The Franco-Belgian comics tradition that gave us Asterix the Gaul and The Adventures of Tintin also spawned a brilliant series from Maurice Tillieux following the rough-and-tumble cases of private eye Gil Jordan (Jourdan, in French), two of which appear here. Full of action and humor, they're drawn in a style that sets comical characters in a realistic and gritty world. In "Ten Thousand Years in Hell," Gil and his pals Crackerjack (a former thief) and Inspector Hannibal Crouton head to South America to rescue an inventor kidnapped by a dictator's henchmen, while "Boom and Bust" sees the team trying to solve a string of burglaries and a bomb plot.