THE BEST OF 2022 & 2023 COMICS FORECAST
By Cameron Ashley
What a year! Seriously, how good were comics in 2022?
I’m not entirely sure if confidence, in terms of consumer,
retailer and publisher, returned to something approaching “normal” (whatever
that means for the comics industry), but it felt like a lot of excellent comics
perhaps stuck in the pipeline during the worst of the pandemic finally saw the
light of day. Pure speculation on my part, and the fact that a number of
smaller publishers either will not or might barely make it through 2023
undercuts the overall optimism of this opening.
Anyway, comics!
If this is this first time you’ve encountered one of these
yearly wrap-ups of mine, I have a few rules (some of which I admittedly break
on occasion):
All Best of titles are generally stand-alone. If not, they
must at least begin in the relevant calendar year (which disqualifies something
like, say, Catwoman: Lonely City).
They must have been printed; this is a column for a wonderful
retail space after all.
I generally have an aversion to including mainstream titles
as you don’t need someone like me to tell you about them.
The titles are listed in no particular order of my idea of
“quality,” with the exception of the first book listed which I consider the
best of the year.
Clearly this is just my dumb opinion and you may well hate
this list. That’s cool with me – you’re encouraged to put your faves in the
comments, I am aways looking for comics to discover.
I try to get to as much as I can (which is why this column
runs so late every year). Notable 2022 exceptions I am aware of but did not get
to read by deadline are: 2120 by George Wylesol (Avery Hill), Yokohama Kaidashi
Kikou by Hitoshi Ashinano, translated by Daniel Komen with English adaptation
by Dawn Davis (Seven Seas) and Mickey Mouse: Zombie Coffee by Regis Loisel and
translated by David Gerstein (Fantagraphics). There will be dozens more, but
those three are things I particularly wish to have read.
2022 was not just a year full of great comics, it was also a
year full of great books about comics. From Matthew Klickstein’s flawed but
still revealing oral history See You at San Diego, Shelley Bond and co.’s
excellent comic-as-comics-how-to, Filth & Grammar and Brian Doherty’s
colourful history of Underground Comix, Dirty Pictures, readers were spoiled.
An additional note here – I also read 2021’s True Believer: The Rise and Fall
of Stan Lee by Abraham Riesman, which I encourage all to read. It’s a vitally
important and potentially shattering read for many. (NOTE: Wrestling fans should
be on the lookout for Reisman’s follow-up biography, this time on Vince
McMahon, due March).
Additionally, a flood of stand-out reissues hit the shelves –
Home to Stay, Fantagraphics’ sumptuous, oversized collection of every Ray
Bradbury story published by EC Comics, probably chief among them alongside
Viz’s lovely new editions of Kazuo Umezz’ jaw-dropping Orochi classics and the
budget-busting, painstakingly assembled, Love & Rockets: The First Fifty by
Los Bros Hernandez, Fantagraphics’ 40th anniversary celebration of some of the
greatest comics of all time.
Okay, here’s what I enjoyed the most in 2022, a year
dominated by works years in the making. Don’t go anywhere, however, immediately
below that is the 2023 Forecast (with titles arranged alphabetically in this
section), our annual look ahead to Things We Know are coming in the year ahead,
and in some cases already on the shelves, as well as some not-so educated
guesses.
Here we go.
THE BEST COMICS OF 2022
ONE BEAUTIFUL SPRING DAY
Jim Woodring
Fantagraphics
Well, wow.
One Beautiful Spring Day is Jim Woodring’s attempt to create
what he considers a terrible creative mistake. See, Jim listens to something
called The Unifactor in making any and all creative decisions. Square types
might just scoff and call The Unifactor Artistic Intuition or, with some
generosity, his muse. Jim, however, and those of the more creatively romantic
amongst us (hi, Team!) would believe that The Unifactor is the space made from
Woodring’s intellect, unconscious wanderings and visions. It’s a living space.
His character, Frank, is our guide through it.
Some time back, Woodring ignored a creative
decision/Unifactor direction and kind of fucked things up a bit. Then he kept
ignoring. Three complete comics are the resulting step-children of The
Unifactor, Congress of the Animals (2011), Fran (2013) and Poochytown (2018).
None of these books feel instinctively “bad,” but there is definitely something
off with each of them, the kind of thing phrases like “I can’t quite put my finger
on it” were invented for.
2018s corrective effort, Poochytown, even comes with a
subtitle: “Discontinuing Congress of The Animals and Fran,” Woodring retconning
Frank’s adventures like some sort of Big Two-character post whichever Crisis we
are up to now. In listening to The Unifactor again though (and one presumes,
begging absolute forgiveness in the process), a gift was bestowed upon
Woodring. The Unifactor decided to adopt its stepchildren as its own by giving
Woodring the answers to “fixing” the work.
The result is One Beautiful Spring Day, which compiles the
three outcasts and connects them together with over 100 new pages. It may sound
cynical to some, just another Fantagraphics ploy to wring more dollars out of
its obsessive fanbase (hi again, Team!). That’s what I first thought. My next
thought was to write about it right here, to pick it apart, see where the old
stops and the new begins, dismantle it, reassemble it, reveal it. It was easily
the most arrogant thought I’ve ever had about a comic.
There are times when every critic, even one as half-assed and
amateurish as me, should read something that is so good that any desire to pick
it apart evaporates. There should be times like this, anyway. I think if you’re
a critic and you find everything fair game, you’ve lost some love.
All of this is to say that One Beautiful Spring Day is quite
possibly one of the most perfect and beautiful comics reading experiences I’ve
had since childhood. Additionally, the fact that I literally read it sitting in
my backyard on probably the most perfect Spring day Melbourne had last year
made it feel like The Unifactor was visiting me too. I chilled a four pack of
very strong Hawkers IPA, sat on dandelion-covered grass in bad need of a mow
and read. It was all so perfect.
The book is somehow completely whole, its previous segments
absorbed into this new comics organism, and shockingly, is as coherent as
Woodring’s Frank work has ever been while also being supremely psychedelic.
Woodring’s wavy lines, like heat waves on a hot day distorting the background
of what we see, are the key to his powers, there’s nothing else like them in
comics and at this size, the pages almost overwhelm the reader just as the
events overwhelm the characters.
One Beautiful Spring Day is likely Woodring’s masterpiece,
which is saying something, and is undoubtedly shortlisted for comic of the
decade. Find someplace comfortable, someplace quiet, and ensure you have at
least two hours by yourself. I promise you will not regret it.
