Category: Biography

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The Great Marc Evers: The True Story of a Champion Against All Odds


By Ivo van Woerden, adapted & illustrated by Gemma Plum, coloured by Marloes Dekkers and translated by Michele Hutchison (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-51-5 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced for dramatic effect.

Comics are the natural home of triumphal heroes and extraordinary feats, but in general the victories (and rare defeats) of fictive sporting heroes have been restricted to Britain and Japan where many, many panel stars have been footballers, drivers, runners, jockeys, wrestlers, boxers, speedway riders, cricketers, basketball & baseball heroes, skiers, skateboarders and the like. Deeply provincial America never bothered much except for pugilists Popeye & Joe Palooka (or in transitory promotional sallies like Marvel’s truly awful NFL SuperPro title in 1991), and even impressively broadminded Europe has been fairly selective in its sporting choices – like Béka (AKA Bertrand Escaich & Caroline Roque) & Poupard’s comedy strip Les Rugbymen / The Rugger Boys or that apparently immortal race driver Michel Vaillant.

The exception to all those statements is the subgenre of graphic biographies, where exceptional individuals including track and field stars overcoming initial disadvantages are a popular and growing category. In recent years we’ve covered many – like Roberto Clemente, Tillie Walden, Mylo Choy, Emile Griffith, Harry Haft, Suzanne Lenglen, and so many more, but none as remarkable as The Great Marc Evers…

At two-year old, Evers was (finally) diagnosed with profound intellectual impairments comprising a specific Learning Disability as well as severe ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). Despite prognoses ranging from “give up now” to “just go away”, Marc’s parents and siblings toiled constantly to make a human life for their boy, who had been written off as hopeless: incapable of learning to talk, dress, coordinate his actions or even vacate his bowels without aid. However, and thanks to help from forward thinking agencies and specialists, Frank and Gitty Evers found places he could fit in and ways to develop his autonomy and agency.

Swimming became a lifeline for the boy and he excelled. After years of steadfast effort, Marc represented Holland at the 2012 London Paralympics. He won gold, as he done so many times before and would do again. Taking five Paralympic medals and numerous world records, he is the Netherlands’ greatest Paralympic swimming champion; in both disability and all-comers divisions Evers has been Paralympic, World and European champion in the 100m breaststroke and is the Netherlands’ greatest aquatic sportsman…

Of course, you can read up on his sporting achievements and full life elsewhere (such as in the original biography, or this Graphic Novel or even online) but for now let’s talk some more about comics and acknowledge illustrator-adaptor Gemma Plum and colour-artist Marloes Dekkers who transformed journalist Ivo van Woerden’s prose biography of the swimming superstar’s progress into a masterful exhibition of the power of graphic narrative.

The most telling tactic is the use of silence. There are few conversational gambits. Marc’s world is full of extended quiet moments, whether under water or locked in his bubble of isolation and hyper-observation.

Here you will see a combination of traditional sequential narrative describing the life story of the characters interacting with an ingenious array of visual flourishes (such as pictorial tics to mirror Marc’s distracted states and carefully utilised panel repetitions reproduced over and again to emphasise the conceptual freezes and pauses that make up the life of those with any degree of ASD). These old “presponses” to new variations neatly and repeatedly hammer home the point that dealing with an ASD child is relentless, surprising, wearisome, tedious and has no ending in sight, but shows also that with effort and dedication, and the right help, any situation can be managed…

Moving, rewarding, inspirational and ingeniously inventive, The Great Marc Evers is an intimate, candid, powerfully optimistic and relentlessly hopeful coming-of-age tale reminding us of the value of perseverance, resolve and trust.
Text and artwork © Stichting Grafische Journalistiek, 2026. Translation © Michele Hutchison, 2026.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: All You Need to Know About Fitting In Whilst Standing Out… 8/10

The Great Marc Evers will be published on 1st October 2025 and is available for pre-order now.

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Lo! An Amazon!: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Mary Wollstonecraft


by Mary M. Talbot & Bryan Talbot (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-91422-449-2 (HB)

Although now rightly considered one of the most influential and radical thinkers in history Mary Wollstonecraft (April 27th 1759 – September 10th 1797) achieved a smidgeon on intellectual renown but no security in her own lifetime and a degree of notoriety and exclusion in the years that followed her death. She only began winning back her deserved position after the rise of the Suffragettes and Feminist Philosophy, which saw many aggrieved and disenfranchised people (infamously “half of those on Earth”) rediscover her forgotten books and letters.

Amidst the gender-inequality of the 18th century Wollstonecraft led a controversial life: always close to the edge of acceptability. In death she was misrepresented, dis-remembered, shoved into quiet corners (if not suppressed), slandered, libelled and actually written out of history. Posthumously pilloried and even slut-shamed by generations of “decent” middle class folk and autocratic literary men (and women) for her ways and choices. Her iconoclastic thoughts and groundbreaking writings were simply ignored until they all but went away…

Thus, there’s a strong chance that you’ve never heard of her and even an greater one that you’ve conflated her with her own daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who invented science fiction and wrote Frankenstein.

Hagiography and justice-seeking aside, Mary Wollstonecraft’s efforts revolutionised modern social norms and gender thinking and she has been reclaimed by those she too-late inspired, but what was she like and how did she find the strength to keep going?

Potential insight and answers lie enthrallingly packaged here in another biographical picture-box depiction from Mary M. Talbot and spouse Bryan Talbot – focussing on her struggles to be independent and prosperous in the years when humanity’s first leaps in humanist revelation correspond with some of our darkest hours…

Dr. Mary is an academic, educator, linguist, social theoretician, author and specialist in Critical discourse analysis. In 2012 she added graphic novelist to her portfolio of triumphs, collaborating with her husband on Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes. That award-winning memoir/biography of Lucia Joyce was followed by Sally Heathcote: Suffragette (drawn by Kate Charlesworth), The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia, Rain and Armed With Madness: The Surreal Leonora Harrington (all with Bryan). These merely supplement a glittering educational career and such academic publications as Language and Gender: an Introduction and Fictions at Work: language and social practise in fiction. She is particularly drawn to true stories of gender bias and social injustice.

