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.

Phoolan Devi: Rebel Queen


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Wolf of Baghdad


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Nina Simone in Comics


By Sophie Adriansen; with Antoane, Romain Brun, Domenico Carbone, Gabriele Di Caro, Mademoiselle Caroline, Samuel Figuiére, Dario Formisani, Sandrine Fourrier, François Foyard, Christian Galli, Chadia Loueslati, Walter Pax, Isa Python, Benjamin Reiss, Riccardo Randazzo, Adrien Roche, Anne Royant, Cynthia Thiéry, Mayeul Vigouroux, Lysandre Vanhoutvenne, Sara Colella, François Renaud & various (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-326-4 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-327-1

Nina Simone was a mighty voice dedicated to freedom of expression and emancipation of body and soul. This powerful collaborative visual investigation probes her troubled life, failures and achievements, and highlights a life-long war between family pressures, her own frustrated desires, search for autonomy and the spurious divide between classical music and The Blues.

Another stunning musical biography, this book was released continentally in 2023 and is certain to appeal to readers all over the English-speaking world. Nina Simone in Comics joins NBM’s superb and sublime graphic narrative sub-strand, probing the history of a globally significant performer and musical phenomenon whose works and deeds shook the planet and changed society…

Following a full ‘Discography’ (mirroring a ‘Further Reading and viewing’ section at the end of the book) we have context-providing, photo-packed prose essays augmenting stylish individual comics snippets. Both educative articles and chronological character-confirming visual vignettes are penned by French author, biographer and journalist Sophie Adriansen (La menace des fantômes & Musiques diaboliques [Scooby-Doo], Grace Kelly – D’Hollywood à Monaco, le roman d’une légende, Le Syndrome de la vitre étoilée) who steers a coterie of cartoonists and illustrators dramatising the history and demystifying the myths for us. Each combined chapter opens with a quote from the star or close associates…

Anne Royant opens the show with ‘Music As Company’ detailing early days of a musical prodigy born into a strict Christian “negro” household in proudly segregated Tryon, North Carolina. It’s 1935 and Eunice Kathleen Waymon is growing up in a blanketing swathe of religious music, and utterly unable to keep her little hands off her mother’s beloved pedal organ. Eunice is barely three and plays it better than her astounded mother Mary Kate

Textual assessment ‘In the Beginning’ sees how the family moved socially upwards thanks to Eunice’s gifts, before Christian Galli reveals in images how the toddler decided ‘I’m Going To Be A Classical Pianist When I Grow Up’. Prose supplement ‘Two Pivotal Figures in her Life’ reveals the influence of Mary Kate’s employer Mrs Miller – who sponsored music lessons for the maid’s kid and organised a fund fuelled by Eunice’s recitals that made enough money to carry the child to music college. The other founding spirit was English music teacher Muriel “Miz Mazy” Massinovitch who taught the wonder girl poise, erudition and Bach: inculcating a love of “real music” that carried Eunice to the top of the world but also tainted her life with bitter disappointment…

Growing into a teen hampered by ingrained prejudice and restricted by repressive “Jim Crow” laws prompts the question ‘Do You Feel Black?’ (illustrated by Samuel Figuiére) before support feature ‘Eunice Discovers the World’ shows her dream to be a classical performer continually challenged by blinkered society, before Dario Formisani and colourist Lysandre Vanhoutvenne share heartbreaking revelations as the high school graduate’s dream of attending a prestigious music academy founders due to skin colour in ‘Early Setbacks.’ Her transition to Philadelphia and New York is explored through prose and photos in ‘Talent to Develop’

Mother Mary Kate was a hard, pious woman and when Eunice adopted a stage name to play nightclubs and earn money, her surrender to ‘The Devil’s Music’ (art by Mademoiselle Caroline) sparked years of bitter contention. That transition and its repercussions is covered in ‘Eunice Becomes Nina’ before Adrien Roche draws ‘Pivotal Figures’ and an essay follows Nina ‘Back to Atlantic City’ for a new life of overnight popularity and appreciation but utterly at odds with her childhood aspirations…

A lifetime of poor choices in men and managers is first touched upon in the Antoane-illustrated ‘We Start Recording Tomorrow’ whilst bizarre circumstances leading to ‘The First Album’ are seen, prior to François Foyard’s cartoon crescendo ‘Patience…’ detailing how Nina responded to learning her life and music were controlled by men because she never read contracts: a situation expanded upon in ‘An Underwhelming Success.’

