Category: Graphic Autobiography

Posted on

Ruins (Paperback Edition)


By Peter Kuper (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-18-8 (TPB/Digital edition)

Multi award-winning artist, storyteller, illustrator, educator and activist Peter Kuper was born in Summit, New Jersey in 1958, before the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio when he was six. Growing up there he (briefly) met iconic Underground Commix pioneer R. Crumb and at school befriended fellow comics fan Seth Tobocman (Disaster and Resistance: Comics and Landscapes for the 21st Century, War in the Neighborhood, You Don’t Have to Fuck People Over to Survive).

As they progressed through the school system together, Kuper & Tobocman caught the bug for self-publishing. They then attended Kent State University together. Upon graduation in 1979, both moved to New York and whilst studying at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute and The Art Students League created – with painter Christof Kohlhofer – landmark political art/comics magazine World War 3 Illustrated. Separately and in conjunction, in comics, illustration and via art events, Kuper & Tobocman continued championing social causes, highlighting judicial and cultural inequities and spearheading the use of narrative art as a tool of activism.

Although a noted and true son of the Big Apple now and despite brushing with the comics mainstream as Howard Chaykin’s assistant at Upstart Associates, most of Kuper’s singularly impressive works are considered “Alternative” in nature, deriving from his regular far-flung travels and political leanings. Moreover, although being about how people are, much of his oeuvre employs cityscapes and the natural environment as bit players or star attractions.

When not binding his own “Life Lived in Interesting Times” into experimental narratives – such as with 2007’s fictively-cloaked Stop Forgetting To Remember: The Autobiography of Walter Kurtz – or bold yarns like Sticks and Stones (2005), Kuper created The New York Times’ first continuing strip (1993’s Eye of the Beholder) and regularly adapts to strip form literary classics like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1991), Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (2019), Kafka’s short stories  Give It Up! (1995) and Kafkaesque (2018) as well as longer works like The Metamorphosis (2003), all while creating his own unique canon of intriguing graphic novels and visual memoirs.

Amongst the so many strings to his bow – and certainly the most high-profile – was a brilliant stewardship of Mad Magazine’s beloved Spy Vs. Spy strip, which he inherited from creator Antonio Prohias in 1997, and he also chases whimsy in children’s books like 2006’s Theo and the Blue Note or experimental exercise The Last Cat Book (1984: illustrating an essay by Robert E Howard). Whenever he travelled – which was often – he made visual books such as 1992’s Peter Kuper’s Comics Trips – A Journal of Travels through Africa and Southeast Asia. Three years later he undertook a bold creative challenge for DC’s Vertigo Verité imprint: crafting mute, fantastically expressive thriller/swingeing social commentary The System.

Kuper’s later comics – all equally ambitious and groundbreaking – had to make room for his other interests as he became a successful commercial illustrator (Newsweek, Time, The Nation, Businessweek, The Progressive, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly and more), lecturer in Graphic Novels at Harvard, a teacher at Parsons School of Design and The School of Visual Arts and – since 1988 – co-Art Director of political action group INX International Ink Company. Translated into many languages, he has built a thriving occupation as a gallery artist exhibiting globally and scored a whole bunch of prestigious Fellowships and Educational residencies as a result.

He still finds time to pursue his key interests – such as contributing to benefit anthology Comics for Ukraine: Sunflower Seeds and cultivates a lifelong passion for entomology. This hobby infused 2015’s fictionalized autobiographical episode Ruins: an Eisner Award winning tome now available again in an enthralling trade paperback edition.

A passionate multilayered tale of crisis, confrontation and renewal infused by his ecological concerns, political leanings, rage against authoritarianism and love of Mexico, it draws from the same deep well as 2009’s Diario De Oaxaca: A Sketchbook Journal of Two Years in Mexico. Between 2006 and 2008, Kuper, his wife and young daughter lived in Oaxaca, absorbing astounding historical and cultural riches, beguiling natural wonders, hearty warmth and nonjudgemental friendliness. They also witnessed how a teacher’s strike was brutally and bloodily suppressed by local governor/dictator Ulises Ruiz Ortiz – AKA “URO” – in a series of events with a still heavily disputed death toll scarring the region and citizens to this day.

Part travelogue, part natural history call to arms and paean to the culture of Oaxaca, Kuper’s tale details a marriage in crisis played out against a disintegrating crisis of governance. Recently unemployed, socially withdrawn and emotionally stunted museum illustrator/bug lover George finally capitulates and voyages to the Mexican dreamland his wife Samantha has been pining for since before they met. Under the aegis of a sabbatical year taken to write a book on pre-conquest Mexico, she has dragged him out of ennui and churlish career doldrums to a place where he can indulge his abiding love of insects, if not her…

For Samantha, it’s a return to a paradisical place and magical time, albeit one where she loved and lost her first husband. That’s not the sole cause of growing friction between the increasingly at odds couple. The lengthy trip’s overt intention of reuniting them falters as she is drawn deeply into stories of how the Conquistadors destroyed Mesoamerican cultures they found and highlights parallels to her own plight. There are other earthier distractions she just can’t shake off too…

Slowly, George’s intransigence melts as he meets people willing to tolerate his ways, see beyond his shell, and share the history, geology, geography and serenely easy-going culture that eventually penetrates his crusty exterior. All manner of distracting temptations – like the infinite variety of cool bugs! – are endless and constant as he makes friends and finds healthier ways to express himself. He even tries to renew his constrained relationship with Samantha, but there will always be one impossible, impassable barrier to their future happiness…

… And then they’re caught up in the Teachers’ strike and extra-judicial methods Governor URO employs to end it even as George achieves the milestone life goal he never thought possible and visits the Michoacan forest where Monarchs come to breed and die.

