FLOG! Entries tagged 'Raymond Macherot'

Daily OCD 11/16/12

TheJenVaughn

The first bit of frost of Online Commentaries & Diversions:

• Review (video): Last Gasp's John Longhi reviews The Lost Art of Ah Pook by Malcom McNeill, a story originally created with William Burroughs. Longhi says, "I can see why Burroughs wanted to work with McNeill because he's one of the few guys who could capture the crazy wacked out details of his story writing. . . [It contains] all the wonderful social discord that made his writing fantastic."

• Review: Blacklung by Chris Wright gets high marks on Paste Magazine. Sean Edgar says, "Blacklung is a weird, compelling creation, telling a harrowing story of redemption and savagery through art that could initially pass as adorable before you get to the tongue necklaces. Highly recommended for those with strong stomachs."

• Review: School Library Journal announces their BEST BOOKS OF 2012 and in the graphics novels section, Noah Van Sciver's The Hypo is listed. "Van Sciver makes Lincoln real by picturing one of the hardest times in his younger life. . . Dickens-style squalor and melodrama plus Austen-style romance, all done in gritty cross-hatching."

• Plug: The NY Times listed Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons at the top of the Best Bathroom Reads of 2012. Dwight Garner believes "the prints collected here are droll and strange." Two of our favorite words to describe Fantagraphics-style creators such as Flannery O'Connor.

• Plug: Ken Plume mentions some of our books on his 2012 shopping guide: "Alongside the Peanuts collection, [Walt Disney's Donald Duck: A Christmas for Shacktown and Mickey Mouse Vol. 4 "House of the Seven Haunts"] reinforce the assessment that no one is doing archival comic collections as well as Fantagraphics."

• Plug: Drew Friedman is Boing-Boing-ed thanks to his amazing drawings, this time of John Severin from MAD/EC/Cracked comics.

• Plug: Black and White adores Raymond Macherot's Gil Jordan, Private Detective: Murder By High Tide and Sibyl-Anne Vs. Ratticus . Miguel saw the English and French versions, "And I fell in love. . . [Macherot's] worlds are (usually) full of deceptively cute anthropomorphic animals, and in his best work, under that kids-friendly surface of pretty little animals there is real threat."

• Review: Roughly translated from Ediciones La Cupula, Jaime Hernandez's God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls is reviewed. "The excitement that overwhelms us after reading each of the installments of the saga of [Ti-Girls] is directly proportional to its artistic excellence, his talent as a storyteller and human greatness that lives in his cartoons."

• Review: Lanacion reviews the writings and works of Alexander Theroux (Laura Warholic, Estonia and The Strange Case of Edward Gorey) and translated, barely, Matias Serra Bradford states, "If left as an untreated rarity, Alexander Theroux seems mysterious to the fantastic and impossible point of determining the trajectory of a particle and its position."

• Review: The Snipe News looks at Joe Sacco's Journalism collection. "the decade’s worth of stories. . . are most notable not from any kind of torn-from-the-headlines sensationalism but for the empathy the author brings to his subjects. . . . Sacco has a feel for displaced persons in general."

Daily OCD: 12/28/11

mike

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: The National Post's David Berry names The Best Graphic Novels of 2011, saying of his #3 choice "This does feel somewhat like cheating, since there’s only a few sequences of proper graphic work here, but why quibble about format: Mark Twain’s Autobiography 1910-2010 is, quite simply, one of the funniest things you’ll read in any genre. Kupperman has a child’s free-ranging imagination and an aging intellectual’s dry wit... This supposed telling of Mark Twain’s 20th-century life... would be an awe-inspiring work of imagination if it wasn’t so absurdly hilarious. Somewhere between John Hodgman and Graham Roumieu, Kupperman has found stark comic brilliance."

• List: Comic Book Resources continues their Top 100 comics of 2011 countdown, with Ganges #4 by Kevin Huizenga coming in at #48 and Brian Cronin calling it "mind-boggling" and "remarkable. Absolute top notch sequential work."

• List: Comic Book Resources columnist Sonia Harris lists "My Top 10 Comics (for ANY Year)" with Love and Rockets taking the #2 spot: "Read Love & Rockets, all of them, both brothers, everything you can find. Your life will be richer."

• List: Bookgasm's J.T. Lindroos, running down the Best Euro Comics as part of the Best Books of 2011, writes "Fantagraphics continued its Jacques Tardi lineup, and I was particularly delighted by the proto-steampunk The Arctic Marauder, although I think one should own every single book in the series. I was also happy to see some less well-known artists get their chance, and both Sibyl-Anne Vs. Ratticus by R. Macherot and Murder by High Tide by Maurice Tilleux were wonderful surprises in the classic Franco-Belgian 'bigfoot' style. Fantagraphics is quickly becoming the Criterion Collection of comics publishing."

• List: Richmond VA comic shop Velocity Comics counts down their top ten Best Graphic Novels 2011, with Jim Woodring's Congress of the Animals at #9: "There are few artists’ work I can endlessly stare at with as much feverish perplexitude as Jim Woodring’s. Yes, I just made that word up."

• List: Vancouver BC culture site The Snipe surveys local comics industry folks for their favorite comics of the year. The Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse series by Floyd Gottfredson is named Best Collected Edition or Reprint by cartoonist Steve LeCouiliard...

"Floyd Gottfredson is one of the overlooked masters of the comic strip. Like Carl Barks, his work was always signed 'Walt Disney' but his craft and storytelling brilliance shone through. Comic strips really don’t provide much more pure joy than Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse."

...and by VanCAF organizer Shannon Campbell...

"The two-volume collection of Floyd Gottfredson’s run of Mickey Mouse, hands down! These books chronicle the glory days of the old-school Mickey Mouse comics when Gottfredson did both art and story (from 1930-1934)."

...while the staff of Lucky's Comics can't pick just one:

"This has been a boon year reprint editions, but take your pick from Fantagraphics Books’ amazing editions of Pogo by Walt Kelly, Donald Duck by Carl Barks, Mickey Mouse by Floyd Gottfredson, and Prince Valiant by Hal Foster. Fantagraphics has done such an incredible job on book designs, colors, paper… all of the details that make these editions glow."

• List: On his Four Colours & the Truth blog Tim Reinert picks his top 20 Best Original Graphic Novels of 2011, with Love and Rockets: New Stories #4 at #17...

"Love & Rockets. Three little words, but for those of us who love independent comic books, they mean so much.... As usual with L&R, the stories are sweet, sad, sexy, humorous, and above all, fun."

...21: The Story Of Roberto Clemente by Wilfred Santiago at #13...

"It’s not just the subject matter that’s a winner here. Santiago has a knack for simplicity in his storytelling approach, and in a medium that’s often beset by needless complexity, that’s a rare gift."

...and The Hidden by Richard Sala at #6:

"...[P]robably the best pure horror comic I read this year... and one that quite frankly shocked the hell out of me. Sala’s expressionist art style might not be the most obvious choice for telling blood-curdling horror stories, but its innocent cartoony quality somehow makes a perfect (and terrible) fit with the horrible, almost nihilistic story that Sala is telling."

• Review: "Swarte’s visuals are always gorgeous and distinctive, with a strong influence from Hergé but an even more rigidly mapped out structure. The more you look at them, especially the large ones, the more you see, as in a one-panel, one-pager that lays out a parodic vision of comics production as if it resulted from a Roger Corman-esque movie studio. His eye is careful and his line even more so. ...[Is That All There Is?] is a real pleasure to read and to look at, and it makes a case for Swarte as a real comics guy, not just an illustrator." – Hillary Brown, Paste

• Profile: At City Journal, an essay by Stefan Kanfer with a history of Walt Kelly and Pogo: "He frequently quoted a line that he had written for Porky Pine: 'Don’t take life so serious, it ain’t nohow permanent.' No, it ain’t. But art — even comic art — can be, in the hands of a master. Every book, every comic, every panel verifies the claims of Kelly’s fervent cheering squad: after 63 ever-lovin’ blue-eyed years, Pogo is still incomparabobble." (Via The Comics Reporter)

• Plug: Seattlest's Heather Logue spotlights Tony Millionaire's upcoming appearance and art show at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery: "Aside from the fact that he has an amazing superhero name, Tony Millionaire also has the extraordinary talent to back it up. The cartoonist will be at Fantagraphics with his latest book 500 Portraits -- a collection of portraits (duh) of everything from the very famous face, to the very small bug. All meticulously crafted in his beautiful, yet grotesque way -- you're not going to want to miss Tony's take on portraiture."

