Category: Educational

Posted on

A Quick & Easy Guide to Consent


By Isabella Rotman with Luke B. Howard (Limerance Press/Oni Press-Lion Forge Publishing Group)
ISBN: 978-1-62010-794-2 (PB) eISBN: 978-1-62010-815-4

I’ve constantly argued here that comic strips are a matchless tool for education: rendering the most complex topics easily accessible and displaying a potent facility to inform, affect and alter behaviour. Here’s another superb example of the art form using its great powers for good.

The Quick & Easy Guide series has an admirable record of confronting uncomfortable issues with taste, sensitivity and breezy forthrightness: offering sound solutions as well as awareness or solidarity. Here, Maine-based cartoonist Isabella Rotman (Wait What?: A Comic Book Guide to Relationships, Bodies and Growing Up; You’re So Sexy When You Aren’t Transmitting STIs) and New Orleans colourist Luke Howard collaborate on a cogent, compelling primer covering the irrefutable basics When, Where, Why and most especially What can be taken as Consent. This is such a charged issue that the light, informative lecture is preceded by a very clear and well thought out Content Warning defining terms and the specifics of situations, with firm regard to gender, scope and even an Informational Disclaimer – that’s how hot a topic this still is…

Terms are examined and situations explored during a tenuous first encounter between two healthy young adults. However, as things heat up, a phantasmal guide pops in to steer the participants and give voice to their suppressed concerns, through chapters such as ‘What is Consent?’, ‘Consent is Simple’, ‘What is Sex?’ and ‘Consent Must be Freely Given!’, all emphasised through sidebars like ‘Tell Them What Turns You On!’ and an enumeration of what definitively ‘Have Nothing to do With Consent!’…

The dialogue and comics show-&-tells are punctuated by quotes from professional Sexual Consent Educators, augmented by role plays, quizzes and a section outlining and defining current (US only) ‘Age of Consent’ laws, before asking ‘Is Everyone Fully Informed?’ This last is primarily about all the many factors – physical and emotional – potential partners should always be apprised of, but also broadmindedly enquires ‘What About Kink?’, and even tackles the ever-present – and potentially devastating – ‘Fear of Rejection’…

In closing, the convivial confrontation offers a list of potential faux pas in ‘So Don’t…’; a summation ‘In Review…’ before providing a ‘Yes. No. Maybe So Checklist’ as well as a selection of ‘Safer Sex: Contraception’, ‘…STI Risk Reduction’ and ‘…Activities’ suggestions.

Being wise beyond her years and probably acutely aware of how inventive humans are, the author closes with sagacious questionnaire ‘Anything Else?’, plus a fulsome Bibliography and list of Resources to contact including Sex & Relationship Education, appropriate Hotlines and online Checklists… although considering how hostile most parents, many governments and all organised religions are to such dangerous knowledge in the sweaty hands of actual consentors/consentees, these might no longer be of much use…

I hail from (and am a grateful survivor of) a fabulous far-distant era where we happily ravaged the planet without a qualm and believed emotional understanding led to universal acceptance. At the same time, it seems most of us never stopped being greedy cave monkeys obsessively snatching whatever we wanted with no consideration of others or the greater consequences. Then again, some seem (apparently) a little more in tune with the planet now, and finally learning to share and play well with others…

This witty, no-nonsense treatise offers sage advice on becoming our best selves by dealing with our selfish natures – something that really should have been bred out of humanity eons, if not centuries, ago. This should be compulsory reading in every school and college… and pub, and nightclub, and scenic natural beauty spot, and cinema and waiting room and…
A Quick & Easy Guide to Consent™ & © 2020 Isabella Rotman. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Positive


By Tom Bouden, translated by Yves Cogneau with Charles “Zan” Christensen (Northwest Press)
ISBN: 978-0-98459409-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

Many things are dangerous and don’t go away just because we stop talking about them. Coincidentally, here’s something short, sweet and utterly, comfortingly satisfying. Please enjoy. BTW: today is HIV Long-Term Survivors Day.

First observed on June 5th 2014 as a day honouring long-term survivors of HIV, and to raise awareness about their needs, issues, and journeys, this day became an annual commemoration as it coincides with the anniversary of the first official reporting of what became known as “the AIDS epidemic” when the US Centre for Disease Control reported five cases of a mysterious disease affecting young gay men on 5th June 1981.

Human Immunodeficiency Virus is a Lentivirus attacking the body’s immune system. If untreated, the infection usually leads to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome – commonly known as AIDS. For the longest time, the condition was a killer, but can now be controlled quite successfully now through a variety of medications, treatments and necessary lifestyle modification. The biggest dangers remains its ease of transmission and long gestation period. Many sufferers pass it on in a honeymoon period of apparent prime health and sexual activity with no symptoms apparent.

At its height, AIDS ravaged the world, and has killed approximately 38 million people. It also completely changed global society. However, as it hasn’t been a headline grabbing threat for so long and horniness is eternal, across the world – and generations! – infections are on the rise again as a people blithely interact thinking history is dead and can’t hurt them…

Sadly, how those testing positive for HIV were treated also revealed a lot about the people around them. This powerful but truly uplifting graphic tome was created in 2008 by Belgian cartoonist Tom Bouden (Max and Sven, The Importance of Being Earnest, In Bed with David & Jonathan, Queerville): a means of exploding idiotic myths, factually explaining how a positive diagnosis changes the life of someone with the disease and affects those around them.

