Category: Lifestyle

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Explainers


By Jules Feiffer (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-835-0 (HB)

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

In January this year we lost one of the few remaining titans of our industry and art form. Bronx-born Jules Ralph Feiffer (January 26th 1929 – January 17th 2025) was always far more than “just a comic-book guy”, even though his credits in the field are astonishingly impressive. Feiffer wrote upwards of 35 books, plays, and screenplays and was frequently cited as the most widely read satirist in America. His creative credits extend far beyond the world of print. Feiffer was one of the playwrights on stage revue Oh! Calcutta! (collaborating with Kenneth Tynan, Edna O’Brien, Sam Shepard, Leonard Melfi, Samuel Beckett & John Lennon) and has created 35 plays, books and screenplays including Carnal Knowledge and Little Murders. In 1961 his animated trenchant antiwar short feature Munro won an Academy Award.

In our isolated, outlier field, Feiffer began his career working for and with Will Eisner on The Spirit and other comics features, before creating his own Sunday strip Clifford (1949-51). He eventually settled at The Village Voice, art directing and crafting a variety of comics for kids and adults. These include Sick, Sick, Sick, Passionella and Other Stories (1959), Feiffer on Nixon, the Cartoon Presidency (1974), Knock Knock (1976), Tantrum (1979), I Lost My Bear (1998), Kill My Mother (2014) and Amazing Grapes (2024).

He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1995, and his many awards include a Pulitzer and Oscar, an Obie, Inkpot, National Cartoonists Society’s Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award, and Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Writers Guild and Dramatists Guild of America. In 2004 he was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame and was later recognized by The Library of Congress for his “remarkable legacy as a cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, adult and children’s book author, illustrator, and art instructor”. In 2006 was awarded the Creativity Foundation’s Laureate.

Novelist (Harry: The Rat with Women, a Novel in 1963 and 1977’s Ackroyd), animator, educator, academic, film maker, playwright (why isn’t there a single-word term for those guys?), he officially turned his back on cartooning in 2000, but the 42-year run of his satirical comic strip in The Village Voice ranks as some of the most telling, trenchant, plaintive and socio-politically perspicacious narrative art in the history of the medium.

In 1965 Feiffer kickstarted academic American comic fandom with his celebratory evaluation of the industry’s formative Golden Age The Great Comic Book Heroes, and in 1979 was at the forefront of the creation of graphic novels with Tantrum before scripting Robert Altman’s much-undervalued Popeye movie (released a year later).

After years as a cartoonist, illustrator, pundit and educator, at the age of 85 (having been born in the Bronx on 26th January 1929) he returned to his primary role of storyteller with another gripping and innovative graphic novel – for which read on after the review below…

Originally entitled Sick, Sick, Sick, and latterly Feiffer’s Fables, before simply settling on Feiffer – Feiffer’s Village voice strip was quickly picked up by the Hall Syndicate and developed a devoted worldwide following. Over decades the strip generated many strip collections – the first book was in 1958 – since its low key premiere. The auteur’s incisive examination of American society and culture, as reflected by and expressed through politics, art, Television, Cinema, work, philosophy, advertising and most especially in the way men and women interacted, informed and shaped opinions and challenged accepted thought for generations. They were mostly bloody funny and wistfully sad too – and remain so today.

Fantagraphics Books began collecting the entire run in 2007 – and we’re all waiting patiently for the run to continue and conclude. However Explainers is a magnificent first volume of 568 pages, covering the period from its start in October 1956 up to the end of 1966. As such, it covers a pivotal period of social, racial and sexual transformation in America and the world beyond its borders and much of that is – tragically- still painfully germane to today’s readers.

Explainers is a “dipping book”: not something to storm your way through, but a faithful relaxation resource to return to over and again. Feiffer’s thoughts and language, his pictorial observations and questions on “the eternal verities” are potently, dauntingly relevant even now. As I’ve already mentioned, it is utterly terrifying how many problems of the 1950s and 1960s still vex and dog us today – and the “Battle of the Sexes” that my generation honestly believed to be almost over still breaks out somewhere every minute. Of course, now we have the internet to advise and enrage us further…

Most crucially and compellingly, Feiffer’s expressive drawing is a masterclass in style and economy all by itself.

