Aventures électroniques
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Aventures électroniques |
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| Released | 1974 | |
| Publisher | Dupuis | |
| Genre | Bande dessinée | |
| Yoko Tsuno chronology | ||
| La Forge de Vulcain (1973) |
Aventures électroniques (1974) |
Message pour l'éternité (1975) |
Aventures électroniques (Electronic Adventures) is the fourth book from Yoko Tsuno comic book series written by Roger Leloup and published in 1974. (ISBN 2-8001-0669-7) This album is a collection of short earth-based adventures which involve the use of technology. It is the only album out of the series to feature short stories, one of them only 2 pages long. Chronologically, the first four stories seem to be placed in the time period before Le Trio de l'étrange, and the last two stories afterwards.
[edit] Plot Summary
- Hold-up en hi-fi (Hold-up in Hi-fi)
- One morning Yoko enters a bank to make a money transfer to Japan. Suddenly a loud rumbling sound shakes the block, and the police station next door receive a call that a department store in the city center has collapsed. The police under the leadership of Commissioner Lebrun scramble, leaving only one man to monitor the bank. Just then, a team of bank robbers enter the bank while an accomplice knocks out the remaining officer. Yoko fights - and defeats - two of the robbers, but a submachine gun pressed into her back forces her to relent. In the meantime, the police arrives at the store - only to see it standing intact, as it should.
- When Lebrun is wondering about the rumbling sound, Yoko provides a hint about a truck which had been parked before the bank. Indeed, it contains stereo equipment and speakers, and a tape with the rumbling on it, but the speakers are too weak. But the same evening, as Yoko takes a stroll in the city, she comes upon two movie spectators discussing the effect of the stereo sound system in the theater.
- This comment sparks a suspicion, and above the bank building Yoko indeed discovers the gang as they dismantle two giant speakers and stereo equipment hidden atop the roof. Although she is discovered and locked in, she manages to activate the equipment (which is still hooked up), alerting the police, and then throws a polyester audio tape off the roof, leading the police to the culprits.
- L'ange de Noël (The Christmas Angel)
- Just at Christmas Eve Yoko receives a call from an industrial tycoon who wants his stereo equipment repaired for his Christmas party at home. Chagrined about this, Yoko drives off with her moped and clips a little girl named Annie, who wanted to take a cake (which gets mashed in the accident) from a charity party to her impoverished parents. Upon hearing that her her father is a welder by trade (but without a job), she decides to accept the assignment after all and cuts a deal with the industriant to hire the man for his steel mills. Bursting into the family with this delightful surprise, Yoko is invited for a Christmas dinner with Annie's family.
- La belle et la bête (The Beauty and the Beast)
- During a night tour on her moped, Yoko witnesses a hulking figure attacking two policemen. She races to help - and finds that her attacker is a regular neanderthal, who is strong enough to lift an entire police car and throw it at her! In the fight, she manages to pick up a police pistol and shoots her attacker, clipping him at the leg. The figure immediately turns tail, and Yoko pursues him.
- The chase ends at the local natural history museum, where Yoko finds several things: an empty display case for a neanderthal; a pool of hydraulic oil just beneath the case; and a lab worker who claims that he has been struck down by an attacker - but a trail of oil leads Yoko to a nearby locker, where she discovers an exoskeleton and a neanderthal disguise. The man turns to flee, throwing a bottle of spiritus at a bunsen burner which starts a fire; and two bottles of ether beneath the lab table threaten to blow the room apart. In a last-ditch attempt, Yoko uses the exoskeleton to escape the blast, lands before the culprit and throws him into the next tree just as the police arrives. Later, Lebrun reveals to Yoko that the man is actually a small-minded misanthrope who wanted to use the exoskeleton for revenge on society.
- Cap 351 (Course 351)
- While working on a test for using rockets in the Austrian postal system, Yoko notices a strange distortion which brings the rocket off course for a few seconds. Intrigued, she decides to investigate even though her colleagues are sceptical. During an aerial survey, she convinces her pilot to make a side trip on a course of 351 degrees, where the signal has come from. The pilot then reveals that the area is actually closed off because of an important political conference taking place in the vicinity.
