09.11.2018
The shipyard shuts down, Marco becomes a father, his mother learns how to live alone, a man dies in the countryside, and a journalist flies off the handle. Through the little things, marked moments and commonplace sadness, Manu Larcenet concludes his portrait of an ordinary man, and the imperfections that we’re all familiar with. Thus ends one of the greatest successes of contemporary European comics.
Drama, Europe Comics
09.11.2018
It’s 1943 and all-American Joe is heading off to fight the Japanese. His distraught fiancé Dottie Partington is fired from her job as a movie usher, and a friend helps her find employment at the Yoyo Club, a cabaret favored by soon-to-be-deployed US Air Force personnel. In the meantime, Joe is marooned on an atoll in the South Pacific, where he experiences firsthand the terror of war, and encounters a motley crew of fictional and real-life characters. Back in the States, famed cartoonist Milton approaches Dottie and uses her as the model for his new comic strip, “Poison Ivy,” which centers on the adventures of a patriotic vamp capable of making soldiers “forget their girlfriends back home.” The strip is a runaway success and kindles the fantasies of GIs across the globe, eventually reaching even Joe.
Drama, Europe Comics
09.11.2018
In 1976 Nicaragua “Tacit” Somoza rules the small Central American country with the support of the ruthless Guardia. The son of a powerful family from the capital, Managua, Gabriel is a young priest with an incredible talent for sacred art. He is sent to enhance his painting skills with Ruben, a priest in San Juan–a little village located at the base of a mountain. Despite his difficulty integrating with the villagers due to his father’s reputation, Gabriel slowly gets to know them and, eventually, to love them. Encouraged by Ruben, he paints the villagers. He paints them as they are–men and women of flesh and blood. But Gabriel is soon witness to acts of military repression of the locals. It doesn’t take long for him and the villagers to get swept away in these times of growing rebellion and smoldering revolution. Artistic passion, romantic passion, revolutionary passion. Passion courses though the pages of Muchacho, a two-part series. Here is part one.
Drama, Europe Comics
09.11.2018
It’s a time of grumbling rebellion and brooding revolution. Gabriel de la Serna, the teenage son of a well-to-do family, has gone into hiding. He fled, limping, into the forest. He had come to San Juan, a little village nestled in the mountains, to paint the Passion of the Christ. There he came to understand the passion of the villagers, the country folk, all victims of military repression. Nourished by a sense of divine justice, he begins to understand the villainy of those in power and their cronies. When he’s eventually taken in and treated by the guerillas camped out in the forest, he lies about his family name and swaps his pencils and paint brushes for firearms. As he gazes beyond the surface and deeper into the depths, Gabriel also discovers his own humanity, made of flesh and desires…
Drama, Europe Comics
09.11.2018
One day, while visiting her family in the countryside, Marzi comes across a trail of ants, and decides to have a little fun, blocking their way with sticks and rocks. Is that what it’s like to be God? In this second volume, we discover more about Marzi’s fascinating life in 1980s Poland, torn between the daily stresses of near-war and even bigger questions like the existence and powers of God. Can He really see and know everything, even when she’s all alone in her room, even when it’s just a thought in her head? So many burning questions, with her First Communion right around the corner! Another absorbing series of stories about a little girl who loves life—even as she struggles to understand it.
Drama, Europe Comics
09.11.2018
“What’s going on? Where is my dad? Are we at war? The city is so quiet and dark that it seems hostile and it scares me.” Marzi is a little girl like any other. She plays with dolls, gets lost in the woods, covets chewing gum and ballet lessons… Except that she’s growing up the behind the Iron Curtain in the 1980s, and the Soviet regime sometimes casts an unsettling shadow over her otherwise carefree childhood. But, somehow, she always manages to bounce back! Marzi’s clear-eyed, playful storytelling continues in this third volume of coming-of-age tales from Communist Poland.
Drama, Europe Comics
09.11.2018
Marzena Sowa continues her endearing memoir recounting childhood behind the Iron Curtain in Poland. Even at the height of summer vacation deep in the countryside, the noise of urban unrest carries, bringing news of rations, strikes, and Solidarność. Amid a young girl’s typical worries—the witch neighbor, the school nurse, her mother’s angry temper—come the echoes of the strange and confusing world of adults.
Drama, Europe Comics
09.11.2018
The fall brings more than changing leaves as massive strikes in Marzi’s little hometown help change the course of Polish history. She’s proud of her dad, but can he come home now? Eight-year-old Marzi tries her best to keep up, but it can be hard when you keep outgrowing your shoes! With one foot in the adult world, where nothing is black and white, and one foot in the fantasies of childhood, where greyscale girls can dream in color, she puts her very own twist on everything she sees and hears. Lucky for us, she likes to tell stories.
Drama, Europe Comics
09.11.2018
The communists are gone, but life is still full of challenges. Both for Poland, and for 12-year-old Marzi, the strong-willed kid finding her voice in a country undergoing radical changes. As the country faces new issues like drug abuse and AIDS, Marzi’s piercing gaze notices fraying seams in her own community. “What ever happened to solidarity? If you want help, you’d better not be different.” Marzi is a natural champion for being different: she can’t stand the new capitalist shops, or how boy-crazy her friends are becoming. Will she find a place where she can just be herself?
Drama, Europe Comics
09.11.2018
“This summer, my factory can send you to summer camp. To the mountains or the sea. I’ve never been to the sea, but now you can go for me.” What awaits Marzi on the Baltic shore? It’s the summer of 1992. Preteens at camp in newly-democratic Poland are crazy for Madonna, Pepsi, Russian video games… and seances. Notebook in hand, Marzi observes it all with her wry sense of humor, but that doesn’t keep her from getting swept off her feet…
Drama, Europe Comics
