Among the titles that reach bookstores these days are some works so outstanding that they have already been welcomed as new comic classics. And it’s not an exaggeration. First of all is the second part of the multi-award-winning Lo que me más más gusta son els monstres / El que m’as m’agrada son els monstres (Reservoir Books / Finestres), by the North American Emil Ferris. It took Ferris six years to finish this story patiently drawn with colored pens. The story of a 10-year-old girl who lives in the turbulent Chicago of the late 1960s and who, through her fictional diary, tries to solve the murder of her mysterious neighbor, a Holocaust survivor. Imaginary monsters and flesh and blood monsters coexist in this fascinating, hypnotic and torrential work. A waste of imagination and talent that drags the reader into the spiral of an unforgettable story. A milestone of the ninth art.
Another modern classic is Revolución (Planeta Cómic), by Younn Locard and Florent Grouazel, a triptych that now presents its second part, Equality. A second volume so voluminous that it was necessary to divide it into two parts. Grouazel and Locard have managed to narrate the French Revolution as no one else had done, at street level, as if it were a chronicle and with an authenticity that makes your skin crawl. The documentation is overwhelming and the narrative talent is overwhelming. A job at the height of his enormous ambition. A monumental comic.
Because it’s unlike anything we’ve ever read, The Color of Things (Reservoir Books) is the most unusual comic of the year. Martin Panchaud proposes an unprecedented and fascinating narrative experience, however, behind its groundbreaking and almost intimidating appearance, it is a very entertaining book, with an adventure that captivates the reader from the first pages and is full of script twists.
Jean-Marc Rochette, artist of the iconic Snowpiercer, publishes La darrera Reina (Symbol Editors), where he masterfully mixes stories that take place in different settings and eras. Art, war and love between two apparently very different people. His call to preserve the environment resonates like a black omen: “When the last queen of the bears dies, the time of darkness will begin.” Rochette does not draw the landscape: he encapsulates it in the vignettes so that we feel it. A great album like the landscape it portrays.
From love for nature to love for animals. After the success of Hierba, the Korean Keum Suk Gendry-Kim presents Perros (Reservoir Books), an emotional look at our relationship with pets that manages to shock when it crosses the line of the predictable and enters the realms of animal abuse. An album to put next to the little and emotional Jim (Red Fox), by François Schuiten, although it is closer to the illustrated book than to the comic – the borders are blurred – where the Belgian author draws mourning for his deceased dog. An intimate, sad and beautiful mourning notebook. Schuiten himself, in the company of the essayist Benoît Peeters, signs what will probably be the last volume of his cult series The Dark Cities, The Return of Captain Nemo (Norma Editorial), a tribute to Jules Verne’s fantasy in a dystopian key with a superlative drawing.
The French Nine Antico mixes readings, experiences, historical figures and lives of saints in Madonnas and Whores (Garbuix Books). Through three women who must keep their desires repressed, Antico talks about feminism and patriarchy, and confirms itself as one of the most interesting voices in French-speaking comics. She is not the only French author with news. Chloé Cruchaudet presents Céleste and Proust / Céleste i Proust (Lumen / Finestres), the story of Céleste Albaret, the young maid who accompanied Marcel Proust for nine years and until his death. Her comic delves into her devotion and his manias with a sinuous drawing highlighted by beautiful watercolor color. Precious is also the color of Catherine Meurisse’s album, who intelligently and irreverently questions 25 centuries of philosophy in Humana, Too Human / Humana, Massa Humana (Impedimenta/Finestres), while Clara Lodewick addresses combat in Merel (Garbuix Books). of a woman against the gossip and sexist prejudices that circulate in her town. An invitation to reflect on our attitude towards hoaxes and harassment.
Barcelona is the setting for four new albums. In I am his silence / Soc el seu silenci (Norma Editorial), Jordi Lafebre creates an unforgettable character, a smart, foul-mouthed and bipolar young psychiatrist, who investigates the murder that took place in the sumptuous home of a rich Catalan family. The city that Shum evokes is very different. journalistic. For their part, screenwriters Denis Lapière and Gani Jakupi team up with cartoonist Rubén Pellejero, flanked by Eduard Torrents and Martín Pardo, in Barcelona. Black soul / Barcelona. Ànima negra (Norma Editorial), a thriller that traces the history of the Catalan capital during the Franco dictatorship through the figure of a respectable industrialist who hides intense criminal activity. Finally, Pep Brocal adapts Carlos Zanón’s novel of the same name in Taxi (Salamandra Graphic): a story that takes place over seven days and six nights and that becomes more complicated page by page. Brocal draws with a masterful hand, a great sense of rhythm and an intelligent exercise in color.
