5 out of 5

Nailed it again, and I’d again credit a well-chosen theme: stopping places on a journey, loosely framed as “hotels.” Indeed, hotels do feature in the majority of these stories, either as central plot points – the hotel / motel is an important representation of something – or as a setting for goings-on, and in both cases, it feels integral: conceptually, you cannot swap the hotel for something else.

Interestingly, no interview this issue, rather a pretty good editorial on LA’s Chateau, and a bit of an extra dive on (i.e. a full page dedicated to) one of the reprints: Telechamp, by Sergio Macedo. I suppose one’s take on the text pages makes this a plus or minus; I’m okay with the insertions as long as they are appropriate, but obviously limiting the extras limits the possibility for that to go awry. This time, the Chateau bit definitely fits and is a nice mix of waxing nostalgic and extolling its time-lost vibe as a stopover; the Telechamp background gives some good scene-setting for those of us lacking in a background of some of Hurlant’s classic contributors.

Speaking of whom: the reprints, Telechamp included, are all great matches as well; editorial (down to three – Frissen, Giger, and Lucido) went above and beyond to kind of sequence the tales to fit a “journey” narrative, and the intro text pages to each section of strips speaks to that – we’re arriving, we’re getting our bags, so on. It’s absolutely worth going through this one in order, which continues to highlight the smart mixing of artistic styles, story lengths, and general tone: when there’s something not to your taste (which is inevitable), the change ups make sure you’ll find something soon, if not very likely the next story.