Achille Talon: Difference between revisions

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{{work}}
[[File:Achille_Talon_1.jpg|frame|<small>That short guy he's leaning on? That's [[Rene Goscinny]].</small> ]]
 
 
''Hop !''
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Achille Talon, according his author, ''"knows everything and improvises the rest of it. Apart of this, he's generous, petty, pacifist, aggressive, progressist, bourgeois, selfless, jealous, intrepid and a bit of a coward. In sum, honest and brave just like you and me..."''
 
The comic book was translated for different markets in the 80's and published in English under the title ''[[Walter Melon]]'' with little success, as it was so specifically French by its main character and its language. Readers hardly understood Talon's favorite interjections, "hop !" and "bof..." which simply express positive/negative moods.
 
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{{tropelist}}
=== ''Achille Talon'' provides examples of the following tropes: ===
 
* [[The Alcoholic]]: Achille Talon's father is one, but this is strictly [[Played for Laughs]]. He's remarkably good at holding his liquor.
* [[All Crimes Are Equal]]: In the end of ''l'Âge ingrat'', Grelot is arrested by [[The Longtarin|the cop]], just after his car exploded, for ''"scattering things on the public way, unpleasant behavior, setting a bad example to the younger generation, and, [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|I'd almost forgotten]], kidnapping !"''
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* [[Balloonacy]]: Achille Talon's father escapes [[Meddlesome Patrolman|annoying cops]] by blowing into a breathalyzer balloon until it becomes an improvised blimp and he takes off with it.
* [[Berserk Button]]: Papa Talon losing his beer.
* [[Big Applesauce]]: In the album ''L'appeau d'Ephèse'' (it's a pun; "ça coûte ''la peau des fesses''" (litterallyliterally "it costs the skin of the buttocks") means "it's hugely expensive" in french). Greg lived a long time in the USA and even worked as writer for TV Shows such as ''[[The Love Boat]]''. Talon serves one of his most beautiful sentences before the "Megacash Museum" where he can't go in since it's the night: ''"I was once more forgetting that, in this retrograde country, clocks ignore that in good French it's actually tomorrow morning."''
* [[Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce]]: Achille Talon once forced himself to ingest a dish made from all the most potent spices in the world, just so he could belch out the lethal digestion gasses right in Lefuneste's face.
* [[Blue Blood]]: The marquise Virgule de Guillemets, Achille's (platonic) fiancee.
* [[Break Out the Museum Piece]]: In order to fly to Polynesia on short notice and on a shoestring in ''Le Grain de la folie'', Lefuneste and Major Lafrime hire a veteran German [[WW 1]] pilot, who gets them there onboard his vintage triplane. Amazingly, the obsolete aircraft handily wins a dogfight against a modern jet fighter on the way.
* [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]]: Achille Talon is probably the most [[Egregious]] offender in all French-Belgian comics. See [[Medium Awareness]].
* [[Break Out the Museum Piece]]: In order to fly to Polynesia on short notice and on a shoestring in ''Le Grain de la folie'', Lefuneste and Major Lafrime hire a veteran German [[WW 1]] pilot, who gets them there onboardon board his vintage triplane. Amazingly, the obsolete aircraft handily wins a dogfight against a modern jet fighter on the way.
* [[Butt Monkey]]: Achille and Lefuneste. Usually to each other.
* [[The Cavalry]]: Shows up on time to save the day in ''La Main du serpent'', something the [[Genre Savvy]] Achille matter-of-factly hangs a lampshade on.
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* [[Darkest Africa]]: Lampshaded in ''Le coquin de sort'' (and somehow parodies ''[[Tintin|Tintin in the Congo]]''). All inhabitants of Doduduba ("Fatinbottom") speak an absolutely perfect French and the primitive bush village where everybody walks around half-naked with spears has a big contract with a pet food canning plant in Chicago.
* [[Depraved Dentist]]
* [[Doing inIn the Wizard]]: The album ''L'esprit d'Eloi'' (A pun on Montesquieu's "The spirit of the laws"). There is no ghost, of course.