THE FOREST
Thomas Ott
Fantagraphics
The unfortunate thing about books that get released in the
first quarter of any given year is that have the tendency to get buried under
other excellent books as the year goes on, to the point that they are virtually
forgotten by the time fools like me assemble Best of lists.
Such is the case with Thomas Ott’s remarkably beautiful The
Forest, released last January.
Here’s some of what I wrote about The Forest in this space last March:
The Forest’s main character is a small boy who has just
experienced the death of a loved one and wanders away, sadly, from the funeral,
to travel through darkness, both literal and metaphorical to find light again.
The plot of The Forest is as delicate as Ott’s artwork and,
as result, I’m hesitant to say too much more about it. The Swiss artist
(possibly most notable for his Cinema Panopticum, 2011 from Fantagraphics)
works on black scratchboard, etching away at the surface with incredible care,
to bring forth the white underneath. Every page is stunning in its own way,
whether it’s the expression on the boy’s face, the alternating beauty and
ominousness of the surrounding nature or the almost John Totleben-vibes of the
folk horror nightmares living within the darkest parts of the forest (or the
unconscious, if you dig Jung).
Death is omnipresent in this forest. seemingly with every
twist and turn our boy makes, he’s upon another horror, another grim “version”
of death: men swing from nooses, a pit of human bones is clambered over. Yet
you might be surprised to hear that The Forest is, in my opinion, ultimately
one of the warmest, most affecting and beautiful mediations on death and the
process of grieving I’ve ever seen. Ott’s lovely, enveloping artwork is
obviously a large reason as to why this is, but there’s a LOT going on here for
such a slender book and I think perhaps its use of archetype during what’s,
essentially, a rite of passage, strikes something at pretty primal within.
A truly gorgeous and moving book worth poring over, The
Forest is a stunner.
THE MAN WHO SHOT LUCKY LUKE
Matthieu Bonhomme (Translated by Jerome Saincantin)
Cinebook
Originally published in France back in 2016, Matthieu
Bonhomme’s beautiful The Man Who Shot Lucky Luke finally arrived in English
from Cinebook in 2022. I’ve been banging the Bonhomme drum since Cinebook’s
release of The Marquis of Anoan series with writer Fabian Vehlmann and it’s a
real shame we’ve had no translated Bonhomme since until the arrival of both The
Man Who Shot Lucky Luke and Wanted: Lucky Luke last year.
Who could possibly shoot Lucky Luke, the man who can draw his
pistol faster than his shadow? Bonhomme opens with a “dead” Lucky Luke before
flashing back and fleshing out the first of his two tales of the cowboy
gunslinger to date.
Bonhomme piles on the intrigue with Luke’s arrival in the
rainy Froggy Town causing quite a stir, especially amongst the Bone brothers, a
pair of corrupt authority figures. It’s the little moments here that really
stand out, such as a lightning strike causing Luke to drop the cigarette he’s
rolling with incredibly expensive Froggy Town tobacco into a puddle. Every page
is evocative and cinematic, with Bonhomme’s colours retro-flat, his palette
limited, echoing the look of the classic tales of Belgian cartoonist Morris’
character that stretch all the way back to 1946
I’d recommend grabbing both The Man Who Shot Lucky Luke and
Wanted: Lucky Luke, but forced to put one volume in this list, I’ll take this
one. Formatted in the original European album format, with crisp matte paper,
this is the kind of comic I wish more aspired to be – colourful, intriguing,
warm and constructed with absolute love and affection for both character and
medium. A beautiful comic.
SENSEI’S PIOUS LIE
Akane Torikai
Kodansha
The best comic with the worst title in 2022 was for sure
Akane Torikai’s four-volume gut punch, Sensei’s Pious Lie. A complex and
disturbing psychodrama focussed squarely on power dynamics and abuse, Sensei’s
Pious Lie originally ran from 2013-2017 in Japan and finally made its English
debut last year.
Be warned – this is dark stuff, with a central protagonist,
Misuzu Hara, in the midst of an extremely abusive relationship she cannot
untangle herself from and whose increasing attraction to a brooding student she
teaches (who has suffered abuse of his own) eventually leads to a horrifically
violent climax.
It’s tough subject matter to read and even tougher to write
about, so I’m going to let Kodansha’s PR person step in for a moment:
Torikai's work is a frank and nuanced examination of the
emotional and practical effects of sexual violence, rendering the messy
realities in gorgeously refined linework and dialogue far more naturalistic
than most manga. The author veers away from blunt indictment to paint one of
the most complex and fascinating psychological portraits of both rapist and
victim in any medium.
Torikai subverts almost any kind of genre trope you might
expect to find in Sensei’s Pious Lie. She even dangles a momentary
Hollywood-style ending in front of readers only to smash that particular cliché
to bits as well. Incredibly real, astonishingly absorbing, frequently
devastating, occasionally terrifying and never anything less than compelling,
the quality of Torikai’s art also does not waver across the four chunky volumes
Kodansha gave us. She’s slick and expressive, with characters occasionally
reminiscent of those of her husband and fellow mangaka, Inio Asano.
Every single relationship in Sensei’s Pious Lie, and there
are many, is complicated at best and frequently motivated by some ugly but very
recognisably human motivations. The totality of Torikai’s work is sharp and
smart and unwilling to give most readers what they probably want because that’s
just not how things work in the world. I do wonder about its relationship and
potential commentary on shojo manga, but I don’t know enough about that to
comment with any certainty. Surely the wish fulfilment common in many
(particularly old) Japanese girls comics is in Torikai’s crosshairs – Prince
Charmings and blissful marriages are nowhere to be found here. Torikai murders
those aspirations and throws their corpses in the wood shredder.
Ultimately, Sensei’s Pious Lie is easily the bravest thing I
read last year as well as being one of the best. Although I really do wish there
had been a rethink on the title…
TIME ZONE J
Julie Doucet
D+Q
The justifiably maligned info-dump gets the most striking
overhaul of any worn-out, aggravating narrative trope in the overwhelming pages
of the legendary Julie Doucet’s Time Zone J.
Easily the most shockingly accurate depiction of unspooling
memory that I’ve ever encountered, Doucet details the events of a love affair
gone by with the manic rush experienced by anyone who encounters a past self
via photos, letters, or in Julie’s case, diaries. The result is remarkable and
baffling and deeply, personally odd.
Doucet herself advises that she started drawing the pages
from the bottom up, but this is a pretty confusing instruction. I found that
the pages worked best for me by reading in a circular way – from bottom of left
page to up and over to the right. Honestly though, this should be read in
whatever fashion you feel like reading it and its re-readability comes from the
fact that a reader can construct the information is so many ways.
