Berlin: city of smoke

Following Berlin: City of Stones , published in 2000, Jason Lutes has published part 2, Berlin: City of Smoke. Part 1 is one of the best comics I’ve read, and I can’t wait to start reading part 2. (yes, I know, a last minute suggestion…)

Le couple

Le couple by Max Ernst, a well-known representative of Dadaism and Surrealism. One of my favourites. Earlier this year I posted also about a fantastic graphic novel by Max Ernst: Une Semaine De Bonté (still on sale via Amazon !).

Comics list

Fifty things every great comics collection needs

(via)

Other comic lists: The Comic Journal’s Top 100 English-Language Comics of the 20th Century, Time top ten graphic novels, The 101 Best Graphic Novels, The Twenty Best European Graphic Novels You Haven’t Read (very good choice !), 30 Essential DC Comics Graphic Novels (yeah, right…, but they are good), a list of comic awards, another list of award-winning graphic novels.

Quote

Your pretty empire took so long to build.

Now, with a snap of history’s fingers down it goes.

– V for Vendetta, page 208.

Three Graphic Novels

A while ago I bought three graphic novels, and tomorrow I’m going to buy another three classic graphic novels:

Blankets is a 600-page black-and-white graphic novel by Craig Thompson, published in 2003 by Shenanigans Productions. A memoir, the book tells the story of Thompson’s childhood in an Evangelical Christian family, his first love, and his early adulthood.

From Hell is a graphic novel by writer Alan Moore and artist Eddie Campbell speculating upon the identity and motives of Jack the Ripper. The title is taken from the first words of the “From Hell” letter, which some authorities believe was an authentic message sent from the killer in 1888. The work is dense, multilayered and immensely detailed; the collected edition is 572 pages long.

Berlin is the title of a comic book series created by Jason Lutes and published by Drawn and Quarterly. Planned as a series of 24 magazines, it describes life in Berlin from 1928 to 1933, during the decline of the Weimar Republic. The first eight magazines were compiled into a book titled Berlin: City of Stones, published in 2000. It starts with Marthe Müller, an art student, arriving in Berlin. One story arc details the start of her life in Berlin, focusing on her relationship to journalist Kurt Severing. A second story line describes a working class family which breaks up due to differing political views, the mother eventually joining the communists with their daughters, while the father takes their son to the Nazis. The book ends on May 1, 1929, the International Workers Day. The next eight magazines will be compiled in Berlin book two: City of Smoke and will be released on August 19, 2008.

Weekend Reading

The Contextualizer: Arthur Lubow portrays Prizker prizewinner Jean Nouvel.

Into the Eisenshpritz. Elif Batuman looks at the latest publications in the world of the graphic novel and explains the attractions of the super heroes and their younger siblings. It’s their double character we find so fascinating.

Three Graphic Novels

Today I bought 3 must-read graphic novels (don’t ask why it took me so long to get them):

Maus is the story of Vladek Spiegleman, a Polish Jew who survived the ghettos, persecution and death camps of the Nazi’s in WWII. Vladek’s son Art, the author of the book and a comic book artist by trade, takes on the formidable task of transforming his father’s narrative into a comic book. To do this, he compiled many hours of taped interviews with notes, photographs, outside research and drawings. This information was condensed to give the reader the most succinct version of the story without losing the detail of his father’s narrative. All people are presented as anthropomorphic animals (for example, all Jews are depicted as mice, therefore the name Maus. The drawings are simple; the dialogue balloons are not over loaded with information and the two volumes of the book total only 271 pages. Yet, in so little space, Spiegelman is able to capture the incredible scope of the Holocaust as an event through the eyes of one of it’s victims. Much of this is made possible by Spiegelmans willingness to allow interpretation by the reader. In 1992 it won a Pulitzer Prize Special Award. This is the cover of part I, My Father Bleeds History :

And the cover or part II, And Here My Troubles Began :

Next I am now the proud owner of Watchmen, a twelve-issue comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. Watchmen is set in 1985, in an alternative history United States where costumed adventurers are real and the country is edging closer to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union (the Doomsday Clock is at five minutes to midnight). It tells the story of a group of past and present superheroes and the events surrounding the mysterious murder of one of their own.

And finally I have a copy of V For Vendetta, a ten-issue comic book series also written by Alan Moore and illustrated mostly by David Lloyd. The series is set in a dystopian near-future Britain after a limited nuclear war, which has left much of the world destroyed. In this future, an extreme fascist party called Norsefire has arisen and is now the ruling power. “V”, an anarchist revolutionary dressed in a Guy Fawkes mask, begins an elaborate, violent and theatrical campaign to bring down the government.

Une Semaine De Bonté

Une Semaine de Bonté (A Week of Kindness) is a graphic novel composed in collage by Max Ernst, made during a three week visit in Italy around the time of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. The novel was first published in 1934, as a series of five pamphlets of less than 1,000 copies each.

The novel consists of found images from Victorian encyclopedias and novels, cut up and re-organized into 182 montages which represent a kind of dark, surreal world. One such image includes a series of bird-men fleeing an unidentified terror, a giant hand reaching out of a window above.

Other extracts of this magnificent work of surrealism:

The art of caricaturing

If you want to make caricatures, than read this 1941 book about the art of caricaturing (free via the Internet Archive).

Les Cités Obscures

Via I came across Les Cités Obscures (English translation Cities of the Fantastic), an imaginary parallel world (a Counter-Earth), created by the Belgian comics artist François Schuiten and his friend, writer Benoît Peeters. Official site. Obskür, the magazine about the Obscure Cities. Seems like something I might like.