If you occasionally resort to Thinking and sometimes wonder about Stuff, this book should be your guide and constant companion – and it will make you laugh.
© 2007 Jules Feiffer. All Rights Reserved.

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How to Be Happy


By Eleanor Davis (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-740-6 (HB/Digital edition)

Do acts of creation make one happy? They certainly do for me, but sometimes so do acts of wanton destruction. I’m sharing, not judging. With all the emotional pressure that builds at this time of year, let’s revisit a beautiful and beguiling picture treat intended to reinvigorate a little perspective and say “it’s not all bad”…

Eleanor Davis is one of those rare sparks that just can’t help making great comics. Born in 1983, and growing up in Tucson, Arizona, she was blessed with parents who reared her on classic strips like Little Nemo, Little Lulu and Krazy Kat. Following unconventional schooling and teen years spent making minicomics, she studied at Georgia’s wonderful Savannah College of Art and Design, and went on to teach there. Her innovative works have appeared in diverse places such as Mome, Nobrow and Lucky Peach.

A life of glittering prizes began after her award-winning easy reader book Stinky was released in 2008. Davis followed up with gems such as Flop to the Top, The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook (with husband Drew Weing), You & a Bike & a Road and Why Art? and has become a celebrated star of the international comics scene.

Way back in 2014, Fantagraphics released a themed collection of her epigrammatic tales, crafted in a mesmerising variety of styles and riffing on the concept of joy and contentment: causes, failings, and what to do with them when and if they happen. These are enigmatic variations on the most ephemeral of emotions and one you only really notice when it’s gone, but the individual episodes here are truly joyous to share.

How to Be Happy is NOT a self-help book – at least not in any traditional sense – but it did make me feel very good when I first read it and only increases my sense of fulfilment every time I pick it up, whether in its comforting. reassuring hardback edition or my ever-present anxiety-reducing digital edition…

These observational vignettes were created for the sheer innocent joy of making them, and diligently examine many aspects of life through self-contained yarns ranging from cautionary tales to excoriating self-diagnosis to flights of sardonic fancy. Some are titled like proper narratives whilst others just happen like life does. Those I’ve identified by first lines if no title is obvious…

Packed with evocative, stand-alone imagery, the episodes commence with line art pictorial pep talk ‘Write a Story’ before switching to lush colour for ‘In Our Eden’, wherein a primitive life of pastoral toil starts to grate on Adam and Eve. They are, unsurprisingly, not all they seem…

Further monochrome line art interventionism manifests in ‘First We Take Off Our Clothes’ after which a short hop into full-colour and a longer one into a fraught future examines family life on Tomorrow’s sub-continent when ‘Nita Goes Home’…

Separation and rural isolation underpin monochrome monologue ‘We Come Down on Clear Days’ before the restricted colour palette of ‘Stick and String’ offers a good hard look at relationships and agency in the tale of a wandering minstrel and captivating power of momentary fascination. Relations are further tested in monochrome as ‘Darling I’ve Realized I Don’t Love You’ provides unwise solutions to ancient problems, before a truly disquieting incident of mutual grooming in ‘Snip’ segues into a chilling visit to ‘The Emotion Room’.

Colour is employed to potent effect in ‘He turned a grey-green and thought he might pass out’ whilst ‘Seven Sacks’ addresses grisly problems in a fresh fable Aesop or the Brothers Grimm would be proud to pen.

Two colours and self-delusion tinge ‘Did you want to see the statue?’, whilst B&W lines detail the rewards of heroic vitality in ‘Make Yourself Strong’, after which young love blossoms in living colour in ‘Summer Snakes’…

The pure exultation and imagination of childhood is exposed through stark monochrome in ‘Thomas the Leader’ before a brief vox-pop moment in ‘I used to be so unhappy but then I got on Prozac’ is built upon in further untitled moments of self-realisation before a strong admonition to ‘Pray’…

Observation, tribulation and revelation come to the author for ‘In 2006 I took a Greyhound from Georgia to Los Angeles’, before a descent into dark moments and extreme actions in ‘The fox must have been hit pretty recently…’ is balanced by intimate sharing in ‘The woman feels sadness’.

