The only English language edition of the classic bande dessinee La Bête est Morte. Long out of print.

A technicolor graphic novel retelling the events of World War II. The combatants are portrayed as furry animals (the French are rabbits, the Italians hyenas, the Japanese monkeys, Britains bulldogs, Russian polar bears, Americans buffalo...) painted in a lushly detailed Silly Symphony / Harmon-Ising style. Published in 1944 and 1945 by the French cartoonist Calvo, aided by writers Victor Dancette and Jacques Zimmermann.

During 1941, while France was being crushed under the iron fist of the Third Reich, the cartoonists Edmond François Calvo, and Victor Dancette began work on La Bête est Morte -- La guerre Mondiale Chez Les Animaux [The Beast is Dead: The World War Among the Animals]. The two, secretly wrote and drew a cartoon epic that reimagined the history of the French nation during the war and cast animals as the warring nations.

During 1944, a few months after the liberation, the first part of the work was published under the title Quand la Bête est Déchaînée [When the Beast is Unleashed]. The second part appeared a year later, as Quand la Bête est Terrassée [When the Beast is Defeated].

La Bête est Morte...is also the first graphic novel to allegorically depict the Second World War and the Holocaust.

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