Kraa 1-3

Through tireless work by Chevalley and myself, we can now present the full series of Kraa, by Benoît Sokal!



Kraa 01 - Lost Valley (version 2)
This is a western-style mini-series set in the fictional land of Malaskar, wedged between Alaska & Siberia, during the early years of the 20th century. Unscrupulous businessmen have come to the region to exploit its great mineral wealth, build a megacity, and generally make an all-out assault on Nature.

But Nature fights back. It's a tale of :

Bonding between a human (boy) and an animal (eaglet) who have much in common.
Kraa is the last of the sacred giant eagles which the Indian tribe of Lost Valley has revered since time immemorial.
Yuma, an Indian child, is the last of his tribe, spared from a massacre only because he was away tending the wounded Kraa.
They are spiritual twins, able to read each other's thoughts from any distance.
Together, claw and arrow exact bloody revenge.

Lost innocence because, in the process, Yuma becomes more like his eagle friend : killing quickly, without any emotion, beyond morality.







Kraa : 02 - Shadow of the Eagle
T2 : Where eagles dare.
A harsh winter, Nature refusing to be controlled, a modern Western... here comes T2 !
Whereas the eagle's voiceover provided the narrative for T1, T2 is more structured on action, suspense and dialogue ; and while there's an underlying Gold Rush theme, it is - even more than T1 - your chance to strike BD gold yourself, mon ami. Congratulations ! ;)

T2 provides more of Sokal's gorgeous boards, with :
Themes : young love, man's dream of flying, life with animals, poverty, civilisation, survival, feral man, "this too shall pass away", Western life, etc.
A bigger gallery of characters injecting personality : Valsky (labourer), Emily (nurse), O'Bannon (journalist), Altman (doctor), eagle, Morcov (human vulture)
Events (from human and animal perspectives), myth/spirituality, old worlds and new, rare moments of humour and "grace" and friendship
that adds more flesh to T1's original plot (and I don't just mean Emily disrobed).

Benoît Sokal's (no BS !) amazing depiction of Nature and cityscape in horizontal/landscape and vertical shots - both animals at play and the physical environment (including architecture), from near and far - must be admired by every reader. Human faces and expressions are also a delight, with looks of stupidity and anger not limited to the bad guys, or even to humans.

The "parallel narratives" continue, dark and poignant, into T3...
... and remember, mon ami... the story is better than the screenshots I give you.






Kraa : 03 - The Storm's White Rage
Kraa, T3 : Emily remembers.
Unfortunately, this is the concluding mural of an epic, splendid saga, as flights of both eagle and fancy come to an end.

With the very first panel, we are transported to 1963 where Emily, a respected doctor, is retiring from the hospital at Klontown ; the established megacity is snowbound and, while cleaning out her belongings, she discovers her old diary that recorded her personal experiences back in 1922 (time of events in T1-T2).
Thus, diary flashbacks provide the narrative structure of T3, as we learn how Fate played her hand with the characters we had come to love and hate, 40 years ago.
;)

And we've added 21 pages of translations of interviews with Sokal about the Kraa trilogy, lifted from various sites (provenace is given in each article). I really just did it to waste data9724's time when he proof-read it, and aggravate him if possible (note: wasn't possible), but now it occurs to me that you folks might find the interviews mildly interesting so I included them, attached to the end of this T.3 tome. Retaining them is optional, of course.