Yragaël and Urm the Mad Hardcover – September 4, 2018

I have some of the original printings, paid a LOT for, plus the various issues of Heavy Metal.I LOVE this re-printing and also got Gail. I'm drooling with excitement for Sallambo and Delirious 2.Also I will buy (again, heh!) 6Voyages and the first Delirious despite having them in paperback already, just so my hardcover Titan set is complete!Have "The Night" pre-ordered and can't wait for "Vuzz" to get mmmabye added - even though I have a good Italian language printing.Obviously, big Druilliet fan, even working out a personal art style in tribute - "The Sincerest form of Flattery". Probably once some Hindi lessons through will try to learn FRENCH also out of love for his works...!Well, Wakfu/Dofus cartoons sound really good in native French also...Now, there is one issue - the language...the translation...I do definitely like the language in the Heavy Metals the better. The crazy dark gothic fantasy and space operas in such language. So bold and declarative and epic...But the publishers dealt with people spitting pure venom on how the French wasn't perfect or bad... So they tried and got spit on when they made grand artistic letters while being spat on for changing the original English text, now a good readable font and better translations, still screaming offended people. Got a culture of outrage going on...Heh, please Translate "Vuzz" and colorize it maybe...Try "Rebelle 3" to colorize it - with a Wacom/Huion can work with layers on a decent computer and simulate the wild, crazy watercolors quickly - also cheap compared to the Photoshop subscription racket.Just to make the easily offended scream!

Compared to the rest of the books in this series, other than Delirious which I'm still missing, this book looks awful. the colors are super dull and every 2 or 3 pages the resolution drops dramatically.I would probably just wait for a second printing, especially with this being one of the more expensive volumes

Wizard makes love to a city to bring it back to life. It’s metal and awesome. Urm is amazing and that ending. Holy cow that ending. This is some of the best out there by one of the greats.

These reprints of Heavy Metal serials are simply stunning. The artwork looks better than ever and the hardcover editions are very collectible. Looking forward to much more from Titan Books.

The publishing of Philippe Druillet's comics by Titan Comics has so far been lackluster, but this reaches a new low. Many of the pages look quite good, but many seem to come from very low-resolution images and are jarringly blurry.On the one hand, I'm still glad to be getting Druillet's books, but this poor production makes it difficult to anticipate Titan's future releases.

The first English edition of this comic captured the colors and splendor of Druillet’s work. The Titan edition is more like a color photocopy with a half-empty ink cartridge and mediocre lettering. The writing, regardless of translation, is epic fantasy surrealism. It’s often inchoate, though the progression of images gives you the general outline. Yragael’s quest to save humankind from narcissistic motormouth deities culminates in the birth of deformed Urm, whose story is more straightforward.I remember spending hours poring over a tattered original, later stolen by a “friend” probably for the intimacy renderings. I even used a magnifying glass to see each tiny detail. There really is nothing on this level, even with the proliferation of better-written graphic novels. The art is one of a kind and I’m considering the $100 or so for a 1970s replacement.

Positive - Druilliet's material has been out-of-print in English for awhile and (to the best of my knowledge) was only ever available in softcover. I SHOULD be unequivocally excited about these new editions. I would love to give these releases a 5-star review because Druilliet is one of the true grandmasters of the medium and every comic fan should read his work at least once. But...Negative - The overall image quality is sub-par and the lettering is amateurish. The attached image illustrates the difference between the first English language edition from 1974 and the current 2018 Titan release. The color/line detail may have been a consequence of scanning from second or third generation copies. Art goes missing. Physical items degrade. That's the way of the world. I'm not really that bothered by the image quality, though it is noticeably "poor."The lettering is a completely different story. So much is lost in the transition away from multicolored, voluminous psychedelic lettering towards a bland, sterile computer font. This does not boil down to simply "hand lettering versus digital lettering" though. A skilled digital letterer is capable of injecting some life back in to the text. The lettering in this edition was either done by someone with very little skill (who consequently should not have been hired for a collection like this) or someone WITH skill, but on a tight schedule/minuscule budget. Titan should keep in mind that these hardcovers are competing with IDW's Corto Maltese and Obscure Cites, the wealth of Jodorowsky, Moebius and Manara material available from Dark Horse and Humanoids, and the eurocomics offerings of Fantagraphics, all of which display a level of polish that these Titan Druilliet editions have yet to achieve.(To their credit, this specific volume is slightly improved over the first two Lone Sloane collections that came out last year. The lettering was even worse in those. It really does seem like this project was given to an assistant editor who is learning lettering on the job.)

Phillipe Druillet's Yragaël and Urm the Mad were originally published in 1974 and 1975 in French. They were later issued in a sIngle volume in English by Dragon's Dream in paperback 1975 (ISBN: 0-063-32521-5). [Amazon states published 1979 which isn't correct]. This new edition differs in the way the text is preesnted. In the original the text waas lovely hand drawn and colured. In this edition this text is expunged and replaced with text that is entirely different. - a much plainer ordinary typeface - thus loosing an elenent of the aesthetic of the work as a whole. The artwork is still amazing and in a larger hardback format than the 1975 publication. Would have been much prefererable for Titan Comics to have retained the original text than to repolace it. Personally I'm happy I have another edition to match the other Titan Comics hardback editions of Druillet's works but to be honest if you are consdidering buying this version then dont. Buy the Dragon's Dream 1975 edition.

I absolutely love this book and the art is incredible, Philippe Druillet is a master of all things comic. But this particular reprint is not the best version of the book. The 1979 version that you can pick up second hand here on amazon or ebay is much bette. I own a copy and its quite battered so i thought i would buy the hardback version to save my original getting more damaged. The art is mostly the same but some of the aesthetic of the actual text font has been compromised for easier reading. The colours and lines of the art have suffered as well, the colours seem faded and less bright as in the original edition, as though it was photocopied. And the lines lac the sharpness and definitionGreat book but if you want to experience this masterpiece properly you should get the 1979 version. Trust me on this.....

If you know the works of Druillet, then you can guess: there will be some crazy quality visual treat coated dark and cynical story coming on. Yragael is for advanced fans: not so much hints are given to the reader what is exactly going on. The 2nd story, URM is somewhar easier to absorb, but I suppose noone will like it for the plot itself. It is dark, mysterious, very very disappointed in regards of the future mankind is heading to. Both chapter has a somewhat scary satanic-ish aesthetics. In conclusion, the art itself worths seeing; Druillet fans will not be disappointed in any way. I gave 4 stars only because the quality of the print is somewhat below the standards of prior Druillet Titan re-releases (colors are a bit out of tone) but it really worths the price for me nevertheless.

the artwork was stunning, the stories crazy as usual, all in all brilliant!

Druillet is definitely a must read for Comic enthusiast's, for the Far out visuals alone! Unfortunately some panels/pages are blurred, absolutely no effort has been made to correct and Enhance the printing mistakes & Artwork made (due to lack of technical capabilities) in the seventies, when this book was first published. As a consequence the images appear smudged & decolorized especially in contrast with the crisp, new text.