Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash


By Dave McKean & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-50670-108-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Magnificent and thought-provoking… 9/10

After so many years of being sidelined and despised, sequential narrative has finally been acknowledged as one of humanity’s immortal and intrinsic art forms. That’s never been more apparent than in this astounding biographical examination of celebrated surrealist, landscape painter and war artist Paul Nash, as conceived, designed and created here by modern master of many disciplines Dave McKean.

Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash was commissioned to supplement a retrospective exhibition of Nash’s work, running at London’s Tate Gallery from October 26th 2016 to March 5th 2017. Thia was done as part of 14-18 Now: the Arts plank of Britain’s national centenary commemoration of the Great War. The project was set in motion as a result of the always wonderful Lakes International Comic Art Festival (so you should also look them up, send an effusive thank you and book early for next year’s shindig). At the time the book also came in a limited edition run of 400 signed hardbacks…

This huge (280 x 219 mm) comics chronicle is rendered in a stunning melange of styles alternatively racing and meandering in evocatively sequential manner through Nash’s nightmares and memories. Distilled from his art works, correspondence and writings, it examines the artist’s thoughts and reactions in dreamlike snippets as he comes to terms with a troubled family life, the staggering shocks of war and his lifelong striving for a clear artistic vision. These visions are filtered through a lens of mud, blood and unremitting horror which didn’t diminish after surviving life in the trenches.

Potent and evocative, this is a compelling visual poem not meant as a primer, biographical introduction or hagiography. It’s a celebration of Nash’s art and ethos, and a reminder of the pointless futility of throwing away people’s lives, delivered in styles and imagery deftly chosen for emotional impact. As such it might require you to consult a favourite search engine to grasp the subtler nuances, but any fool can see that a century on from the close of the War to end all Wars, we’ve all individually or collectively made precious little progress or changed in any significant way…

At least we can all still appreciate and be moved by beauty and horror, or art and suffering, and here, it’s definitely worth the effort.
Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash ™ & © Dave McKean. All rights reserved.

Tosh’s Island

Version 1.0.0

By Linda Sargent, Joe Brady & Leo Marcell, adapted by Kate Brown (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-333-2 (Digest HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Powerful, Moving and Memorable… 9/10

British comics’ triumph The Phoenix has been generating fun, fantasy and wild adventure for kids since 2012, scoring some impressive results – such as Bunny Vs Monkey, Mega Robo Bros and No Country – and generally lifting the standards of comics literature and quality of graphic novels for children.

Now, thanks to writers Linda Sargent (drawing on her own childhood experiences) & Joe Brady, and illustrator Leo Marcell, the comic periodical has developed a far more traditional kind of children’s drama: one that should rank beside such potent “real-world” fantasies as A Dog So Small, The Family from One End Street or The Secret Garden.

Tosh’s Island is set in bucolic Kent hops country in the era between the end of rationing and advent of mobile phones, and follows the decline and resurgence of an indomitable spirit coming to terms with the cruellest and most unjust of circumstances.

It begins as Tosh is getting ready for secondary school: helping dad ready the hops and prepare the Oast House for Autumn and having him tell again the story of her being The Gooseberry Girl found under a bush. It’s much better than the ordinary story of how they adopted her. Tosh is fit and active and great at rounders, loves her bike, climbing with best friend Millie, and making up fantastic tales – especially about mermaids…

And suddenly, one afternoon it all starts to go wrong.

Slowly pain visits her, increasingly wracking her body and sucking all the energy out of her. The doctor thinks it’s nothing, but soon Tosh is constantly, chronically suffering. Not wanting to make a fuss, she soldiers on, but soon, it’s impossible to keep her suffering – and fears – secret. As big school starts, she finds everything harder, and old and new friends soon start talking about and taunting the troublesome attention-seeker.

