{"id":33949,"date":"2025-10-04T08:00:51","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T08:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=33949"},"modified":"2025-10-02T17:25:45","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T17:25:45","slug":"love-me-please-the-story-of-janis-joplin-1943-1970-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2025\/10\/04\/love-me-please-the-story-of-janis-joplin-1943-1970-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Love Me Please – The Story of Janis Joplin (1943-1970)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Nicolas Finet<\/strong>, Christopher<\/strong> & Degreff<\/strong>: translated by Montana Kane<\/strong> (NBM)
\nISBN: 978-1-681122-76-2 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-681122-77-9<\/p>\n

Gosh, aren\u2019t real people interesting… especially in comics?<\/em><\/p>\n

The list of people who lived hard, died young and changed the world is small but still, somehow, painfully overcrowded. Possibly the most tragic, influential, yet these days largely unknown was a born rule-breaking rebel who defied all conventions to become almost inevitably THE<\/em> icon of doomed youth-with-big-dreams everywhere…<\/p>\n

Author, filmmaker, journalist, publisher, educator and music documentarian Nicolas Finet has worked in comics for more than three decades – generating a bucketload of reference works like Mississippi Ramblin\u2019<\/strong> and Forever Woodstock<\/strong>. His collaborator on that last one was veteran author, journalist and illustrator Christopher (The Long and Winding Road<\/strong>; many other music-centred tomes and adaptor of the wonderful Bob Dylan<\/strong>). Their compelling treatise on misunderstood and self-destructive Janis – just like her music, poetry and art – is something to experience, not read about, but I\u2019ll do my best to convince you anyway…
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\nAfter a quick dip into early life and influences, the story proper opens in Texas in 1947 as \u2018Forget Port Arthur\u2019<\/em> zeroes in on key childhood traumas and revelations around the homelife and schooling of little Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19th 1943 – October 4th 1970) at the start of the most culturally chaotic and transformative period in American history…<\/p>\n

Brilliant, multi-talented, sexually ambiguous, starved for love and desperately directionless, her metamorphosis through Blues music mirrors that of many contemporaries (a fair few of whom comprise the infamous \u201c27 Club\u201d of stars who died young). However, as this book shows, although something indefinable was always just out of Joplin\u2019s reach, her response was never to passively accept or ever surrender…
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\nBarely surviving her wildly rebellious teen years, an uncomfortable educational life, brief brush with conventional conformity and near-fatal counter-culture encounter in San Francisco – as all detailed in \u2018The Temptation of Disaster\u2019<\/em> – her meteoric rise in the era of flower power, liberal love and drug experimentation and record company exploitation lead to her return to sunny California and triumphant breakthrough in 1966, all carried along by \u2018Spells and Charms\u2019<\/em>…<\/p>\n

Stardom with hot band Big Brother and the Holding Company<\/em>, and a host of legendary encounters affording even greater personal dissipation, makes wild child into living myth at Monterey and other landmarks of the Summer of Love, before success and acceptance prove to be her darkest nightmare in \u2018Lost and Distraught\u2019<\/em>…<\/p>\n

Global stardom and media glorification are balanced by heartbreak, betrayal and too many brushes with death. As Woodstock confirms her status and talent to the world, the landscape inside her head turns against Janis. Endless exhausting tours and brief amorous encounters further destabilise the girl within and the end – when it comes – is no surprise to anyone…<\/p>\n

With a moving Preface<\/em> from comics legend and childhood friend Gilbert Shelton, a huge, star-studded Character Gallery<\/em> and suggested Further Reading and Viewing<\/em>, this forthright, no-nonsense, extremely imaginative interpretation of the too-short flowering of \u201cthe Rose\u201d offers insight but never judgement into a quintessentially complex, contradictory and uncompromised life…<\/p>\n

NBM\u2019s library of graphic biographies are swiftly becoming the crucial guide to the key figures of modern history and popular culture. If you haven\u2019t found the answers you\u2019re seeking yet, then you\u2019re clearly not looking in the right place. Just remember that, as you gear up for what might well be the last Christmas you\u2019ll spend with loved ones…
\n\u00a9 Hatchette Livre (Marabout) 2020. \u00a9 2021 NBM for the English translation. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n

Most NBM books are also available in digital formats. For more information and other great reads see\u00a0NBM<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today in 1931 comics changed forever with the first published episode of Chester Gould<\/strong>\u2019s detective innovation. We last saw his impact in The Dick Tracy Casebook – Favourite Adventures 1931-1990<\/a><\/strong> but there are loads and they\u2019re all great. The same holds true for Walt Kelly<\/strong>\u2019s scathing, sweetly savage political satire which debuted today in 1948. If you\u2019re as yet unconverted why not check out Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comics Strips volume 1 – Through the Wild Blue Wonder<\/a><\/strong>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nicolas Finet, Christopher & Degreff: translated by Montana Kane (NBM) ISBN: 978-1-681122-76-2 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-681122-77-9 Gosh, aren\u2019t real people interesting… especially in comics? The list of people who lived hard, died young and changed the world is small but still, somehow, painfully overcrowded. Possibly the most tragic, influential, yet these days largely unknown was … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Love Me Please – The Story of Janis Joplin (1943-1970)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[115,214,122,215,170],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-european","category-historical","category-lgbtqia","category-non-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-8Pz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33949"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33954,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33949\/revisions\/33954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}