More literary adaptations. Bartolomé Seguí recreates Malaherba (Salamandra Graphic), the first novel by Manuel Jabois, a beautiful story of love and death that traces the passage from childhood to adulthood. And Manu Larcenet dares neither more nor less than with The Road (Norma Editorial, in Spanish and Catalan), a novel with which Cormac McCarthy won the Pulitzer Prize. Larcenet had to convince the American that it was possible to translate this devastating fable about the future of human beings into cartoons and the result is an overwhelming black and white comic that seems to have been drawn with hammer blows. Hard, dry, full of plastic talent and narrative ingenuity. In France it has already climbed among the best-selling books. Larcenet makes a double this Sant Jordi with another album in a completely different register: Group Therapy (Norma Editorial), a hilarious look at the creative crisis through a comic book author who was famous and now has lost inspiration. A transcript of Larcenet himself caricatured in a corrosive way.
Another bestseller in France is History of Jerusalem (Garbuix Books), a graphic essay written by historian Vincent Lemire and drawn by Christophe Gaultier that in ten chapters recounts 4,000 years of history of this city, cradle of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A rigorous and instructive work, a choral narrative that also wants to be an invitation to coexistence between peoples and religions.
From Japan come two intimate, author’s mangas. Taiyô Matsumoto presents the second part of Tokyo Day by Day (ECC), a melancholic album set in the Japanese comics industry starring an influential editor who has decided to leave his job; Matsumoto captures the city with a masterful line that is trembling and full of charm. More tragic is Sentimental Melody (Gallo Nero), six short stories by Tadao Tsuge about the poverty of his country during the postwar period; crestfallen, disoriented characters, who even sell their blood to eat. Experiences inspired by his life.
Another type of desolation runs through the pages of El nido. Hitler’s Last Banquet (Salamandra Graphic), where Marco Galli evokes the decline of the Nazi leader in his residence in the Alps, drugged and prey to terrible hallucinations. His drawing draws on classics like Hugo Pratt and iconoclasts like Olivier Schrauwen and is splashed with a very appropriate lysergic color. Disturbing is also the end of the Labyrinths trilogy (Reservoir Books) by Charles Burns, a David Lynch-style story starring a shy teenager obsessed with horror films who, after meeting an attractive young woman, begins to confuse reality and imagination. . The same author published Skin Deep (La Cúpula), which recovers short stories in black and white, including the famous Burn again. Burns takes us into a dark, black abyss, but it is so fascinating that we do not want to leave it.
The many readers of the graphic novels by Tillie Walden (Pirouettes) or Jillian and Mariko Tamaki (Roaming) will undoubtedly enjoy In Limbo (The Dome), by Deb JJ Lee, the story of a South Korean girl who emigrates to the United States and there he discovers what it means to be different: another language, another culture and other physical traits. Wanting to integrate, she ends up feeling neither American nor Korean and living in that limbo to which the title refers.
Joann Sfar, one of the most prolific authors of comics, presents Riviera (Confluencias), an unclassifiable detective graphic novel drawn with his characteristic lines that are both fragile and vigorous. His script adds reflections on life and religion because Sfar never approaches any issue conventionally. Not here either.
Another prolific author is the Spanish José Luis Munuera, who in The Race of the Century (Astiberri) recreates a true story so grotesque that it seems invented. A marathon that took place in the United States in 1904, during the third Olympic Games of our era, and which was the slowest and trickiest of all time. Masterfully drawn by Munuera and effectively written by Kid Toussaint.
The most popular comics author in Italy right now, Zerocalcare, presents An Octopus in the Throat (Reservoir Books), a metaphor for the fears and silences of childhood, for the art of growing up without dying in the attempt. A happy and at the same time deep, ironic and bitter author. If you are human, it is impossible not to empathize with what Zerocalcare has to say.