The pages of Time Zone J are uncut, meaning that the art
never ceases, the memories flow on and on from page to page and Julie won’t
even give us the edge of the page to remember that we are not Julie as her past
selves and current selves suck readers in deeper and deeper. The overall effect
is hypnotic; the immediacy of this gorgeously drawn memory dump is overwhelming
at times.
I adored Time Zone J. It’s a triumphant return to comics for
Doucet, who quit making them in the 90s, and as beautiful and unique a piece of
art as you’ll find on the shelves. You may have to fight your way into this
book and this may seem like a struggle at first – there is just so much
information both art and text on every page – but its simulation of time and
experience as things that can just collapse over us at any moment is as
absorbing and artfully created as anything in 2022. An essential piece of
comics from the year gone by.
PLAZA
Yuichi Yokoyama
Living The Line
The creator of the “noisiest” comics of all time got even louder in 2022, with Living The Line’s incredible, oversized release of Plaza. Yokoyama’s comics are always singular experiences, page after page of non-stop motion and sound effects – the lettering of which forms such an integral part of the work. I’ve not encountered his art at this size before and the overall effect is almost overwhelming
Plaza is Yokoyama’s attempt at bringing the full cacophony
and frantic activity of the Brazilian Carnival to comics and the result is a
triumph. Readers will feel dropped right into the raucously loud, vibrant and
overwhelming carnival and by the end may feel as emotionally drained as if they
attended the real thing. Yokoyama’s comics are all about the experience, often
of travel and movement, so do not go in looking for plot, go in looking for an
aesthetic overload of off-kilter art and endless happening.
Living The Line’s production is excellent – from the size of
the book, to the paper stock, to the juiciness of Yokoyama’s black lines, as an
art object, it’s a treat. A sumptuous, totally unique vacation to Brazil as
filtered through Yokoyama’s own odd inner-landscape and aesthetic, Plaza is
proof that with a good comic in hand, you don’t need to travel far to
experience much. Wonderful.
DUCKS
Kate Beaton
D+Q
Quite probably the single most critically-lauded comic of
2022, Kate Beaton’s shattering memoir, Ducks, is also likely to be the most
enduring. Another work on this list literally years in the making, Beaton’s
examination of her time working the Albertan Oil Sands covers numerous thorny
topics with thoughtfulness, narrative skill and beautiful cartooning.
Beaton herself is the perfect “everyman,” dropping readers
right alongside in the Oil Mines of Alberta as she bravely attempts to pay off
all her student debt in a two-year period in the early 2000s. Hailing from
British Columbia, Beaton joined countless other Canadians of low-socioeconomic
backgrounds and the otherwise desperately unemployed in this field, seen by
many as their only hope of making good money. What she encounters over her time
at work is an enormous gender disparity, endless misogyny, crippling
loneliness, harassment and assault and, eventually, an escalating environmental
catastrophe.
For Beaton to present all of this with as much objectivity as
she has mustered shows an enormous level of skill alone, but to also make the
comic as gripping and page-turning as it is and fill it with such beautifully
constructed sequences of all kinds of human interaction throughout is pretty
astonishing.
Ducks is an important and special book, deserving of all
praise heaped upon it and more. It’s stunning.
KEEPING TWO
Jordan Crane
Fantagraphics
We’ve all had them. Moments when our loved ones are gone
longer than they said they would be, messages to them gone unanswered, and we
wonder if everything is okay? Are they safe? Will they return?
Jordan Crane’s Keeping Two, twenty years in the making,
unfurls this dread to maximum uncomfortableness, with doom-ridden scenario
after scenario playing out in an emotional whirlwind in the mind of a character
who just wants his wife home and safe. Like Ultrasound, another title on this
list, it takes events real and imagined and replays them. Yet where Ultrasound
ultimately reveals itself to be a genre comic, Crane’s effort, equally
imaginative and constructed with absolute care and delicacy, remains focussed
on the bond between his characters
Sprinkled throughout are the events of another couple dealing
with the loss of a child. Crane weaves these four lives together brilliantly
across his hundreds of beautiful green-hued pages, the characters visually
evolving over the years it took the author to complete his story. Crane’s pages
are panel-packed, reality and imaginings colliding in dizzying sequence one
after the other before opening up gloriously, allowing readers to breathe along
with the characters during Crane’s resolution. Just beautiful.
PTSD RADIO Vol.1
Masaaki Nakayama
Kodansha
Where to start and what to say about Masaaki Nakayama’s
incredible PTSD Radio? It’s a shot in the arm for J-horror? It’s the most
structurally interesting genre comic I’ve read in ages? It’s legitimately
creepy at peak moments?
All of the above is true and all the above is why I’m going
to be really careful here because readers should be as utterly disarmed as
possible by this thick omnibus volume (the first of three in total comprising
the original six Japanese volumes), collecting material originally published in
Japan between 2012-2014.
Nakayama seems determined as possible to keep his readers
wrong footed and off balance throughout PTSD Radio. It opens as a series of
creepy little stories that seem like they are vignettes, but they are not –
they are each part of a wider story and each continues in its own way to build
up the legend of Ogushi-sama.
Echoes of the horror masters are here, Junji Ito, Kazuo
Umezu, and Nakayama’s skill at keeping things as unpredictable as possible has
also clearly come from poring over Umezu’s work. His art is utterly unlike both
of those manga legends, however, modern and clean and appealing – almost like a
manga Darick Robertson who knows how to keep faces consistent from panel to
panel.
The body horror is off the charts weird and imaginative, the
atmosphere drips dread, and the twists and turns in plot are, already in this
first volume, inspired.
That’s it, I’m out. I’ll say no more except that volume two
landed in January (I can’t wait to crack it open), with the concluding volume
three to follow shortly. PTSD Radio is the most impressive “new” horror comic
I’ve come across in a long, long time – don’t sleep on it.
DETENTION #2
Tim Hensley
Fantagraphics
“I’m fine as silk wid my dukes and I wanna drink damn quick!”
Tim Hensley’s bouncy, effervescent adaptation of Stephen
Crane’s 1893 novella, Maggie: A Girl of The Streets, is a total riot. Arriving
under the title, Detention #2 for hilarious reasons (Fantagraphics tells us
Hensley created this “as a study aide à la Classics Illustrated, created for
those being punished by remedial instruction”), Hensley’s hugely oversized
pages are filled with cartooning winks and nods to E.C Segar, Don Martin and
Dan DeCarlo. The dialogue, peppered with lines such as the above and other gems
like, “She was wicked teh deh heart, an’ we never knowed it,” is a total crack
up from start to finish.
