The Devil in the Vatican

Le Scorpion #3-4

by Stephen Desberg, Enrico Marini

The Scorpion, whose mother Cardinal Trebaldi burnt at the stake for loving a man of the cloth, discovers that his father murdered Pope himself. When Trebaldi addresses a huge crowd at the end of the mourning period, the Scorpion is there to tell the truth about how the people's beloved Pope died. Trebaldi claims that the sacred cross of St. Peter miraculously appeared in his castle. The Scorpion must find the real cross if he is to prove Trebaldi's treachery.

This volume contains chapters 4 and 5 from the original series.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Bande Dessinée

96 pages, Paperback

Published August 16, 2009

About the author

Stephen Desberg is a Belgian writer of comics. In 2010, he was the 10th bestselling author of comics in France, with 412,000 copies of all his comics together sold that year.

Reviews

[Diz]

The art and the adventure in this series is still strong in this second volume. The story involves quite a lot of secrets about the Vatican, so it would be fun for those who like conspiracy theories. I gave this fewer stars than the first volume, though. It leans too heavily into ethnic stereotypes in the section of the story that takes place in Istanbul, which made the story less enjoyable than the first volume for me.

[StrictlySequential ArtNarrative]

(x)(x) Cinebook edition is gratuitously censored (x)(x)
->"not to upset our more sensitive readers, certain illustrations have been modified"

This was the most painted-over breasts that I've ever seen! I figure that they wouldn't even have chosen to publish the series if there was more nudity- that this may be their "most voluptuous" title.

But forget that. My rating is a pure medium. I'm just tired of the predictably repetitious story and Marini's art, despite it's aesthetic qualities, is a bit "pointy" to my eyes. Accordingly, despite having the next two tomes in actual-sized French, with full flesh privilege, I'm selling them unread.

[The_Mad_Swede]

The second volume of writer Stephen Desberg and artist Enrico Marini's The Scorpion collects the third and fourth albums in the original French publishing: The Stone Cross and The Devil in the Vatican (which lends its name to the Cinebook collection).

The Scorpion deals with the secrets he learned in the previous volume and the death of the Pope at the hands of agents of Cardinal Trebaldi, whose plotting towards the ultimate power of the Catholic Church is moving forward.

All in all, it delivers more of what the first volume offered (and promised), and I am still interested in seeing where the plot takes these characters.

[Alex]

What's up with the translation? Story is ok but nothing special, Marini's art is great of course, but speech bubbles seemed way off.

[Pavel Pravda]

Je to tak trošku schématické dobrodružství, ale pořád je to zábava. Záporáci z Vatikánu jsou krásně zlí, zatímco hlavní hrdina je správný rebel a proutník, ale zároveň je chytrý a vzdělaný. A samozřejmě, krásné ženské jsou nebezpečné a zrádné. Indiana Jones osmnáctého století. Stačí to, ale víc než zábavu od toho nečekejte. První knihu jsem si pro zopakování chtěl jenom prolistovat, ale nakonec jsem ji kompletně přečetl a vůbec mě to opakované čtení nenudilo. Věřím, že to tak bude i před třetí knihou, kdy si pro zopakování znovu dám tuto druhou. Mariniho kresba je pořád skvělá, samozřejmě.