421 #4

The fourth album in Maltaite and Desberg's *421* series sends its protagonist hurtling through a breathtaking landscape of towering rock spires beneath a fiery orange sky — the Shell-sponsored rally car trailing a dramatic plume of dust that fills the lower half of the cover. It's a wonderfully kinetic image, with the battered, colorful racer suggesting a journey that's already been hard-fought before a single page is turned. *Dans l'Empire du Milieu* promises adventure on a grand, open-road scale, and this 1987 Dupuis edition wears that promise confidently on its sleeve.