Poor, beautiful, “bowery waif” Maggie falls for the dashing
barkeep Pete, who is unfortunately a scoundrel to the core and Hensley charts
Maggie’s tragic slide with wit and, damn, can he draw. His panels pop off these
huge pages, roughly Treasury Edition-sized, with a show-stopping, double page
bar donnybrook that is an absolute hoot. Moral decrepitude has never looked so
much fun.
Complete with a short and hilarious comics biography of Stephen
Crane at the rear and loads of other Easter eggs, Detention #2 has a pretty
small print run, so grab this before it’s gone. As an 1896 critic wrote of
Crane’s work, “I can recall no title that approaches Maggie in the illustration
of drunkenness, promiscuous pugilism, joyless and repellent dialogue, and
noise.” Never has a greater recommendation been penned. Awesome stuff, by Gawd!
Mycelium Wassonii
Brian Blomerth
Anthology Editions
Richard Metzger once described Grant Morrison’s comics as
“candy-coated bullets.” I wonder what he’d say about Brian Blomerth?
Candy-coated anti-aircraft missile perhaps…
Blomerth blew my socks off with 2019s Bicycle Day, “A Visual
History of the World’s First Acid Trip,” and he did so again last year with
Mycelium Wassonii, an astonishing retelling of the adventures and research of
R. Gordon and Valentina Wasson, “the pioneering scientist couple responsible
for popularizing the use of psychedelic mushrooms.”
If anything, Blomerth actually outdid himself, with his
incredible layouts, intricate fungi and beautifully-realised psychedelic trips.
As with Bicycle Day, Blomerth recasts his psychedelic pioneers as
anthropomorphic dog people, all lolling tongues and floppy eyes. Delightfully
influenced by the classics of the Underground, his comics are nonetheless so
rich in detail and craft.
Printed on gorgeous toothy matte paper, publisher Anthology
Editions puts the nail in the coffin of any argument suggesting that colour
pops more attractively of glossy paper than matte. Mycelium Wassonii explodes
in a riot of bright and stimulating mixed media colours, saturating the world
in which Gordon and Wasson live and the realms which they travel to with the
aid of their mushrooms and the end result is both informative and supremely
attractive.
The only comic in 2022 to feature both the CIA and Buddha,
Mycelium Wassonii is so accomplished, I have to wonder where on earth, or
beyond, Blomerth can possibly take his readers next.
OROCHI
Kazuo Umezu
Viz
We were spoiled with three beautifully designed hardcover
editions of Kazuo Umezu’s Orochi in 2022, a classic of horror manga most of
which has never appeared in English before. I last wrote about it in October’s
Halloween column, so forgive me while I plagiarise myself below.
Created between 1969 and 1970, Orochi by Japanese horror
manga legend, Kazuo Umezu (Umezz) should come with a warning for potentially
causing some slight psychic trauma. Almost all of Umezz’s work features bubbly,
cherubic youths doing awful things to each other or, even worse, having awful
things done to them by adults. If Umezz himself didn’t embody such a childlike
joy for life or his youthful protagonists weren’t so frequently capable of
handling themselves, you’d think the guy utterly hated kids. At the very least,
in Umezz’s world, families are demented and people in them are, at best,
secretive and at worst, violently disturbed. It’s quite a worldview. Somehow
despite the grimness, more often than not, his manga somehow also manages to be
fun.
The blurb for Orochi is slightly misleading: “A mysterious
young woman slithers her way into the lives of unsuspecting people like the
legendary multitailed serpent for which she is named – Orochi.” However, Orochi
is frequently a compassionate, helpful figure. Armed with her undefined powers,
Orochi frequently turns from onlooker to tragic events to participant in the unfolding
violence and tragedy.
You can’t go wrong with any of these stories, but volume 2
contains the especially memorable Orochi tale, “Prodigy,” about a family (the
Tachibanas) destroyed by the arrival of a violent intruder one dark night. The
intruder’s break-in leaves young Yu Tachibana with a scar on his neck and his
father an alcoholic wreck. Yu’s mother transforms into a nightmarishly
overbearing and abusive figure, desperately pushing Yu to achieve the academic
brilliance that is his birthright – there is horrible scolding, far worse
physical abuse. Orochi befriends the boy and is witness to his attempts at
desperate revenge against the man who left the mark on his neck that symbolises
so much of the ruin in his family.
Umezz’s art is just glorious throughout –
beautifully-detailed backgrounds, lovingly-rendered characters, incredible
visual storytelling throughout. Family squabbles are gut-wrenching even if the
melodrama is fever pitched. Snow falls against jet-black night in winter
scenes, checkerboard tiles under the feet of characters provide mild
disorientation, adding to the total oddness unfolding in the narrative – this
is a brilliantly constructed comic.
The twist is tremendous, and I’ll not spoil it here. Perfect
for horror readers looking for something a little different and who aren’t
afraid to feel a tad uncomfortable, “Prodigy” is a psychodrama that still
somehow maintains a visceral punch despite being over 50 years old. Seek this
one out. Hell, seek the whole series out.
With further volumes to come in 2023, it’s a wonderful time
to be an Umezz fan.
ACTING CLASS
Nick Drnaso
D+Q
Nick Drnaso’s Acting Class further proves he’s one of comics
most uniquely gifted creators. I have no idea how long it takes him to complete
his long-form works but Acting Class, clocking in at over 260 dense pages, is
so disquieting I don’t know how he lives with these things in his head for as
long as he must – his books have a tendency to make me feel queasy, and I mean
that as the highest of compliments.
Acting Class features an ensemble cast of various social
misfits who each decide to take acting lessons at a community centre. Their
teacher, John, odd from the start, becomes increasingly demanding, his lessons
more and more strange, and his ultimate motives ever slipperier. The “real”
people, their invented class personas and the world in which they all inhabit
all begin to shift and readers may well begin to feel that everything is askew,
the world slowly, gradually tilting as the story unfolds.
Drnaso’s glassy-eyed characters, almost mannequin-like in
their features and mannerisms, seem emotionless even as they force themselves
to emote in class. His figures are frozen in snapshots, posed uncomfortably,
always “human” and yet somehow also not. Drnaso is tapping into some kind of
Uncanny Valley vibe – the discomfort we experience at seeing something
presented to us human that is not quite right.
