Euro Preview: More For The Petrolheads — ‘Michel Vaillant Legendary Races Volume 2: A Driver’s Soul’

by Richard Bruton

Time for another preview from Cinebook and their mission to spread the word of the brilliance of Euro Comics – this time it’s more from the legendary French racing car thriller Michel Vaillant in the Legendary Races series…

Originally created back in 1957 by Jean Graton, the Michel Vaillant series has been a huge best-seller in Euro comics – 81 volumes of the original series by Graton and later his son and Studio Graton selling somewhere in the region of 17+ million copies.

It all centres around the fictional Vaillant motorsport team, following them around the world and through the years with stories that not only featured real-life motor racing drivers, tracks, cars, and events but garnered a reputation for fabulous artwork that captured every moment of the intensity and action on the track.

This current Cinebook series is reprinting the most recent of the Michel Vaillant books, the Michel Vaillant Legendes/Legendary Races title that only began in 2022. The first volume gave us the experience of one of the most incredible Indy-500 races in 1966 and now we’re jumping ahead to motor racing royalty – Monaco in 1971.

Cue adventures, on and off the track, surrounded by the rich and famous in attendance for the world’s most famous street racing grand prix. Whilst the city is lashed with rain, making conditions difficult and dangerous, and Jackie Stewart has almost the perfect racing weekend, Michel Vaillant is having something of a nightmare. As the setbacks to his race mount, the man is having all sorts of doubts about his life and career.

Meanwhile, his teammate Steve Warson is having a very weird Monaco indeed – the FBI have been in touch and he’s agreed to exfiltrate an injured special agent from a hotel in nearby Marseille – all of it just adding a strange spy layer to this latest Michel Vaillant…

I was new to the world of Michel Vaillant when I read the first volume and I have to say that I’m finding the whole thing one of those things that are so unexpectedly enjoyable.

This second book has everything that I found enjoyable with the first, plus that neat little spycraft side adventure going on as well. Sure, there’s still the fact that the art feels that bit static in the figure work, although even that is starting to actually feel more a stylistic choice and one I can quite easily deal with. However, the whole thing absolutely comes alive once we get racing, whether on the track as per usual or here with a little extra thriller of a car chase through the French countryside. The way that Dutreuil gets so much motion into things, all that kinetic excitement is there in spades to make this another excellent album of racing joy.

Oh, and one last thing I thought of just as I put this final image up – the rain. Oh the rain is spectacular. I am an absolute sucket for seeing a great comic artist draw rain, there’s just something about it that fills me with absolute joy. And yes, Dutreuil manages to do rain and racing just perfectly…