French title: Les compagnons du crépuscule, which ran from '84-'90.
Right away, this reminded me both of Hermann's Les tours de Bois-Maury series, as well as his personal art style, altho Bourgeon doesn't draw his faces nearly as homely as Hermann does. (oof, I still don't know what's up with that)
(note that these image samples don't necessarily run parallel to the commentary!)
Driven by chance, a facially-scarred Knight takes Mariotte and Anicet on his quest for redemption, the meaning of which he himself can barely make out. In the first volume, the three companions fall asleep in the "Wood of Mist" and enter a dream in which there is talk of strange elves and a beast to fight. This first dreamlike quest is a narrow success. --BDT
In the second opus, the elves of the Wood of Mist call on the companions for help to deliver them from the Dhuards, a goblin-esque, vicious, oppressive race. Once again, most of the story takes place in a dream, but as the companions sense, it is no less important and dangerous.
Finally, in the last episode, the companions arrive at the town of Montroy, where they decide to spend the winter. Dame Neyrelle, lord of the castle, is not indifferent to the arrival of the knight in her city, and schemes to have the companions accommodated in the castle...
TBH, this series (and the thoroughly mediocre translation I read) were somewhat hard to grapple with. On the one hand, I'm rather fascinated by stories about this time-period, but frankly could have gone without the 'legendary monster' aspects, truth being chronically more fascinating to me than fiction, and all that.
But really, what kept me hanging on was Bourgeon's relentless imagination and sincere dedication to the story. To me, there were lots of little 'bumps on the road' (some of them translation-issues), but the overall story kept pulling me in, again and again. Like, face it, dude-- it's got verisimilitude! :D
Anyway, this being my first read-through, I don't want to judge too much in any particular direction, but I'd say that people who like late-medieval stuff should really dig this, for sure. And then a bunch of others, for various interest-levels, for various reasons.
https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-109-BD-Compagnons-du-crepuscule.html
It has always been the very best 80s Bande Dessinée to me and I have read it countless times, starting from my late teens. It is highly documented and still utterly poetic, philosophical and theatrical. It's simply better than most of Shakespeare's work. There, I've said it.
I would not dare read it in any other language than french however. Every word matters, every picture makes sense, usually at multiple levels of emotion or understanding.
You can endlessly re-read this serie, just mentally choosing who is the main character each time, and your perception of the world will change. And then you blend it all again and it's vertiginous.
By "documented," do you mean discussed & analysed?
Anyway yeah, the more I look at this series, the more it does seem to have those qualities. For example, there's a sort of 'greatness' about this series that I can't quite put my finger on, so far. In English there's a saying that: something can be much worse or much greater than the sum of its' individual parts.
Est-ce qu'il y a la même phrase en français..?
Indeed, in this series many of the panels seem rather ordinary at first glance, but I feel like they... build in my mind, if that makes sense.
I assumed there must be something like that going on! And really, part of why I kept reading amidst the sadly weak English translation. Now, maybe this is one which could have blossomed in English with the talented French-->English translating team of Bell & Hockridge, who brilliantly preserved the wit of Astérix for ENglish audiences.
Wow, that's fascinating. oO
Sorry, by documented, I mean that François Bourgeon did a lot of medieval and artistic research to produce those books (as always). But you are correct, his work is also analyzed by scholars and teachers, first among them is Michel Thiébaut with "Dans le sillage des sirènes".
We also have a similar wording "Le tout est plus que la somme de ses parties.". We usually attribute this saying to Aristotle (with some variations)
So you do have that phrase, nice! :O
Haha, et faux amis alert-- phrase means "sentence" in English, but it's also... "a saying" adapté à l'anglais, mais non? XD