Cynthia Thiéry shows ‘A New Star Is Born!’ after playing a landmark gig at a legendary venue, further explored in text supplement ‘The Town Hall’, after which Chadia Loueslati depicts Nina’s marriage and reasons for staying with an abusive controller whose love manifested in bouts of violence and deep remorse in ‘A Hold On Me’, and ‘A Time of Conflicts’ adds much-needed context to the mystery…

Limned by Riccardo Randazzo and fleshed out by colourist Sara Colella, ‘I’ll Be Back’ and text titbit ‘Marriage and Travel’ follow Nina – a mother with no control of her work or finances – as she visits Africa and becomes even more consumed by civil rights issues, leading to her learning ‘Your Weapon Is Music!’ (Isa Python art) whilst ‘1963’ recapitulates the state of the world. Sandrine Fourrier realises Simone’s progress ‘Towards a Music of Protest’, with a prose precis spotlighting Nina’s ‘Time to Get Involved’

Romain Brun illustrates the birth and spreading social impact of breakthrough composition ‘Young, Gifted and Black’ (co-created with black poet Weldon Irvine) as historical context comes via support feature ‘The Fight Intensifies’, before Gabriele Di Caro revisits public event ‘Human Kindness Day’ (AKA “The Summer of Soul”, and “Black Woodstock”) as a prose essay asks was that ‘The Moment It All Collapsed?’

A decade of letting men control her life and money left Nina Simone a target of the IRS and international exile, as revealed by Benjamin Reiss who draws her ‘In A Pub In Paris’ with prose synopsis ‘An Eventful Decade’ tracking a tragic decline highlighted by a diagnosis of bi-polar disorder. A monumental reversal began when a forgotten track – added as an afterthought to her very first album – was used in a perfume commercial and set the world aglow. Domenico Carbone & François Renaud light up the comeback trail in ‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’, with ‘Nina’s Back’ adding detail to a career resurrection prior to declining mental health triggering a crisis. Limned by Walter Pax & Renaud, ‘That’s Enough!’ with text support ‘Tragedy at Bouc-Bel-Air’ expands on an incident that almost ended Nina’s life…

This compelling journey through oppression and injustice chooses to focus on upbeats at the close, with Nina’s presence at Nelson Mandela’s 80th birthday/third wedding in ‘Happy Birthday, Mister President’ – visualised by Mayeul Vigouroux augmented with essay ‘Swan Song’ – before Royant illustrates the world’s too-late knee-jerk approbation in ‘God Be With You Till We Meet Again’ with a pithy summation ‘Keeping the flame alive’

In so many ways, Activist Nina Simone was more important than the performer/composer, but whether her actions or her music drew you to her, this book will remind you why and make you miss her all the more. Nina Simone in Comics is an astoundingly readable and beautifully rendered treasure for narrative art and music fans alike: one to resonate with anybody who loves to listen and look. If you love pop history and crave graphic escape, this will truly feed your soul.
© 2023 Editions Petit à Petit. © 2024 NBM for the English translation.

Nina Simone in Comics is scheduled for UK release February 13th 2024 and available for pre-order now. Most NBM books are also available in digital formats. For more information and other wonderful reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/

Terror – The Horror Comic Art of Jayme Cortez (volume 1) & Macabras – The Horror Comic Art of Jayme Cortez (volume 2)


By Jayme Cortez, with Fabio Moraes & various, translated by Joe Williams (Korero Press)
ISBN: 978-1-912740-22-2 (PB Terror) & 978-1-912740-21-5 (PB Macabras)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Whatever the Season, All Nights Are Dark … 8/10

Please pay careful attention: this art book contains stories and images of an explicit nature, specifically designed for adult consumption. Tomorrow I’ll write about something else – possibly more socially acceptable, with mindless violence and big explosions, so come back then if incredible art, a dedicated career and rectifying oversights is not to your liking.

