The Obscure Cities (), first published in English as, variously, Stories of the Fantastic and Cities of the Fantastic, is a bande dessinée series created by the Belgian artist François Schuiten and the French writer Benoît Peeters. First serialized in magazine format in 1982, the series has been published in album format by the Brussels-based publisher Casterman since 1983. New installments of the series were published throughout the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2020s, with full-color, partial color, or black-and-white artwork, as well as photo illustration. The artwork of the series is distinguished by Schuiten's realistic rendering of diverse contemporary, historical, and imaginary architectural styles.

The series is commonly labeled as steampunk, based on frequent appearances of anachronistic technology, storytelling and visual traditions of the scientific romance era, and its retrofuturist parallel world setting of imagined cities and cultures inspired by Jules Verne's literary depiction of Europe in the late 19th century.

In 1968, Schuiten and Peeters became friends while attending Catholic school, and the two worked together to write and illustrate a student publication. Ten years later, they reunited in Brussels and resumed their creative collaborations. purports to be a scientific essay bent to debunk the events of La fièvre d'Urbicande. The text is heavily annotated in emotional handwriting by Eugen Robick, the main character of La fièvre d'Urbicande who is now locked up in Brüsel's Sixth Hospice, the city's mental asylum. Schuiten contributed the book's illustrations under the pen-name Robert Louis Marie de la Barque (whereas the French word barque, meaning barge or rowboat in English, translates to schuiten in Dutch). and a full world map shown in the opening pages of La Fièvre d'Urbicande labeled many more city names. In Le Guide des Cités, Schuiten and Peeters directly incorporate assertions and quotes from this correspondence, even where the claims contradict published material.

Urbicande.be

In 1996, Urbicande.be, the official website of the Obscure Cities went online, soliciting fan accounts of their own experiences in search for Obscure Passages. The response was so overwhelming that Schuiten and Peeters were able to expand their online activities into a network of in-universe sites, mainly branching from the URL ebbs.net of their official Obscure magazine called Obskür, where many amateur reports, illustrated by photos and Schuiten's drawings, and various mysterious Obscure artifacts can be found. Along with these, a number of conspiracy theories are explored, regarding authorities of our world intending to prevent the spread of knowledge regarding the parallel world and destroy various Obscure Passages. In May 2015, Urbicande.be was taken offline and archived at AltaPlana.be, an official online encyclopaedia of the Obscure Cities universe.

La maison Autrique

After having colorfully satirized the destructive modernizing fad of Bruxellisation in the Les Cités obscures album Brüsel in 1992, Schuiten and Peeters convinced the community of Schuiten's childhood district Schaerbeek to acquire one of the last remaining buildings in Brussels built by Art Nouveau architect Horta, La maison Autrique, and in 1999 opened a permanent pseudo-documentary exhibition inside, regarding the Obscure Cities, 19th century Art Nouveau Brussels, and detailing its ongoing Bruxellisation destruction during the 20th century, tying in with aforementioned conspiracy theories whereby Bruxellisation is supposed to be an attempt by the authorities to destroy a number of Obscure Passages situated in Brussels.

In 2004, Schuiten and Peeters published the illustrated book La Maison Autrique: Métamorphose d'une maison Art Nouveau (published as Maison Autrique – Metamorphosis of an Art Nouveau House in English) about the building, its restoration during the 1990s, and Horta's life and work. Also, their latest Les Cités obscures two-part graphic novel album La Théorie du grain de sable (2007; 2008) deals with the maison Autrique. As of 2021, the house also hosts a Cités obscures-themed escape room game.

Public art

The album Le retour du capitaine Nemo, published in October 2023, depicts the "Nauti-pouple", a part-animal imaginary vehicle inspired by Jules Verne's Nautilus. In a multi-year collaboration with French sculptor Pierre Matter, Schuiten co-designed the Nauti-pouple as a 6-metre-tall public sculpture, which will be displayed in Brussels, followed by permanent installation at Amiens station in 2025 to commemorate the city's connections to Verne. The album, likewise, shows the Nauti-pouple journeying through various Cities to arrive at Samarobrive, the Obscure Cities counterpart of Amiens.

Publishing history

The full series is available in French and Dutch from Casterman; in German, Spanish, Polish (Manzoku and Scream Comics) and Portuguese by local publishing houses; in francophone Canada by Flammarion; and in Japanese in four collected volumes by Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions. The first Japanese volume, published in 2012, won the annual manga award at the Japan Media Arts Festival. This success encouraged the compilation of the original French albums by Casterman.