Subtitled “A Graphic Novelette of Life with Aids”, the charming tale is delivered in traditional, welcoming Ligne Claire style (like Tintin or Blake and Mortimer); laced with warm humour to balance the tension, fear and pain, and begins eight years ago as young marrieds Sarah and Tim’s latest row is interrupted by a visit from their doctor. He has results explaining Sarah’s recent bout of assorted maladies, but needs her to take a second, confirmatory test…

And so begins a methodical, revelatory but worthwhile discourse as the couple carefully share her diagnosis with friends, family and past intimates, contrived with compassion and sensitivity and braced with solid facts throughout. Navigating and negotiating assorted treatments; dealing with mounting work issues and living as normal as life as feasible, Sarah and Tim build support networks while moving ever onward: embracing bucket lists and pill packs, discarding despair and fostering hope until they reach the stage where they can consider the next positive step… having a child…

Fronted by an emphatically positive Introduction from activist and Gay League executive Joe Palmer, this is a lovely, sensible and above all straightforward examination of HIV in the real world. That said, parents might want to review and possibly police some pages if young children are around, as it contains forthright depictions of nudity and lovemaking.
© 2013 Tom Bouden. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Rex Generations


By Ted Rechlin (Rextooth Studios/Sweetgrass Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59512-229-4 (HB)

Got your eggs yet? Some come pretty big…

I’ve never met a kid who didn’t love dinosaurs, and that gleeful fascination doesn’t fade with age or what we laughingly regard as maturity. Ted Rechlin clearly ascribes to that belief too, and has made it his life’s work, whether it’s in his 30+ books (including End of the Ice Age, Jurassic, Epsilon: a Yellowstone Wolf Story, Howl, Comicquest Time Travel Trouble or the award-winning Sharks: A 400 Million Year Journey) or superhero stuff such as freelance commissions for the likes of DC Comics, Dark Horse or Dover Publications.

Rex Generations is an incredibly informative and engaging book about family, rendered with great deftness, gleeful aplomb, and packed with the latest scientific thinking regarding arguably the most famous species of big lizard (or is that bird?) on Earth.

In case you weren’t paying attention, the clan in question is thundering great tyrannosaur Cobalt and his feisty mate Sierra, just getting by in what is nowadays Hell Creek, Montana.

This stunning full-colour hardback, however, opens in the Mesozoic bit of the Cretaceous Period, or approximately 66 million years ago on a very special night. Here our anxious apex predators proudly celebrate the hatching of four eggs, heralding the start of a new generation, after which we’ll closely follow the pack over the next decade or so. The parents teach and provide in a casually lethal environment packed with a wide variety of dangerously capable prey, rival predators and unknown perils of every description.

This is dinosaurs and natural history, not Lady and the Tramp with really big teeth, so brace yourself and your own youngsters with a little spoiler alert: not everybody present at this antediluvian nativity is going to make it…

Compelling, beguilingly educational and splendidly entertaining, T. Rex Generations is a glorious celebration of Earth’s earlier Saurian inhabitants and our enduring love affair with them. Get this read the rest and go wild!
© 2018 Ted Rechlin. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Women Discoverers: 20 Top Women in Science


By Marie Moinard & Christelle Pecout, translated by Montana Kane (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-270-0 (Album HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-271-7

Comics and graphic novels have an inconceivable power to deliver information in readily accessible form, and – exactly like all the best human teachers – do so in ways that are fascinating, fun and therefore unforgettable. Here’s a crucial past highpoint in a wave of historical and biographical visual celebrations seeking to redress centuries of gender injustice while providing true life role models for coming generations… if we have any.

Crafted by writer, editor and journalist Marie Moinard (En chemin elle recontre, La petite vieille du Vendredi) & Christelle Pecout (Lune d’Ombre, Hypathie, Histoires et légendes normandes), Les découvreuses is a cheery compendium made comprehensible to us via translation into English by the fine folk at NBM. As the name suggests, Women Discoverers focuses on 20 NOT MALE scientists and researchers who generally sans fanfare, or even fair credit, changed the world. Some are thankfully still doing so.

A combination of comics vignettes and short illustrated data epigrams preceded by an impassioned Introduction from Marie-Sophie Pawlak (President of the Elles Bougent scientific society), the revelations begin with an extended strip history citing some of the achievements of the peerless Marie Curie – whose discoveries in chemistry and physics practically reinvented the planet. She is followed by brief vignettes of French biologist Françoise Barré-Sinoussi (discoverer of the HIV retrovirus), Canadian physicist Donna Théo Strickland (laser amplification) and African-American Dorothy Vaughan whose mathematical and computing skills served the world at NASA.

It’s back to comics for Ada Lovelace who revolutionized mathematics and invented computer programming, after which single page biographies describe the achievements of and lengths undertaken by French mathematician Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet AKA Émilie du Châtelet to attend men-only institutions in the days of the Enlightenment, before writing world-changing philosophical magnum opus Institutions de Physique.