Colour adds depth in an extended moment of group therapy release in ‘No Tears, No Sorrow’ after which the wandering introspection of ‘9/26’ leads to a conclusion of sorts during a cab ride to ‘25 Washington Street, Please’…

A superb and sublime example of the range and versatility of image &text cannily combined, How to Be Happy a true joy for all fans of unbridled expression no one could fail to enjoy.
© Eleanor Davis 2014. All rights reserved.

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Gash


By Søren G. Mosdal (Slab-O-Concrete)
ISBN: 978-1-89986-639-7 (TPB)

Not all comics are nice. Not all stories are cosy and comforting. This slim volume collects some short strips by Danish cartoonist Søren Glosimodt Mosdal; powerful, surreal to the point of absurdism, starkly, bleakly, casually violent yet unbelievably compelling vignettes of modern disassociation and spiritual isolation in an urban landscape of staggering indifference.

A seasoned cartoonist and newspaper illustrator born in Nairobi, Mosdal studied and now lives in Copenhagen: a member of their Fort Knox Studios and part of Finland’s Kuti Kuti comics association. Regular clients include Fahrenheit magazine (since 1994), and literary periodical Zoe, whilst his collected comic books include Feuerwerk, Madeleine, une femme libre (with scriptwriters Rudy Ortiz & Pierre Colin-Thibert), and Eric Le Rouge: roi de l’hiver. Beginning this century, Mosdal has increasingly concentrated on music-related works and themes, such as a comic biography of Elvis Presley and Lost Highway, about Hank Williams.

However, in this glorious lost gem from 2001 – and reprinting a Danish collection of two years’ prior – Mosdal’s intense, exaggerated drawing bristles with ill-suppressed animosity as he tells of ordinary life: getting drunk, getting stoned, getting laid and ultimately getting nowhere. Whether relating what I pray are not autobiographical everyday interludes or delivering candid depictions of the deeply distressing adventures of Hans Drone – “The Greatest Writer of our Time!” – or any of the other misfits gathered herein, Mosdal’s fevered works are unsettling yet unforgivably intoxicating. If you’re old enough and strong enough, and have patience and time to go looking, these beautiful, ugly stories are ready in wait for you and absolutely worthy of your attention.

If only some smart, wide-eyed English-language publisher would run that risk…

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The British Invasion


By Hervé Bourhis, translated by James Hogan (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1681123424 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Pourquoi pas, non?… 9/10

Despite a thousand years of “not getting on”, Britain and France are neighbours who have bathed and basked in the glow of each other’s culture, arts, achievements… and failures… with remarkable constancy and consistency. For as long as each nation has existed, this peculiarly dysfunctional relationship has periodically cross-fertilised the lives and adventures and judgements of all of us. We love their stuff and apparently they’re pretty cool about ours. The strange state of affairs (oh tee hee!) has also baffled countless observers from other countries and probably always will. C’est la vie, innit?

Now and here, music writer, graphic novelist, culture vulture and avowed anglophile Hervé Bourhis (The Little Book of Rock) has encapsulated his – possibly forbidden – love for les anglaise and all their works in a fabulously eclectic years-by-year catalogue of events, achievements, style-&-fashion forays, music-&-movie moments, and less definable landmarks. Beginning in 1962, and meandering all the way to 2022, the best, worst, weirdest, and wildest pub talking points, quiz question fodder and modern minutia of pop culture have been assiduously counted and crafted into a dossier of our innate spiffiness.

