It is 1920. The forests have grown too small for freedom.
Édouard Roux, once an outcast youth feared as a child of bears and witches, is left disfigured and alone in the aftermath of the Great War. But when the animal sculptor Jeanne Sauvage grants Édouard the face of Hercules, life begins anew. The two share an epic romance that takes them from the cabarets and salons of Montmartre to the Vercors Massif mountains of Édouard’s homeland. Amidst those mountains, in the Great Hall of the She-Bear, rests a secret from older times…
In The Last Queen, Jean-Marc Rochette bridges war, love, art and greed to shed tragic light on the longstanding struggle between nature and modernity.
Jean-Marc Rochette
Jean-Marc Rochette is a French painter and illustrator. He is one half of the creative force behind the best-selling Snowpiercer, which was adapted into a film by Oscar-nominated director Boon Joon-ho (Parasite) starring Chris Evans, and a TNT/Netflix series starring Jennifer Connelly and Daveed Diggs. His graphic autobiography Altitude was named as one of The Guardian's best graphic novels of 2020.
Reviews
"The Last Queen is a promising indication of what [comics] has to offer, its multi-media combination of impactful words and images making for a message which leaps from the page."
— The Oxford Student
"Uncompromising, deeply poignant and painfully sad, this is a saga of love and extinction: a testament to the passing of the past..."
— Comics Review
"Although set in the past, Rochette encompasses themes very relevant today, most prominently a callous attitude to nature, but also blaming people for their own poverty, societal snobbery, and exploitation of artists."
— The Slings & Arrows
"In short, The Last Queen is a must for next year’s Eisner Awards, and the kind of story that should merit humanitarian awards at all levels."
— borg.com