Category: Biography

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O Josephine!


By Jason (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-210-6 (HB/digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic, comedic and ironic effect.

Born in 1965 in Molde, Norway, John Arne Sæterøy is known globally by his enigmatic, utilitarian nom de plume Jason. The shy & retiring auteur started on the path to international cartoon superstardom in 1995, once first graphic novel Lomma full ay regn (Pocket Full of Rain) won Norway’s biggest comics prize: the Sproing Award.

From 1987 he had contributed to alternate/indie magazine KonK while studying graphic design and illustration at Oslo’s Art Academy. From there he went on to Norway’s National School of Arts and, after graduating in 1994, founded his own comic book Mjau Mjau. Constantly refining his style into a potent form of meaning-mined anthropomorphic minimalism, Jason cites Lewis Trondheim, Jim Woodring & Tex Avery as primary influences. Moving to Copenhagen Jason worked at Studio Gimle alongside Ole Comoll Christensen (Excreta, Mar Mysteriet Surn/Mayday Mysteries, Den Anden Praesident, Det Tredje Ojet) & Peter Snejbjerg (Den skjulte protocol/The Hidden Protocol, World War X, Tarzan, Books of Magic, Starman, Batman: Detective 27).

His efforts were internationally noticed, making waves in France, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Germany and other Scandinavian countries as well as the Americas. He won another Sproing in 2001 – for self-published series Mjau Mjau – and in 2002 turned nigh-exclusively to producing graphic novels. He won even more major awards.

Jason’s breadth of interest is wide and deep: comics, movies, animated cartoons, music, literature and pulp fiction all feature equally with no sense of rank or hierarchy. This puckish and egalitarian mixing and matching of inspirational sources always and inevitably produces picture-treatises well worth a reader’s time. Over a succession of tales Jason built and constantly re-employed a repertory company of stock characters to explore deceptively simplistic milieux based on classic archetypes distilled from movies, childhood entertainments, historical and literary favourites. These all role-play in deliciously absurd and surreal sagas centred on his preferred themes of relationships and loneliness. Latterly, Jason returned to such “found” players as he built his own highly esoteric universe, and even has a whole bizarre bunch of them “team-up” or clash…

As always, visual/verbal bon mots unfold in beguiling, sparse-dialogued, or even as here silently pantomimic progressions, with compellingly formal page layouts rendered in a pared back stripped-down interpretation of Hergé’s Claire Ligne style: solid blacks, and thick outlines dominating settings of seductive monochrome simplicity augmented by a beguiling palette of stark pastels and muted primary colours.

The majority of his tales brim with bleak isolation, swamped by a signature surreality: largely populated with cinematically-inspired, darkly comic, charmingly macabre animal people ruminating on those inescapable concerns whilst re-enacting bizarrely cast, bestial movie tributes.

A master of short-form illustrated tales, many Jason yarns were released as snappy little albums perfect for later inclusion in longer anthology collections like this one which gathers a quartet of his very best.

Here the stream of subtle wonderment opens with a suitably understated autobiographical jaunt to the land of Erin and an uneventful but truly mind-blowing progression along ‘The Wicklow Way’. The vacation hikes might be scenic and uneventful, but you’re never alone as long as you’re stuck inside your own head…

With the addition of a jaundiced inky outlook (and employing “yellow journalism” of the most literal kind) ‘L. Cohen: A Life’ then outlines the experiences and times of the poet, musician and philosopher, with a strong emphasis on whimsical inaccuracy and factual one-upmanship, whilst cinematic classicism underpins ‘The Diamonds’ wherein a pair of softened and barely-boiled detectives lose all objectivity after their scrupulous surveillance of a simple family affects their own hidden lives…

The low-key dramatics slip back into monochrome and into the twilight zone after weary world traveller Napoleon Bonaparte returns to Paris and falls head over shiny heels for infamous exotic dancer Josephine Baker. As with all doomed romances, the path to happiness is rocky, dangerous, and potentially insurmountable, but… c’est l’amour!

These comic tales are strictly for adults but allow us all to look at the world through wide-open childish eyes, exploring love, loss, life, death, boredom and all aspects of relationship politics without ever descending into mawkishness or simple, easy buffoonery. His buffoonery is always slick and deftly designed for maximum effect.

Jason remains a taste instantly acquired: a creator any true fan of the medium should move to the top of their “Must-Have” list.
All characters, stories, and artwork © 2019 Jason. This edition © Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All rights reserved.

Today in 1913 comics legend Joe Simon was born. I’m sure you’ve read all those great books he & Jack Kirby co-created, but if you haven’t, why not try The Sandman by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby?

In 1957 French comics genius Edmond-François Calvo died. You can not until you read his masterwork La Bête Est Mort which we reviewed as The Beast is Dead: World War II Among the Animals and will probably do again real soon.

