GIARDINO - Lot 94

GIARDINO VITTORIO GIARDINO ◊ THE ADVENTURES OF MAX FRIDMAN La Porte d'Orient (T.2), Glénat 1986 Original cover. Signed. India ink and colored inks on paper 24.5 × 32.4 cm (9.65 × 12.76 in.) Along with Jonas Fink, the Max Fridman series is the other masterpiece by Vittorio Giardino, Italy's leading exponent of Ligne claire. His hero, Max Fridman, is a Frenchman and former secret service agent. He's Jewish, a socialist, and knows Mitteleuropa like the back of his hand. His adventures take him wherever the telluric plates of interwar geopolitics collide, as Europe prepares to let the foul beast loose. Between his mission in Hungary in February 1938 in Rhapsodie hongroise, and the Spanish War trilogy that begins in October of the same year, there's this episode set in Istanbul in the summer of 1938, where our secret agent clashes with those of the Soviet NKVD in a chase to recover fugitive engineer David Stern. Giardino is a master!