Although separated by centuries, mathematicians Emmy Noether (Germany 1882-1935) and Niger-born Grace Alele-Williams (December 16th 1932 to March 25, 2022) both excelled and triumphed despite male opposition, but their stories pale beside the strip-delivered hardships of screen star, engineer, plastic surgeon and computing/mobile phone/internet pioneer Hedy Lamarr…

Another Nasa stalwart, mathematician/astrophysicist Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson, famously calculated Apollo 11’s life-saving orbit, while paediatrician Marthe Gautier discovered the origins of Downs’ Syndrome. Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani’s geometry discoveries were tragically cut short by illness, whilst the shameful treatment and fate of British researcher Rosalind Franklin also ended in unjust sidelining, a cruelly early death and belated fame, unlike French mathematician, philosopher and physicist Sophie Germain whose many (posthumous) triumphs never brought her inclusion in the numerous scientific organisations barring female membership during her lifetime and far beyond it…

Whereas Marie Curie’s daughter Iréne Joliot-Curie won similar accolades to her mother, astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars, only to have her (male) supervisor steal the credit. At least she’s still alive to see the record set straight and reap belated fame and awards (go Google Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell to see a rare happy ending)…

In pictorial form, astronaut Mae Jemison reveals her life and medical successes on Earth, before this potent paean closes with a trio of one-page wonders: Kevlar inventor Stephanie Kwolek, Navy mathematician Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (writer of the notorious, ubiquitous and utterly essential programming language COBOL) and Chinese chemist Xie Yi, whose advances in nanotechnology are still making the world a very different place.

Sure, you could ride a search engine to learn about them all, but this book is a far more satisfying and charming alternative and the very fact that you probably haven’t heard of most of these astounding innovators – or even a few of the more ancient ones – only proves why you need this book.
© 2019 Blue Lotus Prod. © 2021 NBM for the English translation.

Posted on

The Incredible Story of Cooking – From Prehistory to Today: 500,000 Years of Adventure


By Stéphane Douay & Benoist Simmat, with Christian Lerolle, Robin Millet & Joran Tréguier, translated by Montana Kane (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-340-0 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-341-7

Usually this bit is about sex or swearing, but here I’m issuing another culinary advisory. If you are vegan, squeamish or can be upset by fish, cetaceans and other really cool animals comedically killed, butchered and consumed, do not buy this book. It’s really not for you.

The purview of graphic novels and illustrated narrative has expanded to mirror every aspect of prose print and even TV broadcasting these days. One of the most engaging for me and many others is historical investigations, breezy documentaries and fact-based investigations and speculations… and even well-researched cookbooks. Here, direct from the continent via those fine folks at NBM, is a graphic treat that combines all of that…

The history and development of cuisine has fascinated most people and this bold venture agues wittily and quite convincingly that this is the most likely way it all unfolded…

Author, economics journalist and comic book writer Benoist Simmat is mostly known to us for Wine, A Graphic History which sold over 100,000 copies in France and has been translated into many languages, but if you drink poshly you might also have seen his satirical bande dessinée collaboration with Philippe Bercovici – Robert Parker: Les Sept Pêchés capiteux. The ambitious tome under review here is likely to be just as popular, especially as it is expansively limned by comics veteran Stéphane Douay.

Born in Le Havre, the picture maker tried assorted jobs – like radio operator and actor/juggler – before settling into drawing for money. He has illustrated strips for over two decades with Matiè re fantô me, Commandant Achab, Les Anné es rouge & noir, Ririri, Don Quichotte dans la Manche, and strips in several collective albums to his great credit. In 2006, he began the Matière Fantôme series. I don’t know if he or Simmat ever worked as cooks or sous chefs…

The cookery class – extravagantly footnoted throughout – commences with their ‘Foreword – The Oldest Story in the World’ before carrying us back to Africa and a quick menu of the species that preceded us in Chapter 1 ‘The Slow Emergence Of Prehistoric Cuisine’. Beginning by examining the capture of fire by Homo erectus, the ice ages of 700,000-500,000 years ago and the first recorded/found recipes found in sites across Asia, the gastro-journey explores with wit, charm and a soupcon of silliness how chucking the latest killed catch onto flames, hot stones and embers not only introduced a whole new range of flavours but also kickstarted the discipline of bacterial control and food hygiene…

With the addition of plants as comestibles and/or flavour enhancers and preservatives, and scavenging increasingly supplanted by farming, the science of food had begun, and as neanderthals and homo sapiens spread across the globe, experts and specialists began carving out their own niches in tribes all advancing as cooking and eating together bound families and individuals into nascent societies…

The second chapter highlights ‘Dinner Tables Of The First Great Civilizations’, sampling moments and menus of Sumer and the origin of beer and trade; Mesopotamia, breadmaking and the invention of status-enhancing banquets; Assyria, the start of gender-specific cooking roles and Egypt’s embracing of salad as well as food for haves and have nots…

Also visited is proto-imperial China as its founders confirmed the link between food and health and formalised the cuisine that has conquered the modern world: a proud claim also true of its contemporary realms in the Indus valley who propounded a connection between certain edibles and a healthy soul, before the chapter closes with a round-up of the state of play in early African and Mesolithic American nations…

The combination of anecdotal snippets, hard archaeological fact and speculation all backed up with unearthed recipes continues in the same breezy manner, encompassing ‘Culinary Passions Of The Ancient Greeks And Romans’, ‘The Trade Routes of the Far East’, ‘Castle Life’ and ‘The New Worlds’ before offering deeper insights into modern eating habits and its politically-charged, commercially ruthless dominance as philosophically demarcated and defined in ‘Bourgeois Revolutions 1: Gastronomy’ and ‘Bourgeois Revolutions 2: Capitalist Cuisine’…

From there it’s a short hop into today’s fashionably foody forum in ‘The Era Of Light Eating’ briefing on “taste activism”, macrobiotics and other fad foodisms, fair trade, fast food vs junk food, biodiversity, compassion in farming, food miles, technological advances (like microwave cookers and air fryers), the power of “Big Food”, foods that harm us, the diet industry and so much more that makes eating a political choice and how staying alive is now a balancing act between health, production, pleasure and authenticity…

Following a summation asking where it will all end and how will we get there, this fabulous buffet of fact and fun wraps up with ‘Recipes’: detailing 22 significant dishes the reader can make, culled from the historical archive and the entirety of human experience across the planet.