• Plugs: At The Beat Heidi MacDonald recommends a few faves from our current 40%-off Inventory Reduction Sale

• Plugs: Ladies Making Comics has a handy guide to books by women creators in our current 40%-off Inventory Reduction Sale

• Scene: At his blog, Drew Friedman recounts his experience as keynote speaker at the International Society of Caricature Artists' annual convention last month, with lots of photos, a couple video clips and a transcription of a Q&A session

• Commentary: On his blog, proud book-papa Blake Bell runs down the reasons he's so excited about the imminent release of Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives Vol. 1, which he edited

Fantagraphics launches massive mail-order 'FBI�MINI' promo

kimt

(a partial assortment)

I always was very fond of the mini-comics format -- take two to four 8 1/2 x 11 sheets, fold them once, staple, and voilà! You have an adorable little 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 comic book for mere pennies. But I could never really figure out what to do with this old-school, low-tech format.

Until now!

For this catalog season, we have created 21 "FBI•MINI" booklets (most in this format, although there are a few oddities), as premiums for customers who order books directly from us. They are available free with the purchase of their "matching" book or books -- or for those customers who've already bought those books but are desperate to get the FBI•MINI, free with the purchase of $50 worth of any other Fantagraphics mail-order merchandise.

We've put together some pretty amazing stuff. For instances, there are four foreign FBI•MINIs featuring material that is being released in English for the very first time: an eight-page David B. story from the 1990s, an eight-page full-color Sibyl-Anne story by Raymond Macherot, a twelve-page collection of Joost Swarte's very earliest, most underground-y work -- the stuff that didn't make it into Is That All There Is? -- and most amazing of all, 21 pages of an abandoned Manchette/Tardi story that has only been printed once in an obscure French collection, and never in English. That's 49 page of prime European comics available here for the first time.

There are four sketchbook collections (an amazing gathering of Jim Woodring work preparing for Congress of the Animals, an intricate set of sketches and more by Stephen DeStefano for Lucky in Love, a collection of Kim Deitch's legendary pencilled conceptualization drawings... and a hilarious blurt of Prison Pit character doodles from Johnny Ryan).

There's a non-Segar Popeye strip from the Segar era that didn't make it into our Popeye series (since it wasn't by Segar)... a collection of terrific "coming attractions" pages from Golden Age comics to go with Greg Sadowski's upcoming Golden Age covers collection... a dozen great "Humorama" drawings that didn't quite get into the Humorama book... a striking facsimile of a Maurice Tillieux original Gil Jordan page, complete with watercolored color indications on the back... and a never-before published Joe Sacco strip.

Plus 16 pages of Alex Toth art from the Setting the Standard era, but here reproduced in crisp black and white from the original photostats... Tony Millionaire's hilarious illustrated essay on failing to secure a TV gig for Billy Hazelnuts, complete with a preview of his upcoming Billy Hazelnuts Volume 3... a collection of the legendary Ivan Brunetti Nancy strip try-out... and 12 gorgeous full-color pages of scary Richard Sala faces.

And we've also got some obscurities, such as 12 pages of Bill Griffith comics that got axed from his epochal Lost and Found, a never-before-reprinted Critters-era "Nilson Groundthumper" story by Stan Sakai, and some truly Jurassic-era comics from Peter Bagge and Los Bros. Hernandez.

If any of these catch your interest (and if you're reading this blog surely at least one of them will) you can click right on any of them to a more detailed listing on our website -- or just click right here and all 21 will pop up for you to peruse.

Daily OCD: 9/13/11

mike

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Alex Toth worked in a multitude of genres while at Standard (crime, romance, and horror among them) and they are, to the last one, collected here. Also, Toth’s Standard work has been reprinted somewhere between infrequently and not at all, and to have it all collected (and collected beautifully; the digital restoration keeps the original look perfectly) in this work fills in a sizable gap in comics history. Bravo for Fantagraphics.... If you’ve ever wanted to see what the 'big deal' is with Alex Toth, I can think of absolutely no better place to start. There’s no better bang for your buck this year than Setting the Standard." – Alonso Nunez, Giant Fire Breathing Robot

• Review: "Field mouse Sibyl-Anne... lives a quiet life in the French countryside, alongside her friends Sergeant Verboten (a porcupine), Floozemaker (a crow), and fellow mouse Boomer. When the greedy, power-hungry rat Ratticus shows up, his destructive ways turn the animal community upside down.... Macherot’s plotting is lively and unexpected... Thompson’s translation is colloquial and funny and, one can assume, smooths out some of the original’s mid-century social attitudes." – Publishers Weekly

• Interview: Comic Book Resources' Alex Dueben talks to Gabrielle Bell about her comics and her experience being in Mome at the beginning and end: "Well, it was very stressful. I wasn't very fast. I was really struggling, and it was hard to do. It was a good challenge. It really helped me to learn to put out comics regularly, but I think I wanted my own space to put my comics. Now I have my blog, and it certainly doesn't bring me much money or fame [laughs], but it does feel good that it's mine. I'm doing it as almost my own personal newsletter. Mome was very helpful and a good challenge. Maybe I outgrew it?"

• Profile: Martin Wisse posts a trio of short videos demonstrating Joost Swarte's forays into sculpture, residential design, and furniture design (via The Comics Reporter)

Daily OCD: 8/26/11

mike

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "It would take Gottfredson a few years to hit his stride: Many of his best Mickey stories appeared in the later ’30s and ’40s. But the basic characteristics that would make the print version of Mickey popular after the studio curtailed his animated antics can clearly be seen in these first installments.... Race to Death Valley is the latest entry in Fantagraphics’ reprints of classic comic strips, and is sure to delight fans of Mickey Mouse as well as comic strip aficionados. The strips are clearly printed in a readable size, and editors Gerstein and Groth carefully document the origins of the strip." – Charles Solomon, Los Angeles Times Hero Complex

• Review: "A new book from Fantagraphics helps restore the balance to Toth's broader reputation. In Setting the Standard: Comics by Alex Toth, 1952-1954, editor Greg Sadowski has assembled all of the crime, war, science-fiction, horror, and romance titles that Toth produced during his two years working for Standard Comics.... Setting the Standard pays tribute to Toth... by collecting genre-bound stories that the artist made fascinating through the sheer force of his talent." – Casey Burchby, L.A. Weekly

• Review: "Setting the Standard is chock full of stories... Lovers of good retro stories that support heroic warriors and the emotional problems of young women whose heart is between two men will be delighted." – Le Blog de Li-An (translated from French)

• Review: "For anyone with an interest in the Seattle music scene of the 1980s and ‘90s, the subgenre that became known as grunge, Taking Punk to the Masses: From Nowhere to Nevermind is essential reading.... If you can’t make it out to Seattle to visit Experience Music Project’s Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses exhibit, this book is a suitable substitute. Tons of gig posters, set lists, and album artwork provide further context. These visuals, accompanied by McMurray’s straightforward commentary and the extensive DVD interviews, create a compelling document of a unique era of music history." – Blogcritics

• Reviews (Video): On the latest Comics-and-More video podcast, hosts Dave Ferraro and Patrick Markfort look at our two most recent Franco-Belgian translations, Gil Jordan, Private Detective: Murder by High Tide by M. Tillieux and Sibyl-Anne Vs. Ratticus by R. Macherot — hope they liked 'em

• History: At Comic Book Resources, Brian Cronin digs into a piece of Carl Barks duck-comic trivia that we'll have to address somehow when that volume of the Carl Barks Library comes around

• Lore: The latest installment of Kim Deitch's epic memoir-in-music "Mad About Music: My Life in Records" at TCJ.com takes us into the Sixties

Sibyl-Anne contest at ComicAttack.net

mike

ComicAttack.net are giving away a copy of Sibyl-Anne Vs. Ratticus by R. Macherot to one lucky contest winner! Drew McCabe says "We fell in love with the book... a few weeks back. Now Fantagraphics (Sibyl-Anne’s awesome publisher here in the states) and ComicAttack.net are giving away a free copy of the book for your reading pleasure!" Entries are due by Sept. 1 — click here for all the contest rules.

