La Quête de l'oiseau du temps
La Quête de l'oiseau du temps (The Quest for the Time-Bird, or Roxanna and The Quest For The Time Bird) is a French language fantasy comic series written by Serge Le Tendre and drawn by Régis Loisel (1st cycle) and others (2nd cycle), published by Dargaud since 1983.
Story
The world of Akbar is in danger: Ramor, the cursed god, is about to be liberated. The sorceress Mara has found a way to prevent the god's resurrection and to bind him again to his prison, a conch. To succeed during the incantation however, she needs the legendary Time-Bird, a mythical beast able to control the flow of time. She sends her daughter, Pelisse (Roxanna in the English translation) to a past lover, Bragon, once a fearsome warrior, now a gray-haired lord of the manor, to convince the aging hero to embark on one last adventure in order to save the world of Akbar.
Themes of the comics include imaginary fauna and flora and nostalgia, as aging heroes deal with their fading glory, new heroes take their place and villains accept their past and manage to find peace. A melancholic mood permeates the whole story.
Publication
- Original story
- Volume 1 : Ramor's Conch (La Conque de Ramor, 1983)
- Volume 2 : The Forgotten Temple (Le Temple de l'oubli, 1984)
- Volume 3 : The Rige (Le Rige, 1985) - « Lucien » award at the Festival of Angoulême the following year
- Volume 4 : The Darken Egg (L'Œuf des ténèbres, 1987)
- Second cycle (prequel)
- Volume 5 : Friend Javin (L'Ami Javin, 1998)
- Volume 6 : The Book of the Gods (Le Grimoire des Dieux , 2007)
- Volume 7 : The Way of The Rige (La Voie du Rige, 2010)
Translations
The series have been translated into several languages, including Spanish, German, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, Polish, Czech and Serbian. An English translation, "Roxanna" was published in the late 80's by NBM.[1]
In December 2015 Titan Comics released the hardcover collected edition of The Quest For The Time Bird (232 pages, Titan Comics, hardcover, December 2015, ISBN 1-7827-6362-7) [2]
Sources
- ↑ http://www.eurocomics.info/roxanna.html
- ↑ http://titan-comics.com/c/320-the-quest-for-the-time-bird/