We comic book guys tend to think we invented and run the medium and art form of graphic narrative, but – gasps in shock! – other countries have been doing the same or similar all along. Moreover, so very much of it is so very good…

Britain and the US have, over decades, employed a select few master craftsmen (and they were mostly men as far as I can see) and I’ve done my bit to point them your way, but until very recently we haven’t seen much of Brazil’s monolithic comics output. That changes here and now with a two-book collection highlighting the breathtakingly prolific career of Jaime Cortez Martins – AKA Jayme Cortez. He was born in Lisbon, Portugal on 8th September 1926 and his life changed at age six when he first saw imported American newspaper strips: particularly Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon. Jaime’s first drawing was published when he was 11, and in 1944 he was apprenticed to children’s magazine O Mosquito under its art director Eduardo Texiera Coelho. The prodigy generated numerous groundbreaking strips before – having discovered the rich world of Brazilian comics – he emigrated to São Paulo to find great fame fortune and renown. Celebrated globally except in English-speaking countries, Cortez died in 1987.

For more biographic detail resort to the internet or best yet buy these books where editor/writer-compiler/art historian Fabio Moraes and appreciative guests such as Paul Gravett, and Paulo Montiero offer their own insights in Forewords and Intoductions. What’s really important is what follows: a magnificent treasury of a passionate creator’s output (albeit mostly his horror genre material) encompassing Brazil’s “golden age” of scary stories.

Cortez made himself master of countless artistic techniques and although there are ads and a few comic book stories included, these volumes primarily gather a mindboggling number of painted covers (as many as 4 per week!) in chronological order. Whether in colour or monochrome, these stunning retrospective compendia of gloriously designed and delineated imagery in a wealth of styles incorporate a staggering arsenal of artistic techniques – even photographic – to highlight a stunning and prolific career you and I were utterly unaware of.

Terror – The Horror Comic Art of Jayme Cortez properly opens with a comprehensive biographical essay ‘The Life of a Master Illustrator’ relating that dazzling career and offering candid photos, early works, magazine covers, strips and extracts, original artworks and commercial jobs before the serious stuff begins with his entire covers run for landmark publication O Terror Negro (The Black Terror).

This launched in September 1951 and ran until 1967, with Cortez generating the covers from #2 until the end and also the regular annual editions Almanaque de O Terror Negro. From January 1954 he added Sobrenatural to his commissions list: another 31 covers (plus another Annual) until September 1956 and (from February 1954 to July 1956) 35 more covers for Contos de Terror (Horror Tales), another Almanque and a brace of Frankenstein fronts. Throughout the book are many original art reproductions and dozens of reference photos the artist used as part of his process in bringing ghosts, ghouls, goblins, aliens, psycho-killers, devils, demons and witches to life, and making realistic the demise of countless maidens, wives and sundry other innocents…

Macabras – The Horror Comic Art of Jayme Cortez continues the gruesome gallery of dark delights by including some more of his beguiling strip work and another cartload of intoxicating covers. Following another context-packed biographical essay – ‘A Virtuoso of Illustration’The Portrait of Evil 1961 reprints and deconstructs what is considered Cortez’s signature sequential narrative masterpiece, before The Portrait of Evil 1973 does the same for the improved version the tireless quester produced when he returned to the subject in a more mature and philosophical frame of mind…

From there it’s a return to eye-catching images and bold typography in a welter of covers for his minor magazine efforts, beginning with 62 issues of Seleçóes de Terror (beginning in 1959 and going on until 1967), 28 for Histórias Macabras, 19 for Clássicos de Terror, an even dozen for Histórias Sinestras, as well as Histórias Do Alem (4), Super B?lso (3), Terror Magazine (3), and 10 for indie company Jotaesse.

Also on view are a chapter on the artist’s fascination with Edgar Allen Poe, a photo-essay on Creating a poster (for his other job working in films) and 14 chilling Black and White Illustrations to round out the fright fest.