Bryan has been a fixture of British comics since the late 1960s, moving from Tolkien-fandom to college strips, self-published classics like Brainstorm Comix (starring Chester P. Hackenbush – the Psychedelic Alchemist!), early Luther Arkwright and Frank Fazakerly, Space Ace of the Future to paid pro status with Nemesis The Warlock, Judge Dredd, Sláine, Ro-Busters and more in 2000 AD. Inevitably headhunted by America, he worked on key mature-reading titles for DC Comics (Hellblazer, Shade the Changing Man, The Nazz, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, Fables, The Dead Boy Detectives and The Sandman) and was a key creative cog in short-lived shared-world project Tekno Comix, before settling into global acclaim via steady relationships with Dark Horse Comics and Jonathan Cape. These unions generated breakthrough masterpieces like The Tale of One Bad Rat and a remastered epic revival of The Adventures of Luther Arkwright.

Since then he’s been an independent Force To Be Reckoned With, doing just what he wants, promoting the art form in general and crafting various fascinating and compelling works, from Alice in Sunderland, Cherubs! (with Mark Stafford), to Metronome (as Véronique Tanaka) and his fabulously wry, beguiling and gallic-ly anthropomorphic Grandville sequence, as well as his mostly biographical/historical collaborations with Mary.

In the interest of propriety, I must fully disclose that I’ve known him since the early 1980s, but other than that shameful lack of taste and judgement on his part, have no vested interest in confidently stating that he’s probably Britain’s greatest living graphic novelist.

For this convincingly pastiched tome all that experience and dedication is combined to unpick an astoundingly unjust life with no happy ending even today. However, the war for equality grinds inexorably on and as Wollstonecraft implicitly understood, knowledge is power and a weapon…

Rendered in subtle palettes and muted tones, the tale begins and ends in modern times with a mother and child acknowledging their debt to a fallen pathfinder before a creators’ ‘Prefatory Note’ explains certain conceits and contrivances made to clarify meaning.

Then we meet Mary in pensive mood at the heart of the French Revolution in opening chapter ‘How filent is now Versailles!’ before exploring her formative years as a mere daughter of her abusive, profligate parvenu father. Tasked with looking after her six siblings and deprived of her personal inheritance, she briefly found friends, shelter and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge with the Arden clan in ‘Sweet Beverley’. Ultimately however – and saddled with her younger sisters – she had to find means to support herself and them in ‘How my heart pants to be free’…

These included traditional roles as Ladies’ companion and governess before finding funds sufficient to open a school for girls in Newington Green (1784), but being unable to keep it after her siblings suffered disastrous marriages a year later as seen in ‘I am a poor forlorn wretch without her’…

Thanks to new friends like anti-Monarchists, Republicans, religious Dissenters and grand liberal thinkers Reverend Dr Price and publisher Joseph Johnson, a solution comes in Chapter V’s ‘If I exert my talents in writing I may fupport myfelf in a comfortable way.’ Soon the starving impulsive rebel is being feted by the greatest and most dangerous minds of the age; penning articles, essays, political rebukes, travelogues, educational and social primers and even novels and children’s books. However, her beliefs – always stridently expressed – on the slavery of marriage results in socially and even physically perilous relationships outside acceptable norms, as seen in ‘My wayward heart creates its own mifery.’

Fired up by the age of intellectual revolution and crumbling aristocratic old orders, rejecting toxic notions of unfettered capitalism and divinely dictated layering of races, classes and genders, she makes her way to Paris in 1792, and unwittingly brings herself into the sights of Britain’s ruling elites an the swiftly-changing factions briefly and successively leading the unchecked political storm of the Terror. Her observations there lead to more books describing ‘Death and mifery, in every fhape of terrour.’ but also deliver another man she thought she could trust, but who would inevitably betray. Dragged back to the London in 1795 – as revealed in ‘I reft my cheek on thine, forgetting all the world.’ – that mistake, overwhelming melancholia and a failed suicide attempt lead to another path taken as Wollstonecraft and her infant daughter Fanny are packed off to Norway, where she finds fresh stability and restores her fortune by writing a hugely popular travel book…

Her final years in England and comfortable but faux, face saving “marriage” to philosopher William Godwin are covered in ‘My foul has been fhook.’ As she played housewife, raised Fanny and investigated the horrors of women committed to mental hospitals at the whim of their male guardians, her extraordinary life constantly caught up with her. Although Godwin loved her as much as he could, his entrenched attitudes meant that she died unsupported after traumatically delivering second child Mary. In final chapter ‘I had never loved till now.’ Godwin’s inept attempts to atone and memorialise her with his tell-all 1798 Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, instead gave her detractors plenty of scandalous muck-raking fuel to trash and functionally erase Mary Wollstonecraft for decades to come…

To balance the tragedy and offer some shred of hope the story ends with an ‘Epilogue’ offering the prototypical free-thinker the chance to reflect upon and assess her own life and achievements, and is backed up by a copious, contextual appendix of ‘Annotations’ as well as ‘Bibliographical References’ should you care to read more and further…

Compellingly scripted with a fine eye for elucidatory minutiae, visually Mary Talbot’s carefully catalogued, chronologically deduced events range from strict reportage to speculative political and emotional broadsides.

This is another powerfully enraging, engagingly uplifting rescue mission of one more calculatedly forgotten woman of achievement and a sheer delight that will absolutely compel all readers to look for more.
© 2026 Bryan Talbot and Mary M Talbot. All rights reserved.

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Glorious Summers volume 5: The Warrior’s Haven (1980)


By Zidrou & Jordi Lafebre, with additional colour by Mado Peña, translated by Lara Vergnaud (Europe Comics)
No ISBN: Digital edition only

I’ve had this ready for weeks but couldn’t face running it as so many locations mentioned are smoking ruins at the moment. However, as has been pointed out to me, this is a beautiful, sublimely respectful evocation of places and people and so, in anticipation of regrowth and better times that must surely come, here it is. Just squint your eyes a bit, engage your imaginations and please have hope…

Until comparatively recently, comics in the English-speaking world mostly countenanced comedic or numerous adventure sub-genres (crime, superhero, horror, sci fi), with only a small but vital niche of “mundane world” ventures, usually depicted via graphic biographies and autobiographies like They Called Us Enemy, Love on the Isle of Dogs, Wage Slaves or Sour Pickles offering a different feel and flavour. Even historical sagas were treated as extraordinary moments with larger-than-life characters whenever possible.