… And finds it expiring from human intrusion…

Acting as thematic spine and tonal indicator for the unfolding story, each chapter follows – with snapshot scenes of changing, degrading landscapes – the epic flight of a lone Monarch butterfly, from its start in Canada, across America to the forest’s lepidopteran devotee George ostensibly left his comfort zone home to see.

With overtones of Peter Weir’s film The Year of Living Dangerously (and Christopher Koch’s novel too), Ruins layers metaphor upon allegory, distilling political, ecological and personal confrontation into a powerfully evocative account of people at a crossroads. Inspirationally visualised in a wealth of styles by a true master of pictorial narrative and classic drama, this new paperback edition also includes an ‘Afterwords’ where the author adds context to the still ongoing saga of the civil war crime underpinning his story.

Clever, charming, chilling and compulsively engrossing, this delicious exercise in interconnectivity is a brilliant example of how smart and powerful comics can and should be.
© Peter Kuper 2015. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Walking Distance


By Lizzy Stewart (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN:978-1-910395-50-9 (HB)

Assuming you do still think, where do you go and what do you do to get in touch with yourself? I only ask because, in these days of a million and one ways to chemically, digitally functionally and emotionally sedate the mind, one the most effective ways to process information is still a good long walk…

Lizzy Stewart lives in London and Shanks’ Pony is not only how she manages city life but is also a restorative physical act which seemingly obsesses her. She even keeps a list of favourite movie walks by a host of female stars that fit all her personal criteria for moments of perfection…

Walking Distance is a coping mechanism: a meandering meditation on Right Here, Right Now, utilising a stunning sequence of painted views of what she sees on her various perambulations – a beguiling travelogue of London literally at ground level and a healthy pace – wedded to small tracts of text graciously sharing her innermost, scattershot thoughts and deliberations on notions that trouble women (and perhaps the odd man or two) these days.

All the bugbears trot along with her (and, by extension, us): getting by, success and failure, body issues, direction and achievement, growing up and growing old, family pressures, exactly what comprises norms of behaviour, unfair expectations, balances of power in gender relationships and what the future holds in store…

Naturally – and shamefully for us men – a large proportion of that menu includes deep and ever-growing concerns over personal safety and the right to privacy and agency in public. There’s isn’t a woman anywhere who hasn’t had a walk marred at some moment after apprehensively anticipating what a complete stranger in the vicinity might abruptly say or do.

Happily, the grim is balanced by the delightful: ponderings on art and work, a sense of home space and just the sheer joy of observing the fresh and new as well as the comfortingly familiar. There’s even room for intimate views of personal history and opinion, yet overall the progression is always hopeful, tending towards examination rather than hasty judgements or solutions and always in the direction the walker chooses…

This beguiling stroll offers a blend of philosophy, anxiety and anticipation, all brainstormed as she – and you, if you can keep up – strides ever onward. Clearly, walks do anything but clear your head, but can result in beautiful visual ruminations like this one: no glib sound-bite responses, no roles modelled and no solutions, but you can consider this a privileged personal chat while she walks and you don’t.
© Lizzy Stewart, 2019. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Marzi volume 2: From Heaven to Earth


By Marzena Sowa & Sylvain Savoia, translated by Anjali Singh/Mediatoon Licensing (Europe Comics)
ISBN: 979-1-03280-391-2 (digital edition only) ASIN: ?B0C1JLQFMV

As you’re surely aware by now, our Continental cousins are exceeding adept at exploring humanity’s softer, more introspective sides through comics. Here is another autobiographical tome, detailing the life of a little Polish girl growing up in an era of massive social change: a masterclass in emotive, evocative, vibrantly funny and ruthlessly sensitive storytelling to delight our senses by quietly affirming people everywhere are basically the same…

Originally released in France in 2006 as Marzi, tome 2: Sur la terre comme au ciel, this charming episodic collation continued a sequence of seven cartoon memoires by writer Marzena Sowa and her work/life partner Sylvain Savoia. They first met when she came to Paris from Poland as an exchange student, and he – a successful cartoonist and graphic novelist – quickly realised the potential of her family anecdotes as she spoke of growing up in a subjugated Soviet satellite nation at the tumultuous tail end of the Cold War…

Their published collaborations were a hit in Europe, and first translated into English for DC/Vertigo in 2011 (still available if you prefer physical books). At that time, media hype concentrated on the political aspects, but if you can, when reading this version, try to ignore that just as the creators did. It’s a shaping element and plot point – albeit a omnipresent and potent one – like boarding at Hogwarts or growing up in the Teen Titans, but the setting is almost never what the stories are about. These are tales of childhood and finding comfort. Inspiration and happiness wherever you can, not a fabricated kid’s adventure like Emil and the Detectives or a historical testament like The Diary of Anne Frank…

Marzna Sowa was born in Stalowa Wola, Podkarpackia, Poland on April 8th 1979. She grew up mostly ordinary like all her friends and family, but after achieving maturity during some of the most eventful years of the last century, changed her life path in 2001 when she left Jagiellonian University, Krakow for Bordeaux’s Michel de Montaigne University to complete studies in Literature. The how and why will become great comics in later volumes, You’ll just have to be patient or buy all the books now.