Graded Easy, Elaborate or Difficult and spanning recent to ancient the list opens with ‘Anti-waste Velouté – Italy’ and includes ‘Vegan Hamburger – England’; ‘Chicago Hot Dog – USA’; ‘Chow Mein Noodles – China’; ‘Cincinnati Chili – USA’; ‘Fish Ceviche – Peru’; ‘Homemade Ketchup Sauce – USA’; ‘Herring and Potatoes in Oil (Hareng Pommes À L’Huile) – France’; ‘Authentic Paella Valenciana “Mixta” – Spain’; ‘Fish & Chips – England’; ‘Woodcock Hash in Beauvilliers-style Croustade – France’; ‘The Aztec Taco – Mexico’; ‘Chicken Marengo – France’; ‘Cassava-Plantain Fufu with Mafé Sauce – Ivory Coast’; ‘Pork Vindaloo – India’; ‘Oyakodon Donburi – Japan’; ‘Maestro Martino’s Macaronis – Italy’; ‘Lamprey Pâté – France’; ‘Beef Plov – Uzbekistan’; ‘Maza Bread – Greece’; ‘Roman Garum – Italy’ before ending at the beginning with ‘Prehistoric Confit – France’…

The art of food and pleasures of eating have never been better appreciated or shared than in books like these, blending fun and exoticism with the tantalising yet satisfying anticipation of gustatory consumption. Academically robust and steadfast, the book’s ‘Bibliography’ and ‘Acknowledgements’ sections are huge but fascinating, making this a simply delightful dish: an inviting comics divertissement that absolutely whets the appetite for more… and maybe a snack to accompany the ingestion…

The Incredible Story of Cooking – From Prehistory to Today © Les Arènes, Paris, 2021. © 2024 NBM for the English translation.

The Incredible Story of Cooking – From Prehistory to Today: 500,000 Years of Adventure will be published on 10th September. 2024 and is available for pre-order now. NBM books are also available in digital formats.
For more information and other great reads see NBM Graphic Novels.

Posted on

Little David


By David Cantero (Northwest Press)
eISBN: 978-1-9438900-0-2 (digital only)

Families are important: by every conceivable metric the foundation of human society. If we swallow our arrogant exceptionalism for a moment, it’s also the binding concept of all mammalian life and a fair bit of the rest of Earth’s breathing occupants. You just need to try and be flexible, tolerant, willing to re-examine old ideas in the light of changing information and where necessary loosen any old hidebound definitions you might have acquired while growing up… and be amenable to change. It always comes whether or not you want it too.

Traditional interpretation of the family concept is one we’re finally shedding: escaping centuries of oppressive preconditioning and the diktat of whatever autocratic – or, more usually, theocratic – hegemony presumes to run your life at any one time. You can consider the current foofaraw about the imaginary cosmic threat of letting people self-define their gender just the latest bunch of reactionary twaddle of a none-too-rapidly dying breed…

I’ll restate that just in case I wasn’t clear: human beings are all about families and what constitutes a family is open to personal interpretation…

David Cantero Berenguer (The Little Swallow Light, Cunitoons, People) was born in Cartagena, Spain and – after graduating in 1996 from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Liège – embarked on a stellar career as an author, cartoonist, illustrator, concept artist, designer and games maker. He is a prolific creator of books and graphic novels for kids and adults. Many of his works involve gay themes, ranging from inclusive all-ages chronicles (like the one under review here) to beguiling adult erotica.

Little David was first released in 2015 and deftly references Winsor McCay’s classic fantasy Little Nemo in Slumberland. It is a delightful and charming selection of short gags wherein an ever-inquisitive titular star cavorts, chats and interacts with nine other kids, each and all cumulatively representing the wealth of options qualifying as family units today.

David himself has two dads, and pal Ulysses has a widowed mother, a stepdad and two half-brothers. Earnest and forthright Marie just has her mum. Abrasive Big Harry is full-nuclear in a biological clan of mum, dad and one sister, whereas Lena is a result of artificial insemination undertaken by her already-divorced mother. Anastasia has a mum and dad who conceived her in vitro, and PJ was adopted. Completing the roster, Ian has a mum and a trans dad whilst twins Yoko and Keiko have two mums and are the result of natural insemination.

That’s a heady mix and subject to exactly the kind of innocently incisive, hilarious conversations you’d imagine a bunch of smart, curious kids will indulge in when the adults are absent and they’re trying to get to know each other.

The result is a wittily compelling string of spit-take moments, especially as David (and his beloved stuffed unicorn Little Poo Poo) not only learn about many other ways of living but also explore various ways of dressing and expressing his own developing personality, interests and choices…

As innocently enchanting as Peanuts, as astute as Bloom County and as outrageously revelatory as Calvin and Hobbes, this peewee playground of family fun offers as sincerely inclusive and heartwarming kindergarten of comics messaging as you’d ever want your kids to see, and is also a superb example of top rate cartooning to gladden the eyes.