What we have never had – and still largely don’t -is a comics equivalent to general fiction, drama and melodrama. That’s not so in Japan, South Korea or Europe, where a literal “anything goes” attitude has always accommodated and nurtured human-scaled slice-of-life tales depicting ordinary people in as many quiet as extraordinary moments. Surely it can’t be that hard to tell engaging stories in pedestrian, recognisably ordinary settings? Medical traumas, love stories, school tales and family tragedies about common folk seem to play well on various-sized screens around the world, so why not in English language comics? The closest we seem to get are comedies like John Allison’s superb Giant Days (which I really must review soon) which all operate on the immortal closing line of every pub drawn out conversation or failed dinner party anecdote “well, maybe you had to be there…”

People being people is more than enough for Europeans. There apparently is an insatiable appetite for everyday events aimed at properly “mature readers”, joyfully sans vampires, aliens or men in tights. These even have sub-genres of their own. For example, there’s the wealth of superb comics just about going on holiday. So, since our own Government-in-Absurdia have ensured that it’s now all-but-impossible for any UK-based citizens to pop across and have une petite vacances in Europe, let’s stare & glare covetously at them having a good time. After all, over there holidays are an inalienable right, and they have some simply fabulous tales about a simple break. This one is probably amongst the best you’ll ever see…

An absolute exemplar of fantasy vacations made real, Glorious Summers: Southbound! (1973) was a nostalgia-drenched confection by Zidrou and regular collaborator Jordi Lafebre: a sublime example of idyllic group memory made into graphic sorcery in an everyday account utterly unafraid to temper humorous sweetness and light with real-world tragedy and suspense.

Perhaps some context is in order. Summer holidays – “Midi” – are a big deal in France and Belgium. The French divide into two tribes over the annual rest & recuperation period, which generally lasts an entire month. Juilletistes only vacation in July, wielding dogmatic facts like rapiers to prove why it’s the only way to take a break. They are eternally opposed, heart, soul, and suntan lotion, by majority faction the Aoûtiens, who recharge their batteries in August whilst fully reciprocating the suspicion, disdain and baffled scorn of the early-leavers. Many European sociologists claim the greatest social division today is not race, religion, gender, political affiliation or whether to open boiled eggs from the top or the bottom, but when summer holidays begin and end.

Les Beaux Étés 1: Cap au Sud! was the first in a string of family visits that began in 2015 courtesy of scripter Benoît “Zidrou” Drousie and Spanish illustrator Jordi Lafebre. Drousie is Belgian, Brussels-born in 1962 and was a school teacher prior to quitting marking books in 1990 to instead make them. His main successes include school dunce series L’Elève Ducobu, Petit Dagobert, Scott Zombi, La Ribambelle, Le Montreur d’histoires, the revival of Ric Hochet, African Trilogy, Léonardo, Shi and many more. His most celebrated and beloved stories are this memorable sequence and 2010’s Lydie, both illustrated by Lafebre.

That gifted, empathically sensitive illustrator and art teacher was born in Barcelona in 1979 and has created comics professionally since 2001, first for magazines like Mister K, where he limned Toni Font’s El Mundo de Judy. He found regular work at Le Journal de Spirou, creating the romance Always Never and collaborated with Zidrou on La vieille dame qui n’avait jamais joué au tennis et autres nouvelles qui font du bien, Lydie, and La Mondaine.

A combination of feel-good fable and powerful comedy drama, Glorious Summers depicts cherished memories of an aging couple recalling their grandest family moments, beginning with a momentous vacation in 1973 where their four kids nearly lost their parents….

Here, however, final Anglicized volume (so far) The Warrior’s Haven – continentally Les Beaux Étés tome 4: Le Repos du Guerrier – focuses on the close of July 1980, as – just for once – infinitely patient Maddie Faldérault is not waiting for her comic illustrator hubby to finish a late assignment before the brood can head off on holiday! Pierre even has time to complete a little side project and give some life/career advice to studio junior Benoit who has come to the house to pick up the completed pages of latest hit-in-waiting G.I. Girl! (finished almost nine hours ahead of schedule!) and not at all to see oldest daughter Jolie-Julie…

This time the necessary angst and drama are all the preserve of rebellious. acting-out, chain-smoking seventeen year old Nicole who has convinced her folks to bring along her nervous, wealthy, spoiled boyfriend Jean-Emmanuel. All too soon though the parents stop reacting to the horny brats snogging at every opportunity. Now the annual escape from gloomy Brussels for a month in sun-drenched France can start. Even sixteen year old sole Faldérault son Louis is packed and prepared with his books, art supplies and music, and still-precocious nine-year-old wild child Paulette (AKA Peaches) can finally embrace the adventure to come…

And this year offers the beginning of a whole new era and way of life for family Faldérault, as Pierre and his brother Xavier are now proud co-owners of a brand-new, purpose built timeshare house. A fully fitted “turnkey vacation home” is waiting for them in the south of France: clean, fresh, stocked with everything needed and ready for occupation and memory making. No more roughing it in tents and hostels or hotels stuffed with strangers. Now it’s indoor plumbing, a personalised kitchen, a barbeque pit, comfortable sofas and proper beds… a place where they can relax and be themselves. They know exactly what it will be like because Maman picked it all out and designed it from the catalogue and sales brochures. Proud Pierre has already packed the handcrafted shingle for his “Warrior’s Haven”…

As the apparently-expanding family discuss the prospect over one last meal before setting off, the inevitable hammer falls. Pierre’s publisher thinks G.I. Girl! will be a monster hit and has tripled the print run in advance of release! Of course, that will mean the brilliant DILIGENT artist simply must add a giant poster for the promised TV ads, but it shouldn’t take more than a few days if he works flat-out…

The result is Papa stays and faithful transport Mam’zelle Estérel (translated here as Little Miss Esterel) is jam-packed with everybody else for the southbound trek to the sun. Even with Julie now designated driver, the raucous clan rituals (stupid jokes, constant awful singing and barbed off-colour remarks) are in full flow. Not even Nicole and “Jean-Manu”’s constant revolting actions in the backseat – which Louis dubs “vacuum-cleaning faces” – can stop them…