On meeting Savoia, mutual attraction became a working partnership with the first Marzi tome Petite Carp published in 2005. The last to date was released in 2017. Her other award-winning tales include N’embrassez pas qui voulez (Don’t Kiss Who You Want – 2013, art by Sandrine Revel) and Tej nocy dzika paprotka, (with Berenika Kolomycka). After further schooling to become a videographer, Sowa moved into Cinema, writing screenplays and directing documentaries while still scripting comics like La Grande Métamorphose de Théo (2022 with Geoffrey Delinte) and La Petite Évasion (2022 with Dorothée de Monfreid).

Savoia was born in 1969 in Reims and initially studied at the Saint Luc Institute in Brussels. In 1993 he co-founded art workshop 510TTC, crafting his first comics – Reflets Perdus – from a Jean-David Morvan script before beginning their extended series Nomad. Later hits included Al’Togoat (2003), Les Esclaves oubliés de Tromelin and Henri Cartier-Bresson, Allemagne 1945, supplemented by poster making, advertising art and training manual design and illustration.

Since 2018 he has helmed educational series Le Fil de l’Histoire raconté par Ariane & Nino (On the History Trail), enjoying further success with Sowa in Les esclaves oubliés de Tromelin and Petit Pays. In 2020 Savoia was made a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters.

Previous book Little Carp introduced 7-year-old Marzi, growing up in a Soviet-built apartment block. There are always shortages and long queues at the housing estate store, but somehow the market always has most of what people need. Dad works with Zdzich in the Huta Stalowa Wola, the city’s only factory, which has its own perks and perils…

Smart and observant but perhaps thinking too much, Marzi’s also – to her excitably loud and frequently angry mum’s consternation – a very picky eater, only barely aware of the effort dad must make to support them. Of course daughter is grateful, but also deeply concerned about so many things she can’t change…

State-controlled housing is short on amenities and variety (there are only two kinds of apartment available – small or bigger) with no play facilities, so kids cluster around the elevator on her floor (the fifth) to play their games vertically. Favourite is messing with lift buttons so the carriage stops at every floor. They also like ringing doorbells and running away. Marzi is great at the latter but hampered in the former as she’s afraid to ride the grim grey box and will always use the stairs if she can…

She has a strong bond with Andrzej, Magda, both Anias and especially feisty Monika, who always leads at everything, like that time Ania (1) and Andrzej’s mother pierced all their ears (except Andrzej and baby Magda!) and Monika’s mum gave them all their first earrings…

Here, we resume her ruminations on December 13th 1981, with ‘The state of fear’ as – aged 2½ – she recalls how appointed head of state General Wojciech Jaruzelski was on their intermittently-working television declaring “Poland is in a State of War!” There were tanks in the streets and everybody whispered and avoided telephones. It would be years before she understood, but her parents did right away and were really, really scared…

Marzi is a little older as ‘Reality TV’ details a world of shortages where everyone hides what cash money they have. When the little lass sees colour TV for the first time and begins agitating to get one, she sees more of a world where everything is rationed and controlled by the Kupon (coupon system) dictating the dissemination of goods and foodstuffs…

Although dictatorial by diktat and “Communist” by command, Poland remained devoutly Catholic throughout Russian rule and we jump to the most important event in a child’s life in ‘God loves me’. Mama is manically devout and goes into nuclear mode as her only daughter simply cannot get with the program and do what priests and teachers demand as her class prepare for their first Holy Communion. She just can’t understand all the fuss and her First Confession is a disaster, but this day and life-change is just inescapable…

Marzi is luckier than most of her friends as Dad has an official garden (in Britain we’d call it an allotment) and her Aunt Niusia lives on an actual farm. The family always have access to extra – fresh – food and can even make extra, under-the-table cash selling produce on the openly-ignored food black market. However, the day-dreaming child’s visits to either are always fraught with unacknowledged but pragmatic brutality. Marzi has met cows, pigs, turkeys, chickens, cats, dogs and other creatures and fully understands why mum says you shouldn’t give animals names, but it can’t stop her trying to form bonds or leave food on her plates…

A weekend at Niusia’s and a new white dress for Mass on Sunday inevitably draws calamity and catastrophe when Marzi gets on the wrong side of cart horse Baska, but her “punishment” in ‘What’s bred in the bone comes out in the flesh’ is a real gift from God, after which ‘Bad grass’ sees the family stocking up on fruit & veg from the urban spread for a quick money bonanza. Sadly, after being forbidden a go on the scythe, Marzi gets caught up in observing ants at work and lets down her folks yet again…

When (relatively) rich girl Justyna joins the class, all her American bought clothes and cosmetics prove that ‘Money does smell (good)’ whereas Marzi’s new – incontinent – guinea pig ‘Perelka’ just does not, and comes to an inevitable end in the family flat. Marzi really wanted a dog anyway…

