Negative Exposure: Fear and Loathing in Kokonino World

Les Dossiers d'Olivier Varèse #2-3

by Thierry Smolderen, Georges Pop, Enrico Marini (Illustrator)

The Manga by way of Europe masterpiece featuring art by fan favorite Enrico Marini ("Gypsy Raptors, Black Pearl) is completely redone in this volume collecting the 4-issue mini-series, along with two bonus issues and brand-new coloring! Follow the exploits of incompetent investigative reporter Oliver Varese, who has a knack for attracting both beautiful women and danger as he travels the globe on assignment. From Red Square, to Hong Kong, to Geneva, Oliver chases down the truth amid international intrigue ripped from the headlines. Investigative journalism is harder than it seems: beautiful women, fast cars, dangerous assignments, and other things that are too much for Oliver Varese to handle can all be found in "Negative Exposure".

152 pages, Paperback

First published April 2, 2012

About the author

Thierry Smolderen (born 25 November 1954) is an essay writer, as well as a script writer of Belgian comic strips.

Smolderen is a teacher at École des Beaux-Arts of Angoulême, France. As a comic books historian, he wrote Naissances de la bande dessinée (2009), about the "platinum age" of comics. This book has been published in English by the University Press of Mississippi in 2014, under the title The Origins of Comics: From William Hogarth to Winsor McCay (Eisner Award nominee of 2015 in the Best Scholarly/Academic Work category).

Reviews

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are two stories in this collection. The first one has an incomprehensible plot that travels too fast for the reader to follow, and the protagonist spends the whole story being dragged around at the whims of other people, without ever making any decisions of his own. Also, Marini's art style is a blatant ripoff of Katsuhiro Otomo's. The second story has a much simpler and clearer plot, and the artwork looks more like Marini and less like Otomo.