Still in Belgium, having accepted a now staggered vacation start, Pierre sets to and ponders joining them later before suddenly being struck by inspiration. Instead of imparting fatherly advice to impromptu assistant/courier/would-be son-in-law Benoit, he offers ingratiating responsibility to the gifted lad. He can get his big break by finishing the poster for father Faldérault! Crucial decision made, Pierre is soon hurtling south by train…

Near the scenic village of Monpazier, road trek and rail journey fortuitously converge, allowing them all to be reunited on their own doorstep – or at least it would have if they hadn’t been the latest victims of a huge property scam. Sitting under a tree in the vacant lot that should be their second home, the family reel in shock. Gradually, they meet other hopefuls of the utterly fictitious Oasis Turnkey Villas Holiday Complex.

They all bought a dream sight unseen, and soon the sadder, wiser vacationers have banded together. As steps begin to track down the fraudsters and the entrepreneur idiot-brother Xavier recommended, the old warrior spirits return. As they all make the best of it, united with their new notionally-homeless neighbours in not letting bad people take their holiday as well as their money more memories are made…

Of course the youngsters are initially crushed, embarrassed, petulant and indignant, but rich-boy Jean-Manu – who has stayed in penthouses all over the world but never, ever been camping – unexpectedly proffers some wisdom, solace and a little enhanced perspective. Moreover, although the cops might be less than helpful, the local villagers are all sympathetic and kind. With immense grace and no pretensions, they quietly chip in to make the victimised visitors feel welcome and less stupid. When fresh suckers turn up they too are comforted by all, and embraced as another community family forms. Days go by, unforgettable moments are enjoyed and life goes on…

Even return to the real world is graced by warmth, friendships and beloved customs and rituals that serve to reinforce the past and welcome what the future offers. What follows is timeless weeks of wonder and unforgettable explorations on endlessly sunny days, with local villagers and distressed wanderers forgetting woes and overcoming the worst the world can offer: a welcoming lesson in humanity at its best…

This tale is another beautifully rendered, enticingly realised album of happy days stitched seamlessly together. It’s funny, sweet and charming whilst delivering painful blows you never see coming. There aren’t any spectacular events and shocking crises and that’s the whole point…

If you’re British – and old enough – this series (six translated albums thus far, plus a French omnibus edition) will echo revered family sitcoms like Bless This House or Butterflies and generational ads starring the “Oxo Family”. (If that description doesn’t fit you, I pity your browsing history if you look up any of that). The rest of you in need of an opening (but unfair) comparator could break out the Calvin and Hobbes collections and re-examine the bits with his embattled parents when the kid’s out of the picture…

Lyrical, laconic, engagingly demure, and debilitatingly nostalgic, this holiday romance (blessed at the end with Jordi Lafebre’s glorious gallery of pencil sketches) is sheer visual perfection wrapped in sharp dialogue and a superbly anarchic sense of mischief. Vacations and downtimes are built of moments and might-have-beens, such as packaged here in compelling clips to make the mundane marvellous.
© 2019 – DARGAUD BENELUX (Dargaud-Lombard s.a.) – ZIDROU & LEFEBRE, LLC. All rights reserved.

Today in 1932, French artist Jean-Jacques Sempé (Le petit Nicholas, The New Yorker) was born, sharing a birthday with pioneering cartoonist, scholar, feminist and comics historian Trina Robbins (It Ain’t Me, Babe, The Silver Metal Lover, Wimmin’s Commix, Wonder Woman, Friends of Lulu, Dope, Women and the Comics) in 1938; writer Rachel Pollack (Doom Patrol, New Gods, Unquenchable Fire), in1945; artist Alex Saviuk (The Flash, Green Lantern, The Amazing Spider-Man: Parallel Lives OGN,  numerous Spider-Man series) in 1952; comic book royalty John Romita Jr. (Superman, Daredevil, Spider-Man, The Eternals, Iron Man, Kick-Ass, Uncanny X-Men, Incredible Hulk) in 1956 and writer/editor Andy Helfer (Justice League of America, The Shadow, Judge Dredd, Justice Inc.) in 1958.

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Noisy Valley: The Art of Protest


By Myfanwy Tristram (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-43-0 (THB)

The world has always been hierarchical in nature. Moreover, the ever-expanding, shamefully selfish human portion of it has never missed any opportunity to exploit, impose upon and oppress its own “lower orders”. Historically, those who put themselves above us have systematically entrenched and weaponized wealth, ownership, culture – and weapons too – to suppress those they deem “lesser” in some arbitrarily decided way you were never consulted upon. This is called lawmaking and “keeping public order”.

The other side (the only un-oppressed minority in existence) uses divisive popularism, money-thuggery and lawyers, because they believe most ordinary people don’t give a toss about anything until it affects them in the pocket or impacts their kids and, no matter to what end of the political spectrum one belongs, they can be bought or placated by gestures rather than actual change.

And what can the rest of us do? Grumble, complain and, if all else fails, be disruptive. We unite in protest because all we have going for us is numbers and shared goals…

Having, in my militant radical youth, marched a few miles and punched (far less than) my fair share of neo-Nazi thugs and bovver boys – kids, don’t do this unless you really, truly have to – I still ascribe to old-fashioned ideas which don’t properly fit in a modern society, but I’m still angry and reasonable enough to be willing to listen and entertain new options…

Generally speaking, politics is composed of and utilised mutually by firebrands, coldly calculating grandees and wannabe despots, but in recent years universal failures in leadership large and small have prompted exponential growth in movements of gentle resistance and persuasion. It has to be gentle now, because each increasingly innovative exhibition of concern and dissent has been met with revision of laws already calculated to defang protestors and quash opposing opinions.

That’s what Noisy Valley is all about…

All governments change laws and tinker with norms of social compliance to reduce resistance to the people the elected ones actually serve. This is done in pursuit of a mythic general weal that translates as “me/my donor’s money is more important that your concerns or lives” and “we value your opinion, but keep it to yourselves”…

This compelling graphic report documents a long history of hands-on dissent via local, global and grass roots responses to abuses by those-in-power, gleaned from firsthand witness accounts by those who were involved at the time.  Here they are transformed into rousing modern fables that sprang from an art project celebrating democratic crusading activists and the stirring histories of South Wales’ Rhondda valley.