Thankfully, her parents believe her, moving heaven and earth to get to the bottom of the mystery. There’s always hope of a recovery or at least end to pain, and treats like a visit to the beach. Here she meets a lonely French boy as forlorn as her – and as imaginative. Together they build a mind palace of refuge, an island for mermaids and shark rides and castles in the air. Corresponding with Louis will save Tosh’s sanity, but only after inadvertently causing her immense grief and embarrassment…

The mystery and misery continue until at last the right diagnosis and even treatment is found, but it certainly not all good news…

A forceful and evocative personal history of fortitude and resolve mesmerisingly clad in whimsy, charm and beguiling imagination, Tosh’s Island is a brilliant introduction to real world problems any kid can grasp and be moved by, in exactly the way books like Animal Farm, Tarka the Otter or Lord of the Flies negotiate the transition from sheltered child to understanding proto adult… and all in utterly entrancing pictures.

Do not miss this landmark tale.
Text © Linda Sargent & Joe Brady, 2024. Illustrations © Leo Marcell, 2024. All rights reserved.

Tosh’s Island will be published on October 10th 2024 and is available for pre-order now.

750cc Down Lincoln Highway


By Bernard Chambaz & Barroux, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-245-8 (album TPB/Digital edition)

For such a relatively young country, there’s an astounding amount of vibrant – and largely self-perpetuating – mythology underpinning America. Cowboys, Indians, colonialism, Manifest Destiny, gangsterism, Hollywood, food, Rock ‘n’ Roll and even names and places have permeated the imagination of the world. This last even created its own sub-genre: tales of travel and introspection ranging from Kerouac’s On the Road to Thelma and Louise via the vast majority of “Buddy movies” ever made.

Somehow, such stories seem to particularly resonate with non-Americans. Scots, French and Italian consumers are especially partial to westerns, and Belgians adore period gangster tales set in the golden age of Los Angeles. I must admit that during my own times stateside there was always a little corner of my head that ticked off places I’d seen or heard of from films, TV or comics: Mann’s/Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, Central Park, Daly Plaza, Empire State Building as well as uniquely American moments and activities – pretzel cart, bag of potato chips bigger than my head, bar fight, someone saying “yoo Brits…” – as I experienced them myself. That’s the true magic of modern legends.

It’s also the theme driving this beautiful travelogue depicting life imitating art…

Available in oversized (288 x 214 mm) paperback and digital formats, 750cc Down Lincoln Highway reveals how a French competitor in the New York Marathon takes a cathartic life detour after getting a “Dear John” text from his apparently no-longer Significant Other one hour before the start.

Understandably deflated, he hits a bar, discovers bourbon and strikes up a conversation with one of life’s great survivors…

Ed’s barfly philosophy hits home – as does his description and potted history of the Lincoln Highway – and before long our remarkably reliable narrator has hired a motorbike and opted to cross the USA along the historic route from East Coast to West…

Rendered in a dreamy, contemplative wash of greytones, his ride becomes a shopping list of transitory experiences confirming – and occasionally debunking – the fictive America inside his head and his preconceptions of the people who live there.

Putting concrete sounds, tastes, sights and smells to such exotic ports of call as Weehawken, Princeton, Trenton, Philadelphia, Gettysburg, Pittsburgh, Zulu, Fort Wayne, Chicago, Dekalb, Mississippi, Central City, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City, Eureka, Reno, Lake Tahoe, Berkeley and so many other places before reaching the highway’s end at Poteau Terminus, the once-broken rider regains his life’s equilibrium and gets on with the rest of his life, happy that the trip and anonymous people he met have rewarded him with fresh perspective and rekindled hope…

Written by award-winning novelist, poet and historian Bernard Chambaz (L’Arbre de vies, Kinopanorama) and backed up by an extensive map of the trip, garnished with suitable quotes from Abraham Lincoln, this is quite literally all about the journey, not the destination…

This beguiling excursion is realised by multimedia artist and illustrator Barroux (Where’s the Elephant?, In the Mouth of the Wolf), serving as a potent reminder of the power names and supposition can exert on our collective unconsciousness.