Daily OCD: 8/5/11

mike

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: To the surprise of few, The Hooded Utilitarian's International Best Comics Poll tops out with Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts in the #1 spot. HU editor Noah Berlatsky writes, "If you like charming, Peanuts is charming, and if you like dark, it’s dark, but it isn’t just charming, or just dark, or even just charming and dark. There are countless ways to like Peanuts, which is no doubt why it — deservedly, inevitably — tops this poll."

• Review: "The squeaky-voiced character from the animated shorts was especially bold in his daily newspaper comic strip [Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse]. Its memorable continuities were largely the responsibility of one man: Floyd Gottfredson. ...Gottfredson and his collaborators crafted two-fisted tales that remain entertaining, thrilling and funny up to 80 years on.... This inaugural issue in a planned Gottfredson library is a handsome hardback, prepared with the same care as Fantagraphics's archive of Charles Schulz's Peanuts." – Owen Heittman, The Australian

• Review: "Sibyl-Anne vs. Ratticus is a wonderful time and read!... The writing and art are grade A for this, and I cannot recommend it enough. It does have a feeling much like Peyo’s Smurfs, but I prefer Macherot’s Sibyl-Anne over it. His story telling is a bit more better put together, and action scenes are more exciting (if one has to compare to something, that is). Plus Sibyl-Anne is just cute.... Sibyl-Anne vs. Ratticus has something every comic lover can enjoy." – Drew McCabe, ComicAttack.net

• Review: "Knowing me, if I wait until I’ve finished all 624 pages of [The Comics Journal #301], I’ll never get around to reviewing it, so I figured I’d just do it in parts. After a solid Introduction by Editor-in-Chief Gary Groth, in which he extols Crumb’s virtues as a cartoonist, and explains the reason Genesis deserved TCJ’s lengthiest critical symposium ever (the reason is that Groth thinks the book deserves it), we get a long and surprisingly warm and easygoing chat between Groth and Crumb. Neither has ever come off this…normal." – Christopher Allen, Trouble with Comics

• Plug: The Beguiling features The Comics Journal #301, with some nice photos

• Profile: Martin Dunphy of The Georgia Straight profiles Rand Holmes and previews the Holmes exhibit and presentation this Saturday at Vancouver comic shop Lucky's

• Profile: At SF Signal, Galen Dara explores "the odd cognitive dissonance" of divergent forms of comics by contrasting the work of Joyce Farmer with that of mainstream comics illustrator Jo Chen

Daily OCD: 7/27/11

mike

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Macherot’s animals are cute and full of character, from the porcupine sheriff to the cigar-smoking, shop-keeping bird. Visually they resemble Walt Kelly’s Pogo, with backgrounds that will look familiar to anybody who ever watched The Smurfs cartoon.... There might be more slapstick than the average post-elementary school reader can appreciate, but the adorable art, amiable characters, and a thrilling late-story air battle will keep you interested until the end. Best of all are the brief glimpses at domestic country mouse mundanity, like Sibyl-Anne’s love for baking pies and the aside where she and Boomer talk about how nice a certain table and its parasol are." – Garrett Martin, Paste

• Review: "This series [Wandering Son] is beautiful, perfectly capturing that time at the age of 10 or 11 where naivety and confusion meet in the formative years of your young identity. Where androgyny is a fine thing, defined by its ambiguity and as distinct as any sex." – Tom Rosin, Page 45

• Review: "The Willie and Joe cartoons and characters are some of the most enduring and honest symbols of all military history.... Alternating trenchant cynicism, moral outrage, gallows humour, absurdist observation, shared miseries, staggering sentimentality and the total shock and awe of still being alive every morning, this cartoon catalogue of the Last Just War [Willie & Joe: The WWII Years] is a truly breathtaking collection that no fan, art-lover, historian or humanitarian can afford to miss. …And it will make you cry and laugh out loud too." – Win Wiacek, Now Read This!

• Review: "...[Willie & Joe: Back Home] features some of the most powerful assaults on the appalling edifice of post-war America ever seen. The artist’s castigating observations on how a society treats returning soldiers are as pertinent now as they ever were; the pressures on families and children even more so; whilst his exposure of armchair strategists, politicians and businessmen seeking to exploit wars for gain and how quickly allies can become enemies are tragically more relevant than any rational person could wish. ...[W]e have here a magnificent example of passion and creativity used as a weapon of social change and a work of art every citizen should be exposed to, because these are aspects of humanity that we seem unable to outgrow." – Win Wiacek, Now Read This!

• Review: "Visually, Tyler's style is unique in the comics world.... The scrapbook design of [You'll Never Know, Book 2: Collateral Damage] is just one of many remarkable decorative touches she adds. Color is tremendously important both in a narrative sense (identifying key times and characters) and an emotional sense (modulating feelings felt on a page in an expressive style). The complexity of her page design (changing formats on an almost page-to-page basis) is brought to earth by the simplicity of her character design. The result is what feels like an ornate, powerful and cohesive sketchbook/journal.... Most impressively, Tyler manages to bring a static kind of craft (a sketchbook) to life with panels that crackle with energy and movement. There are no easy outs or answers in Tyler's attempts to create, maintain and understand connections with her loved ones..." – Rob Clough, High-Low

• Essay: The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon on Jaime Hernandez's The Death of Speedy, written for Team Cul de Sac's Favorites zine: "Hernandez's evocation of that fragile period between school and adulthood, that extended moment where every single lustful entanglement, unwise friendship, afternoon spent drinking outside, nighttime spent cruising are acts of life-affirming rebellion, is as lovely and generous and kind as anything ever depicted in the comics form."

• Commentary: "It could be seen as frustrating that I've still got five years to wait to complete the Peanuts collection, ...but in some ways it's nice. If they came out more quickly, there would be more of a feeling of urgency about ploughing through the strips, whereas I'm able to take a more leisurely approach, reading bits here and there. After all, they were only really meant to be read once a day. I don't buy many books these days, preferring to download them to my Kindle, but these books are definitely going to be a part of my life for as long as they'll last (or as long as I'll last, whichever comes first) and I do look forward to seeing 50 years of Schulz magic lined up on my shelves. I just need to work out where I'll put them all... Such is the life of a completist!" – James Ellaby, Lullabies from a Giant Golden Radio

• Analysis: At Robot 6, Matt Seneca examines a page from Ganges #2: "Kevin Huizenga is one of the cartoonists whose work addresses comics’ conflict between the abstract and the literal most frequently and interestingly. Huizenga’s attempts at using comics to mimic the visual effect of video games are especially notable: rather than creating the simulacrum of reality that the vast majority of comics do, what is brought forth instead is a simulacrum of a simulacrum, a copy of a copy, something already abstract abstracted further, its ties to reality stressed and stretched about as close to the breaking point as they can go."

• Interview: The Daily Cross Hatch's Brian Heater wraps up his 4-part conversation with Mome editor Eric Reynolds: "I think Mome actually got better as I actively stopped worrying about who the readership might be, and actively indulged my own interests.... I think that began to happen as early as the fifth or sixth issue. And I think, by the end of it — you can point to a lot of things that we probably would have leaned against publishing at the beginning."