It was 2022, a time when everybody in Britain – and on Earth – had plenty to protest about. It was around that twenty minutes or so when Liz Truss “led” the nation that assorted ordinary folk were making their way to The Workers Gallery of Ynyshir to view an exhibition of protest drawings by Brighton-based social historian/comics creator Myfanwy Tristram (Draw the Line, Running Out)…

That exhibition and the people she met there became the basis for a graphic catalogue of eyewitness stories focused on when protest evolved, why it is embattled in the UK, and how it is under threat of being legislated out of existence now…

Here in easily-accessible snippets of the past are the observations of those fighting public spending cuts and library closures; Anti-Consumerism, The Greenham Common Peace Camp and Police responses to the question ‘Do we have a right to protest?’

Examination of how laws have been changed and the Courts deployed to suppress societal disruption accompanies scrutiny and testimony on Schoolgirl strikes; The Aldermaston Marches (by on-scene photographer David Hurn); the Miners’ Strikes and Hospital closures (specifically a schoolboy marcher protesting the loss of Llwynpia in South Wales).

More factoids about US/Welsh historical connections, global suppression of dissent, increasing size of protest movements and the apparently not-quite-officially-genocide in Gaza bracket personal reports of Women in the Workplace from the 1960s to today; Politician Jill Evans’ fight to make safe deadly landfill sites of Nantygwyddon and poet Patrick Jones’ battle to save ancient woodlands of Sirhowy Valley before the stories close with climate change protestor Jenny McLelland and an overview of what happened since the Noisy Valley project began in 2022 (…so many Prime Ministers and lawmakers gone since then…!)

Closing the celebration are ‘End Notes’ comprising illustrated mini briefings on all ‘The Protestors’ storied here; a copious section of contacts for further study compiled as ‘References’; Acknowledgements and a pretty impressive biography of auteur Myfanwy Tristram.

The greatest enemy of the impassioned ideologue is apathy. This simple fact forces activists and visionaries to ever-more devious and imaginative stunts and tactics. However, all entrenched Powers-That-Be are ultimately hopeless before one thing: collective unified resistance by the very masses they’re holding down through force of arms; artificial boundaries (class, race, capitalist dogma); forms of mind control like bread, circuses and religion; divisive propagandas or just the insurmountable ennui of grudging acceptance to a status quo flavoured with an orchestrated fear that unknown changes could make things worse.

From its earliest inception, art – and especially cartooning – has been used to sell: initially ideas or values but eventually actual products too. In newspapers, magazines and especially comics the sheer power of narrative – with its ability to create emotional affinities – has been linked to unforgettable images and characters. When those stories affect generations of readers, the force that they can apply in a commercial, social or especially political context is almost irresistible…

The power of graphic narrative to efficiently, potently and evocatively disseminate information and advocate complex issues with great conviction through layered levels has always been most effectively used in works with a political or social component. That’s never been more evident than here…
Text and images © Myfanwy Tristram, 2026. All rights reserved.

Noisy Valley: The Art of Protest will be published on May 14th 2026 and is available for pre-order now.

A national promotional tour is underway and you can meet the creator and exchange all the views you cherish at a number of venues. These include

7th May: GOSH Comics, London launch party for Noisy Valley

16th May: Beyond the Book Festival, Brighton

18th May: Waterstones, Brighton

24th May: BorthFfest, Wales

27th May: Hay Festival, Hay-on-Wye, Wales

29th May: The Worker’s Gallery, Rhondda, Wales celebration event for Noisy Valley

6th June: Leeds Litfest

Please seek further details from them. I just type stuff…

Today in 1919, we welcomed astoundingly versatile Canadian comics all-star James Winslow “Win” Mortimer (Superman, Batman, Robin, Superboy, Stanley and His Monster, Spider-Man, Night Nurse) while in 1940 the Philippines was blessed by the comings of both Cal Sobrepeña (Lovelife Komiks) and the iconic fantasy master Alex Niño (Captain Fear, Thriller, Space Clusters), and Argentina greeted future mega-scripter Carlos Trillo (Cicca Dum Dum, Cybersix, El Negro Blanco, El Loco Chávez, Borderline, Clara de noche). The US struck back in the creative wonder stakes by birthing cartoonist Phil Foglio (Buck Godot, Dynamo Joe, Girl Genius, Angel and the Ape) and illustrator Tim Sale (Billi 99, Batman: The Long Halloween, Spider-Man: Blue) in 1956, and author/painter Christopher Moeller (Iron Empires, Rocketman: King of the Rocketmen, Star Wars, JLA: A League of One) in 1963.

Landmark launches today include Ken Reid’s fantastical Face Ache in 1971; adult French comics magazine L’Écho des savanes in 1972 and Barbara Slate’s boldly groundbreaking Angel Love for DC in 1987, but the date also marks the passing of veteran Belgian writer/artist Sirius AKA Max Mayeu (Les Timour, Niki Lapin, L’Épervier Bleu, Pemberton, Bouldadar) in 1997, and gone-too-soon Tomosina Cawthorne-Artis AKA Tom Artis (Tailgunner Jo, Judge Dredd, Sensational She-Hulk, The Spectre, The Web) in 2007.

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Emmie Arbel: The Colour of Memory


By Barbara Yelin: translated by Helge R. Dascher & edited by Charlotte Schallié and Alexander Korb (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-91422-442-3 (HB)

With the world once again on the brink of extinction and hate, and what looks to me and so many others like actual clinical madness gripping every pious yet greedy soul alive, what better time than right now to explore the memories and postwar experiences of a Shoah survivor?

