Category: Biography

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Agatha – The Real Life of Agatha Christie


By Anne Martinetti, Guillaume Lebeau & Alexandre Franc translated by Edward Gauvin (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-91059-311-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

This year celebrates 125 years since the birth of Agatha Christie and it’s rather odd to think that someone so quintessentially English, purportedly old-fashioned and adamantly upper (middle) class can belong to the entire world, but in the case of Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan DBE it’s inescapably true.

Anointed both “Queen of Crime” and “Queen of Mystery” she remains the author of the world’s longest continually running play – The Mouse Trap – and is officially Earth’s best-selling fiction author. Moreover, she was Really Quite Good at her job and if you’re the one who hasn’t read her yet, just get on with it: you are letting the side down most dreadfully…

Her literary appeal and plotting ingenuity, as most effectively expressed throughout this pictorial perambulation via metafictional icons Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple (and many other creations (such as Tommy & Tuppence, Mr. Parker Pyne, Harlequin and Ariadne Oliver), is truly global and inspires generations of readers every day.

Such can be seen in her own fictive alter ego Ariadne Oliver and the many other depictions of the author-as-investigator, as seen in graphic novels like The Detection Club or this bold offering from France blending incontrovertible fact with rational deduction, wild extrapolation and delicious speculative fantasy on the manner of highly polished professional Fan Fic…

Agatha – La vraie vie d’Agatha Christie was co-written by author/Editor Anne Martinetti (Creams and Punishments) and author/documentarian/graphic novelist Guillaume Lebeau (Crimes on Ice). Beguilingly illustrated by Alexandre Franc (Victor et l’Ourours, Mai 68: Histoire d’un Printemps, Le Satellites, Cher Régis Debray), it was released in 2014 and made it into English as Agatha – The Real Life of Agatha Christie two years later.

Telling tales within tales, it takes as its starting point the infamous but true “lady vanishes” incident from December 1926 and from that event weaves a mesmerising tapestry exploring the childhood and early unsettled existence of Agatha Miller and the stellar life – or lives – she ultimately made with the sweat of her brow…

That only really began after extricating herself from an extremely troubled marriage to dashing pilot-turned-failed-businessman Archibald Christie…

Although this story is awash in fact, drenched in detail and delivered with compelling charm I’m not sharing much of that with you: magnanimously opting to let readers enjoy the unfolding and infinitely re-readable glee of seeing a true world – if not real life – enigma peeled back before your very eyes, whilst all around you some of the most captivating character-play and psychological analysis ever concocted holds the attention and hopefully tickles your little grey cells…

Playfully messing with chronology we see her life and death, disappearance and rise to dominance, capacity to forward-plan, wild adventurous life and loves as well as possibly peeking within, thanks to beguiling tête-à-têtes between Agatha and her great, incisive, pitilessly unforgiving and inescapably present totemic creations…

All the compelling speculation on events, triggers and their aftermath are bolstered by a lengthy and comprehensive Appendices section, containing an extremely complete Timeline of her eventful life, backed up with a mammoth Bibliography of her many, many, so many books and plays…

A sublimely visual examination of the world’s most accomplished wordsmith, Agatha – The Real Life of Agatha Christie pulls off the near impossible trick of using a picture book to make literature irresistible. Surely you need to see for yourself?
© Hachette Livre (Marabout) Paris 2014. All rights reserved.

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Pink Floyd in Comics


By Nicolas Finet, Tony Lourenço, Thierry Lamy, Céheu, Samuel Figuiére, Alex Imé, Abdel de Bruxelles, Joël Alessandra, Gilles Pascal, Christelle Pécout, Antoine Pédron, Léah Touitou, Yvan Ojo, Toru Terada, Christopher, Antoane Rivalan, Martin Texier, Martin Trystram, Romain Brun, Will Argunas, Estelle Meyrand, Fred Grivaud, Georges Chapelle, Chandre, Kongkee, Christophe Kourita, Juliette Boutant, Afuro Pixe, Lauriane Rérolle, Pierre Vrignaud , Mathilde d’Alençon, Emmanuel Bonnet & various: translated by Peter Russella (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-336-3 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-337-0

Graphic biographies are all the rage these days and this one – originally released on the continent in 2016 – is one of the most comprehensively researched and emotionally rewarding that I’ve seen yet: part of NBM’s Music Star in Comics series guaranteed to appeal to a far larger audience than comics usually reach. It certainly deserves to and might make a perfect gift if any of us make it to the Great December fun-fest/Gig in the Sky…

If you’ve never heard of Pink Floyd there may not be much point in you carrying on past this point, but if you are open to having your mind blown visually whilst visiting wild spaces, please carry on and perhaps invest some time and effort into checking out the music too…

Still with us? Okay then…

As if cannily re-presented popular culture factoids and snippets of celebrity history – accompanied by a treasure trove of candid photographs, song lyrics, posters and other memorabilia – aren’t enough to whet your appetite, this addition to the annals of arguably the most creative and conflicted assemblage of musicians ever bundled in the back of a tour bus also offers vital and enticing extra enticements.