• Profiles: Following the news that the Xeric Foundation is discontinuing its publishing grants, the writers of Robot 6 spotlight some of their favorite past grant recipients, including Megan Kelso and John Kerschbaum

• Awards: The Oregonian's Steve Duin congratulates his Oil & Water collaborator Shannon Wheeler on Wheeler's Eisner Award win last weekend

New Comics Day 7/27/11: Gil Jordan, Sibyl-Anne, The Raven

mike

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators and web-savvy comic shops are saying about them (more to be added as they appear), check out our previews at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability.

Gil Jordan, Private Detective: Murder by High Tide
by M. Tillieux

96-page full-color 8.5" x 11.25" hardcover • $18.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-451-1

Sibyl-Anne Vs. Ratticus
by R. Macherot

64-page full-color 8.5" x 11.25" hardcover • $16.95
ISBN: 978-1-60699-452-8

"Fantagraphics is bringing some acclaimed Post-Herge all-ages comics to American audiences, and this week sees two of them coming to stores that people should be watching for: Gil Jordan, Private Eye: Murder by High Tide by M. Tillieux, a funny fast-paced detective story, and Sibyl Anne vs. Ratticus by R. Macherot, featuring a mouse in a story that's described as a Pixar version of Wind in the Willows." – Dave Ferraro, Comics-and-More

"Fantagraphics also presently has an initiative to translate post-Tintin Franco-Belgian comics for English-speaking audiences, so they're releasing Maurice Tillieux's crime cartoon Gil Jordan, Private Detective: Murder by High Tide." – Cyriaque Lamar, io9

"I love learning about classic Eurocomics, so my next purchase would be one of two new books from Fantagraphics: either Gil Jordan: Murder by High Tide ($18.99) or Sibyl-Anne Vs. Ratticus ($16.99). I know nothing about either book or the creators (M. Tillieux and R. Macherot, respectively) and am eager to be schooled." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

The Raven
by Lou Reed and Lorenzo Mattotti

166-page full-color 9" x 9" hardcover • $22.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-444-3

"...Lou Reed (of all people) releases his interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven with Italian cartoonist Lorenzo Mattotti." – Cyriaque Lamar, io9

"There’s a interesting looking collaboration between Lou Reed and Mattotti on Poe’s The Raven..." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

At The Comics Journal it's Joe McCulloch's...

"CONFLICT OF INTEREST RESERVOIR: Europeans draw the comics. The Raven sees Lorenzo Mattotti interpret Lou Reed’s channeling of Poe; $22.99. Gil Jordan, Private Detective: Murder by High Tide collects a pair of classic Belgian albums by Maurice Tillieux; $18.99. And Sibyl-Anne Vs. Ratticus similarly presents work by Raymond Macherot; $16.99."

Daily OCD: 7/18/11

mike

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "...[L]ike the best coming-of-age stories — comics or otherwise — Wandering Son is meticulously accurate in its details, but universal in its emotions. Gay or not, readers shouldn’t find it too difficult to identify with kids who feel like their bodies and their friends are equally culpable in the worst kind of betrayal, preventing them from realizing the potential they see in themselves." – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

• Review: "The tone of each book is very different, with the Gil Jordan collection favoring clever mysteries, narrow escapes, and broad comic relief, while the Sibyl-Anne book is subtler, dissecting the way miniature societies work, together and in opposition. Both are excellent, though, showing off the strengths of the Eurocomics tradition, with its sprawling narratives spread across small panels, mixing cartoony characters and elaborate backgrounds." – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

• Review: "Reminiscent of the classic Michael Winner-helmed and Charles Bronson-starred The Mechanic, Tardi's follow up to his acclaimed adaptation of a Manchette crime novel West Coast Blues, Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot... delivers a superior sequential thriller. Violent, sexy, and littered with enough shocks to excite the most hardened crime fiction fan, Tardi once again produces one of the finest examples of the genre." – Rick Klaw, The SF Site: Nexus Graphica

• Review: "McKean has long been established as a master of multimedia imagery and Celluloid represents possibly his finest work. The clarity and seamlessness with which he combines photography with drawings and paintings makes every scene entirely convincing. It’s this hyper-reality that encourages us to submit to the dream-logic of the story." – Gavin Lees, Graphic Eye

• Review: "[Celluloid] is a story of sexual growth and empowerment. ...McKean's artwork gains greater dimensionality as his central character grows more assertive.... The pace of the story is left up to the reader, but McKean has created such lush visuals that many will want to linger and examine the intricacies of the imagery presented....Many of the pages are so well crafted in their surrealistic imagery that they could easily hang beside Picasso. McKean has boldly stepped away from the confines of mainstream comic books with this endeavor, and the result is a masterpiece of eroticism that relies heavily on intellect and emotion, rather than just mere arousal or titillation." – Michael Hicks, Graphic Novel Reporter

• Review: "If Siamese Dream-era Smashing Pumpkins exploded inside a Victorian tea shop, it would look something like [Meat Cake]... The humour is perverse, like an alt-universe Kate Bush who grew up reading penny dreadfuls instead of Brontë, the drawings are obsessively crammed with fever-dream detail, and the author has the advantage of being able to make publicity appearances dressed as her own characters, which is not something most cartoonists should attempt." – Grant Buist, The Name of This Cartoon is Brunswick

• Profile: Rosalie Higson of The Australian talks to Robert Crumb in anticipation of his visit to Sydney next month for the GRAPHIC festival: "There's a unique timing and way of telling a story with comic panels, different to writing novels or a film script. And there are seasons in the life of any artist. Crumb has dropped all his ongoing characters. 'I'm sick of them all. I'm very critical of my own work, when I look back on it I'm not especially proud, I wasn't really serious enough about it. I'm not sure what it all means for posterity, I have no idea. You can be the world's most favourite artist, and be totally forgotten a few years later,' he says."

• Interview: At Print magazine's Imprint blog, Michael Dooley chats with Trina Robbins. Dooley: "Trina's 2009 The Brinkley Girls: The Best of Nell Brinkley's Cartoons from 1913-1940 is a stunning collection as well as a detailed pictorial chronicle of the evolution of fashion and style, from Nouveau to Deco." Robbins: "I love clothes. I love lipstick. I love glamor. And obviously, so have many other women, if you look at the large readership of artists like Nell Brinkley and Brenda Starr's Dale Messick. And in the case of younger readers, at all the girls who loved Katy Keene. There probably are still some women who might want to see me, if not guillotined, then at least sent off to a gulag for promoting such work."

• Plug: "I was planning to attend [Comic-Con] dressed as Prince Valiant in honor of the lavish reprints of Hal Foster's classic, which I'm collecting, but was told I wouldn't be allowed to bring my 'singing sword' on the plane, so there went that idea. So I guess I'll just go as 'me,' letting others provide the color and dash." – James Wolcott, Vanity Fair

Fantagraphics at San Diego Comic-Con 2011!

janice

Fantagraphics is puttin' the "comics" back in Comic-Con as we head to San Diego this week with a slew of scintillating signings, almost two-dozen dynamite debuts, and a collection of comics sure to please any comics fan... and fill those enormous free tote bags they give away at the door.

First up, DEBUTS!