Released in February (and produced thanks to the assistance of the  Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives Project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) this epic tome is an engrossing expansion of 2022’s visual essay in But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust. Through gentle conversations and via thoughtful consideration it pictorially processes the memories of a remarkable, and remarkably tight-lipped, woman who survived the last breakout of extermination madness in the 1930s and 1940s, She kept on living against crushing odds and circumstances, making a life for herself and with her remaining family. Of course, that was only the beginning of the story. Here, in beautiful languid episodes framed in mood-altering hues and tones, is some of what she did once the actual shooting had stopped…

One of three acknowledged survivors of a Dutch family handed over to Nazis when they conquered Holland, a four-year old girl and her mother were despatched to Eastern European death camps. Seven-year old Emmie Arbel was finally orphaned at Ravensbruck and Bergen-Belsen, but “saved” by the Allies when the camp was liberated. Clerically decreed a Displaced Person, she was soon reunited with her brothers, but suffered appalling betrayal, sexual abuse, illness-induced isolation and benign neglect from those entrusted with her care and rearing. Even being bounced across newly-liberated Europe before being bundled off to new homeland Israel only reinforced the conviction that Promised Lands came with conditions and were not for everybody…

Deeply traumatized, but fortified by selective recall and an indomitable poker face, Emmie grew up and turned inward, living life at a distance until making friends with a German artist and storyteller who wanted to show a different truth…

As much about getting a reluctant hostile witness to open up and share sights and scares of the life lived, The Colour of Memories unfolds in slices and snippets: a deft, non-linear, emotionally turbulent potpourri sparked by recollection, rather than chronologically steered or directed. This softly shocking, wandering ramble shows how the mass-produced, institutionalised terrors of war and pogrom were only prelude to the rest of Emmie Arbel’s life, and that the bad times were not over just because no one was actively trying to kill her…

The tale is as much about a growing friendship and mutually acceptable narrative, with graphic novelist Barbara Yelin injecting much of her process into the compelling mix. Born in 1977 Munich, Yelin studied illustration at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences before breaking into France’s Bande Dessinée market in 2004 with Le Visiteur. Successive works include Le Retard; Gift; Riekes Notizen (in daily newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau); The Summer of Her Life and, in 2016, Eisner Award-nominated graphic novel Irmina.

A feast of revelatory growth and paean to adaptability, this dossier on survival comes with supplemental materials including a list of ‘The People in This Book’; a ‘Glossary of Hebrew Words’; a timeline ‘About Emmie Arbel’; documentarian Yelin’s incisive afterword and process deconstruction ‘This is Her Story’ and Alexander Korb & Dienke Hondius’ statement of intent ‘The Aftermath of Survival: Emmie Arbel’s Experiences After the Holocaust’. These are supported by photos, maps, diagrams and closing addendum ‘Wartime and Postwar Routes of the Arbel Family’ before editors Charlotte Schallié & Korb’s ethical dilemmas and the solutions needed to facilitate a non-harmful processing of the unthinkable are discussed in essay ‘About this Book’.
Text and images © Barbara Yelin and Reprodukt. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1843 pioneering Brazilian cartoonist and comics artist Angelo Agostini was born and we lost French cartoonist comic star Jean Cézard (Arthur le fantôme justicier) in 1977, legendary Lee Elias (Green Arrow, Beyond Mars, The Rook, Luke Cage) in 1998 and the magnificent Alfredo Alcala (Voltar, Batman, Man-Thing, Planet of the Apes, Swamp Thing, Arak, Son of Thunder, Kong the Untamed, Conan) in 2000.

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A Portrait in Poems: The Storied Life of Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas


By Evie Robillard & Rachel Katstaller (Kids Can Press)
ISBN: 978-1-5253-0056-1 (HB/Digital edition)

We don’t cover nearly enough kids’ books here, nor those with an Arts or Educational underpinning, and that’s because I lazily prefer to read stuff that’s entertaining, worthwhile and well-produced. And yes, I know they’re not necessarily mutually exclusive but somehow, so often, they are. Happily, this gloriously inclusive biographical primer into one of the world’s most interesting and accomplished women and her life partner is all of that and more.

A delicious, enthralling picture book for 6 to 9-year-olds, A Portrait in Poems précis’ and shares some notable Parisian moments in the life of author Gertrude Stein and her muse Alice B. Toklas. This unconventional couple led the upcoming arts glitterati of Europe and collected one of the most astounding art collections in history prior to one World War and before the next. The book is drafted in episodic free verse by librarian, teacher and writer Evie Robillard and painted with idyllic verve by El Salvadoran illustrator Rachel Katstaller in a superbly subtle manner guaranteed to get youngsters addicted to learning more.

In short order you’ll visit the protagonists’ first home at ’27 Rue de Fleurus’, observe as ‘Picasso Paints a Portrait’, share ‘Saturday Evenings’ and enjoy ‘The Room with All the Paintings’ before meeting ‘Gertrude Stein, the Genius’…

The couple shared their exalted Salon existence with ‘A Dog Named Basket’ (two actually) and we see more of them all in ‘Gertrude & Alice & Basket in a Book’ before wrapping up the history with what happened ‘After’…

Adding learning and lustre a ‘Time Line’ supplies dates and hard facts, while glimpses of character shine in a trio of epigrammatic ‘Snapshots’, whilst ‘Sources’ offers some of Gertrude’s best works to check out and a bibliography reveals more books about her, before a final ‘Author’s Note’ deals with the contentious period when the couple abided under Nazi occupation in Vichy France.

It’s never too early to give children a hunger to know stuff, and this bright, inclusive foray into the mind and life of one of our most remarkable thinkers is a welcome addition to any junior library or kids’ book stash because it simply cries out for readers to go absorb more…
Text © 2020 Evie Robillard. © 2020 Rachel Katstaller. All rights reserved.

Today in 1877, pioneering comics wonder Rudolph (Katzenjammer Kids/The Captain and the Kids) Dirks was born, with French writer/illustrator/publisher Jean Bruller following in 1902, Cuban cartoon everyman Ric Estrada in 1928, and journeyman comic book standby John Calnan in 1932.

At the mature ends of the industry curve, UK satirist Steve Bell was born in 1951 – just as the Empire changed forever – and two years later so was Canadian David (Reid Fleming – World’s Toughest Milkman) Boswell, with Argentinian Enrique Alcatena coming along in 1957 and Karen Berger in 1958.