Author, filmmaker, journalist, publisher, educator, translator/music documentarian Nicolas Finet has worked in comics over three decades: generating a bucketload of reference works – such as Mississippi Ramblin’ and Forever Woodstock. He adds to his graphic history tally (Prince in Comics; Love Me Please – The Story of Janis Joplin 1943-1970 and David Bowie in Comics) with this deep dive into the crazed career of the ultimate cosmic explorers and rebellious cultural pioneers. His scripts of the comics vignettes compiled here are limned by international strip artists, providing vividly vibrant key moments in the band’s progress, with each augmented by photo/prose feature articles by Tony (Prince in Comics) Lourenço on chapters #1-14 and Thierry (David Bowie in Comics) Lamy for chapters #15-28.

The ever-growing show starts small and quite quietly in ‘1962-1967: Psychedelia and Light Shows’, as envisioned by Céheu with the meeting of school chums and enthusiastic Blues lovers in Cambridge. Roger Waters, Dave Gilmour and Roger “Syd” Barrett were all middle-class intellectual teens certain of succeeding in life – although no strangers to personal tragedy. However, as they progressed educationally and moved towards London – meeting Rick Wright and Nick Mason on the way – Music increasingly stole their souls…

Illustrated by Samuel Figuiére, the new band was making waves by 1965 and awash in the euphoria of first gigs by ‘1967: Dazzling Beginnings’: even taking on ardent fans Peter Jenner and Andrew King as their managers whilst they mixed fantasy, science fiction concepts and art school psychology with Avant Garde lighting effects in increasingly expansive live performances…

Alex Imé and colourist Mathilde d’Alençon depict ‘1968: A New Team’ as Mason, Waters, Wright & Syd capped off a perfect start with hit singles Arnold Layne and See Emily Play with a breakthrough album Piper at the Gates of Dawn, as creative touchstone Barratt butted heads with dogmatic recording bosses and labels. Soon drugs, pressure and his own shaky mental health would push Syd into relinquishing touch with reality…

After introducing Storm Thorgerson and design specialists Hipgnosis (a lifelong secret weapon in Floyd’s conceptual arsenal), Abdel de Bruxelles’ ‘1967-1968: Syd Barrett, A Genius Struck Down’ reveals how a Rock & Roll lifestyle irreparably damaged the fragile genius who was the soul of the group and what happened with him after he left, whilst Joël Alessandra illuminates the next stage of the band’s creative growth in ‘1969 – Pink Floyd at the Movies: MORE’…

Hungry to prove their creative worth and collaborative ethic, the unstoppable rise of the band is further explored in ‘1969 – A Record or Two’ by Gilles Pascal, whilst less happy film fun manifests in Christelle Pécout’s ‘1970 – Pink Floyd at the Movies: ZABRISKIE POINT’.

Internationally renowned, critically adored and hugely popular across the globe, a string of hit albums and monster tours are detailed (as Dave Gilmour returns to the line-up) in Antoine Pédron’s ‘1970 – A Cow and a Full Orchestra’ and ‘1971 – Welcome to Trippy Rock’ by Léah Touitou. Then Yvan Ojo shares the story of the world’s weirdest live gig in ‘1971 – A Day in Pompeii’, before Toru Terada depicts another astounding art-driven side project in ‘1972 – Pink Floyd at the Movies: OBSCURED BY CLOUDS’…

The band’s world was about to change forever, even as internal dissent heralded a moment to pause and reflect. Christopher’s oblique approach illustrates ‘1973 – A Lunar Journey in the Form of Cosmic Validation’ as 8th album The Dark Side of the Moon elevated Pink Floyd to another level of success… and pressure.

This is counterpointed by Antoane Rivalan’s flashback moment ‘1967-1994 – Hipgnosis: Music to Look At’ and further revelations regarding Thorgerson and his designers before Martin Texier focuses on what true innovators do once they’ve done everything in ‘1971-1974 – Wavering: The Household Objects’. The answer for the group was individual endeavours and looking backwards as ‘1975 – Wish You Were Here’ by Martin Trystram honoured old mate Syd, just as internal tensions were peaking…

For years deeply politicised, antiwar activist Roger Waters had been seeking to appoint himself leader of a creative collective that didn’t want one, and his campaign to take charge – which eventually ruptured the band – really began with ‘1977 – Dogs, Sheep, Pigs’ as captured by Romain Brun. Incensed by the Falklands War but creating masterpieces despite breaking childhood bonds as seen in Will Argunas’ ‘1979-1982 – The Wall’ (album, tour and movie), the inevitable occurred in Estelle Meyrand’s ‘1983 – Break Up’…

Dark days of dissolution and dispute are exposed in ‘1985 – The Great Beanpole Throws in the Towel’ by Fred Grivaud, ‘1987 – Pink Floyd Rolls the Dice Again’ by Georges Chapelle and Terada’s tour overview ‘1966-2005 – Absolutely Live’.

Reconciliatory moments triggered by time apart are seen in ‘1994 – Recapturing the Magic’ (by Chandre, coloured by Emmanuel Bonnet) as work on new album The Division Bell leads to the surviving but separate players partially reuniting for Kongkee’s ‘1996 – In the Pantheon of Rock’ before political protest movement Live 8 brought them together as seen in Christophe Kourita’s ‘1996-2005 – On the Back Burner’.

As friends and old enemies passed away with increasing frequency, their era’s end is acknowledged by Juliette Boutant in ‘2006-2012 – To its Dead, a Grateful Pink Floyd’ and Afuro Pixe’s ‘2014 – One More for the Road’, with speculative appraisal coming in ‘1967-2014 – Four Inspired Boys’ by Lauriane Rérolle and an exploration of legacy visualised in Pierre Vrignaud’s ‘2015-Infinity – Pink Floyd’s Children’…

This compelling and remarkable catalogue of cultural heritage and achievement concludes with Pink Floyd’s Discography (including all solo and off-brand releases), listings of Films, DVD, and Videos, Websites of Note, Bibliography and Recommended Reading plus a copious Acknowledgements section.

