The story begins darkly and with a picture puzzle. A man sits on a bed in a dark bedroom on Long Island. He looks desperately at the floor. You see a weapon. The man gets up, goes into an empty children’s room and: Bang! We have a hunch: He’s dead. Then we jump forward five years and onto a steamer where a man in a dark coat and bowler hat is standing at the railing. He starts and looks us in the eyes with his twirled mustache. And there’s no question: this is Hercule Poirot, the master detective. From then on in the comic “Murder on the Orient Express” by Benjamin von Eckartsberg and Chaiko most of it in a familiar way. Just as you know it from the famous crime novel by Agatha Christie.
Or from the numerous film adaptations of the material. Or the audio books. Or from the two video game adaptations, 2006 and last October came out. In 2007 there was already a comic adaptation by François Rivière and Solidor. And the beginning of September came by illustrator Bob Al-Greene yet another one out. What all this is supposed to show is that you know the material. But that’s exactly what the Munich comic author and illustrator Benjamin von Eckartsberg found exciting again when his Swiss publisher Paquet asked him a few years ago whether he would take part in an Agathe Christie comic series. And then he was also attracted by the “almost mathematical task” of “shortening down” this crime plot, which takes place “in a small space, without the whole house of cards collapsing.”
The 62-page volume was published in French in 2016. And before the German version was published by Carlsen, it was also published in Portuguese, Greek and other languages. The concentration on the French comics market was also the case with “Gung Ho”. The extremely successful, post-apocalyptic adventure series by Benjamin von Eckartsberg and the Munich illustrator Thomas von Kummant, the fifth and last part of which was published in German two years ago. Even with their adaptation of Wolfgang Hohlbein’s “Chronicle of the Immortals“They both landed a coup. Which finally earned them the honor of working on the comic project two years ago.”Batman: The World“. In it they sent the bat man into the snowy Alps.
There is also a lot of snow in the “Orient Express”, in which the train of the title gets stuck somewhere in Yugoslavia. Then a traveler is murdered by twelve stab wounds. The Shanghai-based illustrator uses color Chaiko, with whom Eckartsberg had already worked on the “Chronicle of the Immortals”, also presented everything quite coolly. And perhaps one would have wished for more visual variation and contrast. Nevertheless, Eckartsberg and Chaiko managed to create a very coherent, atmospherically strong implementation of the crime thriller. Added outdoor scenes provide variety. The author shortened the beginning, changed it, and added something at the end. He rewrote and re-wrote dialogue and cut out one of the suspicious characters.
Well-rehearsed team: Benjamin von Eckartsberg (right) and Thomas von Kummant in the garden of their studio.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
In fact, only 70 percent of Christie’s are “real,” von Eckartsberg reveals on the phone. There have been no complaints from Agatha Christie fans so far. But he is a bit afraid of the “Gung Ho” fans. Because, yes, the series continues. The Munich native has already written the story for two new volumes. Because he realized that he “still had something to tell” with the characters. Only: Thomas von Kummant won’t draw the stories because “he wants to do something different again.” That’s why he’s now in the test phase with a Hong Kong artist. But what is clear is that you don’t want to copy Thomas von Kummant’s style. So this should be exciting, in several senses. The release, initially planned for France, is planned for 2025.