This long-past-due celebration of a truly unique artistic pioneer is both compelling and shocking, and something no mature-minded devotee of graphic excellence should miss. Moreover, if the subject matter intrigues you, Korero also publish a stunning line of companion volumes of unknown (to you and me) art masters in their “Sex and Horror” collections: thus far highlighting the mastery of Emanuele Tagglietti, Alessandro Biffignandi, Fernando Carcupino, Roberto Molinio…

It’s never too late to be scared witless or stunned by magnificent comic art so let’s open our eyes and get a little international here.
First published in 2023 © Korero Press Limited. All rights reserved.

The Great Anti War Cartoons


By many & various, edited by Craig Yoe (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-150-3 (TPB)

After watching far too much news again, I dug this book off my shelves again. It seemed somehow appropriate. Again.

You’ll hear a lot about the pen being mightier than the sword regarding The Great Anti-War Cartoons, but sadly it’s just not true. Nothing seems able to deter determined governments, or stop outraged religions and/or rich, greedy – and apparently duly elected – raving mad ruthless bastards from sending the young and idealistic to their mass-produced deaths, especially those innocents still afflicted with the slightest modicum of patriotism or sense of adventure. It’s even worse when the sods at the top turn away or claim it’s self-defence whilst killing bystanders but not the ACTUAL other equally mad bastards really responsible.

Our own currently escalating and deteriorating global situation (but isn’t it always?) proves mankind is always far too ready to take up arms, and far too reluctant to give peace a chance, especially when a well-oiled publicity machine and vested media interests gang up on the men and women in the street going “yeah, but…” and “stop killing us…!”

We’re all susceptible to the power of a marching beat played on fife and drum, but at least here amongst these 220+ cartoons and graphic statements, we see that rationalism or conscientious objectivity – or pacifism or even simple self-interested isolationism – are as versed in the art of pictorial seduction as the power and passion of jingoism and war-fever.

All art – and most especially cartooning – has the primitive power to bore deep into the soul, just as James Montgomery Flagg’s iconic Uncle Sam poster “Your Country Needs You” and our own Lord Kitchener version by Alfred Leete in 1914 so effectively did for millions of young men during the Great War.

How satisfying then to see Flagg’s is the very first anti-war cartoon in this incredible compilation of images focusing on the impassioned pleas of visual communicators trying to avoid body-counts or at least reduce bloodshed. The Great Anti-War Cartoons gathers a host of incredibly moving, thought-provoking, terrifying, but – I’m gutted to say – ultimately ineffective warnings, scoldings and pleas which may have moved millions of people, but never stopped or even gave pause to one single conflict…

Editor Craig Yeo divides these potently unforgettable images into a broad variety of categories and I should make it clear that not all the reasons for their creation are necessarily pacifistic: some of the most evocative renderings here are from creators who didn’t think War was Bad per se, but rather felt that a specific clash in question was none of their homeland’s business.

However with such chapters as Planet War, Man’s Inhumanity to Man, The Gods of War, Profiteers, Recruitment and Conscription, The Brass, The Grunts, Weapons of War, The Battle Rages On, The Long March, Famine, The Anthems of War, The Horrors of War, The Suffering, The Families and Children of War, The Aftermath, Victory Celebration, Medals, Disarmament, Resistance and Peace, we witness immensely talented people of varying and even conflicting beliefs responding on their own unique terms to organised slaughter. For every tut-tut of the Stay-at-Homers, there are a dozen from genuinely desperate and appalled artists who just wanted the horror to end.

With incisive examinations of shared symbology and recurring themes, these monochrome penmen utilised their brains and talents in urgent strivings to win their point (there is also a fascinating section highlighting the impact and energy of the Colors of War), but the most intriguing aspect of this superb collection is the sheer renown and worth of the contributors.

Among the 119 artists include (120 if you count Syd Hoff and his nom-de-plume “Redfield” as two separate artists) are Sir John Tenniel, Caran d’Ache, Bruce Bairnsfather, Herbert Block, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Ron Cobb, “Ding” Darling, Billy DeBeck, Jerry Robinson, Albrecht Dürer, Art Spiegelman, Robert Crumb, Rube Goldberg, Honore Daumier, Goya, George Grosz, Bill Mauldin, Gerald Scarfe, Ralph Steadman, Thomas Nast and most especially the incredibly driven Winsor McCay.