Pink Floyd in Comics is an astoundingly readable, beautifully realised treasure for comics and music fans alike: one to resonate with all who love to listen, look and fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way…
© 2022 Editions Petit as Petit. © 2024 NBM for the English translation.

Pink Floyd in Comics will be published on 13th August. 2024 and is available for pre-order now. NBM books are also available in digital editions. For more information and other great reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/

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Glorious Summers volume 3: Little Miss Esterel (1962)


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

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 “real world” ventures, and those usually depicted via graphic biographies/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 outside small press/self-publishing – 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 with ordinary folk in as many quiet as extraordinary moments.

Surely it can’t be that hard to tell engaging stories in simple, recognisably ordinary settings? Medical traumas, love stories, school tales and family tragedies still play well on various-sized screens around the world, so why not in English-language comics?

People being people is more than enough for our continental cousins. There appears to be an insatiable appetite for everyday moments aimed at properly “mature readers”, joyfully sans vampires, aliens or men in tights. These even have sub-genres all their own. For example, there’s a wealth of superb material just about going on holiday. So, since we Brits are all too broke for any jaunts or une petite vacances in Europe, let’s stare covetously at them having a good time. After all, Over There holidays are an inalienable right and they have some simply fabulous tales about the simple well-earned break. This one comes from one of the best series on taking it easy you will 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.

Would sir et madame care for a soupçon of context? Summer holidays – “Midi” – are a big deal in France and Belgium. The French divide into two tribes over the annual rest 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 first in a string of family visits – six so far – 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 becoming a teller of tales in 1990. His main successes include school dunce series L’Elève Ducobu, Petit Dagobert, Scott Zombi, La Ribambelle, Le Montreur d’histoires, a revival of Ric Hochet, African Trilogy, Léonardo, Shi and so many more. His most celebrated and beloved stories are this memorable sequence and 2010’s Lydie, both illustrated by Lafebre.

That gifted, empathically sensitive artist and 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 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. The general progress is backwards, as the second tale – The Calanque – was set in summer of 1969, when heavily pregnant Maddie Faldérault (imminently about to deliver precociously hyperactive Paulette AKA “Peaches”) once again had her holiday start late thanks to an inescapable deadline. Husband Pierre is a comics artist and every summer break begins with him frantically trying to complete enough pages to take the time off…

That time it left Maddie coping with three impatient kids (oldest girl Jolly-Julie, dangerously forthright Nicole and introspective toddler Louis) and a newly-bereaved and lonely Spanish father-in-law…

Here, however, third volume Mam’zelle Estérel (translated for this criminally digital-only-edition as Little Miss Esterel) starts in the present day before setting the wayback machine to August 1962. Papa and Mama Faldérault are finally selling the faithful Renaut 4L Hatchback which carried their ever-expanding family south to the sun for three memorable decades.

It’s not that she’s clapped out or knackered – in fact the vehicle is in immaculate condition. She has been lovingly cared for and is a valuable collector’s item! – it’s only that Peaches is all grown up now and the last chick preparing to leave the nest, so plucky, steadfast “Little Miss Esterel” deserves an owner who will keep her on the road and having adventures…

Of course, the transaction is charged with sentiment and sparks a flood of memories, and the scene shifts to 1969. Recently a mum for the second time, Maddie shepherds her two kids (toddler Jolly-Julie AKA “Zulie” and 6-month-old Nicole) and idiot husband. It’s four days into the big holiday, and he’s just finishing the emergency pages his abusive “named-creator” boss Garin just dropped on him.

The scenario is particularly aggravating as Maddie’s martinet mother Yvette LeGrand and long-suffering, still-recuperating cardiac-case dad are staying with them. Having bought the young marrieds a car for family vacations, the snooty dowager has invited herself and gluttonous heart-attack survivor Henry (dubbed forever after “Fat Pop Pop” by Zulie) along on their eagerly-anticipated premier camping trip.

Sadly, grandmama’s haughty convictions and stern diktats don’t just extend to how badly Madeleine is raising her children, how stupid Pierre’s job is or what Henry can eat, drink or do. Before long she hijacks the déclassé sun, sea-&-picnic worshippers’ dreams: sternly inflicting upon them all a succession of hotels, restaurants and churches (all Michelin-starred!) for their own good and ultimate edification…

Inevitably the situation is too much even for easy-going Pierre and poor historically-dominated Maddie… but then something small but wonderful happens to change and even explain those harsh years when Yvette raised her daughter all alone; and Pierre philosophically accepts that the Sun and Sea will always be there, but some things won’t…

Packed with heart, honest emotion and tons of pure sitcom comedy gold, this tale is another beautifully rendered and realised basket of memories 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 entire point…

If you’re British – and old enough – this series will stir echoes of revered family sitcoms like Bless This House, Bread, or Butterflies and even generational ads starring the “Oxo Family” (and 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 might 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, debilitatingly nostalgic but unafraid to grasp any nettles on the beach, this holiday romance is another dose of sheer visual seduction wrapped in sharp dialogue and a superbly anarchic sense of mischief. Vacations are built of moments and might-have-beens, and come packaged here in compelling clips all making the mundane marvellous.
© 2018 -DARGAUD BENELUX (Dargaud-Lombard s.a.) – ZIDROU & LEFEBRE, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Erased – An Actor of Color’s Journey Through the Heyday of Hollywood


By Loo Hui Phang & Hugues Micol: translated by Edward Gauvin (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-681123-38-7 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect. If any such use of slurs, epithets, terms, treatment or attitudes offends you, you really should not be reading this book – or maybe you need it more than most.