We are used to comics artists pulling us in with their work,
but Drnaso creates characters and settings with the stripped back sterility of
a combined Ikea catalogue and flight safety instruction sheet. It’s like J.G
Ballard’s Death of Affect (the inability to authentically emote resulting from
years of sensory overstimulation) on a planetary scale. The result is,
artistically, fascinating. Add to this some of the frankly bizarre acting
scenarios that begin to play out amongst the ten students of John’s class, and
the astonishing cracked-reality sequence that leads to the book’s final,
troubling moments, and Acting Class stands tall as the most unnerving reading
experience of 2022.
I’m never going to an in-person short course on anything ever,
ever again.
ULTRASOUND
Conor Stechschulte
Fantagraphics
One of those comics that’s ripe for multiple re-readings is
Conor Stechschulte’s Ultrasound, a chunky, hardbound head-trip that’s best gone
into by readers as cold as possible to maximise its swerves in plot.
Glen drives home on an extremely rainy night and has a tire
blow out. Knocking on the door of a nearby house, he’s soon welcomed inside to
meet Arthur and his wife, Cyndi. Glen’s attraction to Cyndi is apparent quickly
and Arthur encourages an awkward, drunken tryst. From here, nothing is the same
again and Stechschulte’s brilliant, decade-in-the-making comic, switches colour
palettes through a dizzying journey of unreliable narrators, uncertain events,
surveillance and mind control experiments. It’s all grounded by Stechschulte’s
realistic dialogue, gifts for depicting physical expression and scratchy lo-fi
artwork.
These poor, poor characters, ploughing forward towards “the
truth” as their own pasts shift behind them like quicksand are the bedrock of
Ultrasound, stripping its SF trappings back to absolute believability. The
craft is off the charts good, with events replaying on top of each other,
recontextualised each time with each new plot reveal.
Ultrasound feels endlessly re-readable, perfectly paced and
exquisitely executed. An incredible addition to a year stacked to the brim with
absolutely excellent comics, Ultrasound is also now a movie (with a screenplay
by Stechschulte). I’ve not watched it yet, but it would be fun to see with the
book in your lap, as further divergences in events are sure to occur. Let’s
hope its not another ten years before Stechschulte follows this up.
FORECAST
BLOOD OF THE VIRGIN
Sammy Harkham
Pantheon
Due May
Finally finished, finally collected, international fans of
Sammy Harkham’s work can finally stop trying to hunt down various issues of the
artist’s Crickets anthology which serialised his epic Blood of The Virgin.
Coming in May from Pantheon, Harkham’s gorgeously cartooned
story of a struggling immigrant filmmaker in early 70s LA has been in the
making for roughly a decade spanning (I believe) at least four different
publishers in the process. I’ve got most of it and it’s wonderful. To have it
all together under a single cover is sure to be one of the comics treats of
2023.
Pantheon says:
Set in and around 1971 in Los Angeles, Blood of the
Virgin follows an immigrant film editor named Seymour who is desperate to make
his own movies. Without money or clout, he has no choice but to spend his days
slumming it for the worst and most exploitative production company in town.
When Seymour is given the chance to make a film of his own, his unbending
principles and relentless drive violently clash with an industry that rewards
everything but these traits. As Seymour’s blind ambition pushes the movie
along, his home life grows increasingly fraught. Using the film’s production as
a means to spiral out into time and space, Harkham creates an epic novel that
explores the intersection of parenthood, 20th-century America, sex, the
immigrant experience, and the era of grindhouse movies. Like a kaleidoscope, Blood
of the Virgin shifts and evolves with each frame, allowing the reader to zoom
out and see that at its core, this book is about the making of a man.
DOCTOR STRANGE: FALL SUNRISE TREASURY EDITION
Tradd Moore & Heather Moore
Marvel
Due August
Yes, I realise that Tradd Moore’s Doctor Strange: Fall
Sunrise mini-series is currently underway in single issues but, come on, the
man was made for the oversized Treasury Edition. Personally, I find Moore to be
the most interesting artist working in the comics mainstream – he quit drawing
straight lines years ago and his flowing, curved and organic work is just
stuffed with detail.
Moore was not only made for the Treasury Edition format, he
was also made for Doctor Strange. If there’s ever been a run on the character
that’s topped the pop-psychedelia of the original Steve Ditko/Stan Lee run or
the trippy existential prog rock weirdness of the Steve Englehart/Frank Brunner
and friends run of the ‘70s, I’ve never seen it but surely, with Fall Sunrise,
we have a contender.
Marvel of course brings the hype:
Doctor Strange awakens alone in a distant world not his own.
Lost of purpose and surrounded by danger, the wandering sorcerer must explore
this land of blades and mystery to unravel arcane secrets and escape the deadly
horrors that lie in wait! Strange is pulled in every direction by powerful
figures while millions of lives rest in the balance - including his own! Who
can he trust? Can this world's deadly ritual be stopped? Or is the answer
simply blood? Heaven help us, it must be blood!
2023s ultimate
read-this-with-headphones-in-front-of-your-turntable book, Doctor Strange: Fall
Sunrise surely marks the latest phase in Tadd Moore’s fascinating evolution as
an artist. These are the kind of things I wish Marvel would do much more of.
The ongoing focus on super-tight continuity and the lack of truly great
stand-alone material is why, for me, DC is the much more interesting choice
currently. Marvel has the characters, they have the creators – let more of them
off the chain. Hopefully, Fall Sunrise is a sign of similar material to come.
It’s sure to be one of the year’s most striking oversized books.
GOODBYE, ERI
Tatsuki Fujimoto
Viz
Due June
Famed for the wild just-concluded series, Chainsaw Man,
Tatsuki Fujimoto seems like a restless creator, having also put together
several one-shots of interesting variance. I’ve not read much Chainsaw Man, but
I like what I’ve seen. Goodbye, Eri, Fujimoto’s forthcoming one-shot may well
have slipped past my notice had it not been for this review at The Comics Journal’s website which I
encourage anyone interested in comics, comics craft, or just Fujimoto’s work to
check out.
What makes a comic a comic is always intriguing to me,
particularly in an age where so many comics seem to be merely Hollywood
pitching vehicles. With Goodbye, Eri, Fujimoto largely presents his comic in
the form of a fixed four panel grid from the perspective of a phone camera
belonging to a boy named Yuta. Yuta spends much of his time filming his dying
mother but then encounters, as the TCJ.com review says, “the movie-obsessed Eri.”