• Love & Rockets New Stories 4 by Los Bros Hernandez
• Mark Twain’s Autobiography by Michael Kupperman
• Prison Pit Vol. 3 by Johnny Ryan
• Mome 22, edited by Eric Reynolds
• The Raven by Lou Reed and Lorenzo Mattotti
• The Art of Joe Kubert, edited by Bill Schelly
• Setting the Standard: Alex Toth, edited by Greg Sadowski
• Esperanza by Jaime Hernanadez
• Like A Sniper Lining Up His Shot by Jacques Tardi
• Gil Jordan, Private Detective: Murder by High Tide by M. Tillieux
• The Pin-Up Art of Humorama, edited by Alex Chun
• Drawing Power, edited by Rick Marschall and Warren Bernard
• Sibyl-Anne vs. Ratticus by R. Macherot
• Willie & Joe: Back Home hardcover and Willie & Joe: The WWII Years softcover by Bill Mauldin
• The Armed Garden by David B.
• Complete Peanuts 1981-1982 (Vol. 16) by Charles Schultz
• Even More Jewish Comedians by Drew Friedman
• The Hidden by Richard Sala
• The Man Who Grew His Beard by Olivier Schrauwen
• Nuts by Gahan Wilson

Next up, SIGNINGS!

Thursday, July 21st:
1:00 - 2:00 PM   Joyce Farmer / Esther Pearl Watson
2:00 - 3:00 PM   Bill Schelly / Robert Goodin
3:00 - 5:00 PM   Gilbert Hernandez / Jaime Hernandez / Mario Hernandez
5:00 - 6:00 PM   Frank Stack / Paul Hornschemeier

Friday, July 22nd:
11:00 - 12:00 PM    Joyce Farmer / Bill Schelly / Tim Hensley
12:00 - 1:00 PM   Floyd Norman / Wilfred Santiago / Frank Stack
1:00 - 3:00 PM    Gilbert Hernandez / Jaime Hernandez / Mario Hernandez
3:00 - 4:00 PM    Paul Hornschemeier / Anders Nilsen / Esther Pearl Watson
4:00 - 5:00 PM   Mark Kalesniko / John Pham / Malachi Ward
5:00 - 7:00 PM   Johnny Ryan
5:00 - 6:00 PM   Jon Vermilyea
6:00 - 7:00 PM   Robert Goodin

Saturday, July 23rd:
12:00 - 1:00 PM        Wilfred Santiago / Bill Schelly
1:00 - 2:00 PM        Joyce Farmer / Frank Stack
2:00 - 4:00 PM        Paul Hornschemeier / Johnny Ryan
3:00 - 4:00 PM        Esther Pearl Watson
4:00 - 5:00 PM        Mark Kalesniko
4:00 - 6:00 PM        Gilbert Hernandez / Jaime Hernandez / Mario Hernandez
6:00 - 7:00 PM        Robert Goodin / Jon Vermilyea / Malachi Ward

Sunday, July 24th:
11:00 - 12:00 PM   Joyce Farmer / Jon Vermilyea / Esther Pearl Watson
12:00 - 1:00 PM    Mark Kalesniko / Frank Stack
1:00 - 3:00 PM    Gilbert Hernandez / Jaime Hernandez / Mario Hernandez

All the action awaits you at our usual spot, Booth #1718!

And don't miss our amazing PANELS! I won't get into all the details, because Mike did so earlier here on the FLOG, so click on the date to see our previously posted full rundown on each panel!

Thursday, July 21st:
• 12:30-1:30     Spotlight on Bill Schelly [Room 8]
• 1:00-2:00     CBLDF Master Session 2: Shannon Wheeler [Room 30CDE]
• 2:00-3:00     Love and Rockets — Gilbert, Jaime, and Mario Hernandez [Room 9]
• 2:30-3:30     Joyce Farmer: Special Exits, A Memoir [Room 4]
• 3:30-4:30     Spotlight on Frank Stack [Room 4]
• 6:00-7:00     Comics for Social Justice: The Making of Oil and Water [Room 9]

Friday, July 22nd:
• 10:30-11:30     Comics Arts Conference Session #5: Critical Approaches to Comics: An Introduction to Theories and Methods— Matthew J. Smith and Randy Duncan with panelist, Andrei Molotiu. [Room 26AB]
• 1:00-2:00     Comics Arts Conference Session #6: Wordless Comics with Andrei Molotiu. [Room 26AB]
• 12:00-1:00     CBLDF Master Session 3: Jaime Hernandez [Room 30CDE]
• 1:00-2:00     Publishing Queer: Producing LGBT Comics and Graphic Novels with moderator Justin Hall [Room 9]
• 1:00-2:30     The Golden Age of the Fanzine moderated by Bill Schelly. [Room 24ABC]
• 10:30-11:30     Cartoon Network Comedy: Regular Show/The Problem Solverz and More! The Problem Solverz talent includes Ben Jones, John Pham, and Jon Vermilyea. [Room 6A]

Saturday, July 23rd:
• 10:00-11:30     50 Years of Comic Fandom: The Founders with Bill Schelly [Room 24ABC]
• 11:30-12:30     Bill Blackbeard: The Man Who Saved Comics with Trina Robbins [Room 24ABC]
• 12:30-1:30     Fantagraphics 35th Anniversary [Room 24ABC]
• 1:00-2:00     Spotlight on Anders Nilsen [Room 4]
• 2:30-3:30     The Art of the Graphic Novel with Joyce Farmer (Special Exits, A Memoir) [Room 24ABC]

Sunday, July 24th:
• Nothing. Come shop with us!

PHEW! And, can you believe it? This is only the beginning! Stay tuned to the Fantagraphics FLOG, Twitter and Facebook for important (we mean it!) Comic-Con announcements all week long!

Daily OCD: 7/11/11

mike

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Fantagraphics, always a publisher you can count on to rescue classic comic material from oblivion, has published a gorgeous 288 page hardcover archive edition of Mickey [Mouse]'s earliest serialized comic strip adventures and he's quite a different character than we know today...a little rambunctious, a little mischievous, and a whole lot of fun. This book takes readers on a glorious ride through depression-era adventures as Mickey battles villains, becomes a fireman, visits a circus, and meets his faithful pup Pluto for the first time. Besides the many great comic strips, Fantagraphics has filled the book with a ton of supplemental material... This is an absolute must-have for any Mickey Mouse fan. Grade A" – Tim Janson, Mania

• Review: At Comic Book Resources, Greg Burgas and Kelly Thompson engage in a dialogic analysis of Dave McKean's Celluloid.

Burgas: "McKean’s art is astounding, as it always is. He moves from his very rough pencil work that he used on Cages and moves quickly into a multimedia extravaganza, with photographs interspersed with film reels (more photographs, of course, but used in a different way) and paintings and more detailed pencil work. The colors are magnificent, too... It’s an astonishing work of art, to be sure..."

Thompson: "I agree that the success of this book is in that it is beautiful from cover to cover. As a rule I tend to prefer McKean’s very rough pencil work, though I very much appreciate the layering mixed media styles he uses, and I found all of it very beautiful and successful in that way. I was impressed with the color choices and the really wonderful cubist look he achieved for some of the work, and some of the mixed media he used toward the end was some of my favorite in the book period.... After discussing it, I feel more pleased with the book as a whole because I’ve been forced to admit that I don’t recall seeing many more effective executions of erotic subject matter as a legitimate work of art in this way..."

Burgas: "What is compelling about Celluloid is that McKean tackles a difficult subject and elevates it beyond a simple porn comic. I think the very fact that Celluloid makes you wonder about sex in many of its iterations is impressive. As you can see, both Kelly and I had our issues with it, but it’s a gorgeous comic nevertheless. It’s definitely something that you don’t see every day!"