Little David is a book every home and elementary school should have and use. Tell your government I said so…
© 2015 David Cantero. All rights reserved.

Posted on

A Quick & Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities


By Mady G & J.R. Zuckerberg (Limerance Press/Oni Press)
ISBN: 978-1-62010-586-3 (PB) eISBN: 978-1-62010-587-0

Here’s a handy rule of thumb for getting along. People get to decide what to call themselves. You get to accept and agree with them, as long as no one is being actually harmed or just mind your own business. That assessment is to be made by Law, not personal belief or some higher calling. If you can’t accept their definitions of themselves, you have the right to leave people alone and never interact with them. Okay?

We are the Naming Primate. If we encounter something unknown and/or scary, we give it a description, definition and title and accept it into our ever-expanding understanding of Reality. It’s what enabled us to take over this world. Naming things is generally a good thing and allows us to navigate the universe. Some people, however, use the power of naming to isolate, ostracise and wound. They are not doing it right. People like us have plenty of really fitting names for people like them when they abuse our gift.

In reality though, it seems like every time we make a move towards greater inclusivity, some faction of retrograde, regressive backwards-looking churl or biological luddite manufactures a reason (usually cribbing the lexicon of science to mask opinionated complete tosh) to prove why we can’t all get along. Dudes: take a look in a mirror…

I personally favour retaliation, but the only way to truly counter them is with understanding, so here’s a book that offers plenty of names and definitions we should all be adding to our own lexicons.

I’ve frequently/perpetually argued comic strips are a matchless tool for education: rendering the most complex topics easily accessible and displaying a potent and lasting facility to inform, affect and alter behaviour. Here’s a timely revisit and splendid example of the art form using its great powers for good…

The Quick & Easy Guide series has an admirable record of addressing uncomfortable issues with taste, sensitivity and breezy forthrightness, offering solutions as well as awareness or solidarity. Here, coast-to-coast cartoonists Mady G. & J. R. Zuckerberg collaborate on a bright and breezy primer covering the irrefutable basics on establishing one’s own sexual and gender identity (including the difference between those terms), safely navigating all manner of relationship and exploring the spectrum of experiences available to consenting adults.

A major aspect of us People Primates is that we spend a lot of our lives trying to work out who we are. It takes varying amounts of time and emotional effort for every individual… and lots of honesty.

It’s like most work. It can be unwelcome, laborious, painful and even dangerous and nobody should attempt it too soon or alone. Moreover, all too often, assistance and advice offered can be unwelcome and stemming from somebody else’s agenda. In my own limited experience for example, any sexual guidance offered by anybody with a religious background is immediately suspect and a waste of breath. Perhaps your experience is different. That’s pretty much the point here. In the end, you have make up your own mind and be your own judge…

Unlike me, A Quick & Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities takes no sides and offers no bias as it runs through the fundamentals, but only after a Foreword from cartoonist and author Roz Chast and an Intro by Mady lay out the rules of engagement on the attaching and utilisation of the labels and roles gradually becoming common modern parlance…

Micro lectures are set during a wilderness trek where an agglomeration of troubled humans have a group teaching encounter under the supervision of a “Queer Educator” endeavouring to define for them the nature of ‘Queerness’. The useful commentary, educational asides and plentiful laughs are generated by a colony of snails avidly observing proceedings like a raucous, bonerless and bewildered Greek Chorus. Such gastropods, as I’m sure you recall from school, are either male, female, hermaphroditic or something else entirely, depending on what time it is. Now that’s perspective…

Subjects covered with forthright verve, clarity and – crucially – wry wit begin with ‘What is Queer?’, proffering terms for defining Sexuality and Gender subdivided into Bisexuality, Asexuality, Pansexuality amongst many other permutations. These and later lessons are illustrated with examples starring primarily neutral vegetable critters dubbed The Sproutlings who are conveniently pliable and malleable…

‘What is Gender Identity?’ digs deeper, discussing Gender vs Sex via a little biology tutorial before ‘Now… What’s Gender Expression?’ expands the debate, determining modern manners and ways of signalling the wider world what one has decided is a person’s (current, but not necessarily permanent) status. The chat comes with carefully curated real-world examples…

This is all fine in an ideal world, but contentious, often life changing problems that can occur are tackled head-on in ‘What Does Dysphoria Mean?’: detailing examples of traumas accompanying the realisation of not being how you believe you ought to be. Divided into Physical, Social and Non-Binary Dysphoria, the examination includes ways of combatting the problems and more case histories courtesy of the human wilderness students…

In swift succession ‘So, what is Asexuality?’ and ‘What does it mean to Come Out?’ offer further practical thoughts and prospective coping tactics before vital life lessons are covered in ‘Here are some Relationship Basics’.

Also included here are an “Outro” by Zuckerberg and a section of activities including ‘Design a Pair of Friendship Jackets’, ‘Create Your Own Sprout-sona!’ and ‘How to make a Mini Zine!!’ as well as information on ‘More Resources!’ and Creator Biographies.

I hail from a fabulous far-distant era where we happily ravaged the planet without a qualm but believed emotional understanding led to universal acceptance. We’re apparently smarter about the planet now, and it’s wonderful (if a bit disappointing) to see the quest to destroy intolerance and ignorance still continues. This witty, welcoming treatise offers superb strategies for fixing a pernicious issue which really should have been done and dusted decades ago.

