Six Comic Books For Further Reading
Guy Peellaert & Pierre Bartier
The Adventures of Jodelle
Trans. Kim Thompson
Fantagraphics
Belgian artist Guy Peellaert’s (1934 –2008) multifaceted oeuvre included film posters (Taxi Driver), album covers (David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs), and this eye-popping, cutting-edge 1966 graphic novel confection that conflates ancient Rome and the swinging sixties in psychedelic pop-art graphics soaked in Kool-Aid colors.
Lewis Trondheim
Approximate Continuum Comics
Ed. & trans. Kim Thompson
Fantagraphics
This autobiographical graphic novel by L’Association co-founder Lewis Trondheim is a witty, reflective, self-deprecating, pleasurable, and perceptive meditation on the cumulative minor crises of adulthood.
Amanda Vähämäki
The Bun Field
Drawn & Quarterly
One of the lights of the diverse and experimental Finnish comics scene, Vähämäki’s soft, informed graphite drawings convey a fable-like narrative that employs fluid dream logic to access the submerged emotional world of childhood.
Marion Fayolle
In Pieces
Nobrow
This collection of short, wordless pieces offers a series of parables about relationships between men and women. Fayolle’s charming, colorful artwork beckons readers toward surreal visual metaphors and wry, incisive commentary.
Joost Swarte
Is That All There Is?
Ed. Kim Thompson
Fantagraphics
Dutch cartoonist Joost Swarte coined the term “clear line” to describe Tintin creator Hergé’s influential style. Swarte works in that aesthetic tradition—with added architectural rigor and the rhythms of silent film comedy—to communicate short, absurdist, subversive narratives.
Blexbolex
No Man’s Land
Nobrow
Mononymous artist Blexbolex is a master of expressive, simplified graphics that make limited colors sing, as in his gentle, free-associative books for children (Seasons and People). No Man’s Land is, by contrast, a fantastic, miasmic, paranoid noir that takes place in the mind of a man who has just put a bullet through his brain.