Cinema was the great and dominant art form of the 20th century. There have been untold tons of film books (even I’ve got one coming out later this year!) and loads of graphic biographies about movie stars and Hollywood – so many, that humanity shares a communal/mutual vision capable of supporting more subversive dalliances with those mediums. Here’s a smart and powerful biographical account employing that common ground to probe some of the deeper social issues stemming from the dominance of the fabled tinsel town Dream Factory through eras where the playing fields were never ever equal…

In 2020, Laotian-born writer Loo Hui Phang (Bienvenue Au College, Delices De Vaches, The Smell of Starving Boys) and veteran French illustrator Hugues Micol (Tumultes, Les Parques, Agughia) collaborated on European reminiscence Black-Out, describing the unseen, forgotten and retroactively redacted career of a mixed race actor who was a contemporary film phenomenon before his political ideals and subversive acts against discriminatory movie making practises led to his contributions being excised from acceptable Hollywood history.

Employing a dreamlike semi surreal narrative delivered via symbolic tableaux and straight strip art storytelling, it told the compelling, inequitable and tragic tale of a gifted entertainer who could have been America’s first black film star…

In 1936 Los Angeles, rich, famous and utterly acceptable foreign immigrant Cary Grant meets a beautiful boy orphan at a boxing gym. Taken with his looks and attitude, the transplanted Londoner takes the kid under his wing. Soon the lad is playing those always anonymous minor “ethnic roles” in epic box office masterpieces like Lost Horizon and Gone With the Wind.

Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Lena Horne, Rita Hayworth and dozens of other starlets seek his company. He is schooled by David O. Selznick and gulled by Louis B. Mayer, and in later years Paul Robeson gives him life advice as he instinctively and unwisely makes enemies like John Wayne and Senator Joseph Mc Carthy…

A truly beautiful and visual striking man, Maximus Ohanzee Wildhorse AKA – and against his own wishes – “Maximus Wyld” always turned heads in cosmopolitan, covertly egalitarian, boldly bohemian but officially segregated Hollywood. Of course, that casually collegiate acceptance never made it into the roles or onto screens where culturally-conscripted stereotypes were peddled to ignorant, scared, easily riled John Q Public. Throughout his many appearances Wyld cleverly subverted the medium, using it to propound his views on a two-tier system and diminution of his peoples: a stance that led to his downfall and even greater erasure from historical view…

He is a proud, politically radical socialist enjoying every forbidden fruit accruing to his obvious physical attractions. In the new Sodom and Gomorrah, that means intimate entrée into the twilight world of homosexuality, decadence and hedonism, and those charms and willingness to listen also make him a constant true confidante and companion to Hollywood’s most contentiously defended commodity and obviously enslaved minority – lovely women…

The tale of his not-rise and inescapable fall touches on all areas of engrained traditional white privilege. Wyld is a human melting pot and walking (tap dancing, really) metaphor: exotic, universally attractive, unconventional but morally sound and sexually ambivalent. He stems from many races (plantation negro, First Nation/“red Indian”, Chinese) previously and still subjugated and used by the transported-but-aggressively dominant European culture.

Cloaked in shamanic mysticism and force, Max’s saga unfolds with him holding another secret. Professionally lauded, but officially uncredited he is inescapably in touch with his metaphorical ancestors – particularly a Comanche medicine man, a spirit stallion, coolies and slaves – all silently reminding him his career and livelihood are built and still thrive on the desecration and degradation of his ancestors…

A totemic figure – albeit shrouded in shadow and his own judiciously-kept council – Max played a vast range of non-white characters from house slaves to African tribesmen to Tibetans to painted savages, but was constantly denied honest moments in the spotlight, just as were all marginalised peoples of that period of US history. However, his unshakable dream of being the breakout actor of color in Tinseltown never really dies. It’s taken from him.

Or it would have been if he ever really existed…

This tale is a masterfully researched and constructed faux expose: a deviously fanciful conceit acting as if this poor guy really was there. A symbolic amalgamation of so many untold stories, Erased employs the facts of past ethnic experience to make a unifying myth: telling of an Invisible Man left out of history – like how many of today’s electronics won’t register people of colour because they were calibrated by white male Silicon Valley nerds…

The deeply moving personal journey ends with a powerful ‘Epilogue 1986’ as lingering heyday survivor Rita Hayworth ruminates on Max Wyld, after which the entire affair is awarded an effusive appraisal in an Afterword by author, publisher and critic Leland Cheuk.

The major themes, issues and delivery of the tale were previous covered in I An Not Your Negro author Raoul Peck’s erudite and challenging ‘Preface’, prior to ‘Maximus Wyld: A Bibliography’ providing a selected listing of all the major movies potentially graced by his presence in advance of the main event…

So sleekly, mesmerizingly effective is the result that Erased – An Actor of Color’s Journey Through the Heyday of Hollywood won Loo Hui Phang the Grand Prize for Excellence in Non-Fiction (publication & translation) as part of the Albertine Translation Foundation project, as well as garnering the Prix René Goscinny 2021 at Angoulême International Comics Festival.

