Opening the gate · 0 %
Comic · Skateboarding · 12 French cities
The man who invented the skateboard.
The government called it “the devil's tool”
and the headsman cut it short…
Chapter zero · The sentence
A very long time ago
In the thirteenth century, Jean, the village carpenter, builds a plank on four wheels. The clergy calls it Satan's own tool, the crowd wants his head, the king takes it. He was only an inventor — and the real culprit, the sorcerer who stole the invention from him, watches him climb the scaffold.
The head leaves the shoulders — and time cracks open.
“Walk the spectrum of time and find your head across the centuries; only it can bring you back among us, my friend.”
“The headsman is after your head too — he wants your soul. He may well put you on the right track: watch for the clues he leaves behind, and you'll crack the code.”
Centuries later
The characters
Four figures, as Lionel drew them for his character sheets.
Jean · aka Headlessman
The hero. The village carpenter who invented the skateboard and paid for it with his head. Out of the Middle Ages, he tears through the streets and districts of French cities to get it back. The corridors of time left him a gift: he hardly ever falls.
The one you're hunting
He's come from the past too: he wants the head, to bring it back to his master. He hides once in every city — find him and you pick up the letter that leads to the code.
The one who condemned him
He's the one who handed the inventor over to the axe. Now he sends the headsman down the corridors of time, all the way into the modern world, to fetch the head.
What's at stake
Hidden in one of the twelve cities. Find all twelve headsmen and the code tells you exactly where.
How it works
Along the way, the headless man walks twelve French cities and crosses all ten districts of each. The sequences come out in no particular order, linked to one another by teleport gates. Each volume can be walked like a guidebook: stations, squares, bridges and landmarks — places you know.
He shows up only once per city, hidden somewhere in one of the ten sequences. Your job is to flush him out.
Wherever he stands, he leaves something behind. One more clue towards the head, right where he's hiding.
Twelve cities, twelve clues. Put end to end, they lead to the headless man's head.
The twelve cities
The city's number opens the code printed at the foot of every page: 5.1 K means Lyon, page 1, letter K. On the page where the headsman hides, that letter is a clue.
The route
These pages aren't read panel by panel. The character crosses the scene move by move, broken down like a motion study: your eye follows the line the way it would follow a skater across a plaza.
Preview
Somewhere in this city, the headsman is waiting.
Lyon Part-Dieu station
5.1 K
Preview
Ten districts per city. One single appearance.
Trocadéro / Eiffel Tower
3.7 S
Preview
The sequences come out in no order.
La Défense
3.13 L
Preview
He's after the headsman. The headsman is after his soul.
Royat thermal baths
1.11 P
Preview
Every city opens with its lettering.
Montpellier
Preview
Twelve cities. Eleven still to open.
Place de la République
5.15 B
Flip book no. 1
The workshop
Every position of the character is drawn separately. A single page can be sixty drawings lined up across one scene. The flip book is where the movement gets roughed out: a pad you thumb through to check that a line actually holds up.
Nothing generated
Every drawing on this site is Lionel Euphrasie's own hand. No illustration was produced, completed or retouched by artificial intelligence. It's drawing, one position after another.
The author
Trained as an architect. Skater. Draughtsman.
What an architect learns to do — survey a place, cut a section through it, work out how a staircase, a ramp or a railing hold together — is exactly what you need to draw a whole square and send someone across it.
And what a skater sees in that same square — a line, a sequence, somewhere to put a wheel down — is what turns a survey into a trajectory. Headless Man was born where the two meet.
The shop
Four families, some fifty pieces: the HLM logo and the comic's characters — to wear, to ride and to stick.
The work
The prologue and the sequences published so far, back in order, with the record of letters and the code to crack. Two ways to get it — paper you can leaf through, or a file you can open right now.
Full title: La légende de l'homme sans tête (The Legend of the Headless Man), drawn and written by Lionel Euphrasie. On the title page of the first volume: “La mort est éternelle” — death is eternal.
Printed and bound, shipped to your door. The format these pages were drawn for.
Soon
Available the moment you've paid. Read it on screen, zoom in page by page.
Soon
T-shirts, hoodies, caps, beanies and socks.
Decks and griptape — the object that started all of this.
Bags, keyrings, pins, mugs and a towel.
Engraved lighters and sticker sheets.
See the official shop
Questions
Left to right, like a tracking shot. The character doesn't appear once per panel: he's drawn in every one of his successive positions, laid out across a single scene. You follow the line with your eye, the way you'd follow a skater.
Because the headless man doesn't travel in a straight line: he goes through teleport gates that drop him anywhere in time and anywhere in France. The order they come out follows his jumps, not the map.
He appears once per city, in one of the ten sequences. Wherever he stands, he leaves a clue. Twelve cities, twelve clues — and all twelve lead to the head.
Twelve cities, ten districts each: 120 sequences. Every one drawn by hand.
No. The city sequences are silent: not a single speech bubble, not one word. Only the prologue has dialogue — and on this page it comes with an English translation. They read anywhere in the world, and the comic exists in English too.
It's a puzzle book, from age 7. And it reads twice: once to follow the headless man's line, then again for everything going on around him — the passers-by, the façades, the little scenes of city life.
One per city: twelve volumes for France, 30 to 35 pages each, in pocket format (A5). Each sequence spreads across a double page, and every volume opens with the same prologue.
Twenty-odd years of drawing, and a childhood memory: the “Where's Wally?” books, which Lionel pored over page by page. The same pleasure of combing a scene with your eyes — with a headless skater to follow and a headsman to flush out.
Because the trip through the corridors of time left him with powers: he hardly ever falls, and his tricks defy the laws of gravity. Enough to make him the best drawn skater in the world — in his author's opinion, at least.
Skaters, who follow the line and recognise the tricks — right down to the “pop” of the board and the “ding” of the truck on a rail. Puzzle lovers, who want to be first to find the head. Collectors: each volume stands alone, in any order. And comic lovers, for the broken-down movement and the real places redrawn.
The story is built to travel. After the twelve French cities, Lionel pictures twelve more volumes elsewhere — Japan, the United States, Spain…
No. No drawing is generated, completed or retouched by AI. The line, the colour and the breakdown of the movement are entirely Lionel Euphrasie's own hand.
The first pieces are in the works. The easiest way to hear about it is to follow @_headlessman on Instagram, or the Facebook page.