It’s also a superbly engaging, warmly inviting graphic meander to a mutual destination no armchair traveller should miss.
© 2018 URBAN COMICS, by Chambaz, Barroux. ©2020 NBM for the English translation Hearst Holdings Inc. All rights reserved.

Goblin Girl


By Moa Romanova, translated by Melissa Bowers (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-68396-283-0 (HB/Digital edition)

Scandinavian artists and authors seem to have a real knack for combining comics with therapy and producing truly memorable books you really want to tell your friends about. Like this one…

Stockholm resident and dog-lover Moa Romanova (Moa Johanna Strinnholm as was) came into the world in 1992 in Bollstabruk, Kramfors Municipality, Sweden. She’s an artist and musician who studied painting at the Gothenburg School of Fine arts before becoming a worthy graduate of the wonderful Malmö Comic Art School. She’s done a whole bunch of other stuff too, such as fanzine On Tour and second graphic novel På glid (Off the Rails). Today, though, let’s plug her multi-award-winning debut graphic novel which English-language readers can see as Goblin Girl. Available in at least seven languages so far, it started life as Alltid Fucka Upp when first published in Sweden by Kartago förlag.

The Goblin in question is a young woman of artistic temperament and ambitions who suffers from crushing panic attacks and other contemporary insecurities. Despite being broke and stuck in a grotty squat over a shop, she’s getting by, thanks to mum, friends and a counsellor I personally wouldn’t give house room…

Looking for love – aren’t we all? – she hooks up online with a minor TV celeb who’s far too old for her, but at least he seems to listen. It’s not undying passion, but in the absence of anything better…

He seems to want nothing, and validates her life …even offering to sponsor her art career. Are things finally looking up? Aren’t there always strings attached?

And so, her life progresses via drink, panic attacks, other people, concerts, social services, work, no work, body issues, relationships, fraught travel, psych evaluations and admissions: all the crap making up a modern life if you’re not born perfect but still have a brain to be unhappy and discontented with…

Dealing with contemporary life, mental health issues and the inescapable problem of unequal power dynamics in all relationships in an uncompromising but astonishingly steady – if not upbeat – manner, Goblin Girl (available in breathtaking oversized hardback or digital editions) is a remarkable testament and to modern living and appraisal of the costs involved, beautifully drawn in a deliberately ugly way and deeply, inescapably moving. You won’t all like it, those who do won’t like all of it and those of you who take it on will read it over and over again and still come away wanting more…
© 2020 Moa Romanova. English translation © 2020 Melissa Bowers. This edition © 2020 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

Giant


By Mollie Ray (Faber & Faber)
ISBN: 978-0-571-37419-9 (HB)

The true power of comics storytelling is its innate ability to cut through layers of language, fluff and obfuscation to impart pure meaning, feeling and response on a symbolically primal level. When a carefully constructed image hits below the strata of constructed reality the impact is devastating and lasting.

Such is absolutely the case in Giant as debutante author Mollie Ray cuts through the hindrance and drawbacks of deceptive, misunderstandable language, with all its inherent accidental barriers, to reach a universally communal level of understanding.

Using evocative design, staging and carefully crafted characters beautifully drawn, directed and positioned in the manner of classic silent movies, she relates a transformational, deeply personal crisis into a universal parable of fear, hope and in this case joyous resolution all without saying a word…

Meticulously rendered old school in ballpoint pen on cartridge paper and channelling a dire medical emergency, she shows how a loving family is stressed, stretched, almost crushed and so nearly destroyed when a youngster suddenly succumbs to a disease and resultant condition that changes everything and affects everyone.

The silent saga is every parent and sibling’s nightmare, with a resolution coming not through magic or miracles but through hard work, medical resolve, unceasing endurance, patience and understanding.

This tale is a moving and most remarkable achievement that will resonate far beyond the usual comics and graphic novel circles. Don’t wait for the inevitable animated adaptation to become a seasonal standby: buy Giant now and show all your friends… and enemies too, if you can get them to not listen…

Artwork & design by Mollie Ray. © Mollie Ray, 2024. All rights reserved.