• Review: "I have the impression that Lewis Trondheim is the most important European artist of his generation. Such is the creativity and productivity and so the breadth of his work that, for me at least, wins the title deservedly. Approximate Continuum Comics... is the first part of Trondheim's autobiographical adventures.... The brilliant humour of Trondheim, his sharp-tongued reason, the way with which it shows the mix of imagination with reality. Equally impressive is the effortless way in which the most espressive artwork works serving the story." – Aristides Kotsis, Comicdom (translated from Greek)

• Review: "Bell does the best job of any attempt I've ever seen to bring together everything we know about Ditko's life and work. The result [Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko] is fascinating, frustrating and eventually presents a sad portrait of an immense talent that withdrew from the world and denied it of his work and himself of the audience, acclaim and success that was easily within his grasp." – Tom McLean, Bags and Boards

• Plug: "The 22nd -- and final -- issue of MOME from @fantagraphics is the best one yet. So sad." – Whitney Matheson (USA Today Pop Candy), via Twitter

• Plug: Sceneario takes note of the new entries in our new Franco-Belgian comics line with interest and excitement (en Français)

• Preview: At Flavorwire, Emily Temple shares some glimpses of the cartoons to be included in Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons, saying "Her style is distinctive — the charmingly brusque drawings are cut from linoleum and then essentially stamped when she applied ink to the ridges, and while the content is largely related to her experience as a student, you can still feel the slightly skewed, individualistic perspective that appears in O’Connor’s short stories.... Lovers of her work will doubtless find joy and meaning in her cartoons, and other people will probably like them too."

• Preview: Jamie Frevele of The Mary Sue picks up on the preview of Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons, saying "...while not as demented as some of her writing, the dark humor is still there, even in the short span of a single panel."

• Plug: "Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons is the first compilation of her graphic work in pen-and-ink and linoleum cuts. Before her writing career the young student aspired to be a cartoonist, and she developed a visually bold and eye-catching style. The results are witty and acid comments on campus life and American culture that show O'Connor developing her own acerbic point-of-view." – M. Bromberg, BellemeadeBooks

• Plug: The Portland Mercury's Jacob Schraer amusingly abandons writing about Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons to post a video of Miss Piggy — that's OK, we all have days like that

• Interview (Audio): Kevin Avery, author/editor of Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson, is a guest on the Rockcritics Podcast. Host Scott Woods says "I’ve mentioned a few times here already Kevin Avery’s wonderful book, Everything is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson. Half a personal biography of Nelson, half a compilation of select Nelson reviews and essays, it’s one of the finest books I’ve ever read about a writer — and, needless to say, about rock criticism."

• Profile: "[Basil] Wolverton was one of the pioneers who made today’s highbrow comics scene what it is; his twisted abstract portraiture, all sweatbeads and pleading eyes, floated like a buoy in a sea of banal comic art, influencing kindred spirits like Robert Williams and Big Daddy Roth. Though best known for his nightmare caricatures in the vein of Lena Hyena, his sf and horror work — jewels like the 'Brain Bats of Venus' — is equally disturbing (or invigorating). God knows what brain bat attached itself to Wolverton’s fertile grey matter, but it certainly wasn’t of this atmosphere." – Joe Alterio, HighLobrow

Now in stock: Sibyl-Anne Vs. Ratticus by R. Macherot

mike

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship:

Sibyl-Anne Vs. Ratticus
by R. Macherot

64-page full-color 8.5" x 11.25" hardcover • $16.95
ISBN: 978-1-60699-452-8

See Previews / Order Now

Sibyl-Anne and her fiancé Boomer live in blissful peace in the French countryside until the evil rat Ratticus, evicted from his previous residence, sets his eye on the quiet acre that the couple share with their friends (a porcupine, a crow, and a rabbit).

After a hilariously unsuccessful attempt to infiltrate the quiet little community in drag (which leaves a member of the cast smitten, Some Like It Hot-style), the devious Ratticus engineers the takeover of a neighboring rat colony and builds it into an army that sweeps Sibyl-Anne and her friends off their homestead and onto an island. Battles by land, by sea, and even by air ensue, until finally the wicked are defeated and peace is restored. Macherot’s charming mouse’s-eye views of bucolic idyll and his fast-paced, witty storytelling turn this book into something like a Pixar version of The Wind in the Willows.

Part of Fantagraphics’ program of bringing American readers the best of post-Tintin Franco-Belgian all-ages comics, Macherot’s “Sibylline” series (as it is called in French) is widely regarded as one of the great classics of the field, and is slated for re-release in French in 2011 as part of a “Complete Sibylline” project. This is the very first instance of Macherot’s work being translated into English.

Exclusive Savings: Order this book together with Gil Jordan, Private Detective: Murder by High Tide by M. Tillieux and save 20% off the combined cover prices! Click here to order.

Editors Notes: Kim Thompson on Sibyl-Anne Vs. Ratticus, Part 2

kimt

[In this installment of our series of Editors Notes, Kim Thompson interviews himself (in a format he's dubbed "AutoChat") about Sibyl-Anne Vs. Ratticus by R. Macherot, now available to pre-order from us and coming soon to a comics shop near you. This edition is so epic, we've split it into two parts — here's Part 1 from yesterday! – Ed.]

Okay, so yesterday you summed up all of Macherot’s career pre-Sibylline. He spent a decade at Tintin magazine, was lured to Spirou, his first Spirou series tanked — look, I did it in 16 words instead of thirteen hundred…

Yeah, yeah. You’ll thank me later. Anyway, Sibylline didn’t start off auspiciously. The first two episodes were oddly violent housebound Tom-and-Jerry style riffs with a cat tormenting the mice. The third was both more Chlorophylle-esque and more promising: Macherot relocated the main mouse characters to the country and did a nice little riff on protecting a sparrow from some malevolent crows. But with the fourth — which comprises the first 20 pages of this book – Macherot suddenly found his groove. He surrounded his two main mice with a supporting cast and little country village, he introduced an ongoing villain, and for the next 120 pages he was as much on his game as any cartoonist has ever been.

“For the next 120 pages”? That implies…

Yeah, I’ll be getting to that. Anyway, the four stories that comprise the two albums (of which Sibyl-Anne vs. Ratticus is the first) are I think his absolute top, even edging out Chaminou.

So why do you like them so much?

First, and most obviously, there is the art: It’s just flawless. Second, I think in these books his delineation of character is great — better even than Hergé’s. In pretty much every comic at the time, the protagonist was boring and colorless, supported by one or more “wacky” sidekicks. As he had done with Chaminou, Macherot stood this on his head by packing Sibylline with character traits, not all of them pleasant: She is frankly a bit of a bitch…

Or a “shrew”…

Exactly — she pushes her poor “fiancé” around like the lump that he is, she’s egocentric and boastful, and she has a hair-trigger temper and is easily offended. But she’s also fiercely loyal and courageous, and downright adorable. One cannot overstate how radical (and a female, too! very rare for European kids’ comics at that time) this characterization was. And the other members of her little group are sharply drawn too: The cowardly, cunning and mercantile crow Floozemaker, the good-hearted but slightly thick porcupine Verboten, and in his own way, the peevish but eternally “Yes-dear”ing Boomer. Add in the fiendish but ironically aware of his own limitations Ratticus, and the odd supporting characters like the irked fireflies, and it’s this fantastic dynamic that Macherot, who was a terrific comedy writer — look at the scene where the rabbit is trying to climb a tree and the captured rats take malicious glee in psyching him into repeatedly falling out of the tree, or Sibyl-Anne’s periodic eruptions of anger against Floozemaker (including when he’s shrewdly negotiating hostages at the end) — was able to use to his best advantage. Add in a carefully structured, sprawling animal war plot and the whole “Ratticus” cycle is just a gem.

Before we continue, why did you change the character’s name? Especially such a piddling change.

Macherot (who was a genius at names too) clearly picked the name “Sibylline” because in French all the vowel sounds in it are sharp “ee” sounds, like a mouse squeaking: See-bee-leene. In English they aren’t, and I have this perhaps weird prejudice against using names where the pronunciation is open to debate: I could see English language readers being confused as to whether to rhyme the name with “clean” or with “fine,” or even trying for the French pronunciation, like Americans who insist on saying “Tangtang” for Tintin and "Ah-stay-REEX" for Asterix, which grates on me. “Sibyl-Anne” is virtually identical, but with zero pronunciation latitude. As a bonus it’s perfectly Googlable with just a few random real “Sibyl Anne” facebook pages cluttering up the hits, it has a nice rural flair to it, and besides, “Anne” is my wife’s middle name.

