At 18, Valérie Mangin left Nancy for a preparation course in Paris. Historian, graduate of the Ecole des Chartes, she “entered by the back door” in comics, following a meeting with her future husband, Denis Bajram. For twenty years, she has chained the scenarios. This fall, it does double duty. A futuristic dystopia, “Inhumans” , and the 11e title of the Alix Senator series, “The slave of Khorsabad”.
Is it complicated to take Alix back?
Documentation takes me as long as writing. You have to pay close attention to historical details. But I have great pleasure in going back to the models of Rome, of Khorsabad. The Roman Empire is so big, it allows you to vary the sites. The only constraint is to have a scenario validated by the Jacques-Martin committee, but he never told me anything.
Alix was 20 years old. With you, he’s 50. Will he die one day?
I am often asked the question! No. He has been with me for so long, I would have a hard time killing him. Every time I kill a character, it gives me enormous emotion. Social violence, gratuitous killings were much stronger than today. Alix, that shocks him. But that’s because we transfer our feelings there. Alix says more about our vision of the XXIe century than in Antiquity.
In “Inhuman” , you leave a part to your questions.
Yes, we were interested in working on the freedom-submission diptych. It’s a political fable, coupled with an adventure album. It is important to leave readers wondering. Myself, I don’t have many answers. To write dystopias is to talk about things that go wrong to prevent them from getting worse. The past is like the future, it’s a way of talking about us in the present, of talking about humans above all.
“Inhuman” , scenario Valérie Mangin and Denis Bajram, drawing Thibaud de Rochebrune, Aire Libre, at Dupuis. “The slave of Khorsabad, Alix Senator 11” , scenario Valérie Mangin, drawing Thierry Démarez, at Casterman.In addition to this, you need to know more about it.
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