French pioneer Emmanuel Poiré – aka Caran d’Ache – died today in 1909, but his legacy includes stuff like Natacha by François Walthéry in Le Journal de Spirou today in 1970, and 2000 AD which launched in 1977 and is still on sale this week…

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Leonardo da Vinci: The Renaissance of the World


By Marwan Kahil & Ariel Vittori, translated by Montana Kane (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-259-5 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-260-1

Some people are simply so famous that everybody thinks they already know all about them. That’s what makes biographies like this one such a tricky proposition. As always, talent will tell and the narrative gifts of writer Marwan Kahil and illustrator Ariel Vittori are more than sufficient to breathe fresh life into a much-told tale of one of the most accomplished men in world history.

Kahil (A. Einstein – the Poetry of Real) studied at the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris and Simon Boudvin’s prestigious Graphic Art Workshops before deciding to split his time and efforts between comics and film and theatre. Rome-based Ariel Vittori (Quelques pincées de désir) is an artist and designer who numbers Disney, Campari and Monadori amongst her satisfied clients, although her true calling is narrative illustration. She is co-founder and President of Attacapanni Press: an independent publisher matching rising stars with seasoned comics veterans…

Leonardo da Vinci: The Renaissance of the World opens with a querulous preface from Kahil before the Maestro’s eventful life begins to unfold in glorious colour as the elder reminisces in Rome 1515 anno domini…

It begins in April 1452 with ‘Chapter 1: A Young Man Unlike Any Other’ at the hamlet of Anchiano (near Vinci) with the welcoming of a very observant baby to loving extended family. Time passes and a doting grandfather passes, leaving the special child apprenticed to a painter in Florence…

The present interrupts as the elderly Leonardo falls foul of the Roman clergy and is forced to flee to France…

‘Chapter 2: The Most Handsome Man in Florence’ follows the seemingly blessed teenager as he excels and overtakes mentor Andrea del Verrocchio, roistering his way through Florence and making many friends and far more enemies as he courts rich, powerful and essentially dangerous patrons. Throughout it all he is driven by his unconventional romantic drive and fanatical compulsion to see more and understand everything.

In ‘Chapter 3: The Sforza’s Man’ the itinerant ideas man reaches Milan and works for the powerful duke, even as his older self in 1515 must deal with the so-different responses of his two apprentices Salai and Francesco to their impending arrest and excommunication…

Our saga concludes as the great man finally achieves a measure of peace and security under the patronage of lifelong admirer Francis I, allowing Leonardo to end his days in ‘Chapter 4: In the Service of the King of France’…

Although many scenes and snippets are taken from non-chronological key moments, the overall effect reveals a life both frustrating and frequently dangerous, but lived very much on the scholar’s own terms… and with few regrets. The tale is also liberally dosed with revelatory secrets on the creation of the Master’s greatest artworks and scientific discoveries, adding a degree of enthralling vitality to proceedings.

This beguiling dramatised biography is splendidly augmented by educational extras, such as with ‘Leonardo da Vinci – Works’: a commentary on many of his creations supplemented by a crucial illustrated menu of ‘Principal Players’; a fulsome list of further reading in ‘More on Leonardo’ and a copious illustrated collection of ‘Quotes of Leonardo da Vinci’.

Seen here is a visual delight celebrating a unique mind and personality, and one you should reacquaint yourself with as soon as you can.
© 2017 Blue Lotus Prod. © 2019 NBM for the English translation.

For more information and other great reads go to NBMpub.com.

Today in 1912 strip pioneer Sydney Smith launched Old Doc Yak, precursor to The Gumps, and Mexican cartoonist Gabriel Vargas (La Familia Burrón) was born in 1915. Legendary artist George Evans (EC Comics, Terry and the Pirates, Secret Agent X-9) took his first breath in 1920, as did just as fabulous Bruce Timm in 1961.

UK comic Smash! launched today in 1966 and cartoonist Corinna (The Space Between) Bechko was born in 1974, but in 1996 Italian Roberto Raviola (Kriminal, Alan Ford) died.

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Cravan – Mystery Man of the Twentieth Century


By Mike Richardson & Rick Geary (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59307-291-9 eISBN: 978-1-62115-198-2

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

The old cliché about truth being stranger than fiction seemingly has a lot more force these days than it used to have. Moreover, everybody is always captivated by an unsolved mystery, aren’t they?

That was clearly the case when occasional writer, producer and full-time publisher (of Dark Horse Comics) Mike Richardson discovered he shared a small obsession with cartoonist and true crime raconteur Rick Geary…

That story is intriguing enough in itself but only constitutes a minor footnote at the back of this fascinating appraisal of one of the most infamous self-aggrandizers of the early 20th century and yet somehow fittingly, a man all but forgotten today. If any of us survive we’ll be saying that about 45/47 one day (soon, I hope…).

Rick Geary is a unique talent in the comics industry, not simply because of his style of drawing but especially because of his method of telling tales. For decades he toiled as an Underground cartoonist and freelance illustrator of strange stories – published in locales as varied as Heavy Metal, Epic Illustrated, National Lampoon, RAW and High Times -honing his unique ability to create sublimely understated stories by stringing together seemingly unconnected streams of narrative to compose tales moving, often melancholy and always beguiling.

Discovering his natural oeuvre with works including biographies of J. Edgar Hoover and Trotsky, plus the multi-volumed Treasury of Victorian Murder and Treasury of XXth Century Murder series, Geary has grown into a grand master and unique presence in both comics and True Crime literature.

In this captivating monochrome tome, he and Richardson wove scanty facts, some solid supposition and a bit of bold extrapolation into a mesmerising treatise about a precursor to Jimmy Hoffa and Lord Lucan – with a hefty dose of Shergar, D.B. Cooper, Ronnie Biggs and Forrest Gump thrown in for good measure…

Arthur Cravan was but one of the names used by serial fraudster and inveterate troublemaker Fabian Lloyd, a nephew of Oscar Wilde who, after being expelled from the last of many good schools in 1903, began, at the tender age of 16, a short and sparkling career seeking limelight.