Hinting at exotic things to come, an impromptu but welcome trip to the farm in Skowierzyn results from a distant aunt (born and raised in France!) wanting to reconnect with her roots. However, the glamour promised by ‘Oh la la Elen!’ isn’t what the little dreamer was expecting, although that disappointment was then eradicated by a 15-day stay in fabulous metropolis Krakow with grandmother Jdzia, Aunt Dzidzia and Uncle Metek…

Her first extended taste of freedom supercharges Marzi’s imagination as modernity, history, fantasy and romance collide, especially after hearing the legend and seeing the statue of the dragon ‘Smok Wawelski’. Our tiny tourist is far less enamoured of patent herbal medicines like Amol, ruthlessly dispensed when she’s deemed to have overdone things…

Despite all her gripes and doubts about everything – even God is on her “unproven” list – the life of Marzi and her pals is pretty good and generally happy, but that suddenly changes in chilling final episode ‘Breathing can be hazardous to your health’. Here, Marzi is on the farm and revelling in the mucky joys of the countryside when suddenly the adults all start acting crazy. Now, no kid can go outside, eat vegetables (no loss there!) or drink milk. The trip ends suddenly and Dad drives them back to the flat in hurry. Soon every kid is having to take nasty medicine from the hospital and all outside activities are stopped. It’s spring 1986 and slowly reports are emerging that there has been an accident in a place called Chernobyl…

A skilfully shaped, enticingly enthralling paean to growing up in interesting times (and aren’t they all?), From Heaven to Earth is a celebration of independent thought: blending pranks and misunderstanding, new fun with familial strangers and with doing tedious stuff adults tell you to. Making fun where you can as your awareness deepens and a mature world is built by ever-expanding experience, and how we all grow up to be our parent in unbalanced doses of imitation and utter rejection…

Marzi is definitely about independence and freedom, but it’s personal not national and inherently hopeful: the tale of a fish out of water learning to swim her own way. If you want polemical condemnation and confirmation of your own prejudices, look elsewhere. Better yet, stick around to see how a delightful and unique individual lived her own best life…
© 2017 – DUPUIS – SOWA & SAVOIA. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Mongrel


By Sayra Begum (Knockabout)
ISBN: 978-0-86166-269-2 (TPB)

Comics offer an immediate and potent method of communication that is both universally accessible and subtly intimate. You want countless characters and exotic locales? Just draw them. Need to navigate the most torturous tracks of the psyche and expose the most taciturn soul? Just fill captions and balloons with the words and tone that cut to the heart of the matter…

Somebody who got that from get-go was Sayra Begum, who first presented her life story in pictorial form in 2017. Happily, she shared it with the perceptive folks at Knockabout Comics who recognised a great work when they saw it. In her own incisive words and deft pencil work, Begum – identifying here as “Shuna” – shares what growing up meant for the child of a strict, devout and loving Bangladeshi Muslim mum only living in England until the family has enough money to retire to a mansion in her beloved homeland. It’s not an easy existence since her dad is a white man (a convert to Islam) who still remembers the freedoms of his old life. Moreover, the community treats them with polite disregard…

As seen in ‘Meet the Mongrel’, ‘Memories of Waterland’, and ‘The Forgotten Self’, Shuna and her siblings are pulled in so many directions growing up. She wants to be an artist, but her Amma is more concerned that she be ‘A Good Muslim’, believing ‘Life is a Test’ and her old ways such as ‘An Arranged Marriage’ are the only proper life to live…

For her parents, England ends at the front door and the household is pure Bangla within the walls. The lure of the outer world has already proved too much for one brother as seen in ‘My Poor Family’, ‘Suffocated’ and ‘The Disownment’ and soon Shuna too is living a secret life with an English lover mother could never approve of…

Continual contrasts with her perfect cousin in Bangladesh constantly wrack her conscience but Shuna has long capitulated to the wiles of Shaitan in her head. Life has a habit of upsetting all plans and exposing secrets and ‘Our Parallel Family’, ‘The Meeting’, ‘Judgement Day’ and ‘The Mongrel Children’ all reveal how even the harshest opinions may shift, leading to a truly romantic happy ending in ‘Goodbye Anger’ prior to a ruminatory ‘Epilogue’…

Begum weds brisk, informative line drawing with the dazzling traditional patterns of Islamic art and excesses of surrealism to weave a compelling and visually enticing tale of real people coping with ancient intolerances and the rapidly evolving family stresses of a fluid and fluctuating multicultural society. It’s all the more affecting to realise she’s bravely sharing the minutiae and intimacies of her own life to highlight a situation as old as humanity itself.

A magical story and a stunning debut, Mongrel is book you must read and one that has never been more timely or pertinent.
Mongrel © by 2020 Sayra Begum All rights reserved.

Posted on

Persepolis – The Story of a Childhood & Persepolis 2 – The Story of a Return


By Marjane Satrapi, translated by Anjali Singh (Jonathan Cape/Vintage)
ISBN: 978-0-22406-440-8 (v1 HB) 978-0-22407-440-7 (v2 HB) 978-0-09952-399-4 (TPB)

With Marjane Satrapi’s new book – Woman, Life, Freedom – due for publication next week, let’s take another look at the landmark cartoon biography that started her impressive career as a political commentator, activist and feminist icon before her appraisal of the changes (and not) of the current Iranian Revolution make her a target all over again…

No comics celebration/retrospective of women in our art form could be complete without acknowledging Marjane Satrapi’s astounding breakout memoirs, so let’s revisit both her Persepolis books (also available in a complete edition released to coincide with the animated movie adaptation) before you are inescapably compelled to graduate to later forays like The Sigh, Monsters are Afraid of the Moon, Chicken With Plums or Embroideries.

