The question of the relationship with the deceased is crucial in our societies but volume 16 of Dungeon Monsters offers a very simple solution: to be buried in Necroville to discuss with the ghosts. Follow our guided tour in the following column. A new tenant of the Dungeon Monsters. Dungeon is a very open fictional universe that has continued to welcome new tenants whether they are screenwriters or authors. In volume 16, it is Guy Delisle's turn to enter the castle. This arrival may seem surprising because the author is best known for autofiction in comics about his travels and his paternity. The Dungeon Monsters series is perfect for this arrival of new artists. These are complete stories, most often in one volume, that take another look at the land of Terra Amata. Somewhere else also presents a new territory. Necroville is a cemetery town because it hosts all the dead of the territory. This village has the magical particularity of bringing back the dead. The deceased therefore arrive from all over the country because the families want to keep in touch with their dead. The reader discovers it when a young mouse Andrée arrives to become a lawyer at Master Ravin. She is skeptical because she fears ghosts. Andrée dreams of a routine life and refuses adventure. Her boss, the bull lawyer, convinces her by promising her a wide variety of acts related to inheritances. She gives in. In parallel, we follow Salsabyl school teacher of the living children… and dead. She teaches in a vault but, to hold, she drinks and a lot. This volume of Dungeon Monsters focuses on the consequences of this situation. Welcoming these dead is a source of income and changes social organization. The community is dominated by marble workers, florists and lawyers. However, the old city becomes too small and expansion is blocked by a seismic fault. The cemetery becomes a coveted area. Everything seems to be getting better for the powerful by the sudden disappearance of ghosts. From a lawyer, Andrée becomes a detective in space and time.
A common universe
Even if artist changes in this new volume of Dungeon Monsters, the duo of creators, Lewis Trondheim and Joann Sfar, keep the reins of the scenario. The colorist Walter is also a regular in this universe. For his arrival in Dungeon Monsters, Guy Delisle modifies his drawing by being less in the purity. Some boxes seem very close to Trondheim. He succeeds very well in rendering the passages dreamlike and seems to reproduce engravings of Piranesi to evoke imprisonment. There is a common space and peoples. Andrée comes from Vaugrenier, a village well known to fans of the series. We especially see the well-known dungeon in the second part of the book which is here in the hands of William of the Court. The tone remains the same with a mixture between laughter and barbarism. Somewhere Else is a light satire. Ghosts are the outcasts of the city who are the source of wealth but are driven from their home when needed. In Nécroville, the problem of land pressure is solved simply by making poisonous snakes and pikes appear to properly accommodate real estate agents. But the rich have equally fanciful solutions to the undead. Andrée then became the defender of these minorities. The lawyer's adventures, however, lack complexity and structure. The publisher Delcourt continues to enrich the universe of Dungeon by offering an ideal volume for All Saints' Day. Somewhere else begins with the description of a cemetery city and then switches to the adventure story Find other rooms of the Dungeon in the chronicles where the best beer in the world is served and a daycare is installed.
