DELIGHTS A STORY OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH HC
(W) Guy Colwell (A/CA) Guy Colwell
In this imaginatively conceived historical graphic novel, Guy Colwell explores the story behind Hieronymus Bosch and his most famous work.
In Guy Colwell's first full graphic novel in over 30 years, we see one painter, Colwell himself, consider another, Hieronymus Bosch, and the story behind the latter's most notable work told in sequential panels. The known details of Bosch's life, and the commissioning of his enormous triptych, "The Garden of Earthly Delights," are scant. Colwell takes the facts of Bosch's time and setting and constructs a tale of a man and artist torn equally among piety, creativity, and commerce. In Colwell's version of Jheronimus van Aken (Bosch's real name), he is an artist paid well by local dukes to paint a vision of the world before the fall, but will the religious leaders of his village see it as celebrating God's creation, or fatally corrupted by sensuality? And what of the increasing numbers of young models needed to depict pre-apple innocence?
This imaginatively conceived graphic biography is Colwell's crowning achievement in a cartooning career, begun in the underground comix movement of the 1970s, and marked by risk-taking and political engagement. His drawing, rendering, and storytelling has never been as self-assured as inDelights.
GUY COLWELL is a painter and comics artist best known for his bestselling underground comix series Inner City Romance (collected into a volume published by Fantagraphics in 2015). He worked extensively as an illustrator, cartoonist and color artist for underground newspapers and publishers from the 1970s into the 1990s, between sabbaticals for environmental research travel and social action. His other books include Street Scenes(2015), In Fox's Forest(2016), and Doll(2019).
MAR241593
Why this caught my eye:
It's been a hot minute since I've seen Colwell's work, and Bosch's work is an interesting subject to see him focus on.
FEEDING GHOSTS GRAPHIC MEMOIR
(W) Tessa Hulls (A) Tessa Hulls
In her evocative, genre-defying graphic memoir, Tessa Hulls tells the story of three generations of women in her family: her Chinese grandmother, Sun Yi; her mother, Rose; and herself. Sun Yi was a Shanghai journalist caught in the political crosshairs of the 1949 Communist victory. After years of government harassment, she fled to Hong Kong with her daughter, Rose. Rose eventually came to the United States on a scholarship and brought Sun Yi to live with her. Tessa watched her mother care for Sun Yi, both of them struggling under the weight of Sun Yi's unexamined trauma and mental illness. Vowing to escape her mother's smothering fear, Tessa left home, traveling to the farthest corners of the globe. At age thirty, it started to feel less like freedom and more like running away, so Tessa returned home to face the history that shaped her family. By turns fascinating and heartbreaking, inventive and poignant, Feeding Ghosts exposes the fear and trauma that haunt generations, and the love that holds them together.
JAN241804
Why this caught my eye:
This sounds positively soul crushing, which is one of my favorite genres.
FLAVORS OF IRAQ IMPRESSIONS OF MY VANISHED HOMELAND GN
(W) Feurat Alani (A) Leonard Cohen
Originally published in French in 2018 and winner of the Prix Albert Londres, this unique graphic novel provides a glimpse of the devastating changes inflicted on Iraq in the aftermath of the American invasion. During the summer of 2016, distrought and disappointed by how Iraq is described in the media, French-Iraqi journalist Feurat Alani posted over 1,000 tweets in which he told the world about his Iraq. Feurat grew up in Paris, but spent many childhood summers in an Iraq that he watched fall apart under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. As an adult, he reports from an Iraq under American occupation, and discovers the sounds and silences of war. The Flavors of Iraq is an intimate and discerning look at a battered country from first a child's, then a young man's perspective. Together with Léonard Cohen's superb illustrations, the result is a poetic and powerful story of a different Iraq.
MAR241643
Why this caught my eye:
I recall briefly seeing this pop up in news feeds a while back, so glad to finally see it pop up again and translated.
BREATHE JOURNEYS TO HEALTHY BINDING SC
(W) Maia Kobabe, Dr. Sarah Peitzmeier (A) Maia Kobabe
A graphic guide to chest binding with real-life stories and research-backed advice from bestselling Gender Queer author Maia Kobabe and University of Michigan professor Sarah Peitzmeier. Breathe arose from the need for an evidence-based resource for folks considering chest binding as gender-affirming care. Its original form was a 32-page digital-only 'zine, but Peitzmeier and Kobabe saw potential for reaching a wider audience with an expanded version with more art and more exploration of what the research really shows about binding, designed to be easily readable as a printed book. Peitzmeier and her research team interviewed many people of different ages and backgrounds about their journeys with binding. The result is both a practical resource for trans and nonbinary folks and an engaging and perspective-broadening read for anyone interested in what it means to be on a journey of expressing one's gender in the ways that are joyful, healthy, and affirming.
MAR241533
Why this caught my eye:
Looks like a great book to companion stock with Limerence Press titles.
GEORGE SAND TRUE GENIUS TRUE WOMAN GN
(W) Severine Vidal (A) Kim Consigny
George Sand: True Genius, True Woman is a scrupulously researched and tenderly revealing biography of one of the great pioneering figures of 19th-century French literature. Born in 1804-at a time when women were deprived of their civil rights (along with minors, criminals, and the insane)-Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin grew up to defy those norms, both in her life and her writing. Adopting the gender-neutral pen name George Sand, and in a career lasting over forty years as a novelist and playwright, she is best remembered today for the affairs and friendships she enjoyed with men: the composer Chopin; the painter Delacroix; the novelist Balzac.
But this moving biographical portrait, written by award-winner Séverine Vidal and illustrated by Kim Consigny, restores her to the center stage she always commanded in her lifetime. Not just as the daring, scandalously cross-dressing, bisexual, cigarette-smoking divorcée novelist, but as the brilliant chronicler of her changing time--and therefore of ours.
MAR241917
Why this caught my eye:
I'm pretty much just always down for autobiographies from SelfMadeHero. You can check out some samples of the art here.