Pour de nombreux lecteurs, la découverte du manga s’est faite avec Akira. Å’uvre phénomène dans les années 80 et 90, cette bande dessinée et le film d’animation qui en a été tiré ont vite propulsé le créateur Katsuhiro Otomo comme un auteur culte dans le monde entier. Sous le titre Anthology, les éditions Kana publient aujourd’hui dans leur label Sensei des histoires courtes signées du maître. Après Akira en version couleur ou noir et blanc et Dômu, c’est un nouveau pan de l’Å“uvre de ce mangaka qui devient accessible pour les lecteurs francophones.

Dans ce volume de 260 pages, des récits vieux d’une trentaine d’années sont compilés. Très divers dans leur format, les scénarios proposés ici vont de la science-fiction au moyenâgeux en passant par l’absurde. Souvent drôles, les pages se révèlent d’une étonnante modernité dans le trait. Des séquences sont également mises en couleur et bénéficient de quelques effets spéciaux, ce qui vaut au livre de dégager une très forte odeur d’encre.

Sans être indispensable, Anthology est un recueil recommandable, bien loin des premiers travaux gauches ou non-aboutis. Doté d’un humour étonnant et rendant hommage à ses influences les plus patentes comme Moebius et la culture rock, Otomo boucle l’album avec des commentaires pertinents sur chaque histoire. Pour 18 euros, les fans d’univers post-apocalyptiques et d’humour potache y trouveront leur compte, un grand écart anthologique !

Le premier tour du vote des militants socialistes, qui désignent actuellement leur nouveau premier secrétaire, n’a pas permis de départager Ségolène Royal (43,1%) et Martine Aubry (34,5%). Benoît Hamon (22,83%) est éliminé et appelle à voter Martine Aubry. Un second tour aura donc lieu aujourd’hui.

Lire sur le Monde.fr : Un second tour Royal-Aubry pour la tête du PS

Le 26 novembre, dans une petite semaine, Christophe Arleston et Didier Tarquin mettront fin à la saga Lanfeust des Étoiles avec Le Sang des comètes. L’occasion d’un final en fanfare avec un tirage de 300 000 exemplaires et la diffusion de l’ouvrage au format numérique, à partir du 15 décembre pour moins de 5 euros. Mais si Lanfeust des Étoiles tire sa révérence c’est loin d’être le cas pour la franchise, avec la sortie l’année prochaine de Lanfeust de Syxte, un tout nouveau cycle et d’un Légendes de Troy dessiné par Olivier Vatine.

Bon, contrairement aux Chroniques de la Lune Noire qu’on pensait se terminer pour de vrai, les auteurs ont toujours dit qu’il y aurait un nouveau cycle. L’occasion pour le héros de revenir sur sa planète d’origine, de nombreuses années après son départ. Suite à une embrouille temporelle survenue dans le cycle des Étoiles, nous retrouverons C’ian quadra et mère de famille. Dans Casemate, Tarquin explique qu’il y aura de nombreuses nouveautés graphiques à commencer par une pagination revue à 90 de planches par album ! Un prodige rendu possible par une diminution drastique du nombre de cases par page. L’air de rien, la série emprunte aux codes du comics et du manga et devrait offrir davantage de doubles pages d’illustrations spectaculaires.

Côté spin-off, tandis que Tykko des sables, le premier Légendes de Troy dessiné par Nicolas Keramidas est annoncé pour décembre, Olivier Vatine à qui l’on doit les premiers Aquablue travaille sur un de ces albums, Le Secret de Cixi, où on découvrira ce que faisait la belle lorsqu’elle a disparu sur Troy. Indice : un fouet et un string en cuir seraient vendus avec l’album.



Les images sont © MC Productions, Arleston, Tarquin.

Vous trouvez un air de ressemblance dans le titre avec la news précédente ? À croire que le petit monde de la BD s’est donné le mot, la scénariste du Dernier Troyen, Valérie Mangin a posté de nouveaux instantanés dans sa rubrique reportages photos. Les curieux de tout poil pourront ainsi découvrir l’intérieur des locaux de la maison d’édition Soleil à Toulon et l’équipe sur place. Participante au projet Destins de Franck Giroud chez Glénat, l’auteure livre également en clichés les coulisses d’une réunion de travail entre tous les scénaristes avec à leurs côtés quelques dessinateurs présents comme Michel Durand, Espé, Loïc Malnati ou Daphné Collignon… Finalement, il n’y a pas besoin de caméra cachée pour être Infiltrés !

Présente au festival Quai des bulles, la société de sculpture Attakus a ramené tout un tas de photos de son stand et des auteurs présents lors de l’événement. Si le lien sur leur blog a conduit quelques jours vers une figurine de Bob l’Éponge – ce qui reste cohérent avec la Bretagne -, il est désormais possible d’accéder à tous ces clichés et notamment ceux dévoilant les statuettes à venir. Lors d’une séance de retouche, Pierre Alary se retrouve ainsi entouré des bustes de son héros Sinbad et de son génie tiré de sa BD éponyme, réalisée avec Christophe Arleston. Quant à Jean-Louis Mourier, il joue avec tout un tas de petites figurines de ses Trolls… Nous aussi on veut bien s’amuser avec.

CNN:
Sources: Jones leading choice for national security advisor  —  CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) - Two sources close to the Obama transition team tell CNN retired Marine Gen. Jim Jones has emerged as President-elect's leading choice to become national security adviser in the White House.

