Le Génie des alpages is a comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 series by French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 comics creator

Comic book creator

A comic book creator is someone who creates a comic book or graphic novel.The production of a comic book by one of the major comic book companies in the U.S...

, F'Murr

F'Murr

F'Murr or F'Murrr whose real name is Richard Peyzaret, is a French comics creator. He is most famous for the long running series Le Génie des alpages .-Biography:...

. The series first appeared in Pilote

Pilote

thumb|Cover of the first Pilote teaser issue, #0.Pilote was a French comics periodical published from 1959 to 1989. Showcasing most of the major French or Belgian comics talents of its day the magazine introduced major series such as Astérix le Gaulois, Blueberry, Achille Talon, and Valérian et...

on January 11, 1973. In 1976 Les Éditions Dargaud

Dargaud

Les Éditions Dargaud is a publisher of Franco-Belgian comics series, headquartered in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. It was founded in 1943 by Georges Dargaud.Initially, Dargaud published novels for women...

 started publication of hardcover albums.

Synopsis

The short stories are usually told in one-page segments, and unpredictably follow the lives of the series' cast. This includes the old nameless shepherd, his successor, the young Athanase Percevalve, the Dog Without a Name (an intellectual talking shepherd's dog), and a flock of eccentric, verbal sheep, led by Romuald the black ram. Other unorthodox characters appear, such as the Berthold the stupid St.Berhard, Kattarsis the petite self-conscious sphinx, a lion, a fox, eagles, snakes, and "Death" in the shape of an attractive woman. Some of these recur frequently.

There is usually no apparent plot in any of these stories from the Alps

Alps

The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....

. Instead, they often consist of different dialogs and simultaneous happenings, making the overall impression of a totally absurd

Surreal humour

Surreal humour is a form of humour based on violations of causal reasoning with events and behaviours that are logically incongruent. Constructions of surreal humour involve bizarre juxtapositions, non-sequiturs, irrational situations, and/or expressions of nonsense.The humour arises from a...

and secluded world. Nevertheless, F'murr always manages to maintain a kind of direction and realism in his otherwise pointless universe, and somewhere in between is the humour that his fans find hilarious but inexplicable.

Sources

• Le Génie des alpages in Pilote BDoubliées
• Le Génie des alpages albums Bedetheque 

Footnotes

External links

• Le Génie des alpages official site on Dargaud
• Le Génie des alpages Fan site
• Le Génie list of sheep
• Le Génie des alpages Album previews