The imagery of a child, their unrefined stylings and shaded remembrances all possess captivating power to enthral adults. As the author grew up during the Fundamentalist revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran and replaced him with an Islamic theocracy, her recollections and comic interpretations of that time are particularly powerful, moving and – regrettably – more relevant than ever two decades later…

Originally released in France by L’Association between 2000 and 2003 as a quartet of annual volumes of cartoon reminiscence, in Persepolis – The Story of a Childhood Satrapi curated and related key incidents from her life with starkly primitivistic and forthright drawings depicting a sharp, unmoderated voice channelling perceptions of the young girl she was. That simple reportage owes as much to Anne Frank’s diary as Art Spiegelman’s Maus as Satrapi shares incidents that shaped her life and identity as a free-thinking “female” in a society increasingly frowning upon that sort of thing…

By focusing on content of the message and decrying or at best ignoring the technical skill and craft of the medium that conveys it, Persepolis became the kind of graphic novel casual and intellectual readers loved – as did kids everywhere but Chicago in 2013. Here the Public Schools CEO – apparently immune to irony – ruled years after translated publication that the books contained “graphic language and images that are not appropriate for general use” and banned them from “her” classrooms and high schools: a decision quickly reversed when students organised demonstrations and massed at public libraries to read them anyway…

However, graphic narrative is as much an art form of craft and thought as it is the dustbin of sophomoric genre stereotypes that many critics relegate it to. Satrapi created a work that is powerful and engaging, but in a sorry twist of reality, it is one that comics fans, and not the general public, still have to be convinced to read.

In the sequel Persepolis – The Story of a Return, the child-centric reminiscences of a girl whose childhood spanned the fall of the Shah and the rise of Iran’s Fundamentalist theocracy, Satrapi delved deeper into her personal history, concentrating more fully on the little girl becoming an autonomous, independent woman.

This idiosyncratic maturation unfortunately somewhat diminishes the power of pure, unvarnished observation that is such a devastating lens into the political iniquities moulding her life, but does transform the author into a fully concretised person, as many experiences more closely mirror those of an audience which hasn’t grown up under a cloud of physical, political, spiritual and sexual oppression.

The story recommences in 1984 where 15-year old Marjane is sent to Vienna to (ostensibly) pursue an education. In distressingly short order, the all-but-asylum-seeker is rapidly bounced from home to home: billeted with Nuns, distanced acquaintances of her family. a bed-sit in the house of an apparent madwoman. Eventually, in a catastrophic spiral of decline she is reduced to living on the streets before returning to Iran four years later. It is 1988…

Her observations on the admittedly outré counterculture of European students, and her own actions as Marjane grows to adulthood seem to indicate that even the most excessive and extreme past experience can still offer a dangerously seductive nostalgia when faced with the bizarre concept of too much freedom far too soon.

When she returns to her homeland, her adult life under the regime of The (first) Ayatollah is still a surprisingly less-than-total condemnation than we westerners and our agenda-slanted news media would probably expect. The book concludes with a decision to move permanently to Europe in 1994…

The field of autobiographical graphic novels is a proven and invaluable outreach resource for an art form and industry desperately seeking to entice fresh audiences for our product. As long as subject matter doesn’t overpower content and style, and we can offer examples such as Persepolis to seekers, we should be making real headway, any day now.
© Marjane Satrapi 2004. Translation © 2004 Anjali Singh.

Posted on

Baggywrinkles – A Lubber’s Guide to Life at Sea


By Lucy Bellwood with Joey Weiser, Michele Chidester & various (Toonhound Studios)
ISBN: 978-0-9882202-9-4 (TPB/Digital edition)

Everybody needs an abiding passion in their lives, and born storyteller Lucy Bellwood seems blessed with two, as this superb compilation of her comics about tall ships and the history of sailing delightfully proves.

In her Introduction Bellwood describes how at seventeen she fell under the spell of rigging, sheets and wind after spending some life-changing weeks crewing aboard Lady Washington – a fully functional replica of a 1790s Brig. How that inspired her to produce a succession of strips detailing her time afloat and many of the things she learned (then and since) make up first seafaring snippet ‘The Call of the Running Tide’: a funny, fact-packed evocation of the immortal allure of sea and stars. Following that is an utterly absorbing data page deftly describing and exactly explaining ‘What is a Baggywrinkle?’ I now know; so does my wife and one of our cats, but I’m not telling you because it’s truly cool and I’m not going to spoil the surprise…

‘Sea of Ink’ details with captivating charm and sheer poetic gusto ‘The Baggywrinkles Official Guide to Nautical Tattoos’ covering history, development and specific significance of the most popular symbols worn by mariners across the centuries. It’s followed by a definitive ‘Fathom Fact’ and account of Bellwood’s first days at sea traversing ‘Parts Unknown’ whilst nailing down the very basics of the ancient profession. It’s backed up by the nitty-gritty of seaman’s staple ‘Hard Tack’…