In a scant few years he became a star of the art world: a noted poet, Bohemian, journalist, art critic, painter, publisher, author, performer and pugilist (through a string of uncanny flukes he became Lightweight Champion of France without throwing a punch!) whilst simultaneously admitting to being a thief, forger, deserter, confidence-trickster, political subversive and agitator…

A man of many identities – for most of whom he created impeccably-crafted forged papers – Cravan numbered Jack Johnson, Leon Trotsky, Marcel Duchamp and other stellar luminaries of the Edwardian and pre-Great War era as friends. Even after admitting to manufacturing “undiscovered” works by Manet, Dante and his uncle Oscar – whilst assiduously avoiding any involvement in the global conflagration – he was feted by America’s intellectual elite and simultaneously hounded by the US Secret Service…

In 1918, with the American authorities making his life miserable, he set sail from Mexico to join poet Mina Loy – wife and mother of his unborn daughter – in Buenos Aires, but was lost at sea and never seen again.

That’s the official version. Searches found nothing and eventually he was declared dead and mostly forgotten, but stories and sightings persisted, as they always will…

And here’s where Richardson & Geary boldly imagine and draw some admittedly convincing conclusions about Cravan’s possible fate, linking it to the short but fabled career of reclusive author B. Traven: most well known today as the enigma who penned Death Ship and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre…

Beguilingly speculative and ringing with authenticity if not indisputable veracity, this fictive biography is a superb exercise in historical exploration: one packed with wholehearted fun and mercurial love of life. And don’t we all need some of that now?
© 2005 Dark Horse Comics, Inc. All rights reserved.

Today in 1949, comics historian Richard Marschall was born, followed by Gladstone Publishing head honcho Byron Erickson in 1951 and translator/writer Randy Lofficier in 1953. At the same time as Brazilian artist Joe Bennett was being born in 1968, British comic Terrific! was selling its final issue.

In 1969 we lost Donald Duck strip illustrator Al Taliaferro, and in 1999, arguably the most significant man in US comic books, when originating editor Vin Sullivan (Action Comics and Superman) died.

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Death in Trieste


By Jason (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 979-8-8750-0125-3 (HB/digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Absurdly Enchanting Comics Capers… 9/10

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

Born in 1965 in Molde, Norway, John Arne Sæterøy is known by enigmatic, utilitarian nom de plume Jason. The shy & retiring auteur first took the path to cartoon superstardom in 1995, once debut 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 took on Norway’s National School of Arts and, on graduating in 1994, founded his own comic book Mjau Mjau. Constantly refining his style into a potent form of meaning-mined anthropomorphic minimalism, Jason cited Lewis Trondheim, Jim Woodring & Tex Avery as primary influences. He moved to Copenhagen, working 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, Batman: Detective 27). Jason’s 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.

His breadth of interest is wide & deep: comics, movies, animated cartoons, music, literature art history and pulp fiction all feature equally with no sense of rank or hierarchy. Jason’s puckish, egalitarian mixing & matching of inspirational sources always and inevitably produces picture-treatises well worth a reader’s time. Over a succession of tales he has built and re-employed a repertory company of stock characters to explore deceptively simplistic milieux based on classic archetypes distilled from movies, childhood yarns, 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, thick outlines dominating settings of seductive monochrome simplicity augmented by a beguiling palette of stark pastels and muted primary colours.

A master of short-form illustrated tales, many Jason yarns have been released as snappy little albums perfect for later inclusion in longer anthology collections like this one which gathers a trio of his very best. The majority of tales brim with bleak isolation, swamped by a signature surreality. They are largely populated with cinematically-inspired, darkly comic, charmingly macabre animal people ruminating on inescapable concerns whilst re-enacting bizarrely cast, bestial movie tributes. That’s a style that has never been more apropos than right here, as the more modern Art Forms bow before the onslaught and tirade of organised anti-art philosophers and socially intellectual terrorists…

Linked by theme and character, it begins with ‘The Magritte Affair’ as dapper masked men haunt Paris, surreptitiously substituting domestic pictures (like David Bowie as Aladdin Sane) for knock-off Surrealist masterpieces. When seen by affronted householders the images can have mesmeric effects and even spark nervous breakdowns…

Incidences increase and before long special operatives Miss Mira Bell & Mr Bob Delon are assigned the case, but a break only comes after aging painter Victor Dubois is abducted. He proves to be only the latest of many…

After a violent but inconclusive clash with the bowler hat brigade, solid research takes the daring duo to Brussels and the Magritte Museum just as the incidents hit fever pitch. With oddly dressed zombies quoting surrealist doggerel in the streets Bell & Delon uncover the mastermind and motive to close the case… but not for long…

The delicious spoof of Steed & Peel’s Avengers gives way to darker espionage larks as ‘Death in Trieste’ opens on the much-protracted murder of Grigori Rasputin before switching time and place to Berlin in 1925 where a Dadaist convention welcomes time-lost David Bowie. Sadly, he’s more interested in compelling performer Marlene Dietrich, and not paying enough attention to the Nosferatu stalking rooftops and bedrooms…

Nobody is paying attention to Rasputin’s skull and what it’s accurately predicting will befall Germany in the next twenty years…

As doomed lives converge and the Dadaists run riot, the chaos brings forth an immortal hero as undying musketeers Athos pops in for a quick look…

The warped wonderment sidles to a full stop with ‘Sweet Dreams’ as stone heads on Easter Island give musician Bono advance warning of doom. When an asteroid changes direction in the void and heads right for Earth, converging signs and portents trigger artists, musicians and madmen everywhere. As the dead rise in museums and elsewhere, only new romantic pop stars are ready and willing to unite and use their extraordinary abilities to combat an oncoming apocalypse. With Major Tom now in orbit for one final countdown, can hip sounds possibly succeed where science and magic have both failed?

A delightful tip of the hat to spy shows, pop rock and horror movies disguised as an adventure in art history, Death in Trieste confirms the cosmic truth that Jason remains a taste instantly acquired: a creator any 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 1916 Lo Hartog van Banda was born. You only need to scroll back a bit to see him at work, whilst in 1948 Carl Thomas Anderson died. We dealt with him as much as possible in Henry Speaks for Himself.

Today in 1830 gloriously anti-monarchist satirical French weekly La Caricature began, and ran until 1843. Can you remember when Private Eye wasn’t the only cartoon voice of dissent and outraged injustice?

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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.