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Love Me Please – The Story of Janis Joplin (1943-1970)


By Nicolas Finet, Christopher & Degreff: translated by Montana Kane (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-681122-76-2 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-681122-77-9

Gosh, aren’t real people interesting… especially in comics?

The list of people who lived hard, died young and changed the world is small but still, somehow, painfully overcrowded. Possibly the most tragic, influential, yet these days largely unknown was a born rule-breaking rebel who defied all conventions to become almost inevitably THE icon of doomed youth-with-big-dreams everywhere…

Author, filmmaker, journalist, publisher, educator and music documentarian Nicolas Finet has worked in comics for more than three decades – generating a bucketload of reference works like Mississippi Ramblin’ and Forever Woodstock. His collaborator on that last one was veteran author, journalist and illustrator Christopher (The Long and Winding Road; many other music-centred tomes and adaptor of the wonderful Bob Dylan). Their compelling treatise on misunderstood and self-destructive Janis – just like her music, poetry and art – is something to experience, not read about, but I’ll do my best to convince you anyway…

After a quick dip into early life and influences, the story proper opens in Texas in 1947 as ‘Forget Port Arthur’ zeroes in on key childhood traumas and revelations around the homelife and schooling of little Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19th 1943 – October 4th 1970) at the start of the most culturally chaotic and transformative period in American history…

Brilliant, multi-talented, sexually ambiguous, starved for love and desperately directionless, her metamorphosis through Blues music mirrors that of many contemporaries (a fair few of whom comprise the infamous “27 Club” of stars who died young). However, as this book shows, although something indefinable was always just out of Joplin’s reach, her response was never to passively accept or ever surrender…

Barely surviving her wildly rebellious teen years, an uncomfortable educational life, brief brush with conventional conformity and near-fatal counter-culture encounter in San Francisco – as all detailed in ‘The Temptation of Disaster’ – her meteoric rise in the era of flower power, liberal love and drug experimentation and record company exploitation lead to her return to sunny California and triumphant breakthrough in 1966, all carried along by ‘Spells and Charms’…

Stardom with hot band Big Brother and the Holding Company, and a host of legendary encounters affording even greater personal dissipation, makes wild child into living myth at Monterey and other landmarks of the Summer of Love, before success and acceptance prove to be her darkest nightmare in ‘Lost and Distraught’…

Global stardom and media glorification are balanced by heartbreak, betrayal and too many brushes with death. As Woodstock confirms her status and talent to the world, the landscape inside her head turns against Janis. Endless exhausting tours and brief amorous encounters further destabilise the girl within and the end – when it comes – is no surprise to anyone…

With a moving Preface from comics legend and childhood friend Gilbert Shelton, a huge, star-studded Character Gallery and suggested Further Reading and Viewing, this forthright, no-nonsense, extremely imaginative interpretation of the too-short flowering of “the Rose” offers insight but never judgement into a quintessentially complex, contradictory and uncompromised life…

NBM’s library of graphic biographies are swiftly becoming the crucial guide to the key figures of modern history and popular culture. If you haven’t found the answers you’re seeking yet, then you’re clearly not looking in the right place. Just remember that, as you gear up for what might well be the last Christmas you’ll spend with loved ones…
© Hatchette Livre (Marabout) 2020. © 2021 NBM for the English translation. All rights reserved.

Most NBM books are also available in digital formats. For more information and other great reads see NBM.

Today in 1931 comics changed forever with the first published episode of Chester Gould’s detective innovation. We last saw his impact in The Dick Tracy Casebook – Favourite Adventures 1931-1990 but there are loads and they’re all great. The same holds true for Walt Kelly’s scathing, sweetly savage political satire which debuted today in 1948. If you’re as yet unconverted why not check out Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comics Strips volume 1 – Through the Wild Blue Wonder?

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Planet of Science – The Universal Encyclopedia of Scientists


By Antonio Fischetti & Bouzard, translated by James Hogan (Europe Comics)
No ISBN: digital only

Comics and graphic novels have an inconceivable power to deliver information in readily accessible form, and – like all the best teachers – can do so in ways that are fascinating, fun and therefore unforgettable.

A prime example is 2019’s La Planète des sciences – Encyclopédie universelle des scientifiques – which is available digitally in English if STILL not yet as a solidly reassuring tome. A bright and breezy introduction to a number of researchers and discoverers, famed and not, it combines a page of personal history, biography and unflinching commentary on 37 notable personages who have added to global scientific knowledge, each accompanied by a smart, punchy and pertinent gag strip by underground cartoonist Guillaume Bouzard (Caca bemol, Je veux travailler pour le Canard enchaîné, Lucky Luke).

