Bud E. Weyser - Tintin in Thailand (1999)

Tintin in Thailand is a parody of the The Adventures of Tintin books by Hergé, released in 1999. It is written and designed to emulate a volume of the Tintin books, but is the author's own story. It was deemed to have violated copyright laws and thus its publication is illegal.
Tintin in Thailand emulates the style and format of the original Tintin books, with some key differences. With the exception of the cover, the entire volume is in black and white. The characters are imitations of the originals, and are presented as acting out of character, such as by using profane language. Bud E. Weyser is listed as the author, and there is a one page foreword in French.

Copies were printed in Thailand to be distributed in Belgium, where Tintin in Thailand was thought to have been in circulation since December 1999.
Thousands of copies in both French and English were also distributed in Thailand. The quality of the Thai copies was later found to supersede that of the Belgian copies.

In February 2001, the Hergé Foundation heard about Bud E. Weyser's attempts to market Tintin in Thailand as an unknown Tintin book for sale to distributors in Belgium. The Belgian police organized a sting operation, with an officer pretending to be a prospective buyer, and two arrests were made in Tournai. They then arrested the designer in Antwerp. The three confessed to producing more than 1,000 copies for sale in Belgium, and 650 copies were seized. All three suspects were subsequently released.
As of July 2007, copies of Tintin in Thailand could still be found in Bangkok. The Hergé Foundation has continued to take quick action to have copies that are posted online removed." from Wikipedia

THE GUARDIAN:
Forgers send Tintin to Sleazy Bars of Bangkok

Tintin, the boy reporter of comic strip fame, has been caught up in a new adventure and the Belgian police are not best pleased. About 650 forged copies of "Tintin in Thailand" - a lewd tale of Tintin touring sleazy bars in Bangkok - have been confiscated and at least three people arrested, it emerged yesterday.
In Belgium, where the comic strip character with the quiff is something akin to a national hero, the episode has attracted considerable attention, and has been condemned as inbeing poor taste as well as illegal.

Tintin's Belgian creator, Hergé, dreamed up 24 separate adventures for the roving foreign correspondent and his white fox terrier Snowy, but none involved a trip to Thailand and all were considered suitable for children.
In the unauthorised Tintin in Thailand album, however, Tintin is seen with his friends Captain Haddock and the absent-minded Professor Calculus drinking beer at a lap dancing bar in Bangkok. He has abandoned his schoolboy vocabulary for a more colourful one inappropriate for young children. In another scene that is likely to anger fans of the comic strip, Tintin is pictured in a gay escort bar called "Sexy Boy", where he is propositioned by two male Thai hosts. The album also contains graphic scenes of sodomy involving Snowy and Tintin's Chinese friend Chang.

A police unit which specialises in investigating counterfeiting mounted an elaborate sting operation in which officers posed as potential buyers and chatted with smugglers in the town of Tournai, near the French border, before revealing their true identities.
Two men were arrested, and a third from Antwerp, after they confessed to having produced around 1,000 copies of the unauthorised tome in Thailand for resale in Belgium.
Ironically, unscrupulous Thai forgers decided to copy the copy and produced thousands of fake albums which investigators claim are of superior quality to the Belgian version". (14/2/2001)

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Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell - From Hell (1989-1996)

Subtitled "Being a Melodrama in 16 Parts," "From Hell" takes on the most notorious unsolved mystery in the annals of crime, the 1888 "Jack the Ripper" killings of five prostitutes in London's East End. But Alan Moore is more excited by history than he is by any horror show. In his introduction to the series, Moore wrote "It's my belief that if you cut into a thing deeply enough, if your incisions are precise and persistent and conducted methodically, then you may reveal not only that thing's inner workings, but also the meaning behind those workings ... 'From Hell' is a post-mortem of a historical occurrence, using fiction as a scalpel."

Open "From Hell" and you may involuntarily draw back -- it feels like the dark, sooty atmosphere of Moore and Campbell's Victorian London could seep into your own living room. Campbell renders "From Hell" in a scratchy, drippy black and white, with each panel seemingly drawn using a blend of London's chimney ash and tabloid ink. With no campy sound effect balloons, "From Hell" unfolds in an eerie silence, its pauses worthy of Harold Pinter. Although it's still a suspense-driven thriller, "From Hell" condemns the urban destitution and the maltreatment of women of the time in the starkest possible terms, with Moore and Campbell peering into the darkest corners of the victims' squalid lives.

Inspired by the Ripper's centennial, Moore found himself sucked into the lore of "Ripperology," where wild suppositions and fierce factions rival the theorists of the Kennedy assassination. "Watchmen" is replete with Pynchonesque paranoia, and "From Hell" posits a similarly complex conspiracy at the heart of the slayings. Inspired by "Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution" by the late Stephen Knight, "From Hell" suggests that Prince Albert "Eddy" Victor had fathered an illegitimate child, and when four Whitechapel prostitutes attempted to exploit this information, they were executed (the fifth victim was allegedly a case of mistaken identity). Complicit parties include Scotland Yard, the Freemasons and Victoria herself, while such London notables as Oscar Wilde and James "Elephant Man" Merrick make cameo appearances.

