Train de nuit (Night Train) brings together two albums by Berteloot built around an idea that had already become something of a recurring motif in his erotic comics – the sexual possibilities of railway travel. The connection with his earlier Voyages-voyages series is unmistakable. There, trains provide the setting for La Dragueuse des sleeping, Dévergondage à l’est and Les voluptés de l’Orient Express; here, and now in colour, the journey itself once again becomes an opportunity for unexpected encounters.

The central character is Carole, a woman who travels frequently by train and turns her journeys into a succession of erotic adventures. Compartments, sleeping berths and railway stations provide a succession of enclosed or transient spaces in which strangers can meet, flirt, and become lovers. The anonymity of travel is ideally suited to Berteloot’s fantasies, a setting in which people who would probably never meet in ordinary circumstances find themselves thrown together for a few hours.

The two volumes demonstrate Berteloot’s characteristic attention to the visual world of the railway. His trains, locomotives, stations and landscapes are drawn with considerable care, while the changing scenery outside the windows provides a constant reminder of movement and departure. The colouring, watercolour over black and white drawings, can sometimes appear rather crude and hurried – see if you can spot the blank speech bubble near the end of Volume 2 and wonder what it was meant to contain.

Train de nuit was originally published by Magic Strip, with the first volume appearing in 1988 and the second in January 1992. Both volumes were subsequently reissued in the CAP Bédé Adult’ series in 1993.