“The sea is everything!” exclaims Captain Nemo in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Through his words it is as if his voice is heard Jules Verne – its creator – to declare his passion for the “great reservoir of nature.” The father of science fiction writer and “forerunner of modern discovery” was born on February 8, 1828 and died on March 24, 1905, leaving a legacy of writings 62. novels some of which have nothing to do with her sea.

Born in Nantes in the west of France, the “Venice of the West”, a predominantly seaside city, his destiny seemed to be maritime. His ancestors were captains and shipowners, and the house he grew up in was on an artificial island in the Loire, “Il Feydeau”, which was assimilated by the city in the 1930s. Looking at it on old maps, you can see that its shape resembles the plan of a ship. From this tiny island, he could see ocean sailboats and dreamed of one day sailing on them. “My greatest desire was to step on the rickety plank that connected them to the pier and get on deck,” he says in his autobiographical Childhood and Youth Memoirs. It is said that when he was 11 years old, he secretly did something similar when he boarded a ship bound for India. At the next port, the little town of Pembeuf, a few miles downriver, his father was waiting for him and made him promise: “I will never travel again except in my dreams.”

And yet sixteen years later, having received a law degree and already a successful writer, he traveled again. This time he was both the owner and captain of a one-deck, nine-meter traditional fishing boat, which he converted into a pleasure boat. Wishing to honor his son’s name, he named it “Saint-Michel” and sailed with him from the north coast of France to England and Scotland, writing on it parts of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”. Two years later, he purchased his second schooner, the 11-meter Saint-Michel II, another traditional French boat, in which he traveled for 18 months and even crossed the Atlantic. In 1877 he purchased his third and last ship, the Saint-Michel III, an impressive thirty-five meter steamer, with which he sailed through Gibraltar and sailed the Mediterranean in 1878 and 1884. They already say that with this iron ship he visited Greece, but the information is unconfirmed. What is certain is that in his famous section of novels called “Fantastic Voyages” (Voyages Extraordinaire) and among many others that have a water element, he also wrote one set in our own seas.

It is said that when Verne was 11 years old, he secretly boarded a ship bound for India, only to be caught by his father.

It was “Aegean Sea on Fire” (L’ Archipel en Feu), a pirate thriller set two days before Naval battle of Navarino and gets its mythology from Greece during the revolution of 1821. It began to be published in pamphlet form in 1884 in the French newspaper “Les Temps” (“The Times”), and in the same year it was also published in a book but also in an Athenian newspaper under the heading “The Aegean Sea in Turmoil”.

At the beginning of the story, he takes us to Oitylo of Mani, dramatically depicted as the lair of “pliacologist” and “semi-barbarian” pirates, which provoked a reaction from local residents who asked that the publication be stopped. Because of the scandal that broke out, Vern was forced to justify himself, referring, in addition to the actual accuracy of his words (which he painstakingly sought throughout his entire work), and to his philhellenicism.

Piracy and the slave trade – what does all this have to do with the idealized version of 1821 that we recognize
from the young?

One could even say that from Oityla to English-ruled Corfu and the waters of the Aegean, this story of love, betrayal, philhellenicism and bloody naval clashes has always been a “heretical” reading for the Greek public, a look at the dark side of 21 from which we look away. Piracy and the slave trade – what does all this have to do with the idealized version of the Revolution that we are taught from childhood? “Aegean Sea on Fire” is a whirlwind of pirate ships, anti-heroes, seas and human passions that spins in the unknown waters of our recent history, somewhere between myth and truth.

“Vern Wrote Pulp Fiction”

And although the original 1884 edition was beautifully illustrated – albeit with a number of historical inaccuracies – by the French illustrator Léon Bennet, who illustrated a total of 25 Verne novels, 138 years later, a publishing house from Greece appears and tells the story for the first time in the world in the language of comics. We are talking about the editions of “Little Hero”, which published it in 2022 as a two-volume graphic novel.

Talking to the publication’s cartoonist, Thanasis Karabalios, inevitably comes to mind the six-person “1800” (published by Jemma Press), which he not only drew, but also wrote, and which has a related historical background, telling about the adventures of the armatoli. and pirates of pre-revolutionary Greece. This time, the script is signed not by him, but by the experienced journalist Giorgos Vlachos, who seems to have successfully adapted (and summarized in only 90 pages) Verne’s text. And although the cartoonist already had the basis from his earlier research for the 1800 series of historical details (such as costumes or pirate ships), his partner helped him where he lacked knowledge, such as, for example. as regards the Ionian and its local costume. Reading the electrifying footage of the two volumes, Giorgos Vlachos’s historical and folk editing is also revealed in the idiom spoken by the characters: “Isa ore, thrasimia!” screams the infamous Maniati pirate Nicholas Starkos terrifyingly on his ship, in one of those night shots that smell of blood, agony and salt that Thanasis Carabalios is so adept at painting in a cinematic way.

The ninth and seventh arts could always seem related, and this is generously shown here. In the prologue, which presents portraits of the main characters with a brief description, everything reminds us of what Giorgos Vlachos tells us: “Vern did not write “high”, but popular literature – what we call pulp. There, under the portrait of Nicholas Stark, we read: “He sold Christian Greeks and prisoners of pirate raids on Muslim slave markets. Mysterious is his connection with the invisible pirate Sakratif, the terror of the Aegean.” Paper, film, and comics in the revolutionary Aegean of 1827, but, behind it all, still the maritime story of Jules Verne, who, when he sold his last ship, the Saint-Michel III, in 1886, said, “Farewell, beauty.” . my ship,” and now he began to fulfill the promise he made when he was eleven years old to his father: to travel only in his dreams.