Presenting the facts is Dr Antonio Fischetti, author (Cats and Dogs under the scientist’s magnifying glass, Idiotic and Relevant Questions about Mankind); science journalist; educator (at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts, National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris, Louis Lumière School and La Femis); and author of a science column for illustrious truth-seeking organ Charlie Hebdo.

The Continent is happily, gloriously awash with factual albums and graphic novels – and not just biographies – and this is one of the most entertaining I’ve ever seen, opening with Dr. Fischetti’s explanatory postulate on why these particular 37 candidates and his cognitive methodology, before the visual revelations begin. Sub-divided into rough, often overlapping time frames it all starts in Ancient Greece with the lowdown and high points of Thales, Pythagoras, Hippocrates and Archimedes, before jumping to 780-850CE for the story of Al-Khwarizmi.

Traversing the 15th – 16th Century, we meet Leonardo da Vinci, Nicolaus Copernicus, Ambroise Paré, Giordano Bruno & Galileo, before 17th – 18th Century pioneers Rene Decartes, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Isaac Newton, Carl Linnaeus and Antoine Lavoisier get their moment in history’s hindsight and spotlight. As big, deep thinking becomes more widespread, representing the 19th Century are Charles Darwin, Claud Bernard, Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, Alfred Nobel (suck it, Donny-baby!) and Dmitri Mendeleev, after which the revolutionary 19th – 20th Century hones in on Ivan Pavlov, Max Planck, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Alfred Wegener, Alexander Fleming, Erwin Schrödinger and Trofim Lysenko. By now it’s probably clear to most of you that this is no simple hagiography: some of the folk here are included because of their effect on scientific progress and it’s not all smiles, acclaim and awards…

The procession of progress pauses with the 20th – 21st Century (because, as of this writing, time travel has not been satisfactorily confirmed or reproduced under laboratory conditions) with controversial and occasionally still-living paragons Konrad Lorenz, Alan Turing, Alexander Grothendieck, James Watson, Peter Higgs, Yves Coppens, Emmanuelle Charpentier and the recently lost and already hugely missed Jane Goodall. Sure, you could Google them, but this book is a far more satisfying alternative…

The very fact that you probably haven’t heard of some of these latter savants – or even a few of the more ancient ones – only proves without doubt that you need this book. QED: What more can one say?
© 2020 DARGAUD – Fischetti & Bouzard. All rights reserved.

Today in 1913, comic book pioneer, cover artist and co-creator of Zatara Fred Guardineer was born, whilst in 1924 the legendary Harvey Kurtzman took his first peep at reality and probably started taking critical notes. We last spotlighted the inventor of Mad Magazine in Harvey Kurtzman’s Marley’s Ghost.

And today in 1982 the world was lessened by the passing of wondrous Noel Sickles, whom we loved most for such astounding strip work as Scorchy Smith: Partners in Danger.

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Vlad the Impaler: The Man Who Was Dracula


By Sid Jacobson & Ernie Colón (Plume/Penguin Group USA)
ISBN: 978-1-59463-058-3 (HB) 978-0-452-29675-2 (PB)

Here’s a handy Heads-Up and Horrible History hint if you’re looking for something to set the tone for the Halloween we’re probably ALL NOT GOING TO ENJOY THIS YEAR. It’s available in hardback, soft cover and digital editions and well worth staying in with.

As writer and editor, Sid Jacobson masterminded the Harvey Comics monopoly of strips for younger US readers in the 1960s and 1970s, co-creating Richie Rich and Wendy, the Good Little Witch among others. He worked the same magic for Marvel’s Star Comics imprint, overseeing a vast amount of family-friendly material, both self-created – such as Royal Roy or Planet Terry – and a huge basket of licensed properties.

In latter years, he worked closely with fellow Harvey alumnus Ernesto Colón Sierra, aka Ernie Colón, on such thought-provoking graphic enterprises as The 9/11 Report: a Graphic Adaptation and its sequel, After 9/11: America’s War on Terror. In 2009 their epic Che: a Graphic Biography was released: separating the man from the myth of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, universal icon of cool rebellion.

Colón was born in Puerto Rico in 1931: a creator whose work has been loved by generations of readers. Whether as artist, writer, colourist or editor his contributions have benefited the entire industry from the youngest (Monster in My Pocket, Richie Rich and Casper the Friendly Ghost for Harvey, and a ton of similar projects for Star Comics), to the traditional comic book fans with Battlestar Galactica, Damage Control and Doom 2099 for Marvel, Arak, Son of Thunder and Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld, the Airboy revival at Eclipse, Magnus: Robot Fighter for Valiant and so very many others.

There are also his sophisticated experimental works such as underground/indie thriller Manimal and his seminal genre graphic novels Ax and the Medusa Chain. From 2005 until his death in 2019 he created the strip SpyCat for Weekly World News. Working together Jacobson & Colón are a comics fan’s dream come true and their bold choice of biography and reportage as well as their unique take on characters and events always pays great dividends.