(...) Moore's larger point is that the Ripper murders were the fullest expression of 19th century injustices and hypocrisies (...) Moore and Campbell refuse to avert their eyes to even the most brutal or despairing content. Not only do we see the victims plying their trade in the least glamorous ways possible -- hurried couplings against filthy alley walls for a handful of pence -- but the murders are captured with ghastly precision. The book reaches its zenith (or nadir) in Chapter 10 with the last and grisliest of the killings, shown in such detail that it's all you can do to keep your eyes on the page. Still, the graphic novelists aren't in it for splatterpunk shock value. "From Hell" asserts that the Ripper killings provided a catalyst for the 20th century, both figuratively -- the murders and their coverage anticipated tabloid journalism and the modern fascination with serial killers -- and literally. As Gull goes about his dreadful business, he experiences increasingly vivid visions of London in the 1990s.

"From Hell" is as heavily researched as any scholarly work. Although the appendix is superfluous in the human body, here it's as crucial as the heart. Almost every page features end-notes in which Moore not only cites his historical sources but muses on everything from London's "dionysiac" architecture to streetwalking lingo like "thrupenny upright." (...)

To read "From Hell" is to temporarily become a Ripperologist yourself, jazzed by the case's facts, myths and weird coincidences. As you go, you realize that the hero isn't Abberline pursuing his investigation but Moore conducting his own. In "Appendix II: Dance of the Gull Catchers," Moore and Campbell use the comic form to recount, with tongue often in cheek, the strange history of Ripper theorizing. Ripperologists are shown as a mob of manic men with butterfly nets, and Moore himself eventually joins their ranks.

Curt Holman

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Luc Ferrari - Le Banquet [Patajaslocha - 1984 / L'Escalier des Aveugles 1991]

Patajaslocha

Suite de danses (1984)

1. Paso-doble; 2. Tango; 3. Java; 4. Slow; 5. Cha-cha-cha

durée: 27'52''

L'escalier des aveugles (tracks 6 to 18 on this cd)

Recueil de Nouvelles (1991)

1. L’escalier des aveugles; 2. Intermède; 3. Suzanne et le clochard; 4. Interlude; 5. El cuerpo inglés; 6. Intérieur; 7. Hommage à Lorca; 8. Izaskun et la pomme; 9. Interférence; 10. Sans savoir pourquoi; 11. Nada; 12. Madrid, kilomètre zéro; 13. La nouvelle de l’escalier.

durée: 34'21''

link1 (Patajaslocha)

link2 (L'Escalier des Aveugles)

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About L’escalier des Aveugles

"Œuvre créée sur commande du Centre pour la diffusion de la musique contemporaine (CDMC) et de Radio Nacional de España, Radio-2 (RNE-2). Coproduction du CDMC, de RNE-2 et de la Muse en circuit. Réalisée au studio de la Muse en circuit (Vanves, France). Tous les matériaux sonores concrets de l’œuvre ont été enregistrés à Madrid par l’Auteur, avec les actrices Ana Malaver, Julia Gil, Suzanna Cantero, Izaskun Azurmendi, Laura Notario et Gloria de Pedro. Producteur délégué de RNE-2: José Iges. À l’occasion de la Journée Européenne de la musique, l’œuvre a été donnée en première à RNE-2 le 21 juin 1991.

Tout au début, quand je parlais de mon projet de conte radiophonique, j’avais employé le mot «clip» pour évoquer la forme que j’imaginais. Et puis, en travaillant, je me suis rendu compte que ce que j’étais en train de faire était une métaphore sonore de la technique littéraire des «nouvelles». En effet: forme courte, qui raconte chacune une histoire, une situation, une ambiance, mais dans un climat d’ébauche, une manière indirecte de conter, allusive, irréaliste tout en employant des matériaux réalistes. Une manière aussi de laisser l’auditeur (j’allais dire le spectateur) en suspens, peut-être frustré de n’avoir pas une fin pour chaque anecdote.

Chaque nouvelle est construite sur un petit événement: un son, une atmosphère, un mot anodin porteur d’émotion par la voix qui le prononce, un cliché entendu. Et ainsi, l’ensemble se tisse à l’intérieur de multiples langages: le musical, le bruitiste, le réaliste, le synthétique et enfin l’espagnol et le français, proposant au public des pistes à suivre et à délaisser. À propos de chemin, celui-ci est un escalier qui revient comme un thème: l’idée qu’un lieu de Madrid s’appelle L’escalier des aveugles m’a fasciné, comme une réalité poétique, ou plutôt comme une surréalité; mais aussi comme un symbole de ce que j’étais en train de faire, une composition avec des sons et pour la radio. Et comme chacun sait, la radio est pour ceux qui ont des images pleins la tête." in reseauxconcerts.com

"A passionate journey into Ferrari's obsessions with Spain and Sexuality; enchanting, ironic, beautiful, humorous, sometimes glorious. An absolutely unique listening experience: where else would you find the dialects of pasodoble, chamber music, cha cha cha, field recordings and electronics merged into a single, coherent language?" The Ewings Short Reviews