Ostfront / Westfront, published by Cartem Comcs, is a war comic of the Second World War in which Fabrice Héanff is part of the barbarism to create a majestic story with a superlative design

Fabrice Le Hénanff He is one of the great European authors and his talent precedes him. In addition to this Eastern front / western frontOriginally published as two separate stories, he published another exciting story about Second World War AS Wannseein which the Nazis established a plan for the genocide of millions of human beings.

The Second World War is one of the Most themes approached in the ninth artas in other artistic branches such as literature or Chine. In this work, Henanff transports the reader to Eastern frontin which the Germans will fight to conquer Stalingrado between 1942 Y 1943; And then, al West front in which the Soviets will try to do with Berlin In [1945[1945.

In the current full work, which recovers both fronts, Cartem Comics opted for a brilliant layout of workIn which each part is clearly differentiated because its publication appears turned, thus reading one of the fronts, the other will be printed backwards, highlighting the western front as the beginning, to be chronologically before the Berlin taken by the USSR.

Ostfront Plot

Eastern front immerses us in Brutality of the eastern front During the Second World War with a narrative that mixes historical facts with fiction, to create a very intimate story during the Take and defense of Stalingradothe current one Vulgographerbetween German and Soviet troops.

After breaking the Non -aggression pact against the USSRHitler’s Nazi Germany made a plan, the so called Fall Blau or blue floor in June 1942To reach the raw materials necessary to support the war effort, in this case the oil of the fields of the southern Caucasus.

Los protagonists of this story will be the German soldiers WehrmachtThe regular army, where a soldier who had been punished for disciplinary battalions for not having fulfilled the Nazi ritual joins the lieutenant Tomas von Vilshofen and to the sergeant Max Dingerin which it will be one of the most difficult battles of the competition. In addition, the soldiers will perform an introspection exercise that will make them change during work.

The Westfront plot

Western front It is a plot Much more belligerent and activeSome here French soldiers captured by the allies For fighting as volunteers for the Germans, they will say their history during the siege and the subsequent fall of Berlin to Soviet troops. The protagonist will be a German soldier who will tell the captain who will question his odyssey in the capital of Reich and his flight after the fall.

Him Captain Caradec Find out that German is not such, but a Breton like him who opted for the axis for Brittany was independent of France. The fact of sharing a common origin will cause the captain and the fugitive to enjoy greater empathy and, in this way, he can narrate how Berlin was gradually falling to the Soviets despite the ferocious resistance of children and the elderly who fought for their defense.

Fabrice Le Henfff as a full author

Fabrice Le Hénanff He is the absolute manager of the entire work and although in it the facts from the German point of view, initially the second story should have been narrated from the Soviet point of view in his advance to Berlin, but finally, there are not many sources to tell a good story, the author opted for a French volunteer of the German army.

In Eastern front The author offers a Visual and narrative approach that affects the reader from the first cartoonFar from any glorification of the war, then performs a gloomy, realistic and deeply human reconstruction of the war. Therefore, you mean not only the horror of the struggle, but also the moral dilemmas, the fanaticism and the psychological decomposition of the characters.

The story is perfectly documentedBut he does not glorify the legacy of Mars, but tells a marginal story, based on doubts, fears and silences of the fighters. The figure of the traitor, the national identity and the fault cross the plot with a powerful symbolic load, where The most courageous They will not be those who boast their value or their degree, as can be controlled with the military police, but those who Learn their humanity.

In Ostfront, the The narrative is more fragmented and contemplativeSometimes almost static, as if horror scenes freezed. The rhythm is slow and the story is built more by the atmosphere than by the action. The eastern front is so, as other authors have also shown who have published works on him such as Manuel García-Chias, Paco Asenjo Victor Barba or Daniel Ortega and Antonio Gil.

He intensif Intense and stimulating workThat It does not leave indifferentSince it is a story that is not easy or complicating reading, but, on the contrary, it is a graphic testimony that forces you to look in front of one of the darkest faces in European history. In this way, its tone is dark, claustrophobic and deeply existentialist, in which the moral and physical sinking of the German soldiers is portrayed, without heroic, in a hellish environment in which death is omnipresent.

I am Visual style It is also shockingbecause the author uses a file Mixed technique that includes drawing on woodcontributing with a particular plot that gives it depth for each cartoonIn addition to creating an overwhelming setting, reinforced by a chromatic palette, with brown, gray and ocher tones that evoke usury, mud and despair.

On the other hand, in Western frontDuring his previous documentation, the Hénanff found the story of a Small nationalist group Breton During the war, in which one of his members enlisted in the German army and after the fall of Berlin he was captured by the men of the 2nd battleship division of General Leclerc during the Alsace countryside, who will later be affected as traitors in France.

The narrative part maintains the dark tone, but there is a More narrative and structured approachwith a story that revolves around the journey of Captain Caradecwhere you get a real Tribute to Lee Marvin And the film The twelve of the gallowsallowing the reader a higher approach, in which war fiction with classic elements of the war film.

