Jonathan Intégrale 1-2-3
2009
The first Jonathan Intégrale collects
the first three stories of Jonathan, preceded by a dossier containing an interview with
Cosey on the early years of Jonathan and an essay about Tibet.
Let me start by saying that the album is
a jewel. The album is slightly larger than the original albums, the paper is of a much
higher quality (I compared the Intégrale with the original albums (dutch version), some
30 years old), the printing is much better (different colours and the black lines are
perfectly aligned, which is rather exceptional in the original albums) and most
importantly: the colours have been digitally corrected. Comparing the the Intégrale with
the old albums, it is shocking to see how bad in fact the original editions are! Or, to
put it more positive: how much progress has been made in 30 years!
Colour correction
The colour correction (done by Nicolas
Cardeilhac) has been excuted very, very well. The blues are more blue, some purples in the
original edition turn out to be gray-blue (a colour difference also known from
publications in Tintin Journal compared to albums), orange has become more red and less
yellow - in short the contrast between colours has been increased, the colours are more
saturated. Together with the much better printing quality (another example: the blacks are
really black), the colour correction gives the drawings more depth, relief; it makes the
drawings more alive, fresh and crisp. A great job of the Lombard team!
The dossier
The dossier is interesting, too. The
interview with Cosey has no real 'news value' for ardent Cosey-followers, but now his
statements about the early Jonathan years are available to a larger public. It is
illustrated with mostly unknown sketches and photographs. The essay about Tibet (by Claude
B. Levenson) is a little too political and too far off from the Jonathan stories, I think.
But I understand that a collection like this cannot be made without some political
statements about Tibet.
Cosey made his first trip to the
Himalayas when he was working on the third story in this collection (Pieds nus...). In the
dossier he admits that he didn't make too much sketches or photographs during this trip
(most photographs in the dossier are from later travels), which explains the somewhat
loose connection of the documents in the dossier with the stories. Personally, I would be
very interested in the transformation from (photographic) documentation into comic strip
environment - I believe that part of the 'Cosey magic' is his ability to be very realistic
and very poetic at the same time.
Three covers
The cover of the Jonathan Intégrale is a
re-make of the cover of the first album edition of 1977... which was a re-make of the
Tintin Journal cover of 1975. Compare the three covers!
 
I have always liked the first cover because of the
attitude of Jonathan (especially the stretched arms and hands) and of the aeroplane flying
way from the viewer. In the second cover, and even more in the third cover, Jonathan seems
more relaxed, which to me doesn't match with the tension of the moment. If you compare the
backgrounds of the covers two and three, you see the development in Cosey's drawing
towards more abstraction and suggestion. Which of the three covers do you like the most?
About the stories
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