Yuta and Eri begin to make a film together. Then things, from the sound of it,
begin to blur; film and character, script and reality.
Viz says:
From the mad genius behind Chainsaw Man and Look Back comes a
new story about coping with loss. Yuta’s moviemaking career started with the
request from his mother to record her final moments. But after her death, Yuta
meets a mysterious girl named Eri who takes his life in new directions. The two
begin creating a movie together, but Eri harbors an explosive secret.
If you’re still not convinced, I really recommend reading
Masha Zhdanova’s TCJ review. A deep dive into the structural choices Fujimoto
employs in Goodbye, Eri as well as an examination on why a story about making a
movie works better as a manga rather than it would as a film (and, by
extension, just why comics are so awesome), it’s the kind of analysis I wish we
had more of and wish I myself had time to write. Anyway, bring on Goodbye, Eri,
we need more quality shortform manga.
LISTEN, BEAUTIFUL MARCIA
Marcelo Quintanilha
Fantagraphics
Due May
Winner of the Fauve d’Or at Angloume 2022 is Marcel
Quintanilha’s Listen, Beautiful Marcia. A luminously coloured, tightly wound
drama, Listen, Beautiful Marcia concerns a struggling nurse who lives in a
favela near Rio with her partner and a daughter becoming increasingly
rebellious under the influence of a local gang to the point of peril.
Quintanilha is apparently known for straight-ahead thrillers
but here fuses this propulsive sensibility to a family drama. It looks
absolutely gorgeous too – with a reliance on blues and pinks and purples it’s a
depiction of the favelas unlike any we’ve seen before. With the strong backbone
of a strained mother-daughter relationship stitched together with a suspenseful
plot and unique, beautiful artwork, Listen, Beautiful Marcia seems poised to be
one of 2023’s best. They don’t hand out Fauve d’Ors for nothing.
NIGHT FEVER
Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
Image
Due June
Spoiler alert – I’ve actually read Night Fever and it’s
really good. I’m aware that it has been massively pre-ordered by All Star
customers, so I’m not sure how much is needed from me here. I will say that
Night Fever is, in my opinion, a huge return to form for the stellar team of
Brubaker and Phillips, after some patchy work across five Reckless graphic
novels. I imagine the pace of creating such a large amount of Reckless material
in a two-year period is one of the problems with that series, but those books
never quite clicked for me despite great moments across all.
Sean Phillips seems particularly re-energised in Night Fever
and this is the best art he has produced in quite a long time. Brubaker’s
afterword indicates Phillips was not only asking for a story to be set in
Europe for years and finally obliged, but that the artist also drew Night Fever
at the size of the old EC pages of Wally Wood and Johnny Craig – that’s twice
the size of regular comics artboard. Sean’s son Jacob is back on colours and
turns in easily his best colouring over his dad’s work to date – there are some
wonderful colour choices here.
Image comics says:
A gripping new original graphic novel from ED BRUBAKER &
SEAN PHILLIPS, the bestselling creators of PULP, RECKLESS, CRIMINAL, and KILL
OR BE KILLED.
Who are you, really? Are you the things you do, or are you
the person inside your mind? In Europe on a business trip, Jonathan Webb can’t
sleep. Instead, he finds himself wandering the night in a strange foreign city
with his new friend, the mysterious and violent Rainer, as his guide. Rainer
shows Jonathan the hidden world of the night, a world without rules or limits.
But when the fun turns dangerous, Jonathan may find himself trapped in the
dark—the question is, what will he do to get home?
NIGHT FEVER is a pulse-pounding Jekyll-and-Hyde noir thriller
about a man facing the darkness inside himself. This riveting tour of the night
is a must-have for all BRUBAKER & PHILLIPS fans!
Brubaker’s going full Jim Thompson with Night Fever’s script,
plunging readers into a very dark, very weird piece of neo-noir and giving the
Phillips’ some really amazing hallucinogenic sequences to play with in amongst
the grit of late 70s Paris. You are probably getting this anyway, but if not,
you really should.
THE RICHARD CORBEN LIBRARY
Richard Corben
Dark Horse & Fantagor Press
Due April & July
Colourist extraordinaire, Jose Villarrubia has recently been
showing off some of his restoration work on the late, great Richard Corben’s
Den: Neverwhere. Corben’s use of colour was astonishing at times and many of
his comics still look like lurid fever dreams from some great comics future.
Villarrubia’s teases show us new scans of Corben’s work that
look incredible, with hidden detail previously obscured by printing processes
brought to light. Thankfully, we’ll all get to see the end result when some of
Corben’s long out of print works re-debut from Dark Horse, teaming with
Corben’s own Fantagor Press this year in at least two must-have editions.
Murky World is the first volume in the forthcoming Richard
Corben Library, with the classic Den: Neverwhere (with Den celebrating his 50th
anniversary) to follow in July. Corben is a top tier favourite of mine and,
odds are, if you went back through all the columns I’ve written in this space
over the years, his name would crop up the most. These new volumes can’t come
quickly enough for my tastes, and with Dark Horse promising this Library will
be a “series,” hopefully we see even more of Corben’s early work unearthed.
Here's Dark Horse on Murky World:
In Murky World, Tugat the warrior wakes from a strange dream
only to find himself in a bizarre land populated by hungry deadlings, cruel
necromancers, a buxom cyclops, evil cults, and more as he sets off on a
dangerous journey with his beloved horse Frix.
This is the first in a series of deluxe graphic novels from
renowned creator Richard Corben's library to be published by Dark Horse Comics.
This special edition collects the entire Murky World series in print for the
first time, and also features never-before-seen sketch material, the Dark Horse
Presents one-shot, and a foreword by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, all
presented in a gorgeous hardcover with a dust jacket.
A fitting tribute to an absolute titan of comics, The Richard
Corben Library should be considered indispensable.
ROAMING
Jillian Tamaki & Mariko Tamaki
D&Q
Due September
The hotly anticipated reunion of cousins Jillian and Mariko
Tamaki arrives this September. Roaming is the third book the pair has created
together having piled up award after award for previous efforts Skim and This
One Summer, Jillian becoming ever-sought after as an illustrator and Mariko
becoming perhaps an unlikely but successful writer on DCs Bat-titles.
Drawn & Quarterly says:
Over the course of a much-anticipated trip to New York, an
unexpected fling blossoms between casual acquaintances and throws a long-term
friendship off-balance. Emotional tensions vibrate wildly against the
resplendently illustrated backdrop of the city, capturing a spontaneous queer
romance in all of its fledgling glory. Slick attention to the details of a
bustling, intimidating metropolis are softened with a palette of muted pastels,
as though seen through the eyes of first-time travelers. The awe, wonder, and
occasional stumble along the way all come to life with stunning accuracy in
this sumptuous softcover with gorgeous jacket.