Vlad the Impaler is by far their most captivating project: a fictionalised account of the notorious Wallachian prince raised by his mortal enemies as a literal hostage to fortune, only to reconquer and lose his country not once, but many times.

The roistering, bloody, brutal life of this Romanian national hero and basis of Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula is a fascinating, baroque, darkly funny yarn, capturing a troubled soul’s battle with himself as much as the Muslim and Christian superpowers that treated his tiny principality as their plaything.

With startling amounts of sex and violence this book makes no excuses for a patriot and freedom fighter driven by his horrific bloodlust and (justifiable?) paranoia to become a complete beast: clearly the very worst of all possible monsters: a human one.

Sharp, witty, robust and engaging, with a quirky twist in the tale, this is a good old-fashioned shocker that any history-loving gore-fiend will adore.
Text © 2009 Sid Jacobson. Art © 2009 Ernie Colón. All rights reserved.

Today in 1927 graphic novel trailblazer Jack Katz was born. If any of us live, expect us to finally cover his epic First Kingdom sometime soon. Also making their first appearances in 1927 and 1955 respectively were Italian Disney cartoonist Romano Scarpa – as seen in Walt Disney’s Donald Duck Volume 2: The Diabolical Duck Avenger – and the inestimable Charles Burns whose Black Hole is only one of many Must-Read-Before-You-Die classics.

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They Called Us Enemy (Expanded edition)


By George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steve Scott & Harmony Becker (Top Shelf Productions/IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-603094-70-2 (Expanded HB) eISBN 978-1-684068-82-1-
TPB ISBN: 978-1-603094-50-4

This book contains Discriminatory Content from less enlightened times included for historical and dramatic veracity.

Graphic biographies are still a relatively new form for English-language comics, but the wealth and variety of material already available is truly breathtaking and laudable. This so timely exemplary example is a subtly understated yet deeply moving chronicle exploring the events and repercussions of a truly shameful moment in US history, as recalled and relived by a global icon of popular culture. He also happens to be one of that embattled democracy’s most ardent advocates of diversity, justice and equality and top-level activist in the arenas of LGBTQ and Asian-American rights.

George Takei initially celebrated and commemorated his life in prose autobiography To the Stars, but here, in collaboration with writers Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott and illustrator Harmony Becker, the Hollywood star deftly shifted focus to explore in painful and revelatory detail the early years of his life: a formative period spent as a non-person confined without cause behind barbed wire in his own country.

Recounted as non-linear, non-chronological episodes, the history and self-serving actions of American leaders – like Lt. General John L. DeWitt or Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron, who systematically stripped all people of Japanese ethnicity of their rights, livelihoods, possessions and autonomy – are seen through the eyes of a small child. Those observations inevitably shaped the actor into a crusading defender of democratic principles of later life.

I’d love to say that’s simply a thing of the past, but kids are still being locked in cages and families split up. It’s apparently something we humans just can’t stop doing…

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941, on February 19th 1942, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, dividing the country into military zones and effectively declaring all American citizens of Japanese origins enemy aliens. This led to their internment for the duration of the war across 10 isolated camps between the West Coast and Mississippi river.

In surprisingly fond recollections of camp life, we share the notions of baffled children – George, brother Henry, sister Nancy Reiko and many new pals – and the lasting, post-war consequences of divisively authoritarian stunts such as legally-binding loyalty pledges de-fanged and counterpointed by modern day discussions and triumphant moments of past injustices finally addressed.

As well as exposing the true price of dog-whistle politics and human cost of bowing to baying demagogues we see here a shameful period of state-sanctioned, opportunistic profiteering and proud racism in a tale that is a testament to human endurance, perseverance and innate dignity. Amidst the stomach churning, mostly bloodless horror are moments of delightful warmth and genuine humour, bolstered by actions of unsung humanitarian heroes like Takei’s own parents and pioneering civil rights lawyer Wayne M. Collins. Their tireless fortitude and resistance to state-sanctioned oppression, along with the efforts of countless others, offers inspiration and hope for all suffering similar restraint and abuse while sadly proving that some battles may never end. Just look at any headline with the word seeker, refugee or asylum in it and the sheer cost of protecting migrants anywhere on Earth today…

Also offering touching afterword ‘Making History’ by Takei, Eisinger, Scott & Becker; a Takei family photo album; reproduced Civilian Exclusion orders, street maps of the internment camp and chilling “Final accountability rosters” for Camp Rohwer & Camp Tule Lake, this book includes a detailed look at the process of creating it, with candid team photos, script pages, roughs and layouts, as well as press and convention shots of George collecting the numerous awards for his efforts. At the close, there’s a feature on how the book has transitioned to becoming an educational standby, acknowledgements and the always welcome creator biographies.