Hopefully, when we all share appropriate, non-evocative, un-charged terms for discussing human sexuality and gender – such as seen here – we can all make decisions and assessments to build a fairer, gentler world for everybody…
A Quick & Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities™ & © 2019 Mady G & J.R. Zuckerberg. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Thomas Girtin: The Forgotten Painter


By Oscar Zárate (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-07-2 (HB/Digital edition)

Oscar Zárate was born in Argentina in 1942. After studying architecture he worked in advertising until 1971, at which time, like so many other countrymen, he migrated to Europe. Restarting his life and career, his design and painting jobs were augmented from 1977 onwards by illustrating histories of scientific and political luminaries (the …For Beginners and Introducing… series). This led to his adapted literary graphic novels Othello (1983) and Dr. Faustus (1986). A year later he collaborated with Alexei Sayle on Geoffrey the Tube Train and the Fat Comedian and in 1991 the award-winning A Small Killing, written by Alan Moore. He also produced socially active comics strips for Fleetway’s Crisis magazine.

A creator of intellect, passion and sensitivity, Zárate has always delivered far more than expected and in his latest magnum opus advances the potential of graphic biography by combining the avowed popular rediscovery of outsider English Master Thomas Girtin: The Forgotten Painter with a compelling (hopefully, largely fictionalised) drama. The players are three modern day artistic apprentices, devout and dedicated yet adrift and floundering in their own highly personalised searches for integrity and eternal truths. Ultimately, they all finally find ways forward by looking back to a rebel genius inexplicably sidelined by history…

Arturo, Sarah and Fred are all mature-student artists who meet up at a weekly life drawing class in London. Each is passionate about their pastime but cannot escape the crippling pressures their regular lives bring. Arturo is from Argentina and still carries self-inflicted scars of betrayal and failure, as well as the shame of having escaped terror at the cost of his family. It makes him seem gruff, distrusting, weary and cynical …

Architect and imminent grandmother-to-be Sarah is crippled by a different kind of guilt: perpetually wracked by how she is not good enough at anything she does. This recently remanifested when her greatest friend from art school reached out after decades of silence and separation. Back then, Sarah had abandoned and ghosted her on the cusp of success and greatness and has ever since writhed in the torment of debilitating guilt only Catholicism can (self) inflict.

Poor Fred is perhaps the most troubled: an honest, fair-minded worker who accidentally uncovered high levels of tax fraud at work. Even after losing his job because of it, he is still being pilloried: on one side pursued by a journalist who wants him to become a whistle-blower and on the other by a gang of heavies his former bosses hired to ensure his silence…

For nearly a year the trio have gradually become friends, discussing art in after-class pub sessions. Now Fred has become an impassioned zealot with a new love. He’s discovered an 18th century genius who changed the shape of English watercolour painting and then simply vanished from public view and memory.

It’s an injustice Fred is determined to set right…

The story of Thomas Girtin is woven throughout their cumulative tale. He is an intriguing mystery and shining exemplar whose gradually reconstructed history inspires each modern-day acolyte to change the course of their own life. Arturo finds strength from the tragically ill-starred artist’s resolve and courage at a time of widespread and earthshaking political unrest: an outright proudly rebel republican in an avidly monarchist nation, despising, decrying and working against the patronage system that supported his work and kept him in luxury.

Sarah finds inspiration in the driven quest for an almost-mystical connection to Nature and a higher truth. Young Girtin was a contemporary, rival and friend of latterday English icon JMW Turner, and at the turn of the 18th century was rapidly growing in renown. Already recognised as a groundbreaking pioneer outselling his old schoolmate in the cutthroat and exploitative art scene of the day, Girtin never rested, but continually strove to capture the fundamental revelations of reality.

That all ended with his early death in 1802, aged 27. Crucially for Sarah, in his search for the truth of time and the cosmos, Girtin martyred himself: dying due to his own obsessive compulsion to capture the elements in all their ferocious fury and restorative glories…

As for Fred, Girtin’s life increasingly becomes his own. Resurrecting and redeeming the lost painter’s reputation and sharing his mastery with the world becomes his reason for living, driving him to make a pilgrimage in Girtin’s footsteps and thereafter reorder the course of his own remaining years…

The twinned stories are subtly and smoothly presented by Zárate using two different styles of illustrative painting; mixing modern-day pastel tones with stark, sepia-tinted historical episodes that reveal – in his and his characters’ eyes at least – who Girtin was and how he lived, thrived and died.

As this monumental tome unfolds and tellingly argues for Girtin’s popular revival and reassessment, the most convincing asset in that campaign are the beautiful original Girtin works. The reproductions of his greatest triumphs – “View near Beddgelert”, “Estuary of the River Taw, Devon”, “Storiths Heights” and his undisputed masterpiece “The White House at Chelsea” – are judiciously folded into the text and include a selection of large gatefold images.

This is a book about Art and a story of artists, operating on the principle that what we see which moves us, we need to share. Once the story’s done here, that can be easily first facilitated by reading erudite and engaging endpiece ‘Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) An Afterword’ by Dr Greg Smith, (Senior Research Fellow, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art) and the attendant Acknowledgements, Permissions, and copious Bibliography sections.

