Hauteville House Vol. 1: Zelda

When you’re establishing an alternate-history steampunk-lavish cross-world series, especially one that bumps up against our-Earth history fairly significantly, you could do worse than to jump in with both feet.

So right off the bat: well played, Hauteville House.

Without a preponderance of spoilers, here goes: back in a slightly steampunkier version of 1884, Napoleon is continuing his goal of world conquest, which includes sending troops to Mexico to break through a dimensional barrier in the basement of an ancient fort/temple into Something Weird, which they seem awfully blasé about doing.

Our heroes, with a 19th-century scruffy James Bond type named Gavroche in the lead, are part of loosely affiliated global underground organizations opposed to Napoleon, with Gavroche’s cell run by what seems to be Victor Hugo. Hauteville House, by the way, was Hugo’s actual residence after his self-exile from Napoleonic France, hence the name of the series.

Getting further into the storyline actually illustrates what’s been bothering me about Duval’s script: the above two paragraphs appear in the order they appear in the book, but not in chronological order. Meaning that the series starts with a fairly complex and elaborate set piece in the Mexican desert, then we flash back to a feat of derring-do on a ship with Gavroche, and then we follow Gavroche forward as he begins to unravel — with the help of his secret organization, which includes the sexy sexy American agent Zelda (whose American team seems to be both working with and concurrently to the French branch, judging from a neat bit of betrayal and counter-betrayal at the end of the book, and who inexplicably for a minor character is the eponymous character for this first H.H. — it’s not a trend that continues for the other books), starts to unravel the plot that we expect will lead us to said Mexican fort-temple and the weird portal to another dimension.

This, then, is the question: why bother?

The flashback plot (or the current plot, if the first pages of the book are a flashforward — you see the problem) is perfectly serviceable. Thrilling spy adventures, dirigibles, secret hideaways, sexy sexy Americans, killer automatons with chaingun arms, and so on. It rips around touching all the standard bases for the introduction to a series. We have our cast of characters: the maverick hero, the true love interest, the sexy sexy American love interest, the bearded man who smokes a pipe and shouts orders, the grizzled veteran that always comes through in the clutch, and the nebbish accountant-type/comedic foil. And they rip around the planet spying and blowing things up. It’s all got a whiff of “been there, done that,” but it’s not a bad thing. It pushes all the buttons and fills all the holes.

But this starting set piece in the (relative) future doesn’t really add anything to the equation. We know that the clues our heroes are putting together will bring them to the weird Mexican dig, where they will presumably stop whatever it is that the Napoleonic folks are trying to do. But the flashforward isn’t one of particularly high stakes. Folks are workin’ away at a dimensional thingy. There’s gonna be a fight. That’s about the size of it.

So why not tell the story in order? That way we get the satisfaction of discovering things as our heroes do, with no guarantee they’ll even make it to the right place at the right time. The dimensional dig will seem weirder and more spectacular on reveal because we’ll be invested in its discovery, rather than just having the Big Secret dropped in our laps in the first five pages.

It seems like an odd and mildly lazy storytelling choice: I can’t be arsed to make all of the clue-chasing compelling, so I’ll just put the destination up front and that way if the clues are weak nobody will get bored or confused.

As far as the art goes, I keep vaguely hoping Phil Foglio will suddenly appear and take over. It’s more than adequate ranging all the way up to “quite good,” especially with the book’s setpieces: the lethal chaingun-wielding automatons near the end are particularly delightful. It’s hard, though, to shake the feeling that everything between the book’s three or four Big Moments has been kind of dashed off and slapped together; with a little more coherence of intent it could hit either of two sweet spots, one being Folio steampunk whimsy, and the other something more rooted in the mundane, with enough gravity to keep those sketchy lines from wandering off the page. I’m slamming harder than intended: I can’t say enough that the book is perfectly serviceable as is, but there’s nothing to it artwise that really gives me pause to admire.
Well, “chaingun-armed steam-powered lethal robot lady” was amazingly cool, but then again, how could it not be?

I’m being unnecessarily harsh on Hauteville House, in that it’s not a painful read or anything. I’m looking forward to the rest of the books in the series to date as a way to while away some evenings to come. But this seems like one of those cases where the series hype is more hat than cattle; the whole thing is fine without ever reaching beyond any of the standard parameters of a steampunk book into excellent.* Neither the story nor the art really pushes outside the standards: a few dropped names for alt-history relevance, a few zeppelins and steam-powered doodads for the steampunk quotient, a sexy sexy American for the fanboys, and it’s all just kind of there.

Maybe I’m in for a pleasant surprise and the rest of the series will start to move outside the envelope. For now, it gets marks for being solidly adequate, but nothing new under the steam-powered sun.

*I’m aware that having a working knowledge of the “standard parameters” for steampunk bédé puts me firmly in the realms of the damned.

Filed under: Bande Dessinée, Reviews by Shepherd