They Called Us Enemy is a compelling, beguiling and harshly informative account of injustice and unchecked ignorance endured with plenty of points as pertinent now as they ever were.

In 2020 this expanded edition was released with 16 pages of extra material in both physical hardback and digital volume.
They Called Us Enemy Expanded Edition © 2020 George Takei. All Rights Reserved.

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Bogie


By Claude Jean-Philippe & Patrick Lesueur, translated by Wendy Payton (Eclipse Books)
ISBN: 978-0-913035-78-8 (Album TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

As well as a far greater appreciation of, and more accommodating definitions for performing and popular arts, the French just seem to instinctively cherish the magnificent ephemera of entertainment; examining and revisiting icons and landmarks of TV, film, modern music and yes, comics in ways English-speakers just don’t seem capable of.

At the beginning of the 1980s artist Patrick Lesueur collaborated with prestigious and prolific actor/director/producer/film critic/historian and occasional author Claude Jean Philippe on Portraits souvenirs des éditions Dargaud, a series of graphic biographies of US movie stars who changed the world. For their purposes that was Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, Errol Flynn and the subject of this slim, beautiful chronicle translated for America by pioneering West Coast independent publisher Eclipse.

At best a part-time comics writer, Claude Lucien Nahon (April 20th 1933 – September 11th 2016) AKA Claude-Jean Philippe, was an essayist, diarist, director, documentarian and radio regular who waxed wise and lyrical about all aspects of cinema. This made him an ideal option as writer, whereas comics pro Lesueur began life as a window dresser before moving into bande dessinée in 1972, joining the creative staff of Pilote to illustrate its current affairs pages before moving into fiction with short eco-fables compiled as the album En Attendant le Printemps and limning Laurence Harlé’s, cop thriller Reste-t-il du Miel pour le thé. Latterly, he produced Detroit, Douglas Dunkerk, and many more, before succumbing to his true passion as a petrolhead and classic car collector; devoting his time to comics, histories and other publications about all aspects of motoring, such as classic car feature Enzo Ferrari, l’Homme aux Voitures Rouges.

Bogie (Bogey in the original French) is told in a haunting, conversationally first-person narrative as the moodily realistic yet whimsically refined life of one of the greatest screen gods of all time comes to elegiac life in a peculiarly downbeat and lowkey piece. The voyage is all the more fascinating because our tale unfolds in an engagingly static manner, but actually sounds and looks just like you’d expect – and want – Humphrey Bogart to talk to you if you met him in a bar. The restrained yet powerfully effective images shout “private photo album” in a candid, winningly intimate way that, just like the celluloid origins, leaves you wanting more.

Bogart apparently led an unremarkable life off-screen… or perhaps the creators just didn’t want this apparently hard-drinking, much-married legend to outshine his own cinematic legacy, but in terms of graphic novel entertainment this poetic picture-story is a stunning achievement worthy of your attention. Perhaps someday soon another publisher will re-release it and even translate those other silver screen sagas too…
Contents © 1984 Dargaud Editeur Paris by Claude Jean Philippe and Patrick Lesueur. 1989 This edition © 1989 Eclipse Books.

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Low: Bowie’s Berlin Years


By Reinhard Kleist, coloured by Thomas Gilke & Reinhard Kleist, translated by Michael Waaler (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-28-7 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content reproduced for literary and historical veracity.

In recent years, graphic biographies have become a major component of many publishers fare – comics and otherwise – even as high end biopics, podcasts and “tell-all” TV series have similarly gripped consumers keen to get a little closer to the New Gods: celebrities of every shape and shade and ranking.

This one – originally released in Germany by a pioneer and true master of the form – pushes the envelope on what exactly constitutes and defines documentary reportage with a sequel saga proudly, defiantly and fully uninvited, ruminating upon and deducing what might have been…

A forcefully Unauthorised tale utterly unsanctioned by the Bowie Estate, Low: Bowie’s Berlin Years is actually a sequel to, and continuance of Reinhard (Knock Out!, Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness, Nick Cave: Mercy on Me) Kleist’s 2023 release Starman: Bowie’s Stardust Years. That visual odyssey explored the origins of and subsequent early race for fame that gripped music-obsessed sax-playing Bromley boy Davy Jones and how he perfected the art of reinvention. We’ll get to that first book in due time…

Here, however, a second speculative and allegorical deep dive reveals how – and possibly why – after almost self-destructing on the spoils of success and coming close to being destroyed by manipulators and exploiters, globally notorious Ziggy Stardust/David Bowie briefly eluded the pressures of fame to enjoy temporary anonymity and explore creative freedom.