This is a mighty and memorable missal of metafiction: one no mature reader of comics or lover of film can afford to miss. Just remember – it’s not real it’s only a non-movie of a movie…
© Futuroplis / 2020. All rights reserved. © 2024 NBM for the English translation.

Erased – An Actor of Color’s Journey Through the Heyday of Hollywood is published on 16th July 2024 and available for pre-order now. NBM books are also available in digital formats. For more information and other great reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/

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Billionaires: The Lives of the Rich and Powerful


By Darryl Cunningham (Myriad Editions)
ISBN: 978-1-91240-822-1 (PB)

Just in case you missed the last few days here’s a sly reminder of what we’ve just voted to end – at least as concerns direct involvement in public life…

There are books to read, books you should read – and some, certainly, that you shouldn’t – and there are Important books. The relatively new field of graphic novels has many of the first but still boasts precious few important books yet. Thankfully, British documentarian, journalist and cartoonist Darryl Cunningham seems to specialise in the latter and apparently never rests…

It’s hard enough to get noticed within the industry (simply excelling at your craft is not enough) but when comics does generate something wonderful, valid, powerful, true to our medium yet simultaneously breaking beyond into the wide world and making a mark, the reviews from that appreciative greater market come thick and fast – so I’m not going to spend acres of text praising this forthright, potentially controversial and damning examination of Earth’s Newest (but hopefully not Last) Dark Gods – the Super Rich.

Multi-disciplined artist Cunningham was born in 1960, lived a pretty British life (didn’t we all?) and graduated from Leeds College of Art. A welcome regular on the Small Press scene of the 1990s, his early strips appeared in legendary paper-based venues such as Fast Fiction, Dead Trees, Inkling, Turn and many others.

In 1998, he & Simon Gane crafted Meet John Dark for the much-missed Slab-O-Concrete outfit and it remains one of my favourite books of the era. You should track it down or agitate for a new edition.

Briefly sidelining comics as the century ended, Cunningham worked on an acute care psychiatric ward: a period informing 2011 graphic novel Psychiatric Tales, a revelatory inquiry into mental illness delivered as cartoon reportage.

As well as crafting web comics for Forbidden Planet and personal projects Uncle Bob Adventures, Super-Sam and John-of-the-Night or The Streets of San Diablo, he’s been consolidating a pole position in the field of graphic investigative reporting; specifically science history, economics and socio-political journalism via books such as Science Tales, Supercrash: How to Hijack the Global Economy, Graphic Science: Seven Journeys of Discovery and The Age of Selfishness: Ayn Rand, Morality and the Financial Crisis.

This offering details the rise and pernicious all-pervasive influence of three icons of the plutocratic ideal, all while debunking such self-deluding and damaging public myths as “self-made”, “coming from nothing” and “fair and honest”…

It opens with a pictorial Introduction outlining how late 19th and early 20th century robber barons of the Gilded Age set the scene for the rise of today’s financial overlords – and how governments responded to them…

Depicted in clear, simple, easily accessible imagery, Cunningham then deconstructs carefully crafted legends and official biographies of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, energy barons Charles & David Koch and internet retail supremo/space cadet Jeff Bezos with an even-handedness I’m not sure any other investigative author could match – or would want to.

Via an avalanche of always-attributable, deftly delineated facts and reported events, the artist delivers the very opposite of hard-hitting polemic, instead massaging and lathering readers with an ocean of appetising data allowing us make up our own minds about proudly ruthless apex business predators who have controlled governments, steered populations and reshaped the planet in their quest for financial dominance.

Best of all, Cunningham even has the courage to offer bold – and serious – suggestions on how to rectify the current state of affairs in his Afterword, and (should anybody’s lawyers or tax accountants be called upon) backs up all his cartoon classwork with a vast and daunting list of References for everything cited in the book.

Comics has long been the most effective method of imparting information and eliciting reaction (that’s why assorted governments and militaries have used them for hard and soft propaganda over the last century and a half), and with Billionaires: The Lives of the Rich and Powerful we finally see that force being used against today’s greatest threat to continued existence…
© Darryl Cunningham 2019. All rights reserved.

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The Case of Alan Turing


By Éric Liberge & Arnaud Delalande, translated by David Homel (Arsenal Pulp Press)
ISBN: 978-1-55152-650-8 (HB/Digital edition)

After decades of cruel injustice and crushing, sidelining silence, British mathematician Alan Turing – one of the greatest intellects in humanity’s history – is finally the household name and revered pioneer of science he always deserved to be. As well as books and films describing the astounding achievements and appalling way this brilliant, misunderstood man – arguably the creator of the modern world we inhabit – was treated by his contemporaries and society in general, there are also graphic novels (so if you’re interested you should also seek out Jim Ottaviani & Leland Purvis’ The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded) delineating the factual stuff whilst trying to get beneath the skin of a most perplexing and unique individual.

This gloriously oversized (231 x 13 x 287 mm) full-colour hardback biography – also available as an e-book – was first released in 2015 as Le Cas Alan Turing: Histoire extraordinaire et tragique d’un genie and employs an emphatic literary approach that is more drama than documentary. The moving script by author Arnaud Delalande (La Piege de Dante) – via award-winning translator David Homel – only touches on Turing’s early, troubled home life and post-war scandals as the genius descended into self-loathing and court-mandated chemical castration to cure his “social deviancy”.