Jillian’s art is as sumptuous as ever from the preview pages and the duo’s engrossing, character-driven
story sensibilities appear to remain intact. Really, enough said from me here.
It’s the Tamakis. Together. What more could I possibly have to add?
ROGUE TROOPER
Garth Ennis & Patrick Goddard
2000 AD/Rebellion
Serialisation beginning April
Beginning in April in the pages of 2000AD is the triumphant
return of the beloved Rogue Trooper, this time scripted by Garth Ennis and
illustrated by Patrick Goddard.
Rogue Trooper is one of 2000AD’s flagships – he’s obviously
not Judge Dredd, but he’s certainly not too far down the pecking order. Created
by Gerry Finlay-Day and none other than Dave Gibbons, Rogue Trooper follows the
adventures of a lone “genetic infantryman” created to survive a ruined Nu-Earth
and hunting for his enemy, Traitor General. Rogue Trooper doesn’t undertake
these missions alone – the personalities of his fallen comrades are embedded in
chips housed inside his equipment.
Ennis’ story, “Blighty Valley,” marks his debut on the
character and given the combat-influenced nature of much of the writer’s prior
SF work (think Bloody Mary) as well as the amount of other material he’s
written for Britain’s flagship comic, you have to wonder why it has taken so
long. Goddard is a solid choice for the art chores, with a realistic and
detailed style well suited to the material and very much in synch with the
great Rogue Trooper artists past like Dave Gibbons and Cam Kennedy.
2000 AD and Ennis say:
In this new tale, Night’s Horizon is the period two weeks out
of every year when Nu Earth’s orbit carries it closest to the black hole. The
Norts call it Zvartchvintern; the first settlers knew it as Lightfall. Things have
a reputation for going a little… screwy around this time. Now, Rogue Trooper is
about to experience those effects first-hand…
Garth Ennis said: ‘For me Rogue Trooper is as vital a part of
classic 2000 AD as Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Robo-Hunter, Nemesis the
Warlock, or Sláine, and I well remember wandering the wastes of Nu Earth with
Rogue and the bio-chips on their hunt for the Traitor General. The stories that
instantly come to mind are ‘All Hell on the Dix-I Front’, ‘Fort Neuro’, ‘Eye of
the Traitor’, ‘You Only Die Twice’ and ‘To The Ends Of Nu Earth’ – I hope
‘Blighty Valley’ will prove a worthy successor to such unadulterated gems.’
Whether you get this as part of the weekly progs or wait for
the inevitable collection, Ennis and Goddard’s thirteen-part Rogue Trooper will
be one to look out for.
SOCIAL FICTION
Chantal Montellier
NYRC
Due June
FINALLY! It’s real! Coming from stellar publishers, New York
Review Comics comes this massively overdue, first-time-ever English translation
of Chantal Montellier’s beautiful and scathing Social Fiction.
Collecting three of Montellier’s works, Wonder City, Shelter
and 1996, Social Fiction’s arrival complete in English is sure to be one of the
comics achievements of the year. To the best of my knowledge, only 1996 has
been translated before and that was in the early days of Heavy Metal 40 years
ago.
NYRC says:
“An anonymous official chides a man under surveillance for
stepping out of view of a security camera; visitors to an underground mall are
forced to form a new society when a nuclear strike may (or may not) have left
them as the sole survivors on Earth; newlyweds living in an authoritarian New
York City attempt to navigate the insidious hurdles of being permitted to have
a child; and a Puerto Rican boxer discovers that segregation continues in America
long after death.
These are the visions of Chantal Montellier, a contributor to
the legendary Métal Hurlant, and the creator of some of the most striking and
stirring science fiction comics of the 1970s and 1980s…Montellier’s blend of
dark humor, gripping storytelling, and consistent focus on the perils of
totalitarianism, shows her to be a master of both comics and science fiction.”
I adore Montellier’s work so much that a 2003 French edition
of Social Fiction from Vertige Graphic sits on my shelf and another quick flip
through reveals Social Fiction to be as striking, confronting and beautifully
drawn as ever. NYRC always go the extra mile with their presentation and there
is no doubt that this classic material is in safe hands. In particular, I
really look forward to finally reading Shelter in full, which has always seemed
to me to be the most “New Wave of SF” comic that I’ve ever seen – like an
adaptation of a JG Ballard story that never existed.
Trust me – this is utterly unmissable and hopefully is just
the start of more of Montellier’s astonishing work getting long-overdue
translations.
THE SOLITARY GOURMET
Jiro Taniguchi & Masayuki Kusumi
Ponent Mon/Fanfare
Due July (??)
One of the great comics mysteries of 2022, at least for this
dork, was where the hell was The Solitary Gourmet? Rumoured to have been
arriving since 2020, the book was even solicited last year but….still has not
arrived.
Functioning as something of a spiritual follow-up to his The
Walking Man, the late, great Jiro Taniguchi invites us to spend 340 pages with
Mister Inogashira, “a sole, independent trader importing household and fashion
goods from France,” as he…eats.
This (hopefully) forthcoming edition from Ponent Mon collects
all 32 chapters of The Solitary Gourmet, created over a 20-year period, a
different meal and setting in each. It may all sound pretty pointless to many
who aren’t foodies, and possibly some who are, but Taniguchi was not just an
astonishing craftsman capable of varied comics across all manner of genre, but
his best work is arguably The Walking Man – a comic in which literally nothing
happens except for a man going on walks. I think about The Walking Man in terms
of ambient music – it encourages the reader to slow down, soak in the detail,
experience the peace that the character feels. The Walking Man is the
anti-shonen, not a speed line in sight, a deliberate and beautiful attempt by
Taniguchi at imbuing calm in his readers. It’s a comic I treasure.
We all feel that everything is speeding up. 2022 went by
frighteningly quickly and we’re staring down the barrel at March 2023 already.
If you need to take a moment, to calm down, to experience some peace and quiet,
to get away from things but are stuck at your desk – you need a copy of The
Walking Man and I dare say, you’ll need a copy of The Solitary Gourmet.
Mindfulness will never look as delicious as this.