Here the struggling auteur/performance artist recreates himself in a blighted, beleaguered but broadly unbowed metropolis that was a thriving symbol of unfinished wars, the byword for the end of days and paragon of life lived on the edge and in the now…

If you come to this book without prior knowledge of the history and players you might struggle with detail, but the gleefully potent, loose-limbed, energetically fantasmagoric yet understated art, careful juxtaposition of verifiable events and intense character interplay will carry most readers through the unfolding drama.

Plotwise, this broadly true tale is one that has been told many times, with only the names and locations varying. We open in Berlin at the apex of the Cold War. It’s 1976 and a burned out, dispirited Bowie is seeking somewhere he can shelter, refocus creative energies and map out a new direction in the grand show that is his life.

The relocation is aided and abetted by many long term house guests including former wife turned current goad & confidante Angie, producer Tony Visconti, PA/fixer Coco Schwab, collaborators Brian Eno, Robert Fripp and Marc Bolan, and inseparable protégé/soulmate Iggy Pop, as well as increasing untrustworthy manager Tony DeFries and others. The locale itself offers perfect inspirational distractions, including a wild club scene, non-judgemental neighbours, truly progressive new music (such as Tangerine Dream, Can and Kraftwerk), intoxicating cabaret star turned intimate associate Romy Haag, the allure of anonymity and the frisson of living on the point of the spear and at ground zero for a seemingly inevitable nuclear armageddon…

Oh, and when not cycling around a city whose thousand years of history call out to him, there’s also sex and drugs and rock & roll…

Amidst the tensions, distractions and constant philosophical musings – laced with gritty flashbacks and peppered with metaphorical fantasies and eerie appearances by space-suited conceptual b?te noir Major Tom – Bowie ponders and plays and evolves, eventually formulating a bold statement, culminating in a change of life path and musical goals as well as the artistic breakthroughs and triumphs of Low, Heroes (both 1977) and Lodger (1979)… the “Berlin Trilogy”…

With telling and informative appearances by contemporary influences/pals like John Lennon, Luther Vandross, William Burroughs (sort of), the lifechanging, alienating trauma of making and being The Man Who Fell to Earth and wry glimpses at the birth of Punk lensed against the popular tensions surrounding growing incidences of androgyny and transgender hostility, Low: Bowie’s Berlin Years is as much a potent tribute to the city and its people at a key point in history as only a Cologne-born Berliner-by-choice could tell it. It’s also a powerful reminder of those precarious times and how fashion, art and music helped us through the grimness of it all…

The tale is augmented by a Gallery of images encapsulating the man, the moments and his ever-present space-suited internal avatar…

© Text & illustration 2024 by Carlsen-Verlag GmbH, Hamburg, Germany. All rights reserved. English translation © SelfMadeHero 2025. NBM for the English translation.

LOW: Bowie’s Berlin Years is scheduled for UK release May 22nd 2025 and July 8th in the USA. Both editions are available for pre-order now.
reserved. English translation © SelfMadeHero 2023.

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Starman: Bowie’s Stardust Years


By Reinhard Kleist, coloured by Thomas Gilke & Reinhard Kleist, translated by Michael Waaler (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-08-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content reproduced for literary and historical veracity.

Graphic biographies are a now a solid staple of publishers fare, just as biopics, podcasts and “tell-all” TV series similarly entice consumers eager for intimate, often salacious detail on celebrities of every shape and shade and ranking. Thanks to that apparently insatiable appetite for speculative if not actually fictionalised lifestories – officially sanctioned or otherwise – in movies like Walk the Line, Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman or shows including The Crown, Mr. Selfridge or Mr. Bates vs the Post Office, the demand for candid revelation is extremely high, especially as offering purportedly keen insights onto people and events we only think we know but presume we have a right to impinge upon is pure, primal unfettered monkey curiosity in action…

This one – originally released in Germany in 2021 by pioneer documentarian Reinhard Kleist (The Olympic Dream: The Story of Samia Yusuf Omar, The Boxer: The True Story of Holocaust Survivor Harry Haft, Castro: A Graphic Novel) – pushes the envelope on what exactly constitutes and defines reportage with the first half of an extended exploration into a world icon: an assessment that is wildly expressionistic and defiantly fully unsanctioned…

It’s probably fair to say that David Bowie spent his life (lives?) managing his own mythology and seeking to control his own story, but apparently famous people belong – at least in part – to everyone. That’s certainly the premise of this compelling rags-to-the-point-of-disaster saga, told in flashbacks and hi-octane fantasy set-pieces tracing the rise and early successes of young David Robert Jones (January 8th 1947 – January 10th 2016). Touching upon his many personas and innovations and especially exploring the sybaritic excesses, the tale carries the reader to the moments that ended Bowie’s American odyssey of near self-destruction in 1975.