‘The Plank’ outrageously, wittily and saucily debunks accumulated misleading mythology surrounding pirates’ most infamous human resources solution, counterbalanced by an evocative look at the first Lady Washington’s forgotten place in history before ‘Pacific Passages’ reveals how, in 1791, the Boston trader and accompanying sloop Grace deviated slightly from a voyage to Shanghai and discovered Japan by anchoring in Oshima Bay. A tale of remarkable restraint and mutual respect which ended happily for all concerned, whereas  the real trouble started 63 years later when Commodore Matthew Perry showed up and forced isolationist Japan to open her doors to foreign trade…

That salutary tale is bolstered by a ‘Glossary’ of Japanese/English terms, and followed by a superbly succinct history of the greatest scourge ever to afflict nautical travellers. ‘Scurvy Dogs’ relates the effects, causes and raft (not sorry!) of solutions postulated and attempted by every stripe of learned man in the quest to end the debilitating condition’s toll of attrition. It’s followed by ‘Scurvy Afterword’: an engrossing essay by Eriq Nelson relating how we’re not out of the woods yet and why Scurvy still blights the modern world from individual picky eaters to millions suffering in refugee camps.

Wrapping up this magnificently beguiling treat is ‘The Scurvy Rogues’: an outrageously enticing and informative ‘Guest Art Gallery’ with strips and pin-ups from fellow cartoon voyagers Lissa Treiman, Betsy Peterschmidt, Adam T. Murphy, Kevin Cannon, Ben Towle, Steve LeCouilliard, Isabella Rotman, Dylan Meconis & Beccy David.

…And while we’re at it let’s not forget to applaud the colouring contributions of Joey Weiser & Michele Chidester.

Meticulously researched, potently processed into gloriously accessible and unforgettable cartoon capsule communications, the salty sea-stories shared in Baggywrinkles are brimming with verve and passion: a true treat for all lovers of seas, wild experiences, comfy chairs, good company and perfect yarn-spinning.
© 2010-2016 Lucy Bellwood. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Dear Beloved Stranger


By Dino Pai (Urban-Fairy Tales/Top Shelf Productions)
ISBN: 978-1-60309-271-5 (TPB)

The search for love is a primal drive in almost every human being, but so are the equally obsessive, transcendent passions to find one’s station in the world and accomplish great deeds. What happens when none of those quests seem to be progressing or, even worse, when they seem to be implacably at odds?

In 2013 this stunning, Xeric Award-winning debut comic tale addressed just such thorny issues in an intimate, candid and introspective manner. Solitary, intense, dedicated Dino has just finished art school and ponders where his now directionless life is heading next. His search for work and zeal for aesthetic creation hasn’t left much time for a social life so he developed a novel coping mechanism. Moreover, now that he’s truly on his own, inspiration also seems to have died…

Somewhere “Out There” is a soulmate: “His Girl”, patiently waiting to be found. Until that happens, Dino writes notes sharing his life, thoughts and dreams, folds them into paper airplanes and trusts the breeze and fate to take them to where they need to be…

One directionless day when he’s restocking drawing supplies, he finds former classmate Cathy temping at the art store while she saves up for fashion school. The chance encounter makes him realise everyone is progressing but him and Dino resolves to try harder to make and enact choices.

… And somewhere across the city, Cindy finds a crumpled-up paper plane in the street…

He meets Cathy again at an art show and her casually spoken neutral words somehow inspire him. Returning home, Dino stares at the picture of the beautiful Japanese pop star on his wall and starts to create a story: a comic book tale of a boy’s journey…

It starts with a siren song calling him. He hears and climbs through a keyhole, following ever-onwards through strange, perilous and uncanny regions. Along the way are friendly animals who help him survive unnatural perils.

As the work laboriously nears completion it completely consumes him, but still, somehow, whenever Dino leaves his room and re-enters the real world, Cathy is there and slowly, inevitably his two existences drift together.

Crafted in a dazzling variety of styles, techniques and media, Dear Beloved Stranger superbly captures that all-consuming hunger for the indefinable something every frustrated lover feels must be out there somewhere: translating that debilitating absence into a candid examination every person in search of human completion has ever endured.

Sweet, sharp, sour and ultimately enlightening, this is a story for all lovers, would-be lovers and lovers of what might be.
© 2013 Shih-Mu Dino Pai. All rights reserved.

Posted on

It’s a Bird…


By Steven T. Seagle, Teddy Kristiansen & various (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0109-8 (HB) 987-1-4012-7288-3 (TPB)

Since his debut in June 1938, Superman has proven to be many things to billions of people, to the point of even changing their lives and shaping their actions. It’s a Bird… was first released in 2004, offering a departure from typical Superman graphic novel fare with author Steven T. Seagle working through his understandable creator-angst about writing the ongoing adventures of the Man of Steel without simply rehashing what has gone before.

Seagle (whose other comics work includes Uncanny X-Men, Sandman Mystery Theatre, Big Hero 6 and Genius, and is part of TV cartoon creation collective Man of Action) actually scripted Superman #190-200 – published between April 2003 and February 2004. The intriguing, demi-therapeutic exercise revealed in this slim and beguiling pictorial introspection deals with the author’s misgivings about contributing to the canon of an eternally unfolding legend.

