Michel Vaillant is the star of all the biggest international auto racing circuits, and he’s revving up for a whole lot more than just a spin around the block. The Vaillant team finds itself up against new technological innovations, as well as some disconcerting changes in the world of auto racing. The fate of the Vaillant dynasty is in the hands of three generations of men and women. The first challenge is to fight their way to the top on the race track, with their sights set on Formula 1. The second is to try to keep the family together, despite increasingly differing points of views. And it will be up to Michel to ensure their success on both fronts.

The story shifts from intense racing scenes to talky scenes (a bit like the extensive dialogue scenes you get in various French or Belgian comics translated to English, Tintin and so forth). Initially that's a bit disconcerting, but as the story builds up and the characters unfold, it becomes a much better fusion. Not action-y enough to be an American sports thriller, but highly entertaining and dramatic on its own terms.

Time to jump out of my comfort zone, and read something different than my normal diet of Manga, dark comics, and occasional superhero comics. I can’t say I’ve ever read a comic based on racing in any way, so this is a bit of a new one for me. A new comic from Europe Comics, Michel Vaillant is coming soon to an eBook reader of your choice.

I was on a bit of a Tintin kick a few months ago and read a whole bunch of Belgian and French comics like Blake and Mortimer and Freddy Lombard, so the style of this comic immediately reminded me of those. I went back and did a bit of research and discovered that this was, in fact, an older comic that did indeed feature in the very same magazine. It’s funny when you can spot the tonal differences between some of these publications and their comics.

Despite not really being too much into racing, though I did watch Top Gear religiously in the past, I actually enjoyed this. Its probably because it wasn’t bogged down with laborious car racing descriptions and relied on the human drama to tell the story, the technical aspects were just there to spice it up.


The linework in this comic’s art is incredible, especially in backgrounds and technical aspects of the cars and other machines. Half of the time I spent reading this, was be looking around the pages taking in the gorgeous old-school art-style. Comics have sometimes veered towards a more cartoonish look as of late, and art styles like this, with highly detailed pen lines, make me feel nostalgic and give me hope that everything borrowing from the same style-sheet is soon coming to an end.

I was sad to see that this ended on a colossal cliffhanger, so I will try to keep an eye out for the next installment if I can. It’s crazy to think that there are so many diverse types of comics in Europe, it often makes me sad that The US market is over-saturated with superhero books in most of the main houses. That isn’t a dig on superheroes, but I’d love the diversity they have – I would have never likely read this otherwise. Great book, can’t wait to continue it!

Honestly, not what I thought it was going to be. As a big F1 fan, I appreciated the racing side of things, however, the ongoing story in the background surrounding Michel Vaillant's son was a little boring. Don't think I'd carry on with the series to be honest.

I was not familiar with Michel Vaillant, but became acquainted through this volume. I appreciated the colorful artwork, which definitely brings in a classic aesthetic. The book is more character study than action story, but I still enjoyed the artwork and storytelling.

Apparently, Michel Vaillant was a character in French comics in the 1950s. He's been rebooted here, with all the trimmings that actually made me think for a minute he might be a real motorsports racer, but with none of the engagement or fun I would want from such a book. We start with old people quibbling about traffic calming, then a family get-together is a yack-fest about the motor industry, then the next yack-fest is about sponsorship and the post-oil car market. And finally we get a sniff of a race. You know that time when you found out Star Wars #1 was a yack-fest about diplomacy and bollux like that and it had no menacing phantoms anywhere you looked? This is that, only it's not Jar Jar Binks doing the racing. Why Europe Comics chose to publish this barrel-scraping yawnathon, let alone give it a 2021 republishing, is beyond me.