Angola in the Comics #23: Mary Kingsley: La Montagne des Dieux

Once more looking at European publications, we have a 2012 French graphic novel titled Mary Kingsley: La Montagne des Dieux. This was created by writers Esteban Mathieu and Guillaume Dorison with artist Julien Telo, under the supervision of Christian Clot. It's an early entry in a series of similar graphic novels published by Glénat titled Explora, biographical works inspired by the lives of famous explorers.

Mary Kingsley is one of the few female explorers in this series and I'm ashamed to admit I hadn't heard of her before nor read her books (which are in the public domain). Based on the graphic novel and what little I've gleaned about her, Angola was a small part of her overall travels but it was one of the (many) African nations she visited and wrote about.

Mary Kingsley is only available in French so I didn't entirely follow the dialogue of the adaptation and I have yet to read her books, but it does seem like this book is inspired by her life and events and isn't necessarily an authentic account of her life. Nonetheless, the graphic novel opens with her arriving in Angola in 1893 and she spends about a third of the novel in Angola before moving on, eventually heading north to Cameroon.

As always, Europeans are very good at depicting Africa and avoiding the usual tropes I find in North American works. Julien Telo's art is very appealing, energizing the scenes of Kingsley's travels while still rendering them believeable. It's a well-made graphic novel and I'm sure I'll have even more interest in it after I've read Mary Kingsley's own writings.