Visual dissection and informed deduction plays out as traditional drama as Kleist depicts the background, family, maternal disapproval, hungry ambitions and subsequent early race for fame that gripped a music-obsessed, sax-playing Bromley boy and how he evolved a tactic of personal reinvention in his incessant chase for the stars…

On the way and via formulative days of gigging and making contacts during the sixties and seventies, we meet his tragic but deeply inspirational older brother Terry, best friend Marc Bolan, future wife Angie Barnett, exploitative management sharpie Tony DeFries, Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, up-&-comer Iggy Pop, groundbreaking fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto and many more people relatively famous folk. We’re on hand at the birth of Glam Rock and controversial but headline grabbing, dabbling with androgyny and “gender-bending” that led to the breakthroughs that almost destroyed him: the release of melancholic anthem of the era Space Oddity (with Major Tom consequently becoming a personal avatar haunting the singer forever after) and the birth of soul-sucking vampire Ziggy Stardust, a sybaritic alter ego who nearly consumed his creator…

As ambition, excess, and the dreamer’s love of science fiction fuel his inspiration, Bowie/ Ziggy hits America like meteor but soon the fallout starts taking its toll. Adoration and desire war with dissatisfaction and painful self-exploration and unless something Ch-Ch-Changes we will all be witness to a Rock‘n’Roll Suicide…

Arguably massaging history to explore the price of ambition and assess the cost of pursuing power, as well as the shocking threat and reward of sexual identity to society, this cautionary the tale is augmented by a Gallery of images encapsulating the man, the moments and his ever-present space-suited internal avatar…

© Text & illustration 2021 by Carlsen-Verlag GmbH, Hamburg, Germany. All rights reserved. English translation © SelfMadeHero 2023

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Alice in Cryptoland – Bitcoin, NFT and Other Curiosities


By Nicolas Balas, Daniel Villa Monteiro, translated by Margaret Morrison (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-355-4 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-356-1

This book also includes some Discriminatory Content included for dramatic and literary effect.

Sequential narrative is a nigh-universal, overwhelmingly powerful medium fluent in a host of topics and genres, but the area where it has always shone brightest is in its chimeric capacity to convey complex arguments, positions and states in a clear and compelling manner. Although daubing marks on a surface is possibly our oldest art form, the potential to ask questions, make stories and concisely communicate via that primal process remains infinitely adaptable to modern mores and as powerful as it ever was in exploring the unchanging basics of the human condition.

Narrative plus image – and the interactions such conjunctions can embrace – underpin all of our communal existence and form the primary source for how we view our distant forbears; especially as if employed by incisive, sensitive, uncompromising agents and interlocutors…

That’s never been more apparent than in this short sweet deep dive into one of the most controversial of new modern innovations.

Crafted during the Covid lockdowns and released on the continent in 2023, using the avatar of a cute and appealing young woman disaffected with the contemporary financial, governmental and environmental status quo, writer/educator Daniel Villa Monteiro and animator/illustrator Nicolas Balas jointly outline the pros & cons of cryptocurrencies, addressing the history, development, advantages and pitfalls of Bitcoin, Non Fungible Tokens, Blockchain and other trade/pecuniary artefacts of the digital age in a staggeringly accessible manner that even I could grasp.

Just before coronavirus is set to change human society forever, art student Alice receives an inheritance from her grandmother. Constantly harassed by her “breadhead” banker/financier dad on how best to invest the nest egg, self-aware, system-suspicious, rebellious Alice eventually discovers alternate currency Bitcoin and after some trepidation dives into a new world. As an artist, she thinks visually, using cartoons and graphics to enhance her understanding of this brand new world and even explain what she’s doing to her little brother. The results are so effective that soon she is sharing her images and online tutorials with other curious pre-converts, becoming well known to advocates of digital economy and is on the cusp of a promising new career.

If only she can completely convince herself that it’s all safe and secure…

Warm, beguiling and immensely straightforward Alice in Cryptoland is a charming and readily comprehensible argument for its subject that puts understanding of a bewildering subject first and foremost, not only in its context-rammed ‘Foreword’ and utterly crucial ‘Glossary of Terms’ but also on every lovely welcoming cartoon page.

Why not invest some of your actual capital resources on something that could end your dependence on it?

Originally published as Alice au pays des cryptos by Editions du Faubourg, © 2023. All rights reserved. © 2025 NBM for the English translation.
Scheduled for UK release on 13th May, Alice in Cryptoland is available for pre-order now.

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High Command – The Stories of Sir Winston Churchill and General Montgomery


By Frank Bellamy & Clifford Makins (Dragon’s Dream)
ISBN: 978-9-06332-901-3 (PB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Inexcusably absent as we commemorate the achievements and sacrifices of earlier generations are these twin neglected classics of British comic strip art, crafted by one of the world’s most talented narrative illustrators. These wonderful biographical series originally ran in Eagle, the most influential comic of post-war Britain, which launched on April 14th 1950, astounding readers weekly until 26th April 1969.

