A group of old men gathers on an estate in Poland for a hunting party. It's the early 1980s...the Warsaw Pact is still in existence, but cracks are starting to appear. The men in the hunting party are highly influential members of each of the various countries' communist parties. A young French communist acts as translator, and he slowly discovers the story of each of these men, how their idealism eroded, how the Soviet Union loomed over them and their countries... It's a fantastic story, outstanding writing by Pierre Christin and Enki Bilal's artwork is just extraordinary. Bilal uses color schemes as symbols, it took me awhile to catch on. See if you can figure out what his use of the colors red and yellow symbolizes. But this wonderful, tragic story that ends on a strangely prophetic optimistic note, and get a painless education in how the countries in Eastern Europe after WW2 learned to hate/love the Soviet Union.

Sustainable Urban Planning introduces the principles and practices behind urban and regional planning in the context of environmental sustainability…

Christin, a French novelist, and Bilal ( Exterminator 17 ) have produced a story of class conflict transformed by a benevolent mistress and visionary technology. The tale is set in a decaying French industrial hamlet called Jadencourt. As the town's corporate patriarch lies dying, the workers in his factories go on strike and the managers and executives from his global conglomerate gather to await his death and claim control of the huge empire. But the mogul's sole heir, an invalid daughter, surprises everyone: she buys out her executive rivals and confronts the town and union leaders with a fantastic scheme to use the corporation's immense wealth to build a new Jadencourt. The reborn city, completely domed in plastic, is designed to provide for every inhabitant. Bilal's drawings, as always, are impressively rendered, his color muted and melancholic. Despite its labored pace and sometimes predictable characterizations, this work documents the provincial working classes while highlighting the disillusion and social vacuity inherent in utopian schemes.