These are all graphically combined with listicles, celebrity call-outs, name checks, scandals, disasters, tragic passing (and a few who are probably still feeling someone’s boots dancing on their tombs, even through six feet of well-packed Albion dirt) and all the kinds of True Brit bewilderments that provoke our always astonished amis to doff their berets, scratch their pomaded bonces and mutter “sacred blue et focquinelle”…

Joking, japing and jesting aside, this is a superbly astute, stunning researched and wittily wrought dose of weaponised memorabilia, stuffed with fun facts captivating drawn and even offers the best index I have ever seen in its ‘Britbook Playlist’ section. This is something so many boomers deserve in their wrinkled gabardine (or latex: live and let live sez me) stocking this year.

I’ve been around – if not always awake – for all of the stuff cited here, and while I can’t say it was all as much fun as what’s on show on these crisp, fab-hued pages, it does stir memories, bouts of quiet pride and an odd urge to mumble “been there, did that, gottit, mum threw it away,” and “where are they now?”

Gosh, I say! Do you think the Germans could be induced to commit their thoughts on how terrific we’ve been to paper too?
Le Britbook, © DARGUAD 2023, by Hervé Bourhis, All rights reserved. © 2024 NBM for the English translation.

The British Invasion is published on November 12th 2024 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/

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Prez: Setting a Dangerous President


By Mark Russell, Ben Caldwell, Mark Morales, Dominike “Domo” Stanton & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-2896-4 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Sublime Example of Saying What You Mean …9/10

I’ve been saving this fabulously funny, viciously satirical gem for the closing moments of an actual election, and now that my seditious and apparently unwelcome British interference can’t possibly affect what has become the strangest and most contentious campaign in US history, as well as the icing on the Great Big Cake celebrating the utter devaluation of democracy, I think it’s well past time to offer the world a different vision of leadership and governance before it’s too late…

It won’t change anything in the grand scheme of things, but at least we can comfortably shout “I told you so!” from the comfort of our cynicism-lined bunkers…

The original Prez was a hippie teenager created by comic book royalty. In the early 1970s, Joe Simon made one of his irregular, yet always eccentrically fruitful, sojourns back to DC Comics, sneaking a bevy of exceedingly strange concepts right past the usually-conservative powers-that-be and onto the world’s newsstands and spinner racks. The most anarchic and subversive of these was Prez, postulating a moment approximately 20 minutes into the future when teenagers had the vote and elected a diligent, naively idealistic young man who was every inch the hardworking, honest patriot every American politician claimed to be. In 2015, the concept was given a devilishly adroit makeover for post-millennials and the result was a superbly outrageous cartoon assessment of the State of the Nation.

As is the nature of the most effective social commentary (Slaughterhouse Five, Make Room! Make Room!, Stranger in a Strange Land, A Clockwork Orange, Rollerball, Judge Dredd, American Flagg!), although external trappings are futuristic and science fictional, the meat of the matter is all about Right Here, Right Now…

Originally released as the first half of a proposed 12-issue maxi-series the majority of this material was originally collected as Prez: Corndog-In-Chief. Tragically, even written by Mark Russell (Deadbox, Superman: Space Age, The Flintstones, God Is Disappointed in You) and illustrated by Ben Caldwell (Justice League Beyond, Star Wars: Clone Wars), the project stalled with only little additions forthcoming in latter days despite the efforts of  Mark Morales, Sean Parsons & John Lucas.

Special mentions and congratulations should go to colourist Jeremy Lawson and especially letterers Travis Lanham, Marilyn Patrizio & Sal Cipriano whose efforts in supplying screen furniture, hilarious newsbleeds and strapline commentaries added so much to the overall feeling of helter-skelter information overload.

Oldsters Please Take Note: on no account skip or skim the texts that scuttle across the bottom of these pages, just like a proper 24-hour TV news feed. Also, don’t read them whilst eating or drinking either. Laughing out loud and ejecting matter out of your nose is undignified and embarrassing…

In Washington DC, the fix is always in. It’s 2036 and the election of the next President is being quietly decided by an elite group of Senators known as “the Colonels”. Ultimate powerbroker Senator Thorn is addressing a crisis: their sitting incumbent has been scandalously “outed” and withdrawn from the race with a week to polling day. All alternatives for his position are pitiful and frankly embarrassing…