It was the brainchild of a Southport vicar, the Reverend Marcus Morris, who was at that time concerned over the detrimental effects of American comic books on British children. He posited a good, solid, thoroughly decent Christian-inspired antidote and sought out like-minded creators. After jobbing around a dummy to numerous British publishers for over a year with little success, he eventually found an unlikely home at Hulton Press, a company producing adult general interest magazines like Lilliput and Picture Post. The result was a huge hit, spawning clones Swift, Robin and Girl (targeting other demographic sectors of the children’s market), as well as radio series, books, toys and all other sorts of merchandising.

An incredible number of soon-to-be prominent creative figures in many arenas of media worked on the weekly, and although Dan Dare is deservedly revered as the star, many other strips were as popular at the time, often rivalling the lead in quality and entertainment value. As was the trend of the times, the content combined fact with fiction, stressing learning and discernment equally with adventure, thrills and fun…

At its peak, Eagle sold close to a million copies a week, but before changing tastes and “musical owners” killed the title. In 1960, Hulton sold out to comics megalith Odhams, who then became Longacre Press. A year later they were bought by The Daily Mirror Group who evolved into IPC. And so it goes in publishing…

In cost-cutting exercises, many later issues carried (relatively) cheap and oh-so-trendy Marvel Comics reprints rather than British originated material. It took time, but the Yankee cultural Invaders won out in the end. With the April 26th 1969 issue Eagle merged with Lion, and eventually disappeared altogether. Successive generations have revived the prestigious glamour-soaked title, but never its success.

From its glorious Reithian heyday (“Educate, Elucidate and Entertain”) came a brace of brief biographical serials devoted to two men crucial to the war effort that had imperilled the readership’s forebears, and these were originally collected into a classy album by Dragons Dream in 1981.

The first half was reprinted in 2014 as a slim, scarcely seen paperback and hardcover album from Uniform. The Happy Warrior: The Life Story of Sir Winston Churchill as Told Through the Eagle Comic of the 1950’s (ISBNs 978-1-90650-990-3 for the HB and 978-1929154340 for the softcover) came with a scholarly commentary from Richard M. Langworth CBE, but we’re long overdue for the combined volume to resurface.

If you can, go for the High Command edition, but in whatever form you can devour the life story of Sir Winston Churchill and the quiet general (both scripted by Clifford Makins), beginning with the icon of Bulldog Spirit.

Originally titled The Happy Warrior, the prestigious full-page back cover feature (running from October 4th 1957 to September 1958) was Frank Bellamy’s first full colour strip. He followed up with Montgomery of Alamein (Eagle volume 13, #10-27, spanning March 10th to 7th July 1962), delivering twice the punch and more revelatory design in 2-page colour-spreads that utterly spellbound readers, whether they were war fans or not.

Churchill himself approved the early strips and was rumoured to have been consulted before the artist began the experimental layouts that elevated Bellamy from being merely a highly skilled representational draughtsman into the trailblazing innovator who revolutionized the comic page in features like Doctor Who and Garth. The tireless experimenter also began the explorations of the use of local and expressionistic colour palettes that would result in the extraordinary Fraser of Africa, Heros the Spartan and deservedly legendary Thunderbirds strips.

The Churchill story follows the great man from his early days at Eton through military service in Cuba as a war correspondent, and into politics. Although a large proportion deals with World War II – and in a spectacular, tense and thrilling manner – the subtler skill Bellamy displays in depicting the transition of dynamic, handsome man of action into burly political heavyweight over the weeks is impressive and astonishing. It should be mentioned, though, that this collection doesn’t reproduce the climactic, triumphal last page, a portrait that is half-pin-up, half summation and all hagiography.

Bernard Law Montgomery’s graphic biography benefited from Bellamy’s burgeoning expertise in two ways. Firstly, the page count was doubled, and the artist capitalized on this by producing groundbreaking double page spreads that worked across gutters (the white spaces that divides the pictures). This allowed him to craft even more startling page and panel designs.

Secondly, Bellamy had now become extremely proficient in both staging the script and creating mood with colour. This strip is pictorial poetry in motion.

Makins doesn’t hang about either. Taking only three episodes to get from school days in Hammersmith, army service in India and promotion to Brigade Major by the end of the Great War, Monty’s WWII achievements are given full play, allowing Bellamy to create an awesome display of action-packed war comics over the remaining 15 double-paged episodes. There really hasn’t been anything to match this level of quality and sophistication in combat comics before or since.

If you strain you might detect a tinge of post-war triumphalism in the scripts, but these accounts are generally historically accurate and phenomenally stirring to look at. If you love comic art you should hunt these down, or at least pray that somebody, somewhere has the sense to reprint this work.

© 1981 Dragon’s Dream B.V. ©1981 IPC Magazines Ltd.