I’ve scandalously assumed that many of the older European draughtsmen won’t be that well known, despite their works being some of the most harrowing, and their efforts – although perhaps wasted on people willing to listen to reason anyway – are cruel and beautiful enough to make old cynics like me believe that maybe this time, THIS TIME, somebody in power will actually do something to stop the madness.

A harsh, evocative and painfully lovely book: seek it out in the hope that perhaps one day Peace will be the Final Solution.

The time has never been more right for cynics like me to be proved wrong.

The Great Anti-War Cartoons and the digitally remastered public domain material are © 2009 Gussoni-Yoe Studio, Inc. All rights reserved.

Red Harvest – A Graphic Novel of the Terror Famine in 1930’s Soviet Ukraine


By Michael Cherkas (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-320-2 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-323-3

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Because Truth is the Greatest Gift… 10/10

Generally this month varies between Halloween scary stories and material pertinent to Black History month, but today we’re looking at something that is best described as a true horror story.

In 1954 Michael Cherkas was born in Oshawa Ontario. He grew up, studying cartooning at Sheridan College in nearby Oakville, before delving deeper into the art world through Illustration and Design courses at The Ontario College of Art in Toronto. A professional graphic artist, cartoonist and art director for over three decades, he has also – with associates Larry Hancock, John van Bruggen, John Sabli’c – winningly blended social commentary with subversion and paranoic science fiction in comics and books like The Silent Invasion quartet and spin-offs The Purple Ray, The New Frontier and Suburban Nightmares.

Cherkas’ family came to Canada from Ukraine, and Red Harvest is a far more personal comics narrative: one he has taken fifteen years to tell…

The deeply personal passion project details how one prosperous, self-sufficient farming village – Zelenyi Hai – was caught up in and destroyed by the doctrinaire and utterly botched “collectivization of farming” program initiated by Josef Stalin in 1931. That triumph of dogma over logic, common sense and physical practicality stated that the principles of industrialisation be applied to farming to maximise yields, with the resultant increase being sold to the rich-but-failing capitalist nations to secure much-needed funds and resources.

It didn’t work out that way and – aggravated by inefficiency and abetted by levels of regional featherbedding and root-&-branch institutional corruption unmatched until the current British Government started handing out contracts during the Covid crisis – resulted in a wholly man-made famine that killed over five million and displaced millions more.

Ukrainians call that time in 1932 and 1933 the “Holodomor” (literally “death/murder by hunger”). The policy (or naked landgrab) was forcibly applied to the Soviet-controlled (and non-Russian) regions of eastern and central Ukraine, northern Kuban and Kazakstan, with cautious modern estimates reckoning their populations diminished by 35%. However, thanks to decades of Party gag-orders, news-editing and fact-suppression, barely anywhere else knows it ever happened…

How this graphic novel came about – and particularly the powerful illustrative style used – is discussed in Cherkas’ Introduction, and the tale is preceded by a Glossary of language used to add impact and colour to this bleak monochrome masterpiece.

A targeted investigation rather than a straight memoir, the fictionalised saga opens in 2008 as aging Canadian citizen and recently-retired farmer Mykola Kovalenko prepares for his first visit to Ukraine since leaving in 1942. The big event has made him anxious and he’s started dreaming of the past and remembering…

What follows is a compelling yet engaging narrative exposing a war crime and systematic genocide the world has been happy to forget. Rendered with wit, tact and great reserve, it adds meat to history’s bones, tracing the slow, gradual, hopeless decline and repercussions very much in the manner later employed in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. That author also knew human nature, political chicanery; he has painful inescapable truths and a bit of history…

Cherkas is astoundingly adept at giving the many contributory factors and factions human faces: by turn hopeful, enthusiastic, stoic, enduring, fanatical, ruthless, crushed, despondent and ultimately hopeless. By blending Mykola’s contemporary return with the concatenation of cozening deceptions, betrayals, mismanagements, brutally enforced separations, family divisions and stupid changes applied with ruthless inefficiency by Party Officials local and Russian, the author has shone a light on a story that never goes away and never ends happily.

Couched in terms of a family drama, Red Harvest is potent, and unforgettable: a dish we should all dip into and accept that sometimes bitterness is the best we can aspire to.