Mere hints and allegations – let alone actual accusations – of homosexuality destroyed many men until officially decriminalised in Britain’s 1967 Sexual Offences Act, and although (after years of passionate campaigning) Turing was posthumously pardoned in 2013, his loss to suicide probably deprived the entire world of a generation of marvels…

The major proportion of this tale concentrates on World War II and Turing’s work as a cryptographer and inventor at British code-breaking centre Bletchley Park, where an insular young man struggled to convince his officious, unimaginative superiors to let him construct a mechanical brain to defeat the Wehrmacht’s presumed-infallible Enigma machines. Turing’s victories cemented his reputation and ensured that the battle against fascism was won…

The key figures are all there: sometime fiancée Joan Clark, Professor Max Newman, and the weak, shady rent-boy who brought about Turing’s eventual downfall and demise, fully complemented by less well known figures: the MI5 operative who was his constant shadow before and after the war, boyhood lost love Christopher Morcom and so many other unsung heroes of the intelligence war…

Played out against a backdrop of global conflict, Turing’s intellectual obsession with Walt Disney’s Snow White and a recurring motif of poisoned apples (the method by which the tormented soul ended his life) loom large in a story which reads like a movie in the making. Moreover, this powerful tale of an outsider’s temporary triumphs and lasting impact is beautifully and compellingly rendered by true master of historical comics Eric Liberge (Monsieur Mardi-Gras Descendres, Le Dernier Marduk, Tonnerre Rampant, Les Corsaires d’Alcibiade), affording proceedings an aura of unavoidable, impending destiny…

Balancing out the tragedy of chances missed is an informative photo-illustrated essay on ‘The Cryptography War’ from historian, educator and government consultant Bruno Fuligni detailing the development and use of different kinds of cipher and codes; how Enigma changed the rules of the spying game and how Turing changed it all again…

This is an astoundingly effective and moving way to engage with a true story of incredible accomplishment, dedication and terrifying naivety, one that ends with horrific loss to us all and forever-unanswered sentiments of “What If?” and “If Only…”
Text © Éditions des Arènes, Paris 2015. Translation © 2016 by David Homel.

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George Sand: True Genius, True Woman


By Séverine Vidal & Kim Consigny, translated by Edward Gauvin (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-20-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

It’s a sad but inescapable fact that throughout history men have constantly belittled, gaslit, constrained, oppressed, repressed and sabotaged women, presumably in some misguided, malign and apparently pointlessly dick-fuelled campaign to keep them in their place and at our beck and call. It’s also a wonderful truism that over and again, despite personal danger and inevitable pain of consequences endured, many remarkable women have found ways to escape the trap.

Quite a few have done it by guile: simply pretending to one of the guys…

One such was Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil (1st July 1804 – 8th June 1876) who defied, dodged and practically avoided almost all the arbitrary constraints of being a rich, propertied heiress in a strictly codified society where women (just like minors, criminals and imbeciles) had no rights.

Employing her brains, innate diplomatic acumen and passion for storytelling, Aurore made her own way all her life: writing books, plays, articles, literary criticism, and memoires whilst employing her growing influence and ever-expanding net of contacts to fight for social equality – and generally scandalise Europe – as “George Sand”.

She was also bold a pioneer in Gender Expression, defiantly smoking in public and drinking, dressing and acting as a man – an actual legal offense from 1800 onwards, albeit one typically ignored by the Parisian intelligentsia. This wilful civil disobedience won Sand access to many venues expressly barring women, as she also flouted the nation’s ethical foundations with “libertine” behaviour: exploring true sexual liberation and parity through a reputed “host” of male and female partners…

Daughter of a flighty Bohemian, raised by her autocratic paternal grandmother and married off to an appallingly typical rich husband (Baron Casimir Dudevant), Aurore rebelled and lived her own way. She became a staunch proponent of radical ideas, especially women’s rights to full equality under law, and freedom to love as they chose. She even claimed everyone had a right to self-declare a preferred gender and railed against Church-sanctioned strictures of marriage and over tumultuous decades, publicly risked everything to champion social freedoms. She battled bourgeois reactionary governments and sought to elevate the lower classes during the most politically volatile time in France’s history.

Internationally revered and reviled, but – partially – insulated by wealth and position, Sand only wanted to tell stories and live free, but – because that right was universal – became a powerful social commentator, agitator, noteworthy journalistic gadfly. An effective player of power politics at a time when women were relegated to a decorative but always submissive role (generally a means of transferring property and wealth from one man to another) Sand was a tireless reformer who at heart just wanted to live an unshackled life.

Aurore ceaselessly challenged the system: using as example the way she lived; employing rabble-rousing tactics and direct action; instigating subtle intrigue and debate amongst her intellectual peers, and in any other way that came to her – all whilst living a s guilt-free, hedonistic existence. Meanwhile, a steady stream of groundbreaking books and plays confronted these issues and made converts one reader at a time…

First released in Europe as George Sand, fille du siècle in 2019 and as closely detailed and diligently depicted by author Séverine Vidal (A Tale Off the Top of My Head, Le Manteau, J’ai une maison) and illustrated by frequent collaborator Kim Consigny (Forte, À l’orée du monde, L’été de mes 17 ans), this compelling and charming monochrome biography reads far more like a sprawling generational dramatic saga in the manner of Wuthering Heights, Vanity Fair or Le Colonel Chabert rather than a dusty historical tract. Interleaved with excerpts from her own “tell-all” book Story of My Life: The Autobiography of George Sand, her books and other scholarly sources such as The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters, the epic chronologically traces her torrid life, agonising mistakes, family struggles, literary and political successes: a riches to rags to riches story arc peppered with a tantalising smattering of enemies made at a time when France struggled against cultural annihilation and civil chaos.