However, underpinning what might so easily become a self-gratifying ego-stroke is a subtle undercurrent of savvy verity that struck a chord with many fellow industry professionals and insightful consumers as the professional writer finally found themes he needed to explore to be satisfied with his commission.

Let’s be honest here, every comic fan, indeed every twitcher and hobbyist, looks for a way to present and explain their particular passion to the “real” or perhaps “civilian” world and not feel like an imbecile in the process…

Employing barely One Degree of Separation, “Steve” is a writer working through some emotional baggage. He is still coming to terms with his family’s gradual but inescapable disintegration – mental, physical and spiritual – from hereditary genetic disease Huntington’s Disease (Chorea, as was).

In everyday life, his father has gone missing, and his mom and partner are making the “let’s have kids” noises whilst Steve is helplessly waiting for a hammer to fall regarding his own potential prognosis with a condition that cannot be beaten…

He never wanted to write comics – even though he’s successful at it – and now his editor wants him to write Superman. Steve has never had any feeling for the character or the medium and his damned editor just keeps on and on and on about…

You get the picture?

It’s a Bird… is slow and lyrical in its deconstructive self-absorption as Steve – eventually – makes his choices, whilst Teddy (The Sandman, The Dreaming, Grendel Tales, Genius) Kristiansen’s range of enticing drawing styles provides an eye-catching display of sensitivity and versatility – one which won him the 2005 Eisner Award for Best Painter/Multimedia Artist (Interior). If you feel the urge to go beyond panel borders of your private obsession, this one is well worth a look, and a book demanding a digital rerelease ASAP.
© 2004, 2017 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Alone in Space – A Collection


By Tillie Walden (Avery Hill Press)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-58-5 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Time of Wonders to Be Reseen… 10/10

Transitions are important. In fact, they are life changing. But so can be looking to where we just came from. In this superb compilation you can see some of how the amazing Tillie Walden got to where she is now.

We usually attribute wisdom and maturity in the creative arts to having lived a bit of life and getting some emotional grit in our wheels and sand in our faces, but – at least in terms of age – that’s not the case for the Texas-raised pictorial raconteur, whose beguiling string of releases include On a Sunbeam, Clementine, Spinning and Are You Listening?

Walden is still a relative newcomer – albeit a prolific one – who has garnered heaps of awards and acclaim. Whether through fiction or autobiographical works (frequently both at once), she can engender feelings of absolute wonder, combined with a fresh incisive view and measured, compelling delivery in terms of both story and character. Her artwork is sheer poetry.

Following an erudite and recapitulating Introduction by Warren Bernard the comics begin with a breakthrough moment. The remarkably adept neophyte auteur began her rise with Ignatz Award-winning debut graphic novel The End of Summer. Compelling and poignant, it is a family drama fantasy, chillingly reminiscent of Nordic literary classicists like Henrik Ibsen, Astrid Lindgren or Tove Jansson, thematically toned like Brian Aldiss’ Helliconia novels whilst visually citing Dave Sim’s Cerebus collections High Society & Church & State.

Most impressive is the fact that The End of Summer was crafted in 2015 as a side-project whilst Walden was finishing her First-Year major assignment at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. There are further treats from that time at the back of this epic collection, which also include this story’s prequel ‘Lars and Nemo’.

Like everything Walden creates, this is a story I hesitate to describe because it’s a beguiling immersive experience that doesn’t need me spoiling it for you. Get it, read it, tell a friend.

What I will say is this: in distant place servants and staff rush to seal a colossal, cathedral-like palace. Winter is coming and the palatial bunker will be closed off for three years…

In that oppressive atmosphere, frail prince Lars and his twin sister Maja become increasingly aware of the tensions and quirks afflicting their large family.

Lars’ failing physicality has made him a quiet, introspective and fatalistic observer, whilst his dependence on Nemo – a gigantic housecat acting as companion and living, loving wheelchair – mark him as a marginalised target for siblings Olle, Per, Nikolaus and Hedda. As time passes and the children seek ways to amuse themselves, increasingly unstable Per seems to find the oppressive isolation and vast scale of the palace as well as the disinterest and suppressed tensions of the adults incomprehensibly claustrophobic.

Before long, the dooms and disasters Lars is obsessed with start to manifest, leading to tragedy and terror…

Beautifully illustrated in monochrome tones, with Brobdingnagian perspectives shaping every panel, this saga of an opulent yet cold House of Secrets, shielding a broken family from the elements but not themselves and each other, is a superb examination of humanity at its best and worst.

Walden followed up on her Ignatz Award-winning debut with this fluffy yet barbed coming-of-age tale. Part Sweet but not Calorific, I Love This Part deliciously pictorializes life-changing happy, introspective, contemplative and aspirational moments between two schoolgirls who have found each other. Shared dreams, idle conversations, disputes and landmark first steps, even fights and break-ups are seen and weathered.

Novelty, timidity, apprehension, societal pressure and even some unnecessary shame come into it, but generally it’s just how young people learn to love and what that that can entail…

Apart from the astoundingly graceful and inviting honesty of the tale, the most engaging factor is the author’s brilliant dismissal of visual reality. These interactions are backdropped by wild changes in dimension and perspective, abrupt shifts in location and landscape and shots of empty spaces, all adding a sense of distance and whimsy to very familiar proceedings.