In Eugene, Oregon, 19-year-old Beth Ross is cleaning the grills at a franchised fast food joint and manages to deep-fry one of her pigtails. Naturally, her friends have the incident posted on the internet in seconds and she goes viral as “corndog girl”. As the days count down, the two main political parties lurch into panic mode: sucking up to every media darling, publicity whore and news outlet in a frantic bid to get their particular privileged rich white guy elected. It doesn’t help that the feckless mutants and farm animals comprising “Amerkuh’s yoof” can now vote on their phones without leaving the house… but still don’t bother to…

Thorn diligently pursues his own welfare-cutting, businessman-rewarding, military-expanding schemes. He’s not that fussed about winning. He can do deals with anybody…

Beth, meanwhile, is considering going on a game show. It’s the only way to pay her father’s hospital bills. He’s dying from a new form of cat flu ravaging the nation and winning Double Dare Billionaire is the sole option left to her. She doesn’t even make the final cut. It’s probably for the best: the winner had to shoot himself on live TV to get his cash…

Meanwhile, hacker collective Anonymous has started an internet campaign to get Corndog Girl onto the electoral ballot. Since Congress voted to allow Corporations the right to vote, all age restrictions have been abolished. Moreover, in a move to get people to participate, Congress has allowed the public to vote on what is once again – “Twitter”…

Deeply embarrassed and paying no attention, Beth is astounded when she wins Ohio by a landslide and becomes an actual, genuine contender…

‘The Democratic Circus’ has been a complete disaster for professional politicians. The Electoral College system has produced no clear winner and thus – due to the arcane and archaic rules of the process – moves to the House of Representatives where each State has one vote. Thorn is finally in his element, but has grievously underestimated the overwhelming personal greed of each Senator he seeks to bribe. When the dirty pool, double-dealing and horse-trading reaches its peak, his frustrated targets turn against him and before long the incorruptible (he knows she is because he and many others have already tried) Beth Ross becomes the Most Powerful Woman in the World.

During ‘Adventures in Cabinetry’, suddenly everybody in DC is breaking down Beth’s door, but the guy she listens too is Preston Rickard: the most despised man in politics. He suggests he be made Vice President. It’s the only way to save her life. No-one will have her assassinated if he’s next in line…

And so it goes as Beth, emboldened by idealism and the pointless death of her father, resolves to genuinely fix America. The first thing is appoint a cabinet of actual smart people and experts, before joining forces with the most brilliant inventor in the world. Fred Wayne is also the world’s richest man: his unique algorithm made him enough cash to buy Delaware (and its votes and electoral college) and disappear. With the advent of President Ross, however, Fred is once more interested in the world beyond his so very impassable doors…

Ross’ inauguration has everything: threats, more bribe offers, a spectacular assassination attempt and her first crisis.

‘The Beast of War’ details how increasing global tension results in a wave of bloodbaths. America’s armies have been largely replaced by drones and robots piloted by nerdy couch-potato slackers working out of their own front rooms. Sadly, their tendency is to treat work like a gaming session, so with casualties from US drones skyrocketing, the Military-Industrial Complex are eager to move on to the next plateau. Unfortunately for all concerned, the spontaneously sapient/sentient/intelligent AI robotic Sentry War Beast – as designed by Preferred Contractor Securi-Tech – is lethal, indestructible and has ideas uniquely her own.

Thorn cannot see a downside, but he’s about to be very surprised again…

‘Apologies in Advance’ sees Beth decommission the entire drone Sentry Program and go on a world tour, apologising publicly and in person to every country the USA has subverted, invaded, insulted or strong-armed over its brief but checkered history. Of course, that brings its own dangers and ramifications, but a domestic catastrophe is looking to be even more serious. Human deaths from the mutant feline flu are rocketing, but “Big Pharma” wants certain promises – and lots of cash – before it will release a cure. Their smug bubble bursts when President Ross again comes up with a novel solution and makes a truly tough decision in ‘Beware of Cat’…

That was where the series initially paused, and in lieu of an actual conclusion, what is gathered here is a snippet that leaked out to appease rabid (albeit clearly not enough) fan demands for more as first seen in Catwoman: Election Night #1 (2016), an entirely new tale and swathes of extras.