Along the way George Sand wrote 70 novels, 13 plays, and 50 volumes worth of collected writings and speeches that are more relevant today than ever…

What’s most significant here is just how contemporaneous and readable modern audiences will find this true story. The subject and narrative are a treat for fans of racy modern bodice ripper dramas like Bridgerton or Succession – with a healthy helping of Les Misérables seasoning the mix. Incidentally, Victor Hugo numbered amongst her many intellectual – if not amatory – conquests. Other “close friends” and/or foes guest starring in these pages include Chopin, Liszt, Delacroix, Balzac, Baudelaire, the Emperor Louis Napoleon, Jules Sandeau, Prosper Mérimée, Marie Dorval, Flaubert and more. However, amidst trauma and tragedy are many moments of lasting true love and rewarding contentment – such as George’s idyllic 15-year relationship with adored partner “Mancel” – which counter any notion of this being a moralistic warning tale.

Although Sand’s astounding life was filled with enough drama, setbacks, family feuding, skulduggery, glamour, global travel and sheer celebrity cachet to make her a proper modern icon, with the added allure of being absolutely true and shaped by iniquity, inequality, triumph and heartbreak, this is ultimately the history of a winner beating the system and whose uncompromising life was lived triumphantly on her own terms: confirming that life doesn’t have to be endured on any terms but your own…
© Editions Delcourt 2019. All rights reserved.

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Pride of Baghdad


By Brian K Vaughan & Niko Henrichon & various (DC/Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0314-6 (HB) 978-1-4012-0315-3 (PB) 978-1-4012-4894-9 (Deluxe Edition)

It’s a stomach-turning truism that war is a political tool of many modern leaders. It would be beyond crass to suggest that anything good at all came out of the monstrous debacle of the Iraq invasion (or any other proxy war for blatant political gain of grudge-settling) but trenchant-critique-masquerading-as-parable Pride of Baghdad derived from that pocket conflict and at least offered a unique perspective on a small, cruel and utterly avoidable moment of bloody history. Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Goražde (2000) and Joe Kubert’s Fax from Sarajevo (1996) worked in a similar vein for the last Balkan conflict of the previous century. I wonder what will become the fictions and dramas of the catastrophes we’re not stopping now in Ukraine, parts of Africa and Gaza; and what effect – if any – they might have on future generations?

In Pride of Baghdad, author and screenwriter Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, Runaways, Paper Girls, Saga, Lost) and Niko Henrichon (Barnum!, Fables, Sandman, Spider-Man), combined the narrative tools of Walt Disney and George Orwell to reconstruct an anthropomorphised tale of a family of lions. These mighty innocent bystanders were unwillingly liberated from the city zoo during the taking of Baghdad, and left to run loose in those deadly streets until their tragic end. Throughout the entire debacle the beasts were scared, hungry, under constant attack but utterly convinced that everything would be great because now they are free…

This is not a spoiler. It is a warning. This inexplicably out-of-print book is a beautiful, uncompromising, powerful tale with characters you will swiftly come to love and they die because of political fecklessness, commercial venality and human frailty. It’s a story that’s happening again right now but with different victims…

The seductively magical artwork makes the inevitable tragedy that results a confusing and wondrous experience: Vaughan’s script could make a stone – and perhaps even a right-wing politician – cry. In 2014 a deluxe edition was released containing a trove of developmental sketches, commentary and other materials.

The original comic story was derived from a random news item which told of escaped zoo lions roaming war-torn Baghdad streets, and throughout readers are made to see the invasion in terms other than those of commercial news-gatherers and governmental spin-doctors, and hopefully we can use those off-message opinions to inform our own. This is a lovely, haunting, brutally sad story: a modern masterpiece showing why words and pictures have such power that they can terrify bigots and tyrants of all types. Brace yourself for a wave of similar material from contemporary condemnatory cartoonists. It’s the very least that we can do.
© 2006 Brian K Vaughan & Niko Henrichon. All Rights Reserved.

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Phoolan Devi: Rebel Queen


By Claire Fauvel, translated by Montana Kane (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-251-9 (HB/Digital edition)

Born in 1988, award-winning graphic novelist Claire Fauvel (À la recherche d’Alvaro Dolor; Sur les pas de Teresa, la religieuse de Calcutta [w/Marie-Noëlle Pichard]; Une Saison en Egypte; Catherine’s War [w/Julia Billet]) studied illustration at Paris’ L’Ecole Estienne and animation at L’Ecole des Gobelins before beginning an illustrious career in bande dessinée. She’s particularly adroit and adept with female historical figures…

Phoolan Devi: Rebel Queen is that rare event, a history that has all the energy and impetus of a great action adventure and pioneering, political tract. Despite being a factual graphic biography, this is the stuff of legend and grand drama, detailing the astounding, appalling, tragic and triumphant life of a woman who bucked India’s ancient, all-pervasive caste system and paid the seemingly inescapable price the nation’s women seem doomed to. A victim of poverty and inequality from birth, she sought change through bloody deeds and – and as is so often the case – ultimately via political action, in a country where prejudice is institutionalised and baked in: expressed via gender- and caste-based violence, and fostering for millennia a tyrannical social system of inherent, inbuilt corruption where gods and birth status forever dictate one’s position in life by denying all possibility of advancement or change…

Phoolan suffered a double blow at birth: born both destitute and female. Never educated, she remained illiterate all her life. Her innate burden of being shunned and in grinding poverty was further exacerbated when she was married off at age 11: beginning a harrowing pattern of slavery and sexual abuse that lasted until she was rescued by a troop of legendary bandits infesting Uttar Pradesh at the time. They were actually more decent – and fundamentally more heroic – than most respectable citizens (for which read Men), civil authorities and police officers of the region. Becoming lover to one of the gang, she suffered even greater abuse when he was murdered by a rival from a different caste.

