As many of the Europe comics in translation are, it was a bit hard for me to follow at first, not being familiar with international league sports. However, it was an interesting, if derivative premise (man wants to live forever through technology) and kept me reading til the end.

The story of a star Turkish basketball player who won't cheat and an old billionaire looking to transplant his brain into the player's body. You know, that old trope. This comic is overstuffed with too many ideas and way too much exposition. It feels like it was written in the 90's from the amount of telling instead of showing. In this neat future Europe of 2029, corruption and gangs rule the world that's not ruled by the ultra-rich. This 6' 3" center (Yes, that is super-short for a center or anything but a guard.) is manipulated into returning to France to see his dad who has cancer. There the screws are applied to set him to submit to the transfer. It's all gets very nebulous as to what's going on very quickly with this nonsense pseudoscience. Making it even more boring is the comic is interrupted every 10-15 pages by a text page that adds nothing to the story and a welcome blank page that gets you to the end quicker. At the end you find out, this was a novel first translated into a comic (which explains a lot.)

I thought the artwork was great but the story wasn't for me. There was a bit too much text for me. I prefer graphic novels in which there are more graphics than text, otherwise it feels like reading a book with pictures. This is just my personal preference. It is an interesting story just not one for me.

Yeesh, this wasn't good. A graphic novel that combines two major elements to give us just what the world didn't want – a drama about corruption in Turkish basketball, and a near-future sci-fi story of brain transplants, thought mapping, personality digitisation and such things. The biggest problem, despite that set-up being a big problem in itself, is that the script is all over the place – many boxed bubbles are either the narrative flow or are just a caption, and it jars every time you read them wrong – and incredibly repetitive. Needless prose introductions to each chapter tell you something, then you see it played out several pages later, so the last-second basket is no surprise at all, and we actually get bored of reading how his mother died in childbirth. It finally turns out to be an adapted prose novel, but at second time of asking it's a bodge job, where it seems the author was paid per exposition, and certainly NOT one for the memory banks. One and a half stars.

'The Mandelberg Circuit' by Denis Robert with illustrations by Franck Biancarelli is a graphic novel with a science fiction story from the not too distant future.

A famous basketball star and a dying billionaire would seem to have little in common. A scientist with a weird invention will bring them together. The basketball player has his own baggage with a group of gangsters he's disappointed, and a dying father. The offer he gets is intriguing, but will he take it?

It's not a bad story. It takes a little long to tell, but I didn't mind that at all. The art works well.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Europe Comics and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

If there is something to call this title it's overstuffed. The world is interesting and vast but they're also distracting to the main plot that is supposed to be happening. Sports and rigged betting replace arms in terms of economic value; the medical world focuses on treatment of diseases like heart failure and cancer with people still unsatisfied, all while organized crime provides relatively cheaper products in and out of borders.

Especially when that thriller happens with subtlety and with such an advanced methodology. One where a basketball player feels on top of the world so much that he subconsciously acts without the world bearing down on him. Unfortunately blocking the world out so much leaves him vulnerable to the thugs who control the sports he plays. Not to mention his dad has stomach cancer and the above organized crime units are a little too trigger happy. So a seemingly benevolent benefactor shows up when those same thugs threaten him and his girlfriend. But if people read the description, they know that Steve is just an experiment in the billionaire benefactor Netter's attempts to live in his body.

That later half feels genuinely chilling. The world is ready to steal everything from Steve and his only way to survive is through an old man who wants to live in his head. One who takes careful steps to get what he wants and for Steve to stop resisting. Some people can even call this a critique on how corporate overlords seduce people into their world. So much that Netter doesn't exhibit traits that feel human but something alien.

Unfortunately the world gets in Steve's way as much as it does the reader's.

What I like about this graphic novel is that it's different from others I've read in the past and the idea behind it is excellent and got me really intrigued and interested. The problem for me was that it got too long to get to the point, adding unnecessary information several times and that made me skip ahead to get to where I thought the story was going when I read the synopsis. It can be a tiring read if you're expecting a story related to memory transfer, because you'll get a story about a basketball player and his troubles. In short, I think it would have worked better if it had been (a lot) shorter.

The Mandelberg Circuit is a fascinating story about the inner workings of brain and power and human identity.
I really enjoyed this moody story that is rich on character depth.