* [[Eagle Land]]
* [[Easy Amnesia]]: [[Shout-Out|Colorado Jules]] in ''Le trésor de Virgule''. Got a [[Tap on the Head]] that made him forget only a ''part'' of the information about the treasure. Immediately parodied by Virgule who argues him and tells him he's "of bad faith".
* [[Expy]]: Saint-Ogan's ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20190613221339/http://www.bedetheque.com/Couvertures/MonsieurPoche2_17082005.jpg Monsieur Poche]''.
* [[Fatherland]]: Zôtrland in the album ''Le Roi des Zôtres''
* [[Flowery Insults]]: Achille and Lefuneste often try to outdo one another in that regard.
* [[French Maid]]: Subverted; Virgule's maid Hécatombe is a huge woman built like a professionnalprofessional wrestler and [[Popeye (comic strip)|anchor arm tattoos]]... in the requisite maid outfit.
* [[Friendly Enemy]]: Talon and his neighbourneighbor Hilarion Lefuneste. Always calls him ''cuistre'' (prig) but they're inseparable. Especially when they're fighting each other.
* [[Gag Nose]]: [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] when Lefuneste making fun of Achille Talon's nose ends up having the latter hired to play the title character in ''Cyrano de Bergerac''.
** At one point, a crook wants to nail Achille in between the eyes with his gun. He aims, they have a silent faceoffface-off... and he breaks down in tears.
{{quote|I CAN'T DO IT! I CAN'T NAIL HIM BETWEEN TWO EYES HIDDEN BY A NOSE LIKE THIS!}}
* [[General Ripper]]: The commanding officer of the US garrison in ''Le Grain de la folie'' is obsessed by the [[Yellow Peril]].
** To the point where he chews out a subordinate for almost stepping on a butterfly ([[Eagle Land|as American soldiers are the protectors of the weak and the small]]), then chews them out again when he realizes the butterfly is yellow.
* [[Genre Savvy]]: In ''La Main du serpent'', Achille Talon correctly surmises that the other survivors of the submarine wreck were scattered by the storm. In fact, as another character observes, there was no storm. But Achille Talon replies that in adventure stories, there is ''always'' a storm--andstorm—and so there was one.
* [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]]: "Rue de Manconne" seems perfectly innocent until you readdread it out loud, at which point it translates to "(she's) fuckin' stupid".
** Naughty tentacles are invoked in a simile.
** "L'Etang Tacule" is a spoonerism for "The state screws you in the ass".
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* [[In Name Only]]: The obscure [[Animated Adaptation]] from the late '90s starred Achille (under his English name, Walter Melon) as a "hero for hire" who substituted for various action hero [[Expy|expies]].
* [[Intimidating Revenue Service]]: The plot of ''Ne rêvons pas'' is set in motion by the visit at Achille's place of a persnickety tax assessor. In a subversion of the trope, Achille's father, acting as his tax advisor, turns the tables on the assessor and assails him with a mountain of paperwork.
* [[Intoxication Ensues]]: Inverted. Lefuneste once claimed to have embraced the hippyhippie counterculture and offered Achille Talon a spliff. Achille angrily turned it down at first, but smoked it when he thought nobody was looking, and had a [[Mushroom Samba|hallucinatory trip]]. At which point Lefuneste, back to his normal self, told him it was a joke and the "spliff" contained no mood-altering substance whatsoever--[[Fake High|Achille's high was entirely self-induced.]]
** In another, Achille burns some old wood he found in the attic brought back by an ancestor who traveled to India. The entire neighborhood gets high on cannabis fumes.
* [[Latin Land]]: Platopabo ("Uglyplateau") in the album ''Le trésor de Virgule'' published in English as ''Magnesia's Treasure''.
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** ''Cinq colonnes à la une'' (headline splashed across the front page) was a famous French information TV show in the 60's;
** The "5th column" was the overname for enemy spying during the [[WW 2|war]].
* [[The Napoleon]]: A caricature of René Goscinny, portrayed as the irascible midget-boss of ''Polite (!) magazine'' where Achille Talon works. As for Napoleon, many fans thought then that Goscinny ''was'' tiny. It could be as well an [[Homage]] to Goscinny's character [[Iznogoud]].