In 2016, Alaxis partnered with IDW Publishing as the new North American publisher of The Obscure Cities, with Alaxis Press co-branding, and the original staff handling translation and editing. IDW and Alaxis published The Theory of the Grain of Sand in 2016, Samaris in 2017, The Shadow of a Man in 2021, and The Tower in 2022. IDW then released The Fever in Urbicande and The Invisible Frontier in 2022, without Alaxis's involvement; the entire Obscure Cities series was delisted from IDW's website prior to release of these books.

In 2023, concurrent to the French release of Le retour du capitaine Nemo, Alaxis Press launched another Kickstarter campaign, funding a simultaneous English release as The Return of Captain Nemo.

The Leaning Girl received a 2015 Eisner Award nomination as Best U.S. Edition of International Material, and The Shadow of a Man won the same award in 2022.

Awards

  • 1985: Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize for Best Album – La Fièvre d'Urbicande
  • 2012: Gaiman Award for Best Comic
  • 2022: Eisner Award for Best U.S. Edition of International Material – The Shadow of a Man

Notes

References

  • Les Cités obscures at Bedetheque

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  • Altaplana.be, the official website about Les Cités obscures

Further reading

  • Various (Schuiten & Peeters among others; 1994). Schuiten & Peeters: Autour des Cités obscures, Mosquito
  • Dossier FRANCOIS SCHUITEN, in Reddition, #32, 1998 , Table of Contents & order
  • Schuiten; Peeters (2000). Voyages en Utopie, Casterman
  • Benoît Peeters (2004). The Book of Schuiten, MSW Medien Service Wuppertal
  • 2nd edition (2004), NBM Publishing
  • 3rd edition (2004), Casterman
  • Schuiten; Peeters (2004). Maison Autrique – Metamorphosis of an Art Nouveau House, Ed. Les Impressions Nouvelles
  • Schuiten; Peeters (2005). Les Portes du Possible, Casterman

Official sites

Official sites by Schuiten & Peeters tend to treat the Obscure Cities from a strictly in-universe perspective.

  • Urbicande , official web site of the Cités obscures. This site is no longer online but is archived at Alta-Plana, The impossible and infinite encyclopedia of the world created by Schuiten & Peeters (English)
  • Alta-Plana, archives of the Obscure Cities, Schuiten's & Peeters's official Facebook profile for the series (French & English)
  • Alta-Plana, the City of Archives, editable in-universe Wiki-style encyclopedia on Le monde obscure (English)
  • Obskür, the magazine about the Obscure Cities. This site is no longer online. (French & English)
  • Web of the Obscure Cities This site is no longer online but is archived at Alta-Plana, The impossible and infinite encyclopedia of the world created by Schuiten & Peeters (French, English, Dutch)
  • Office of the Obscure Passages (French & English)
  • Dictionary of the Universe of the Obscure Cities (French & English)
  • Luminas, Daily Newspaper of the Obscure Cities (French & English)
  • Light (no longer updated)
  • Tram 81 Graphic-intensive site about one of the Obscure Passages. Site is no longer online. (French, English, Dutch)
  • Cités obscures. A graphic exploratory voyage of the world
  • The Obscure Cities.com, official website of English-language publisher Alaxis Press

Secondary sources

  • The Obscure Cities by Francois Schuiten & Benoit Peeters: A comprehensive review of the Obscure Cities series for English-speaking fans, Text: Sylvain St.-Pierre, Design: Jim Harrison, IKON Press
  • Cities of the Fantastic: A Contemporary Series of Verne-inspired Graphic Novels, review of the series by Duane Spurlock, on Pulprack.com
  • Darius, Julian (s. 2011). The Obscure Cites: An Introduction, serialized, on-going analysis of entire series, in Sequart Magazine
  • The World Of The Obscure Cities: A Parallel World Of Architectural Splendour, by Roel van der Meulen, on Project Galactic Guide
  • Les Cités obscures, series review, also including a partial list of different editions (in French and other languages), by Julian Darius on The Continuity Pages (Wayback Machine snapshot dating October 23, 2006, as today, this URL re-directs to Darius's more recent in-depth analysis of each volume in Sequart Magazine, see link above, that lacks these information on editions)
  • Latour in Urbicande