It was after thirteen years of waiting that the patience of Théodore Poussin's assiduous reader was rewarded by the publication (by Dupuis) of Le Dernier Voyage de l'Amok, the thirteenth volume of the adventures of Captain Steene's offspring.
Over time, Théodore Poussin has become a key character in French comics. His plump appearance with simple features a priori often made him pass, for those who were content to see him on the covers of his albums, for a kind of Tintin binoclard with a big nose, decked out in Captain Haddock's sailor sweater. However, we are far from The Adventures of Tintin, both from a graphic and narrative point of view, because Teddy is much closer to Corto Maltese than to the famous puffed reporter. It is also strongly recommended to those who have sometimes felt the call of the open sea, as well as to lovers of the great travel stories of Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling or Hugo Pratt to read immediately the first seven albums of Théodore Poussin: a perfectly mastered story, inspired by the real life of Théodore-Charles Le Coq, grandfather of Frank Le Gall. It's great.
The following volumes (8 to 12) have somewhat slowed down. Made of good intentions, filled with good ideas, but sorely lacking the breath that had made the strength of the first six albums (the seventh – essential when you have read the previous ones – is apart).
The Last Voyage of the Amok follows The Jealousies, whose story took place a few months earlier. It is therefore advisable to read it again before discovering the new album, just to situate characters that we may have forgotten since 2005 (Buck and Coudreuse, in particular).
So what about this brand new and fresh Théodore Poussin ?
Well, it's indisputable, we are caught up in reading from the beginning. We immerse ourselves in the story without the slightest difficulty. Everything seems obvious, flow naturally. We follow the characters whose purpose we wonder, and that of Teddy in particular, since he is the leader and the (anti-)hero. The dialogues are particularly good, the lines well turned. We feel that Le Gall was keen to take care of his writing. He will just be criticized for the annoying use of English (schooner) to designate the Amok, Poussin's sailboat. Why not just use "schooner" as all French sailors in the world do? Again this painful fascination for useless Anglicisms. But let us move on, because the qualities of this story are numerous enough to make us forget this sorry gap.
Le Gall creates new characters that are alternately disturbing (Dove), endearing (Mickymos) or simply – and subtly – reminiscent of the past (Harmony). He also took more care in drawing his boards. We see this particularly when we read the album following the Jealousies, whose line was often more shocked and less polished. Here, Le Gall is finer, more precise and neater.
But there is still a problem with The Last Voyage of the Amok : it is the final justification given by Teddy for the journey that we devoured during the previous fifty-two pages. The last ten pages seem very meager, in quantity and quality, to justify everything we have read since the beginning. As long as Theodore keeps his intentions secret, the story holds very solidly. But when he reveals to us the end of it, the reason for the expedition, we wonder why he embarked a crew in this case. The character then turns out to be much less mature than we thought because everything is in fact a question of pride and last word.
In the end, the album remains a real pleasure to read despite this awkward ending. Frank Le Gall announces an album to follow that should take place in Europe. Let's hope that we will not have to wait fourteen years to discover the fourteenth volume of the adventures of Théodore Poussin.