The recount begins with ‘Trigger Warnings’ as in 2049 the latest ride of the NRA – get your voice-activated gun hat here! – overlaps with Ross being one of only two women attending the massive Senate Conference on Women’s Health Care. Unwelcome and not caring, as the good ol’ boys decide what guns they love most and why the fillies can’t have birth control, the President has a deviously delicious trick to get things back on target for real folk…

The final bit of business offers hope for the future as the corporate bigwigs finally think they scored a hit by taking NASA off the President’s overstretched dockets in ‘The Final Frontier’, but uber bread-head Boss Smiley has again utterly underestimated the Corndog-in Chief…

Also collecting Prez #1-6, plus a short vignette of how Ross survived being shot down over the South Pacific as first seen in Sneak Peek: Prez #1, this remarkable tome is peppered with delicious ironies and superb prognostications on the state of the union. Sinister undercurrents are provided by a cabal of masked billionaires in a Special Interest Group providing suitable Machiavellian menace whilst the progress of canny, sensible neophyte Ross pokes gaping holes in ideological Sacred Cows and sacrosanct ruling policies that have become the fundamentals of modern political thinking.

Most importantly Prez: Corndog-In-Chief offers a grimly hilarious and outrageously sardonic glimpse at how far it’s all gone wrong. To sweeten the pill it does come with a slush-fund filled with bonus features by Caldwell, plus character and logo designs, roughs, unused colour cover ideas.

And if that isn’t enough the hole campaign concludes with an intriguing excerpt from Ngozi Ukazu’s YA comics thriller Barda to whet your appetite for more women take charge fans.

Funny, angry and delicious, this trenchant tome is one no fully enfranchised fan should miss, and – like Die Hard every Christmas – this book needs to be reissued every four years at the very least.
© 2015, 2016, 2024 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Adrift on a Painted Sea


By Sue Bird and Tim Bird (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-82-0 (TPB)

A child – every child’s – late life obsession to understand their parents and find similarities and differences in the lives each generation has led. What we remember and how we frame such recollections afflicts all of us. It also becomes increasingly important as we get older, a truism that washes all through this elegiac and ruminatory collation where comics storyteller Tim Bird details his response to finding the lost (more actually forgotten and mis-recalled) paintings of his recently deceased mother Sue.

Contemporary found facts just don’t jibe with his own childhood memories and he cannot resist finding what the truth actually is…

What Tim irrefutably knows is that when not running a house, being a wife and rearing two kids, Sue Bird was a talented and compulsive artist, who from childhood created for the sheer joy of it. She loved the sea, shores and marine life, nature studies and still life painting. As a kid she even won competitions and her artworks toured in shows.

Or did they?

Mum created passionately and privately, and never tried to sell her work. After her death during the Covid pandemic, Tim uncovers some paintings and drawings – and a few scraps of newspapers squirreled away. Whilst still coming to terms with the awful restrictions that made her passing so cruel and unfair, he is increasingly gripped with his own passion: a hunger to know what’s what and what happened…

Using the recovered bounty of her dozens of paintings and by talking to anyone still alive who knew her, Tim reevaluates his own past and relationship with Sue Bird, using her artworks as markers and chapter posts for a new sort of artistic statement. Moreover, as he seeks to unravel and reconfigure his fudged and muddy impressions of their times together, other shared milestone moments re-emerge: Northumberland beaches no one else enjoyed, listening to the Shipping Forecast and just sharing a drive to make things…

Using his comics as a skeleton and her paintings as meat on those bones, Bird applies his reshaped consciousness to the past and as his quest brings him closer to his own young family, engineers those feelings and discoveries into a visual eulogy to her and the power of memory, loss, and – always and forever – family.
© Tim Bird 2024.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Because Some Cannot Be Forgotten… 9/10

Adrift on a Painted Sea is published on 1st October 2024 and is available for pre-order now.

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Agatha – The Real Life of Agatha Christie


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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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.

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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.