Comics to start the year

A bluesman in vignettes

January comes loaded with notable comics, but I am forced to start with the one that has impressed me the most: ‘Robert Johnson’s last days‘, of Frantz Shuchazeaupublished in Spain by Andana Graphic. The edition is superb, in a hard cover and good paper, and the story is enjoyed throughout its 236 pages. And it is that this French cartoonist work does not deserve less since, it is simply bright.

Shuchazeau had already approached the jazz of the 30s in his work ‘The dream of melth Slim’, a notable fable, in which Robert Johnson himself appeared as a secondary character. But this new work demonstrates the author’s evolution, to light years of the aforementioned work, creating a book whose drawings really sound like jazz, from the way in which the environments recreate, the posture of the musicians playing, the vital wandering of Johnson himself which is perfectly reflected in the cartoon narrative as its reading progresses, its graphic style halfway between the dirty and the elegant, and even the graphic resources to represent the bluesman’s own sound interpreting their songs. It is, in my opinion, the first essential of the month of January for any reader, and of course, for the melómanos.

Cowboys, Praderas and French humor

Third Change. My second recommendation is a very anticipated reissue by the fan. It’s about Lucky Lukeof the great René Goscinny and Maurice de Bévère (alias Morris). The first volume of a collection that will publish the work of both authors with the character will arrive at the libraries. It is published by Norma Editorial, and the following comics are included: ‘Ríles in La Pradera’, ‘Lucky Luke against Joss Jamon’, ‘The cousins ​​Dalton’, ‘The Judge’, and ‘The race for Oklahoma’.

The edition rises as a note for two reasons. The first the careful and extensive introduction about Morris, his vital journey, and the genesis of his character (by Jorge García); And the second for a small but interesting appendix, in which the 5 original covers of these cartoons are reproduced, as published in the first French edition of Dupuis.

The Goscinny-Morris tandem debuts with Lucky Luke in 1955, so I can’t think of a better way to celebrate this 70 anniversary that buying, rereading, and enjoying this universal classic starring the only cowboy that shoots faster than its shadow.

Oracles of the 21st century

Nor could I forget the work of Liv Strömquist And its essential, ‘The voice of the oracle‘, published by Reervoir Books. Always accurate, Strömquist triggers the flotation line from the entire phenomenon of self -help. It highlights the directives that seem to offer us the contemporary world, in which the idea of ​​personal growth is transmitted in a machacona way, based on the need for constant success. As the cartoonist says: «It is as if we should always be thinking about the future and having objectives. Telling you that you will succeed is almost like the religion of capitalism. Imagine this personal and professional success and that is fulfilled. But this does not work that way ».

In ‘The voice of the oracle’ describes the way in which the self -help industry expands, and by pure logic of the market, it offers (I quote its words again) «this kind of supplements for the soul, in which you must be optimizing as a person ».

As always, after the apparent irrelevance of their reflections in Viñeta, the personnel reading of the author of great contemporary thinkers such as Jacques Lacan, Zygmunt Bauman or Theodor Adorno is hidden. And I have to say that Strömquist, as “oracle”, seems a lot like more accurate, honest and usefulthat all the self -help noise that rumbles in social networks by that plethora of undocumented that offers successful formulas, without the need for effort, and within the reach of all.

Afternoon, but pure avant -garde of the ninth art

To also highlight the unpublished edition in Spain of an absolute classic (of one of the most modern authors of the vignette, George Mcmanus). It’s about ‘Bringing Up Father‘, his most popular character, of which a volume comes luxuriously edited by Diabolo, which includes the daily strips and the dominant plates of the character, originally published in the years 1939 and 1940.

As on other occasions within the collection (in which there are other unpublished classics such as Thimble Theater, of EC Segar, or Polly and Her Pals of Cliff Sterrett), the press strips are accompanied by a rich propusingly enlightened appendix about the creator and His work, offering the necessary context to enjoy and better understand its importance in the history of the ninth art

Women, hunger and death

And finally, by the hand of Dolmen Editorial, a national comic that has impressed me (and much), both for its history, as for the careful narrative of its authors, Tomeu Riera and Enric Pujadas. It’s about ‘The murderers of loneliness‘, a biographical cartoon with some small licenses, set in Palma de Mallorca, in the first Spanish postwar period.

It starts in November 1939, and it becomes evident that sad maxim that, if the wars are hard, the early post -war years are worse. The protagonists, a group of women with a future more than uncertain (each in their own way, and for the most diverse reasons), and whose future would clearly clear, if someone in their surroundings disappeared.

And in the hard postwar period in which everything is scarce, and only the counting money and sounds allows to acquire the products of the podions and poisons, carried with discretion, it can become a lucrative business.

The greatness of this comic is in its structure, tempo and narrative equidistance. It presents the situation of a group of women, and transmits to the reader the idea that this story would never have happened in other circumstances, and that, however, it was sadly real, given the position of the Franco regime regarding marriage and the impossibility of divorce , as well as for the hunger of the first years of autarchy.