You can always check him out yourself. There are many places online to see Girtin’s work, and even a few museums, if you’re pushy. Then go tell a like-minded friend.
© Oscar Zárate 2023. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Mingus


By Flavio Massarutto & Squaz, translated by Nanette McGuiness (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-309-7 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-310-3

Charles Mingus Jr. was born on April 22nd 1922 in Nogales, Arizona. He was a musical prodigy perpetually held back and frustrated by the response of other people to the colour of his skin. “The Angry Man of Jazz” died in January 1979, having battled all his life whilst composing and performing some of the most groundbreaking music of all time. When you hear some you will either love it or loathe it.

That’s the facts. Anything else you need can be found on Wikipedia or in countless books written about – or by – him…

That kind of dry data isn’t what this celebration is about. Instead, journalist and author Flavio Massarutto and magazine illustrator/educator/graphic novelist Pasquale Todisco – AKA Squaz (Toutes les obsessions de Victor, Diabolik, Pandemonio) – have successfully captured the feeling and flavour of the man and his music, crafting visual cuts of key moments to make a conceptual album of his embattled existence and lasting legacy.

‘Track 1: Eclipse’ focuses on 1940 and a Hollywood backlot where extras in a cheap jungle picture discuss the appalling conditions in their other job. Once more, Charlie advocates merging their union with a white one…

The man is driven. Nothing in life keeps him from the world of words and music inside his head for long…

‘Track 2: Pithecanthropus Erectus’ finds him in New York City in 1956, meeting music critic Nat Hentoff and sharing his ideology and inspiration. It’s taken from the latest release for the astounding Charlie Mingus Jazz Workshop. Two years later and jobbing composer and film scorer Mingus almost yields to commercial pressures in ‘Track 3: Nostalgia in Times Square’…

An activist and resister all his life, the small victories against institutionalised racism start to build as the performer makes waves at the Antibes Juan-les-pins Festival 1960 in ‘Track 4: What Love’. The seduction of the senses crafted throughout comes in waves of limited-colour palette comic snippets, blending reportage with fantasy sequences and is here augmented by Squaz’s reproductions of classic Mingus record sleeve designs.

Here The Clown, Tijuana Moods, Mingus Dynasty and Blues and Roots bring us to the height of the Civil Rights revolution as ‘Track 5: Fables of Faubus’ depicts the response to Arkansas State Governor Orval Faubus closing schools to black students…

With war officially declared, the relentlessly impassioned and driven musician pushed ever deeper into music and social justice before ‘Track 6: Self-portrait in Three Colors’ details how it all proved too much. However, after referring himself to Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric assessment, Mingus was caught in racist red tape and only barely escaped an illegal lobotomy…

One of the jazz man’s greatest sins in the eyes of supremacists was miscegenation. Mingus’ relationships with white women (he married two of them) was apparently fed by a drive to unite eternally divided polarities and is addressed in metaphor via ‘Track 7: The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady’, after which ‘Track 8: Passions Of A Man’ jumps to the end days when inevitable fame and success were marred by declining health.

Unable to perform on his beloved bass, Mingus moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico for treatment and ultimately surrendered to “Lou Gehrig’s Disease” (ALS). The hallucinogenic end is pictured with grace and wonder before a posthumous scattering of his ashes in the Ganges, all seen through the eyes of his widow Susan Mingus (née Graham)…

The lasting importance of the man is seen from a child’s perspective in ‘Track 9: Epitaph’ before the soul of Mingus is displayed in ‘Bonus Track: Sophisticated Lady’. Harking back to 1972, it shows a true and perfect moment as a concert at Yale is disrupted by a hoax bomb threat. With the hall evacuated and cops trying to hustle him out, Mingus ignores everything and keeps on playing…

Accompanying the conceptual wild ride, an author’s Afterword shares Massarutto’s take on the project and this volume also includes suggestions for further enjoyment in what ‘To Read’, ‘To Hear’ and ‘To See’…

Just like its subject matter, Mingus follows a radical muse, eschews fact and formula and takes us into the heart and soul of a giant, both scary and almost beyond understanding.

This intensely personal assessment and interpretation is less a biography and more a heartfelt paean of appreciation, channelling and exploring the hard, harsh tone of troubled times where talented, dogged souls fought for recognition and survival in a world determined to exploit and consume them.
© 2021 Coconino Press. © 2021 Flavio Massarutto, Squaz. © 2023 NBM for the English version.

Mingus will be published in August 2023 and is available for pre-order now.

Most NBM books are also available in digital formats so for more information and other great reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/

Posted on

Sophie’s World – A Graphic Novel About the History of Philosophy: Volume 1: From Socrates to Galileo


By Jostein Gaarder, adapted by Vincent Zabus & Nicoby, colours by Philippe Ory with Bruno Tatti; translated by Edward Gauvin (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: ?978-1-91422-411-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

It has long been a truism of the creative arts that the most effective, efficient and economical method of instruction and informational training is the comic strip. If you simply consider the medium’s value as a historical recording and narrative system, the process encompasses cave paintings, hieroglyphs, pictograms, oriental prints, Stations of the Cross, the Bayeux Tapestry and so much more: and pretty succinctly covers the history of humanity…

For well over a century and a half, advertising mavens exploited the easy impact of words wedded to evocative pictures, whilst public information materials frequently used sequential narrative to get hard messages over quickly and simply. In a surprisingly short time, the internet and social media restored and enhanced the full universal might of image narratives to transcend language. Who doesn’t “speak” emoji?