I also changed the rat’s name from “Anathème” which just didn’t seem villainous in English, if you use the English word it becomes “Anathema” which sounds like a great name for a psychotic lesbian James Bond villain but not so much a male rat. I had Sibyl-Anne’s fiancé Taboum as Kaboom until the Araki movie came out, and switched it to Boomer. Floozemaker, I just changed a vowel from the French Flouzemaker for clarity, and Verboten, which is just the best name ever for a cop, I left alone. The fat rat king Ratticus deposes was called “Gudu” in French which didn’t really work well in English either, but I think “Gorge” is pretty funny as a punning name for a gluttonous king.

You keep on harping about the 120-page, two-album “Ratticus cycle” as being so great. What happened after that?

What happened then is that Macherot got hit with a massive, crippling clinical depression. And unlike Hergé and Franquin who managed to control their depressions (in fact each jiu-jitsued his depression into a masterpiece, but that’s another story), it did immediate, massive damage to his work. His drawing, from what I understand largely as a result of his medication which literally impaired his motor functions, went into a steep decline and he had to rely on someone else to write his stories – a guy called Paul Deliège, a perfectly decent Spirou “house” writer, who cranked out several Sibyl-Anne pastiches for Macherot to put into pictures. And in fact — to loop back to the beginning — this was exactly the period when I was reading Spirou magazine. Looking back these stories have their own charms, Macherot is almost never terrible, and Deliège really gives it the ol’ college try (and I respect the fact that one story ends with an Inglourious Basterds-style mass live incineration of all the villains, fully in keeping with Macherot’s darker instincts) but the work was substandard enough that I never got into it. (Even worse was Mirliton, a series of unrelentingly crappy short stories and gags about a cat written by another Spirou “house” writer, the mostly hacky Raoul Cauvin, which is probably the worst thing done by a great European cartoonist. It was clearly just to keep Macherot busy and earning money, although granted it’s not the worst thing to appear in Spirou.)

Macherot eventually climbed out of his depression, or got to the point where he could control it pharmacologically. He started writing his stories again and his art picked up, but it was never quite the same. The later Sibyllines are a little like ’90s Peanuts (or maybe Jack Kirby’s ’70s return to Marvel — or the last, weird years of Dick Tracy or Steve Canyon) — more obsessive, looser, darker (many of the stories are outright horror stories), the linework and lettering increasingly erratic. And not surprisingly, reader and publisher support trailed off and after a while Dupuis stopped releasing the work in albums. In fact, the last few hundred pages of Sibylline were never released in general-market album form (the final two stories, which are really eccentric, were released in a special limited edition a few years ago) and the entire series was allowed to lapse out of print. Insult kept being piled onto injury as Le Lombard let all his Chlorophylle work go out of print, and Chaminou had been licensed to another publisher who published it in a bizarre half-ass form split over two albums because they couldn’t cope with any album over 48 pages, let it go out of print, and this story is now tied up in litigation between Macherot’s heirs and this last publisher so it too is out of print. (Speaking personally this was a pain in the ass because it’s cost me hundreds of dollars to assemble even a partial collection of Macherot work through eBay, and some of the books are simply too expensive even for me.)

The good news is that an enterprising Belgian cartoonist called André Taymans purchased the rights to Sibylline, released several charming new Sibylline stories of his own as well as one of Macherot’s, and beginning this year is releasing a complete Sibylline, digitally remastered and scheduled to include those hundreds of pages of never-reprinted stories. Which is a godsend because we’re using his restored files for our edition. Like their U.S. brethren, Franco-Belgian publishers have been going on a binge of repackaging classic material in “Intégrales” and everyone is keeping their fingers crossed that someone will now do the same for the Chlorophylle material, and if the Chaminou rights get resolved I’m sure someone will be ready to publish that. Including me!

Which brings up the question, and please God make it a short answer: What are your follow-up plans for Macherot if this one is successful?

First, the sequel which finishes up the “Ratticus” cycle (Sibylline et les abeilles is the French title). Second, if the rights get resolved, Chaminou. I’d love to one day do a Chlorophylle but that really hinges on a European publisher getting it back into print and creating digital files for it. That said, even if Sibyl-Anne vs. Ratticus ends up being the only one we manage to do, I’ll be satisfied with that. It’s a quintessential, enduring masterpiece of Franco-Belgian kids’ comics, up there with Tintin in Tibet, The Smurf King, the Spirou Zorglub two-parter, and Asterix and Cleopatra. I simply could not countenance its remaining unpublished in English.

Do you think it will sell in the American marketplace?

I’ve heard from some knowledgeable people who think it’s lunatic to even try, but in some ways it may be more accessible than the “human” Franco-Belgian comics (like Gil Jordan for that matter). I’m convinced that there are aspects of the Franco-Belgian stylization that rub American readers the wrong way (which is why they don’t respond to Franquin) which are mitigated by the funny-animal dodge. I have an elaborate theor—

Thank you, we’re done here.

Editors Notes: Kim Thompson on Sibyl-Anne Vs. Ratticus, Part 1

kimt

Okay, Sibyl-Anne is being released kind of as the other half of a matched set with Gil Jordan, which I know you’ve been a fan of since you were a kid. I assume this is another childhood favorite you’re finally getting a chance to…

No, actually, as a kid I was never a fan of Macherot’s work. Never collected the books, never read most of the Sibyllines until recently — just not on my radar.

Okay, that wasn’t the answer I was expecting. Let me regroup. What made you change your mind? Is this one of the situations like American comics fans have with comics like Little Lulu or Sugar & Spike, which they consider “kid stuff” as adolescents and then belatedly realize how great they are as adults?

No, I don’t think so. I was a big fan of the Smurfs back then already, so I didn’t suffer from that particular anti-kid-stuff snobbery. And my love of Peanuts has been unwavering. It’s more that my peak collecting years of Franco-Belgian comics coincided with a nadir period for Macherot. It was like trying to get into Jack Kirby during his Silver Star years.

You’re going to have to explain that a little more, I think.

Yeah. This is going to go on for a while, sorry, but it’s complicated. Stick with me. I’ll throw in some pictures to keep you entertained while I drone on.

In the “golden age” of Franco-Belgian comics weeklies from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s (when Asterix exploded and brought Pilote into the mix), the two giants were pretty much Spirou magazine and Tintin magazine. As a quick analogy, the Tintin/Spirou relationship was about the equivalent of the DC/Marvel relationship in the 1960s: Tintin had the biggest of the big guns, namely Tintin (Superman) but was quite a bit stodgier, while Spirou had the more exciting equivalents of the FF and Spider-Man. So if you were a major Franco-Belgian cartoonist you pretty much ended up at one of those.

Macherot, as it happened, wound up at Tintin in the early 1950s, for which he created a bucolic funny-animal series starring a dormouse called Chlorophylle, whose most frequent nemesis was a rat called Anthracite.

Click to enlarge

That actually sounds a lot like Sibyl-Anne…

Doesn’t it, though? Hold that thought. And while I would argue that Macherot was in a tie for second best cartoonist working for Tintin…

I assume Hergé being the first, but who was he tied with for second?

E.P. Jacobs (Blake and Mortimer), of course. Anyway, the way these weeklies worked is they serialized stories at two pages every issue, and then collected them into the “album” format. (Spirou’s series were published by Dupuis, Tintin’s mostly by Le Lombard although a few had gone to the Tintin books publisher Casterman.) And there was a definite caste system at both magazines/publishers, based mostly on popularity and sales but I would have to assume also on politics. At the top of the heap you’d get cartoonists whose work would get published as hardcovers (48 or 64 pages), then there was an intermediate level where you’d get 48-page softcovers, and in Tintin magazine’s case a bottom level of cheap, skimpy-looking 32-page softcovers.

