Comics / European Comics

Le dernier livre de la jungle vol.1 (The last Jungle Book)

By Patrick Bérubé
July 29, 2009 - 05:00

Mowgli, an old man feeling the end coming, leaves is family behind and journeys in a small village near the rim of the jungle that saw him grow. There, he will remember his youth: running with the wolves, playing with a bear, learning to hunt with a panther and a fight with a tiger that barely cost him his live.

As you might have guessed, Le dernier livre de la jungle is a loose adaption of Rudyard Kipling's famous The Jungle Book novel. Knowing that, I really did not know what to expect when I picked it up at my public library but I trusted Stephen Desberg's ability as writer enough to give it a shot. As it turn out, I'm happy to have borrowed it and not bought it since there is nothing much original in this series. This first volume follow pretty closely the original book from Mowgli's adoption to when he fights Shere Khan. The only novelty is the story being told by an older Mowgli and it gives it a different angle. I have to say that I expected a bit more from the script since some of Desberg previous series were cleverly written for mainstream stuff. I feel like this series could go both ways. Either it will really build on Mowgli's being old and his reflexion over his youth will take center stage (which would be interesting) or it will fall flat and remain another adaption of a great book.

Visually, It must have been hard for Reculé and De Moor to find a style not too cartoony to avoid comparison with Disney's version of the characters but at the same time not too realistic to remain true the anthropomorphic aspect of the book. The result left me unsure as to whether I liked it or not. The colors are bright and well chosen but the pencils sometime lack subtlety and the backgrounds are sometimes too bare. It feels like De Moor's ink tried very hard to correct these default but it was not enough.

So far this first volume of the series is a relatively straightforward adaption of the Jungle Book. It remain to be seen if it will expand on it or if will remain just an adaptation.

Rating: 7.5 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12