Since World War II, carefully crafted strips have been used as training materials for every aspect of adult life from school careers advice to various disciplines of military service – utilising the talents of comics giants as varied as Milton Caniff, Will Eisner (who spent decades producing reams of comic manuals for the US army and other government departments), Kurt Schaffenberger and Neil Adams. The educational value and merit of comics is a given.

The magnificent Larry Gonick in particular uses the strip medium to stuff learning and entertainment in equal amounts into weary brains of jaded students with his webcomic Raw Materials and such seasoned tomes as The Cartoon History of the Universe, The Cartoon History of the United States and The Cartoon Guide to… series (Genetics, Sex, The Environment et al). That’s not even including his crusading satirical strip Commoners for Common Ground, and educational features Science Classics, Kokopelli & Company and pioneering cartoon work with the National Science Foundation…

For decades Japan has employed manga textbooks in schools and universities and has even released government reports and business prospectuses as comic books to get around the public’s apathy towards reading large dreary volumes of public information. So do we and everybody else. I’ve even produced the occasional multi-panel teaching-tract myself. The method has also been frequently used to sublimely and elegantly tackle the greatest and most all-consuming preoccupation and creation of the mind of Man…

Like organised religion, the conceptual discipline dubbed Philosophy has had a tough time relating to modern folk and – just like innumerable vicars in pulpits everywhere – its proponents and followers have sought fresh ways to make eternal questions and subjective verities understandable and palatable to us hoi-polloi and average simpletons.

In 1991 Norwegian teacher Jostein Gaarder found one that became a global sensation. Oslo-born in 1952, he taught Philosophy and the History of Ideas in Bergen until he retired to write a modern prose masterpiece of allegory and symbolism in the guise of a fantastic mystery and quest saga.

In an assortment of languages, Sofies verden became an award-winning bestseller in Europe, before being translated into English in 1994 and – as Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy – metamorphosed into the top-selling book on Earth a year later.

Translated into 59 languages with sales far in excess of forty million copies, it enjoys regular anniversary rereleases, and has been adapted to the large and small screen in many countries, as well as PC and board games, and all the usual merchandising instances of a global sensation…

In 2022, playwright/comics scribe Vincent Zabus (Le Journal de Spirou, Les Ombres, Incroyable!) and prolific, wide-ranging Bande Dessinée illustrator Nicolas Bidet AKA “Nicoby” and “Korkydü” (Ouessantines, Le Manuel de la Jungle, Belle-Île en père, Sang de Sein, Tête de gondola, Poète à Djibouti, C’est la guerre – journal d’une famille confine) joined forces to translate the philosophical phenomenon into words and pictures: deftly embracing the magically realist underpinnings of the tale by fully exploring and exploiting the self-imposed fourth wall (and floors and ceilings) of the “ninth art”…

Big, bold and embracing wonderment head-on, Sophie’s World – A Graphic Novel About the History of Philosophy: Volume 1: From Socrates to Galileo seductively adapts the first half of Gaarder’s masterpiece as 14-year-old Sophie Amundsen and her best friend Colleen anticipate their first protest event. They are fired up about the planet’s imminent demise and ready to fight for its life, but Sophie’s scattershot passions are suddenly derailed and her curiosity enflamed after receiving an anonymous package asking the somehow compulsively significant question ‘Who Are You?’…

The Who and Why of this enigmatic pen pal transaction completely obsess her after the unseen arrival of follow-up question “Where does the world come from”, and as she ponders, she is lured into the first of some frankly weird if not supernatural proceedings…

As Sophie determinedly seeks answers on a range of conceptual levels, further inquiring despatches literally take her on a journey through all of human development, guided at first remotely, but eventually in the shadow and company of a seemingly benign tutor with an agenda all his own.

…And at every moment and juncture – no matter how wild, impossible or magical – the girl learns and grows…

This initial comics session encompasses cunningly targeted and curated visits, affording up-close-&-personal experiences, via the entirety of the evolution of Western history and culture…

However, as bewildering engagements (or at least gripping, interactive syntheses thereof) unfold in ‘Myths and Natural Philosophers’, ‘Atom and Fate’, ‘Athens and Socrates’, ‘Plato’, ‘Aristotle’, ‘Hellenism’, ‘Two Cultures’, ‘St. Augustine, Averroes, St. Thomas’, ‘The Renaissance’, there’s a turning point in ‘The Baroque’ that unlocks and expands Sophie’s understanding whilst addressing a secret tragedy that unconsciously drives her.

Ultimately, the avid teen discovers other forces in play and unknown actors participating in her lessons, as glimpsed in ‘The Dream of Hilde’ and rebellious phase/phrase ‘A Woman is a Man’s Equal’, and before long the seeker is ready to chart her own course…

Completing the educational brief, this opening discourse includes ‘Author Biographies’ of ‘Nicoby’, ‘Vincent Zabus’ and ‘Jostein Gaarder’ and is absolutely To Be Continued…

Rendered in bright, cheerfully inviting colours in the welcoming manner of a children’s book, this vibrant voyage of discovery is mesmerising in its gently mischievous intensity: an outrageously joyous, entertaining rundown of humanity’s evolution and fundamental principles of thought, cunningly disguised as a superb conundrum to rival any detective yarn. Moreover, the seeds have all been laid for a monumental “Big Reveal” in the next volume…
© 2022 Albin Michel. Based on & © Jostein Gaarder’s novel Sophie’s World. English translation © 2022 SelfMadeHero. All rights reserved.