Surviving all these assaults, Phoolan organised an infamous vengeance massacre at the village of Behmai. That slaughter was picked up by the press, who recast her as a rebel queen and her lover as a martyr. The public began using the honorific “Devi” about her and, after a mythic career, she surrendered to authorities in 1983. Over 11 years of imprisonment, 48 capital charges including murder, plunder, arson and kidnapping were incrementally dropped before a trial that never came. In 1994, the state government led by Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party withdrew all charges and she walked free. Joining that political group, she was elected to national office twice, becoming a powerful advocate for radical change in the caste system and the patriarchal treatment of women. Regarded as the “voice of the oppressed”, on 26th July 2001 her past caught up with her when she was assassinated by relatives of the bandits killed at Behmai.

Fauvel took her inspiration from acclaimed 1996 autobiography Moi, Phoolan Devi, reine des bandits by Phoolan Devi & Marie-Thérese Cuny, and although not all of those events are included in this stunning and uncompromising account, the supremely enticing and engaging art succeeds in mixing some few moments of hopeful aspiration, happy romance and family unity to offset the revolting iniquities Phoolan and other women had to survive on a daily basis. Many still do.

This brilliant tale is grim and unflinching in the portrayal of the constant assaults and abuses she endured, so you’d best gird yourself for plenty of righteous indignation and outright anger at the catalogue of venality and casual intolerance civilised folk still seem capable of…

Potent, unmissable, and primed to continue the fight, this is a book you must read.
© 2018 Casterman. © 2020 NBM for the English translation.

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The Wolf of Baghdad


By Carol Isaacs/The Surreal McCoy (Myriad Editions)
ISBN: 978-1-912408-55-9 (TPB) eISBN: 978-1-912408-71-9

Contemporary history is a priceless resource in creating modern narratives. It has the benefits of immediacy and relevance – even if only on a generational level – whilst combining notional familiarity (could you tell the difference between a stone axe and a rock?) with a sense of distance and exoticism. In comics, we’re currently blessed with a wealth of superb material exploring the recent past and none better than this enchanting trawl through a tragic time most of us never knew of…

A successful musician who has worked with The Indigo Girls, Sinead O’Connor and the London Klezmer Quartet (which she co-founded) Carol Isaacs – as The Surreal McCoy – is also a cartoonist whose graphic gifts are regularly seen in The New Yorker, The Spectator, Private Eye, Sunday Times and The Inking Woman: 250 Years of Women Cartoon and Comic Artists in Britain. Some while ago she found great inspiration in a 2000-year old secret history that’s she been party to for most of her life.

British-born of Iraqi-Jewish parents, Isaacs grew up hearing tales of her ancestors’ lives in Baghdad: part of a thriving multicultural society which had welcomed – or at least peacefully tolerated – Jews in Persia since 597 BCE. How 150,000 Hebraic Baghdadians (a third of the city’s population in 1940) was reduced by 2016 to just 5 is revealed and eulogised in this potently evocative memoir, told in lyrical pictures and the curated words of her own family and their émigré friends, as related to Carol over her developing years in their comfortably suburban London home.

Those quotes and portraits sparked an elegiac dream-state excursion to the wrecked, abandoned sites and places of a socially integrated, vibrantly cohesive metropolis she knows intimately and pines for ferociously, even though she has never set a single foot there…

As well as this enthralling pictorial experience, the art and narrative were incorporated into a melancholy motion comic (slideshow with original musical accompaniment). That moving experience is supplemented by an Afterword comprising illustrate text piece ‘Deep Home’ (first seen in ‘Origin Stories’ from anthology Strumpet) which details those childhood sessions listening to the remembrances of adult guests and family elders, and is followed by ‘The Making of The Wolf of Baghdad’ explaining not only the book and show’s origins, but also clarifies the thematic premise of ‘The Wolf Myth’ that permeates the city’s intermingled cultures.

‘Other Iraqis’ then reveals some interactions with interested parties culled from Isaacs’ blog whilst crafting this book, whilst a comprehensive ‘Timeline of the Jews in Iraq’ outlines the little-known history of Persian Jews and how and why it all changed, before ‘A Carpet’s Story’ details 1950’s Operations Ezra and Nehemiah which saw 120,000 Jews airlifted to Israel. Wrapping up the show is a page of Acknowledgements and Suggested Reading.

Simultaneously timeless and topical, The Wolf of Baghdad is less a history lesson than a lament for a lost homeland and way of life: a wistful deliberation on why bad things happen and on how words pictures and music can turn back the years and make the longed-for momentarily real and true.
© Carol Isaacs (The Surreal McCoy) 2020. All rights reserved.