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Engadget Podcast 119 - 11.21.2008 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The complete screenplay for Wall-E.

Bloomberg:
Obama Team Said to Explore ‘Prepack’ Auto Bankruptcy  —  Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) — President-Elect Barack Obama's transition team is exploring a swift, prepackaged bankruptcy for automakers as a possible solution to the industry's financial crisis, according to a person familiar with the matter.

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ASUS Eee PC 1002HA hands-on and video: looks a lot like the S101 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In celebration of its semisesquicentennial1, Esquire magazine shares the seven greatest stories ever told in the pages of their magazine and has published them online in their entirety. (See also Esquire's 70 greatest sentences.) Get a load of these initial paragraphs.

The School by C.J. Chivers:

Kazbek Misikov stared at the bomb hanging above his family. It was a simple device, a plastic bucket packed with explosive paste, nails, and small metal balls. It weighed perhaps eight pounds. The existence of this bomb had become a central focus of his life. If it exploded, Kazbek knew, it would blast shrapnel into the heads of his wife and two sons, and into him as well, killing them all.

The Falling Man by Tom Junod:

In the picture, he departs from this earth like an arrow. Although he has not chosen his fate, he appears to have, in his last instants of life, embraced it. If he were not falling, he might very well be flying. He appears relaxed, hurtling through the air. He appears comfortable in the grip of unimaginable motion. He does not appear intimidated by gravity's divine suction or by what awaits him. His arms are by his side, only slightly outriggered. His left leg is bent at the knee, almost casually. His white shirt, or jacket, or frock, is billowing free of his black pants. His black high-tops are still on his feet. In all the other pictures, the people who did what he did -- who jumped -- appear to be struggling against horrific discrepancies of scale. They are made puny by the backdrop of the towers, which loom like colossi, and then by the event itself. Some of them are shirtless; their shoes fly off as they flail and fall; they look confused, as though trying to swim down the side of a mountain. The man in the picture, by contrast, is perfectly vertical, and so is in accord with the lines of the buildings behind him. He splits them, bisects them: Everything to the left of him in the picture is the North Tower; everything to the right, the South. Though oblivious to the geometric balance he has achieved, he is the essential element in the creation of a new flag, a banner composed entirely of steel bars shining in the sun. Some people who look at the picture see stoicism, willpower, a portrait of resignation; others see something else -- something discordant and therefore terrible: freedom. There is something almost rebellious in the man's posture, as though once faced with the inevitability of death, he decided to get on with it; as though he were a missile, a spear, bent on attaining his own end. He is, fifteen seconds past 9:41 a.m. EST, the moment the picture is taken, in the clutches of pure physics, accelerating at a rate of thirty-two feet per second squared. He will soon be traveling at upwards of 150 miles per hour, and he is upside down. In the picture, he is frozen; in his life outside the frame, he drops and keeps dropping until he disappears.

What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now? by Richard Ben Cramer:

Few men try for best ever, and Ted Williams is one of those. There's a story about him I think of now. This is not about baseball but fishing. He meant to be the best there, too. One day he says to a Boston writer: "Ain't no one in heaven or earth ever knew more about fishing."

"Sure there is," says the scribe.

"Oh, yeah? Who?"

"Well, God made the fish."

"Yeah, awright," Ted says. "But you have to go pretty far back."

Frank Sinatra Has a Cold by Gay Talese:

Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something. But he said nothing; he had been silent during much of the evening, except now in this private club in Beverly Hills he seemed even more distant, staring out through the smoke and semidarkness into a large room beyond the bar where dozens of young couples sat huddled around small tables or twisted in the center of the floor to the clamorous clang of folk-rock music blaring from the stereo. The two blondes knew, as did Sinatra's four male friends who stood nearby, that it was a bad idea to force conversation upon him when he was in this mood of sullen silence, a mood that had hardly been uncommon during this first week of November, a month before his fiftieth birthday.

M by John Sack:

One, two, three at the most weeks and they would give M company its orders -- they being those dim Olympian entities who reputedly threw cards into an IBM machine or into a hat to determine where each soldier in M would go next, which ones to stay there in the United States, which to live softly in Europe, and which to fight and to die in Vietnam.

The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson. Yes! by Tom Wolfe:

Ten o'clock Sunday morning in the hills of North Carolina. Cars, miles of cars, in every direction, millions of cars, pastel cars, aqua green, aqua blue, aqua beige, aqua buff, aqua dawn, aqua dusk, aqua aqua, aqua Malacca, Malacca lacquer, Cloud lavender, Assassin pink, Rake-a-cheek raspberry. Nude Strand coral, Honest Thrill orange, and Baby Fawn Lust cream-colored cars are all going to the stock-car races, and that old mothering north Carolina sun keeps exploding off the windshields. Mother dog!

Superman Comes to the Supermarket by Norman Mailer:

For once let us try to think about a political convention without losing ourselves in housing projects of fact and issue. Politics has its virtues, all too many of them -- it would not rank with baseball as a topic of conversation if it did not satisfy a great many things -- but one can suspect that its secret appeal is close to nicotine. Smoking cigarettes insulates one from one's life, one does not feel as much, often happily so, and politics quarantines one from history; most of the people who nourish themselves in the political life are in the game not to make history but to be diverted from the history which is being made.

[1] That's seventy five years, yo. Quattuordecennial is the anniversarial name for fourteen years. Others. ↩