SPA
Erik Svetoft
Fantagraphics
Due February
“Wellness” has never looked quite so unwell as it does in
Spa, the debut book by Stockholm-based artist Erik Svetoft. Described as being
perfect for fans of the offbeat horror of auteurs Junji Ito, David Lynch and
Lars Von Trier, Spa does seem to recall Von Trier’s The Kingdom, but moves the
offbeat horror from a hospital to a five-star spa and conference hotel catering
to anyone that can afford to stay there.
Publisher Fantagraphics says:
“A demanding VIP client disappears without a trace. A
business seminar is cut short. A young official gets lost looking for his room.
A socially outcast masseuse struggles to find acceptance. Two lovers struggle
to escape the horror of everyday life — which includes horrific apparitions
routinely haunting them. An egocentric manager doubts himself. Abused employees
accept their sad fate. Curious inspectors come to settle their accounts.
Meanwhile, mysterious moisture damage is spreading. Amidst
the extravagant decor, black and viscous liquid flows slowly in the
labyrinthine alleys of the resort and trickles down the walls. Hot and humid,
the dampness is suffocating. Mold sets in and with it skin diseases,
hallucinations, ghosts, malevolent spirits, hybrid creatures, and other
monsters both dead and alive. Spa is a horrific graphic novel debut marked by
grotesque and whimsical humor.”
Svetoft’s art is scratchy and detailed and perfectly strange,
promising escalating strangeness over the course of over 300 pages. Hopefully
the year’s most perfectly offbeat horror hit!
STARSEEDS BOOK 3
Charles Glaubitz
Fantagraphics
Due August
It’s been a long time coming, but 2023 finally sees the
release of the third book in Tijuana-based artist Charles Glaubitz’s Starseeds
and it promises to be the kind of Kirby meets Campbell meets shamanism meets
conspiracy meets alchemy meets archetype meets psychedelia mash-up fans of
mind-melting comics dream of.
Volume Two showed Glaubitz stretching both artistic and
narrative potential and honestly I cannot wait to see how much further this can
be pushed. Glaubitz made a striking return to pen and ink during the production
of volume three, and the images he’s trickled out as the process continued have
been striking and organic.
An incredible marriage between beauty and bombast, philosophy
and fisticuffs, delirium and design, it's high time the series received more
love, acclaim and, probably most importantly, publicity.
Fantagraphics says:
In Starseeds 3, Renató joins the Starseeds, Crystal and
Jaguar, to save their friend, Indigo. As Renató dives deep into Indigo’s soul,
Crystal defends and protects their helpless bodies from the Illuminati while
Jaguar must purify his soul and energy using ancient medicine to tap into the
cosmic axis tree that will save their friend. When Renato meets their mortal
enemy, the Lizard King, the truth about reality is revealed, altering the
course of the Starseeds’ lives as they face their greatest challenge.
Meanwhile, the Beautiful Dreamers — Arco, Iris, and Hadron
—travel inside the Black Women Mountain to traverse a new dimension of human
thought: the Noosphere!
Kirby and conspiratorial influences aside, Starseeds is the
heir to all the great '70s Marvel cosmic comics; Englehart, Starlin, and it
outdoes all those dudes. Let's hope 2023 is the breakthrough year for this
astonishingly talented artist and his menagerie of cosmic creations. Seriously,
if you’ve not read Starseeds yet and enjoy your concepts high as Terence
McKenna on weekends and your art ever-evolving and always eye-popping, this is
the series for you.
TITS & CLITS
Various
Fantagraphics
Due March
Another long-overdue compilation, Fantagraphics gives the
deluxe treatment to the legendary Tits & Clits, the long-running
underground anthology created by female cartoonists. Created as an answer to
the perceived misogyny of Zap!, the godfather of comix by Crumb, Spain, Wilson
and others, Tits & Clits debuted from editors Joyce Farmer and Lyn Chevli
in 1972 and ran sporadically right through until 1987. Now finally collected in
a massive 368 page edition, the complete Tits & Clits is poised to be one
of the year’s most important archival comics projects.
Fantagraphics says:
A feminist answer to Zap, Tits & Clits quickly became an
anthology showcase for other women cartoonists, featuring the work of Mary
Fleener, Roberta Gregory, Krystine Kryttre, Lee Marrs, Carel Moiseiwitsch,
Trina Robbins, Dori Seda, among others. Like other underground comix, Tits
& Clits leaned into being lewd in order to satirize women’s experiences
with so-called sexual liberation. Featuring stories about birth control,
abortion, menstruation, masturbation, and more, Tits & Clits featured intimate
politics which occasionally clashed with contemporaneous feminist concepts
about sex and sexuality. As Chevli put it: their work had something to offend
everyone. (In 1973, conservative legal authorities in Orange County deemed
their work pornographic and even threatened the two editors with arrest on
obscenity charges.) `
Now, for the first time in half a century, a new generation
of readers will be shocked, entertained, enlightened, and scandalized by the
bold satirical cartoonists that comprised the band of sisters in Tits &
Clits. In addition to reprinting the seven-issue run of the Tits & Clits
series, this collection also includes in their entirety two classic solo comics
from 1972 written and drawn by Farmer and Chevli — Abortion Eve and Pandora’s
Box. Also included is an introductory essay providing context to Tits &
Clits’ place in the history of women’s cartooning by the book’s editor,
Samantha Meier.
Unmissable.
A VERY BRITISH AFFAIR
By Various
Rebellion
Due February
Lock up your hearts! A Very British Affair arrives in
February, collecting over 50 classic British romance comics.
You really have to admire the lengths publisher Rebellion
goes to in order preserve the often-obscure corners of British comics history.
I myself had no idea that England had a thriving romance comics scene in the
50s, particularly romance comics as well drawn as so many of these appear to be
from the preview images.
Rebellion says:
Curated by Eisner-nominated historian and artist David
Roach, A Very British Affair charts the stratospheric rise of romance comics in
postwar Britain with a selection of the greatest romance comics ever printed in
the UK. Featuring an eclectic mix of artists from Spain, Italy, and the UK,
this collection unearths the sensual art and emotional writing which delighted
generations of comics readers.
…this lavish book is a stunning tribute to the often
uncredited creators who crafted an industry of love. Roach shines a spotlight
on the Spanish and Italian artists who dominated romance, as well as the
genre’s forgotten female contributors, like Jenny Butterworth, Pat Tourett and
Diane Gabbott.
This volume should not go under the radar of any comics fan –
it looks strikingly designed and presented and not only shines the spotlight on
so many hidden gems, the art within hits all those retro photorealist
illustrative sweet spots we find re-emerging in comics today. Can’t wait for
this one. Bring your tissues, heartbreak will surely abound.
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