By Vittorio Giardino (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-184-1
Born on Christmas Eve 1946 Vittorio Giardino was an electrician who switched careers at age 30. He worked for a number of comics magazines initially and his first collection Pax Romana was released in 1978. He worked, slowly but consistently, on feature characters such as detective Sam Pezzo, the saucy Winsor McKay homage Little Ego and the cold-war drama Jonas Fink as well as general fiction tales, producing over 35 albums to date.
In 1982 he began the occasional saga of a quiet, bearded fellow recalled by the Deuxieme Bureau (the French Secret Service) to investigate the slaughter of almost every agent in the cosmopolitan paradise of Budapest. The series ran in the magazine Orient Express before being collected as Rhapsodie Hongroise or Hungarian Rhapsody (ISBN: 0-87416-033-2). Within three years he had returned to the subtly addictive pre-war drama with the follow-up La Porta d’Oriente or Orient Gateway to you and me.
Summer 1938: All the espionage agencies in the world know that war is coming. Frantically jockeying for the most favourable position, they’re all seeking every advantage for when the balloon goes up. Soviet engineer Mr. Stern has become just such a preferred asset of too many rival organisations, so he runs, losing himself in the teeming, mysterious city of Istanbul.
Once again reluctant, canny Max Friedman is drawn into the murky “Great Gameâ€, but alongside the exotic, bewitching Magda Witnitz, is he the only one to ask why so many dangerous people want to acquire Stern? And why are they so willing to kill for him?
Subtle, entrancing and magnificently illustrated, this is a superb thriller with all the nostalgic panache of Casablanca and labyrinthine twists and turns of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and no fan of the genre, let alone comics aficionado, can afford to miss this beguiling adventure.
Giardino is a smart and confidant writer who makes tone and nuance carry a tale and his art – a semi-representational derivation of Hergé’s ligne claire (clean line) – makes the lovingly rendered locations as much a character as any of the stylishly operatives in a dark, doomed world on the brink of holocaust.
After ten years, Giardino recently completed a trilogy of albums featuring this unassuming spy which reveals much of his early years during the Spanish Civil War, and with the earlier tales they form an archive of spy-fiction that rivals the best of Le Carré, Hammett, Buchan or Fleming.
Max Friedman is one of the form’s greatest characters and Giardino’s work is like honey for the eyes and mind. This is another graphic novel every fan of comics or the Intelligence Game should know.
© 1986 Vittorio Giardino. All Rights Reserved.
Nice write up. These book do read like some of the great spy/intel community books out there. Like myself, you seem to read the foreign, indie, and superguy comics. Giardino is one of the great masters. Where’d you get the great background info about him? I didn’t know about the serialization history OR that he over 35 albums! Do you know which publishers put them out? I forget who did the ones’ that have been translated — Casterman? I’d love to look into the possibility of coaxing a publisher to translate his other works.
Hi Jim
thanks for the kind words!
lots of the info comes from trawing the internet, places like Lambiek and other foriegn sites in countries where they take funnybooks seriously – and some comes from the volumes themselves.
NBM is working their way slowly through his back catalogue, taking over from the much-missed Catalan communications who first introduced him to the English speaking world in the 1980s.
In Europe, a number of publishers print his work, each in their own mother tongue, although Italy and France hold him in particularly high regard.
So unless you can some sort of foreign, I’m afraid it’s patience, patience.
You could always email a line to NBM because they’re dreadfully slow – or too slow for my tastes – in banging his stuff out and some actual reader anticipation might chivvy them along – as far as I know, they STILL haven’t reprinted volume 1 of No Passaran!