Now Macherot, for whatever reason, wasn’t treated that great at Tintin. In fact it may have been partly self-inflicted: He tended to vary his drawing style and approach from book to book (whereas the successful cartoonists would find one groove and stick to it), he had a certain dark, satirical sensibility that was at odds not just with his chosen “cute” funny-animal style but also with Tintin’s stodginess, and the end result was his books ended up on the cheap/skimpy end. So eventually he decided to jump ship to Spirou…

Did this kind of thing happen often?

No. Cartoonists were pretty loyal, partly because they were on balance treated pretty well but also because the companies did more or less own the characters, so if you wanted to switch magazines you had to leave your characters behind. That was a big disincentive.

Like the U.S. comic books, then.

Yes and no. More like U.S. syndicated strips. Series were created by individual cartoonists and controlled by them, and for the most part they “owned” them enough that eventually contracts in the 1970s and 1980s allowed them to start switching companies (the first big case I remember was Morris taking Lucky Luke from Spirou/Dupuis to Pilote/Dargaud, but there was a flurry of it later), but in Macherot’s day if you moved you lost the characters. This is where Macherot’s creative restlessness stood him in good stead, though: He was actually kind of tired of Chlorophylle (he’d kept his interest up by playing with graphic styles and midway through radically reversing the fundamental concept of the strip by changing it from a Sibyl-Anne-style bucolic series to a fully urban “funny-animals who have an entire city and drive cars” strip and then back again — tinkerings which I’m sure did nothing to endear him to readers or his publishers) and wanted to try something new.

Click to enlarge

This is a long goddamn story, Kim. I just wanted to know about Sibyl-Anne!

I’m sorry. And we’re not there yet. Macherot’s career was a relatively complex one compared to most other European cartoonists of his generation, who once they found their defining series just kept drawing that for the rest of their lives. “Morris: Created Lucky Luke. Drew it for half a century. Moved from Dupuis to Dargaud. Died.” Anyway, Macherot went to Spirou, where they offered him the top-of-the-line 64-page hardcovers, freedom to do what he wanted, and he created Chaminou et le Khrompire, which as it turns out is one of the defining masterpieces of Franco-Belgian comics, and is both a huge leap beyond and summation of his previous work: It’s a secret-agent funny-animal thriller, very self-aware, with some off-kilter characterizations (Chaminou is a bit of an egomaniacal dandy and occasional screw-up) and some genuinely dark moments. (Macherot tended to go a little more graphic in the animals-eating-one-another premise than most cartoonists.) There’s a scene in it that conceptually duplicates the final scene in Freaks, one of the most horrific scenes in any movie ever made, and plays it for laughs. It’s just unbelievably bold for the time (1964), one of those art objects that seems unique and decades ahead of its time, like Night of the Hunter (one of Macherot’s favorite films, incidentally) or Kiss Me Deadly.

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I can see where this is going…

Yes, everyone hated it! The readers were baffled, the publishers were dismayed, and even Macherot’s fellow cartoonists including Franquin — to his discredit, I must say — didn’t care for it. My understanding is that the publisher actually was OK with giving the series a second shot, but Macherot had had the wind taken out of his sails (or sales, har har), and at everyone’s urging did what cartoonists tend to do — as you saw when we discussed Gil Jordan yesterday — which is fall back on a remake of his earlier work, and (also at the publisher’s urging) aim again for a younger audience. And so the bucolic mouse (actually dormouse) Chlorophylle begat the bucolic mouse Sibylline, and Chaminou went on the scrap heap. Dupuis did release the album but, with no follow-up stories forthcoming, allowed it to drift out of print and it eventually became one of the collectors’ holy-grail albums. As a final odd insult it appeared without Macherot’s name on the cover on the first edition because Macherot was used to Lombard’s technique of adding the author’s name and Dupuis would have the author add his own name to the cover layout, and it fell through the cracks.

So he came up with Sibylline…

Congratulations, we’re thirteen hundred words into this and you’ve actually reached the point where you’re talking about the book. What are you, R.C. Harvey?

Ouch. But you’re right, this has gone on long enough. Let’s break it off here and tomorrow we’ll talk Sibylline now that the stage has been set, in agonizing detail. (And I left out stuff: I didn’t even mention Clifton.)

Sibyl-Anne Vs. Ratticus by R. Macherot - Previews, Pre-Order

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Sibyl-Anne Vs. Ratticus
by R. Macherot

64-page full-color 8.5" x 11.25" hardcover • $16.95
ISBN: 978-1-60699-452-8

Ships in: July 2011 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

Download a 7-page PDF excerpt (2.3 MB).

Video & Photo Slideshow Preview (view in new window):

Exclusive Savings: Order this book together with Gil Jordan, Private Detective: Murder by High Tide by M. Tillieux and save 20% off the combined cover prices! Click here to order.

Daily OCD: 10/6/10

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Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Emotionally uncompromising and graphically challenging, You’ll Never Know v.2: Collateral Damage stands out as one of the best comics of the year. Tyler reaches deep into herself, showing the unending dominoes of influence that compose a family. Do yourself a favor and check it out." – Michael C. Lorah, Newsarama

• Review: "But as powerful as this strain of valorization has been, there have been powerful statements of dissent along the way. The Americanization of Emily, for example, or Catch-22. Lucky in Love: Book 1 (by George Cheiffet, with art by Stephen DeStefano) follows their path, though it takes a much more personal, less grandiose tone than those two examples. It’s drawn in a style reminiscent of Disney WWII propaganda cartoons, though DeStefano arranges the backgrounds and perspectives with far greater sophistication." – Joshua Malbin

• Review: "Ryan takes puerile humor to unimagined heights (or depths)... Prison Pit Book Two isn't as much about punchlines and shock tactics. Here, the humor comes via ridiculously long and surreal battles between intergalactic monsters (think bizarre mutations and mass bloodshed). It's sort of a spoof on sci-fi comics, He-Man cartoons, and the over the top male bravado of WWE Wrestling...Prison Pit contains Ryan's signature WTF flourishes, like ass licking creatures, thorny alien vaginas, ghetto slang and Nazi insignia emblazoned 'death hösen' trousers. See you on the playground." – Wilfred Brandt, TwoThousand

• Review: "But the way you're just dropped into Maggie & Hopey, Already In Progress, is pretty much why I continue to recommend this volume [Maggie the Mechanic], rather than its relatively sci-fi-free successors, as the place to start if you're interested in Jaime's work. I understand why that doesn't work for everyone — and it's true, the earliest comics are relatively talky and old-fashioned-looking as befits their influences. But if you start late in the game, you're not just missing dinosaurs and rocketships and robots and superheroes and such — you're missing what really feels like a couple years in the life. Even by page one, we've already missed so much!" – Sean T. Collins, Attentiondeficitdisorderly

• Interview: The Daily Cross Hatch's Brian Heater talked to Drew Weing at SPX. Part 1 gets into the creation of Set to Sea: "The intention was to draw a panel every day and post it. It was supposed to be fun, quick side project, 'it’s the end of the day. I just draw this one, quick, small panel.' And every day it got more and more detailed and complex. By panel two it was too complex to knock off in an hour or two."

• Plug: "Four-Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s... [is a] collection of pre-Code, non-EC horror comics that are every bit as good as the famed EC comics themselves. Here in all its shocking, creepy and gory glory you can see work from Jack Cole, Reed Crandall, Frank Frazetta, Al Williamson, Basil Wolverton, Wally Wood, and more! This one is a must!" – Benn Ray (Atomic Books), Largehearted Boy

• Coming Attractions: Bleeding Cool 's Rich Johnston continues noticing our 2011 Eurocomics reprints, now reporting on our June edition of R. Macherot's Sibyl-Anne Vs. Ratticus: "Am I the only one that’s seeing a bit of a trend? The trade dress appears similar… is Fantagraphics on a major spreee to translate and publish as many quality French comics as they can? [Yes. – Ed.] In a new imprint or line perhaps? [I'm not sure whether we're considering this a "line" or not, but it's not an imprint. – Ed.]"