Walden is a great admirer of Little Nemo so fellow afficionados will feel at home even if some might experience the odd sensation of disorientation and trepidation. Like being in love, I suppose…

A City Inside is another seamlessly constructed marriage of imagination and experience to unflinching self-exploration, constructing a perfect blend of autobiography and fantasy into a vehicle both youthfully exuberant and literary timeless.

Opening in a therapy session, the story delves intimately into a woman’s past, from isolated southern days to bold moments of escape – or is that simply drifting away? – in search of peace and a place to settle. We all leave home and then grow up, and here that transition is seen through a tentative alliance with an idealised first love. It fumbles and fails thanks to the dull oppression of the Happy Ever After part that no fairy tale ever warns you about…

Eventually life builds you into the being you are – hence the symbolism of a vast internal metropolis – and life goes on, or back, or away, or just somewhere else. That’s pretty much the point…

Supremely engaging, enticingly disturbing and ultimately utterly uplifting, this shared solo voyage to another county is a visual delight no lover of comics can possibly resist. Apart from the graceful honesty on show, the most engaging factor is the author’s inspired rearrangement of visual reality. These dictate mood and tone in a way a million words can’t, supplying a sense of grace and wistful whimsy to the affair.

You’d have to be bereft of vision and afflicted with a heart of stone to reject these comic masterpieces, but for many even more rewarding is a glimpse at how that narrative acumen developed.

Rounding out this epic tome is a wealth of Comics by Tillie Walden Aged 16-20 Years Old: all accompanied by author’s commentary to foster understanding or highlight points of interest. From 2013, ‘Glare’ details a childhood spat before 2014’s ‘My Name Is…’ acts as an introduction to a new student whilst the same year sees the artist dabble with colour on a visit to ‘Slumberland’…

Scale and compression inform visual experimentation in 2014’s ‘Cramped’, ‘Journal Entry’ and ‘The Graduate’ after which 2015’s growth opens with longer works and a tribute to major influence ‘Ghibli’ followed by evocative breakthroughs ‘Lost Trees’ and ‘Dreaming’. That same year looking back to childhood spawned oppressive fancy ‘Sun in My Eyes’ and graduation piece ‘In the Palm of Your Hand’…

In 2016 rapid fire soliloquy ‘The Weather Woman’ led to aforementioned prequel ‘Lars and Nemo’ (don’t read it first, okay?) and Walden’s first trip to space in ‘Alive’ ending with a reflective slice of visual verity in ‘What it’s Like to be Gay in an All Girls Middle School’.

Rounding out the candid review is course project delight ‘Q & A’ and fantasy moment ‘The Fader’ (2018) segueing into a stunning Gallery section of promotional prints, posters, variant book covers, and bookplates.

Superbly engaging, shockingly nuanced and movingly beautiful, these works are pure comics magic no lover of the artform should miss.
© Tillie Walden 2021. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Follow Me In


By Katriona Chapman (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-38-7 (HB/Digital edition)

Katriona Chapman is a story-maker who has been crafting superb tales in Small Press titles like Tiny Pencil (which she-cofounded), Comic Book Slumber Party, Ink & Paper, Save Our Souls, Deep Space Canine and her own award-winning Katzine. She draws beautifully and knows how to quietly sneak up, grab your undivided attention and never let go – and she hasn’t spent all her life sat at a desk either.

Follow Me In was her first novel-length tale (go look up Breakwater when you’re done here), combining recollections of a particularly troubling time in her life with clearly the most life-affirming and inspirational events one could hope to experience.

At the railway station, a young woman meets up with an old boyfriend. He’s a writer and she draws. It’s been years and they’re still awkward and uncomfortable in each other’s presence. They talk about the time in 2003 when they decided to trek the entire country of Mexico, north to south-east to west. Back then they were looking for themselves. As her mind goes back, she realizes she’s a lot closer to answers than he is…

This hefty yet pocket-sized (165 x 216 mm) hardcover traces that voyage with exquisite detail, relating history, culture, the sights, and most especially the actual, non-screaming headlines and bad-movie images of a young nation with thousands of years of history, architecture and archaeology: a nation that proudly boasts dozens of indigenous cultures living in relative harmony, speaking at least 68 legally recognised languages and constantly being reshaped by political turmoil. Moreover, no traveller should miss this tome – if only for the advice on bugs, minibeasts and illnesses…

Follow Me In is deftly lyrical and enchantingly enticing; a moving and intoxicating graphic assessment of a crucial time in the illustrator’s life, filled with facts, warmth and conflict, offering fascinating data on such varied topic as ‘A Selection of Mexican Foods’, ‘Learning Spanish’, ‘Travel Sketching’, ‘What’s in our Bags?’ and ‘The Conquests’, all equally compelling and useful to know. And through it all, you’ll want to know what happened to our travellers as they transition from kids to grown-ups as much as what they’ll see next in this magnetic story within a story.

Refreshing, redemptive and rewarding, this is a read to chase away all winter blues and existential glums and an experience you must not deprive yourself of.
© Katriona Chapman 2018. All rights reserved.