Lift and thrust: here’s how my dad used to summarize aviation.

“If you have enough lift and thrust, you’ll take off” … adding: “But the real problem is the landing. When you’re slowing and going down, it looks quite like a controlled crash!”

Ever since I was a child, I heard stories about planes, and the pilots were legion in my family. Later, while I was working as a comic artist, I asked myself if I could write a story about planes and pilots, and something became clear very quickly: drawing planes is only worth it if you have a good pilot’s story.

My dad always used to overdo when telling us about landing on an aircraft carrier in crosswind conditions, in order to add more context. And that’s the big thing: additions and context. A good story is told by the pilot, not its plane!

A long time ago, I promised Jean-Christophe Caurette that I would provide him with an original story for his brand-new publishing house, but I had to wait until December 2015 to have the first draft of “The Kong Crew” come to me. I say, “come to me”, because this story really came to me in one night. In a dream. I saw everything. Just like in a movie. Right up to the title. And, surprisingly, my dream didn’t disappear in the haze of the morning, as dreams usually do: it was still crystal clear.

On that morning, I called Jean-Christophe: “I have a story to tell you: What if Kong, the famous gorilla, won in 1933? What would be left of New York City 14 years later?”

Let me tell you that I did just like my father: I added a lot of details for the atmosphere and the context and, today, I’m lucky enough to publish a little bit of my dream into a comic.

So, you might ask: what does it have to do with lift and thrust? Well, I would say that they are the equivalent to the author and the publisher: one lifts a project, the other one thrusts it, pushes it, and if everything is OK, it should take off…!

Welcome to the Manhattan Jungle!

Eric Herenguel