This new dimension of the war thriller with political and existential dyes allows a certain place of symbolism, but much more focused on the service of action than that of contemplation, since it has a more dynamic narrative rhythm, dense and with more dialogues, following a Much more linear development and using more spatial movements such as cinematographic productions.

In short, the two works of this full volume published by Cartem are complementary and form a diptych on the barbarism of the Second World War. Also so, Ostfront is more experimental, introspective and atmospheric, while Westfront is closer to the classic war history, with defined characters, a concrete plot and references to war cinema, but in both Fabrice Hénnff demonstrates both in its mastery of graphic language and in its ability to treat the conflict critically.

Edition

Eastern front / western front From Fabrice Le Hénanff was published by Cartem Comics inside his Super BD collectionIn hard coveragewith measures of 23.5 x 31.2 cmA colorwith an extension of 136 pagesbe your translator Jose E. Martínez And adding final notes that explain historical words and elements of the plot.

Eastern front/western front

A story of duality in which war must face military duty with personal morality.

In Stalingrado, Kurt Steiner resists inhumanization while Tomas von Vilshofen struggles between love and horror.

In Berlin, François Morliguen presence the fall of a regime and fury of the red army.

War Comic: the brutality of Stalingrado and the sunset of Berlin as never counted before.

It is a masterpiece of duality, a narrative mirror that reflects the extreme contrasts of the Second World War: the brutality of the battlefield in the face of the fragility of human dreams, the military duty in the face of personal morality and the hope that struggles to survive in the midst of desolation.

The comic faces issues such as the light and darkness of the human soul, resistance to yield and the blurred line between the victim and the executioner. The two stories, although separated in space and time, are connected by the conductive thread of moral ambiguity: can there be honor in disobedience? Is it possible to find redemption in a world that seems designed to destroy it?

Visually and narrative, this comic plays with aesthetic duality, alternating between moments of heartbreaking brutality and others of almost poetic calm, underlining that even in absolute chaos, there is still room for humanity, even if it is noises and fragile. It is a story that does not offer easy answers, but challenges the reader to look beyond the extremes and find the truth in the nuance.

Eastern front: Stalingrad

The winter of 1941 had not been a simple enemy; It was a silent killer, an invisible team of cold and despair that tears the army of the III Reich in the vast hatches of Russia. But in June 1942, with loose snow and the renewed war machine, Hitler launched a new assault. This time, the ideals were put aside: the goal was not glory, but oil.

That black gold hidden in the fields of the southern Caucasus was the key to maintaining the race of the war monster. Fall Blau, or the blue floor, played like the title of a serene symphony, but the background of this composition would have been Stalingrado and its notes would have been written with fire, blood and steel.

At this stage, soldier Kurt Steiner walked like a ghost among the living. His “crime” had been to reject the Nazi greeting and his punishment had sent him to the Purgatory of a disciplinary battalion. There, in the bowels of the battle, he did not shoot weapons or conquered the earth: he dug tombs for fallen companions and sided in depopphed threads, as if we had intertwined a mortality for the world.

But the arrival of a train changed the balance of that hell. The young and veterans soldiers descended from him, commanded by Lieutenant Tomas von Vilshofen, a man with the promise of a future that did not adapt to the horror of the present.

Von Vilshofen had sworn in Martha, his girlfriend, who would return soon, that the war would be nothing but a short chapter in his love story. Next to him was Sergeant Max Dinger, whose heart was in a distant farm, taking care of his wife, alone among three French prisoners.

Stalingrad would not just be a battlefield. It would be a cruel mirror, in which men like Steiner, von Vilshofen and Dinger would have faced the enemy, but to themselves. His dreams, fears and souls would have been tested in a city that devoured everything, except the echo of the screams.

Western front: Berlin

On May 8, 1945, Europe held breathing. The weapons began to be silent, but the war, like a cruel lover, did not go without final whispers. In Bavaria, away from the great proclamations, twelve men were captured by the US forces.

They wore German uniforms, but they were French, a living paradox in a world saturated with contradictions. Among them was François Morliguen, a silent witness of the story, someone who had seen how war consumed everything on his journey.

Morliguen was in Berlin when he fell. He had walked among the rubble of a city that once wanted to erect himself like the center of the world, just to become a ruin. He had heard the advance of the red army, a stream of fury who brushed everything on his path, led by brutal justice and cold revenge like the steppes he came from.

For Morliguen and the others, on May 8 it was not the end; It was a point and part. In places like Bad Reichenhall, the weapons still sang their left melody until the last sigh of the day. The Paz came from dropper, leaving behind a void full of questions. How to reconstruct the world when the ashes still fall from the sky?

For Morliguen, that day was not only the conclusion of a conflict, but the beginning of a journey through the unfathomable labyrinth of what it means to survive something vast and terrible as a world war.