- Just as Yoko realizes what the hijacking must be about, a second rocket is launched and immediately kidnapped. Yoko and the pilot fly on course 351, and encounter two men with sophisticated electronic beacons. Yoko jumps out of the helicopter, knocking one of the men out as he lands on him. Upon hearing the rocket approaching, the second man attempts to flee in his car. Yoko throws a beacon at his windshield, but this serves to guide the rocket to the car, which is blasted apart. Yoko rushes to save the man from the wreckage, receiving severe burns in the process. In the hospital, she learns that the men had been hired by terrorist elements to disrupt the conference; and the first thing the committee has agreed upon was swamping their rescuer in a sea of flowers.
- Du miel pour Yoko (Honey for Yoko)
- While making a trip in the hills near Clevy, Yoko and Pol, facing an approaching rainstorm, try to find their way from a wooded hillock. Pol accidentally drives against and dislodges a beehive box, which Yoko sets upright again before the storm starts. As they sit under the nearby trees, waiting for the rain to die down, a bee lands on Pol's shirt and he slaps it. Yoko is quick to notice that the bee is carrying a container with a microfilm, and that several more of this sort are trapped in a detachable box at the hive. Pol finds where the bees might have come from: the local nuclear testing center, which lies just nearby.
- Taking Pol's motorbike and the bees, Yoko drives to the center and manages to convince the director that the matter is important. The microfilms turn out to contain the results for a top secret project, and a researcher named Karenski is the only one at the plant working with bees. Yoko tries to trick him into making a confession, but a click from the tape recorder she is carrying reveals her intentions; Karenski locks her in and demands the microfilms from her. Yoko manages to free herself, however, and chases Karenski on Pol's bike as he drives off in his convertible. As she jumps him in his car, she causes a car crash and breaks both Pol's bike and her leg in the process; Karenski is subsequently collected by the police.
- Later on, at a small party, the institute's director expresses his gratitude for exposing the spy by giving Yoko several jars of honey from Karenski's beehive, and Pol a new motorbike, a Honda 500.
- L'araignée qui volait (The Stealing Spider)
- After bringing Yoko home late one night, Pol decides to make a photo report with his new infrared camera. Passing a part of town where several jewelery stores have been looted, he actually encounters the culprit - a huge spider. He takes a picture of it, then prepares to knock it out with a bottle - but then the spider emits a light beam, and the bottle shatters. And as Pol turns to flee, the spider crawls into a nearby Citroën GS and chases after him! In panic, Pol flees back to Yoko's apartment, and the two of them (Yoko being highly skeptical) round the block, searching for the spider. But in the meantime the spider - which turns out to be a sophisticated robot - has sneaked into the apartment and is ripping open Pol's camera, and then manages to get away, again in the Citroën. Yoko and Pol race after it on Pol's bike. At a construction site, the car stops and the spider escapes into a drainpipe.
- Yoko and Pol check the Citroën and find out that the spider's abilities were just a ruse - somebody else was steering. And this somebody turns out to be a building contractor and his henchman, who are also holding the inventor of the robot spider, one Dubois, prisoner. Dubois had designed the robot as a more versatile alternative to the inflexible robot arms used in nuclear laboratories. The contractor had financed the construction of the spider prototype, but had gone broke after attempting to build apartment complexes just as the government planned to do the same, so he had used the robot to regain some capital.
- With the car's trunk filled with booty, the two culprits decide to make off across the border; they decide to take Yoko, bound hand and foot, as a hostage along with the spider, but not its remote control equipment. Dubois dons the remote just as the car drives off, and he and Pol give chase on the bíke while Dubois tries (somewhat arkwardly) to cut through Yoko's bonds. As soon as this is done, Yoko knocks out the contractor, but his henchman knocks her out and in turn is attacked by the spider, which causes a car crash. As dawn comes, Dubois expresses his fear that the authoritites will hold him responsible for all this, but Yoko calms him by promising to promote the spider to the director of the Clevy nuclear testing plant (from the previous story, Du miel pour Yoko).
[edit] Trivia
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- These are the only stories in the series featuring Commissioner Lebrun, and the last two are among the few where Vic does not appear in the company of Yoko and Pol.
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