* [[Nightmare Dreams]]: What if the [[Big Bad|bad guy]] can ''provoke'' them to manipulate his victims?
* [[Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant]]: In ''Le Monstre de l'Etang Tacule'', a cartoonist draws [[Andre Franquin|grotesque and nightmare-inducing cartoons]], but he claims that his drawings are a faithful representation of reality.
* [[No More for Me]]: Papa Talon, once. Just once. Beer is a serious thing.
* [[The Napoleon]]: A caricature of René Goscinny, portrayed as the irascible midget-boss of ''Polite (!) magazine'' where Achille Talon works. As for Napoleon, many fans thought then that Goscinny ''was'' tiny. It could be as well an [[Homage]] to Goscinny's character [[Iznogoud]].
* [[Only Sane Man]]: Fo-Pli.
* [[Our Gargoyles Rock]]: Gargouilla-la-gargouille in ''L'âge ingrat''.
* [[Overly Polite Pals]]: In one comic, both continuously insist the other go first, but here the stalemate goes on until they're both late, leading to a Big Ball of Violence. Amusingly, this came about after Achille read a book on etiquette, and it turns out the other guy was the author.
* [[Papa Wolf]]: Papa Talon. Keeps an eye opened and a beer with the other.
* [[Police Are Useless]]: Greg didn't like them and projected a part of himself in Papa Talon who keeps a flag of the "Wild Anarchists Federation" in the attic.
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* [[Recycled in Space]]: In ''L'esprit d'Eloi'', Rheingard Van Daag's project is to shoot "[[Dracula]] {{smallcaps|In Space}}", [[Special Effects Failure|in a forest]].
* [[Ring Ring CRUNCH]]: In ''La Traversée du Disert'', Achille Talon tries to get an annoying transistor radio to shut up by smashing it against a rock ([[Percussive Maintenance|all it does is change the station]]) and feeding the pieces to his pet duck. Unfortunately, the radio keeps working from inside the duck's belly. And at the beginning of ''Viva Papa!'', Lefuneste gets his alarm clock to stop by striking it with a hammer.
* [[Schedule Slip]]: a common gag in the Polite strips, involving the comic authors and the less-than-patient Goscinny.
* [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness]]: The trademark of the comics. Lampshaded when an accountant complains to Achille Talon that the translation fees for his comics are double the usual rate.
* [[Shout-Out]]: Many, staring with Achille himself being a [[Shout-Out]] to Monsieur Poche. Greg was at least as cultured as Achille. There are also references to comics authors such as [[Floyd Gottfredson]], Al Taliaferro, Hergé, [[Gotlib]], Lee Fark...
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* [[Sitcom Arch Nemesis]]: Achille and Lefuneste.
* [[Small Name, Big Ego]]: Achille, naturally. It's lampshaded multiple times, but building a giant statue of himself in his garden probably takes the cake.
* [[Spexico]]: Tapasambal (''"T'as pas cent balles ?"'' = "You got ten bucks ?") in the album ''Viva Papa''.
* [[Stealth Pun]]
* [[Stereotypes of Chinese People]]: Averted with Professor Fo-Pli ([[Punny Name|"crease"]]). Speaks perfect French, huge [[The Professor|specialist in chemistry and geology]], wears occidental outfit and quotes things such like ''"The wise man, and a few others before him, peremptorily told it: "better a little drawing than a long speech", and the television executives added: "adn it doesn't cost any more"."''
* [[Spexico]]: Tapasambal (''"T'as pas cent balles ?"'' = "You got ten bucks ?") in the album ''Viva Papa''.
* [[Strawman Political]]: The [[No Party Given|Communist-in-all-but-name]] leader of the opposition party in ''Viva Papa'', who speaks in hackneyed pseudo-Marxist cliches.
** Most politicians seen spring up and are all too ready to help at the mention of the word "voters".
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{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Belgian Comics]]
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[[Category:FrancoComic BelgianBooks Comicsof the 1960s]]
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[[Category:Comic Books of the 1980s]]
[[Category:Comic Books of the 1990s]]
[[Category:Comic Books of the 2000s]]
[[Category:AchilleFranco-Belgian TalonComics]]
[[Category:The Sixties]]
[[Category:Achille Talon]]
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