The Hunting Party (comics)
| Partie de chasse The Hunting Party |
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|---|---|
Cover of the French edition
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| Date | 1983 |
| Publisher | Dargaud/Les Humanoïdes Associés |
| Creative team | |
| Writers | Pierre Christin |
| Artists | Enki Bilal |
| Colorists | Enki Bilal |
| Original publication | |
| Published in | Pilote magazine |
| Issues |
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| Date of publication | 1981 |
| Language | French |
| ISBN | |
| Translation | |
| Publisher | HM Communications |
| Date | 1984–1985 |
The Hunting Party (French: Partie de chasse) is a political thriller graphic novel from 1983 written by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Enki Bilal. It is centered on a group of old, mostly retired or disgraced Communist bloc political leaders who meet in Poland for a bear-hunting party under the guide of Soviet Presidium leader Vasili Aleksandrovič Čevčenko, an aging revolutionary leader who, while retired from official duties, still retains much of his power and political influence. The year in which the story takes place is not specified, but it appears to be set in 1983, per Sergej Šavanidze's fictional biography on page 1, which states that "... at 44 (Šavanidze was born in 1939), he is the youngest member of the Politburo".
The characters, while reminiscing about their individual role in the gradual building of the Communist empire from the Revolution onwards, and the tragedies they had to endure along with growing disillusionment with the Socialist dream, plot to kill the new up-and-coming personality in the Politburo and thus stop his Stalinist political vision meant to ensure social immobilism for all the Eastern bloc.
As in the case of many other French graphic novels, The Hunting Party was first published sequentially. Pilote magazine issued the story in two parts in 1981 and 1982 (#M89, M99). Later the story was published as an individual album in May, 1983 by Dargaud. In 1990 the authors included an Epitaph (1990) chapter, which reflects to the comics' events in retrospect (n.b. in 1989 the Eastern Bloc finally collapsed, urging the creators to revisit their comic created in the early Eighties). These post 1990 editions also contain fictional biographies of the characters and some other "extra" features.
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