Okay, so one of the comics I bought in Angouleme was a real gem: 10 Petits Insectes.

It's loosely (very loosely) based on the Agatha Christie novel which was originally given the catchy if not politically correct title "Ten Little Niggers". Someone realised this wasn't exactly good taste, so other editions have been called "Ten Little Indians", but that's not great either, so these days it's called "And then there were none". The story is about 10 people who are invited to an island where they are bumped off one by one. That's what happens in Ten Little Insects, but there the similarity ends.

It's written by Davide Cali, who I thought I had never heard of before, but then I realised I had a book of his, "The Enemy", with illustrations by Serge Bloch. It's a really nice mix of doodles and collage, with a witty anti war message. The artist on Insects is Vincent Pianina, who I actually met and chatted to a while. Nice guy, he even drew a picture for Katy (my girlfriend).

Ten Little Insects, as the story suggests, replaces the people in the Agatha Christie setting with Insects. This allows the author to make some good insect-related gags and also to play up the grotesque elements of the story without it getting too gruesome. The art is beautifully quirky: a lot of it is just built up with primary colour planes without any lines. I wasn't sure this would work when I first saw it, but now I love it. The angular drawing style reminds me a bit of classic 1950s animation. In fact, this would make a brilliant cartoon. The characters and the humour are what make the book for me, though. Here's one of my favourites: the characters get to the island, and sit around a table. One of them puts on a record which says "YOU'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!"

They naturally assume that this is a sick joke, and one of the insects suggests they turn over the record.

Insect 1: What's on the other side

Insect 2: "You're all going to die (instrumental version)"

Basically, if you don't find that funny, you probably won't like this book. I like this book a lot. It's only in French (Amazon.fr) , but maybe some clever UK publisher will pick it up.

I hope I don't get sued for using all these images. Is that allowed?