Red Harvest is © 2023 by Michael Cherkas. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Red Harvest will be released on November 14th 2023 and is available for digital and physical copy pre-orders now.

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

Master of Mystery: The Rise of The Shadow (Will Murray Pulp History Series)


By Will Murray, illustrated by Frank Hamilton, Rick Roe, Colton Worley, Joe DeVito, Edd Cartier & various (Odyssey Publications)
ISBN: 979-8-54I38-708-7 (PB/Digital edition)

In the early 1930s, just as the Great Depression hit hardest, a new kind of literary (and ultimately multimedia) hero was born …or more correctly, evolved. The Shadow afforded thrill-starved Americans measured doses of extraordinary excitement via cheaply produced periodical novels and over eerily charged airwaves via an iconic radio show.

Made exceedingly cheaply and published in their hundreds for every style and genre, “Pulps” bridged stand-alone books and periodical magazines. Results ranged from unforgettably excellent to pitifully dire, and amongst originals and knock-offs of every conceivable stripe, for exotic or esoteric adventure-lovers there were two stars who outshone all others in terms of quality and sheer imagination.

The Superman of his day was Doc Savage, whilst the premier relentless creature of the night darkly dispensing grim justice was the enigmatic vigilante/ultimate detective discussed here.

As seen in Dark Avenger: The Strange Saga of The Shadow (successor to this book) the enthralling enigma grew out of a combination of sources: radio show Detective Story Hour and the Street & Smith publication Detective Story Magazine it promoted; a succession of scary voices variously deployed by Orson Welles, James LaCurto and Frank Readick Jr.) but above all a Depression-era populace in dire need of cathartic entertainment.

From the very start on July 31st 1930, that narratorial “Shadow” was more popular than the stories he highlighted…

How that aural phenomenon was translated into an iconic literary/media sensation and exactly who was responsible forms the basis of this compelling testament as prolific author, scripter and historian Will Murray turns his spotlight on those who contributed to the amalgamated marvel of mystery and imagination.

Following his reminiscence-fuelled Introduction, Murray restates the origin of the character in photo-filled feature ‘The Five O’clock Shadow’ and details how the Street & Smith campaign to make a voice and a feeling real and remunerative spawned a landmark of broadcast entertainment, before ‘Out of the Shadows: Walter Gibson’ offers an engaging and revelatory interview with the magician-turned-crime writer conducted by Murray and Jim Steranko at the 1975 New York Comic Art Convention.

That interview was in a public forum, and the transcript omitted a lengthy digression comprising Gibson’s oral history of the Shadow’s signature fire opal ring. Here – in its entirety – it comprises ‘The Purple Girasol’, after which it’s the turn of ‘Heroic Editor: John L. Nanovic’ to be rediscovered and awarded his share of the acclaim.

Prolific and underrated, successor scripter ‘Theodore Tinsley: Maxwell Grant’s Shadow’ is celebrated all his many works after which we concentrate on illustration as cover artist ‘Graves Gladney Speaks’.

‘Walter B. Gibson Revisited’ revisits an interview with the author from PulpCon 5 (Akron Ohio, July 1976) conducted by Murray and Bob Sampson, discussing his working stance and fellow creatives at Street & Smith, whilst his connection to, expertise and excellence in conjuring and legerdemain are celebrated in ‘Walter Gibson’s Magical Journey’

Back in the realm of visions, an appreciation of a true master of pulp art exploring the mysterious ‘Edd Cartier: Master of Shadows’ is augmented by acknowledgement of the Dark Detective’s most obvious legacy in ‘The Shadowy Roots of Batman’, with ‘Memories of Walter’ synthesizing the emotions stirred up by the author’s passing in December 1985.

Packed with fascinating detail and elucidatory anecdotes, plus plenty of pictures and photos, this beguiling documentary of bygone times and appreciation of the giant shoulders we all stand on, this so readable tome also includes biographies ‘About the Author’ and ultra-fan Tim King, whose crucial role is covered in ‘About our Patron’.

If heroes and history are important to you this Master of Mystery: The Rise of The Shadow is truly unmissable.
© 2021 Will Murray. All rights reserved. Artwork © Condé Nast & used with permission.