Monthly Stumblings #18: James Edgar, Tony Weare

“The Territory” by James Edgar and Tony Weare

“Matt Marriott” is, with “Randall, The Killer” by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and Arturo del Castillo, the best Western in comics form. This may seem like damning with faint praise because the overall quality of comics Westerns is truly appalling (with the American ones in pamphlets and a newspaper comic strip like “The Cisco Kid” among the worst…). That’s far from being the truth though: both comics series include some of the greatest comics ever published. Unfortunately both share the same disdain from publishers and readers alike. “Randall” (published mainly in the Argentinean comic book Hora Cero Suplemento Semanal [zero hour weekly supplement], issues # 1 – 65: 1957/58, is long out of print; my attempt to bring it back to life failed because there’re problems among some copyright holders, or something…). So, in two words: no Randall. “Matt Marriott” is a British newspaper comic strip that ran in the [London] Evening News from 1955 until 1977. We know who the copyright holders are, but, in a similar attempt, I’ve learned that they can’t find the printing plates anywhere. In view of the fact that the original art was scattered around we just have Edgar’s and Weare’s masterpiece on microfilm in the British Library Newspapers, so, ditto: no Matt Marriott.
That’s how the amnesiac art of comics loses another chunk of its memory. It’s a huge shame that, on top of it all, it is one of its best parts…

Throughout the series Matt Marriott and his sidekick Jason “Powder” Horn, fulfill their odyssey wandering the West of the United States in a still divided (social wounds not totally healed) post Civil War. It’s a country in which the farmers’ settlements are competing with the ranch owners’ land (the Fence Cutting Wars). Other times the narrative focus is the railroad construction and the decimation of buffalo herds. Still in other occasions the social background is the Indian Wars. That’s the case in “The Territory”; not war exactly, I mean, but serious racial tensions that lead to blood shed.

   
Marriott and Horn are expelled for defending the Indians. (I decided to illustrate this Stumbling with original art scans only. The image is a good metonymy of how “Matt Marriott” was barred from the history of comics for not being a children’s comic.) “The Territory,” Evening News, 1973.

But let’s leave the territory (Montana) alone for a while to give a general look at the series first. I’ll start by putting what I don’t like about it out of the way: the usual formulaic nonsense of mass art genre Westerns (the American monomyth, basically, or something even more boneheaded). Unfortunately it exists even in “Matt Marriott” and Tony Weare knew it and abhorred it (Ark, 1990, 47):

I would have liked the characters to have been fallible, but, of course, being cowboys they have to be infallible. If there was a scene where Matt  and Powder were camping out in the bush at night and they heard a noise, Powder would ask Matt if that noise meant there were Indians. Matt would calmly announce that it was an owl, and he’d be right. In another episode, Powder would say it was an owl and Matt would say it was Indians, and Matt would be right again. I always wished that they’d change it around for once. That side of cowboys is very boring. It’s the same with Batman. He can’t make a mistake either. […] In the gunfights the baddies shoot ten bullets and they all miss whilst the goodies shoot one bullet and it’s on target. I hated that side of it.

Me too!
As for the scripter, James Edgar, no one knows what he thought because of two facts: (1) comics fans like Denis Gifford (the only ones writing about comics at the time) suffered from acute childhood nostalgia syndrome: to them only old comics magazines like Comic Cuts were worthy of attention (even so Gifford wrote a 1971 ridiculously sparse “history” of British newspaper comics); (2) scripters weren’t even credited, let alone interviewed.
Anyway, in the International Journal of Comic Art (Vol. 9, # 1, Spring 2007) and elsewhere (Nemo Vol. 2, # 22, June 1996) I suggested the concept of the “absent hero.” A kind of Greek chorus that needs to be there for commercial reasons, but doesn’t intervene much in the action to avoid the cliché of winning the day every time. That’s what happens to Matt Marriott and Powder Horn in some episodes, but not in “The Territory,” or, at least, not completely. Looking at a fight between Marriott and the Miniconjou Indians is like looking at a rigged boxing match.
Almost every other narrative aspect in the series differ from more traditional genre tropes. The characterization, for instance, gives us a fresco of 19th century North American people that is unmatched anywhere. I’ll give you a small sample below.

“Nimbus McBride,” Evening News, 1968.

“Trail Drive,” Evening News, 1965.

The Indians are no exception as we can see in the following great panel.

In a now familiar procedure (to the readers of the Stumblings, that is), the shadows on the exterior of the face, mirror the characters’ inside feelings. The procedure was first called to my attention by Alain Jaubert in his great Arte TV series: Palettes. “When the Bear Runs,” Evening News, 1972. 

In “Matt Marriott” there are miners and soldiers, hunters and merchants, politicians and businessmen, herd drivers and outlaws, lawyers and doctors, bankers and lawmen, etc… Women are homemakers, sex workers and boarding house keepers. Tony Weare’s great characterizations are only matched by James Edgar’s colorful characters and colorful language. Doc Massey in “Marshall of Fireweed” (1959), said to Matt:  “How now my tall pillar of rectitude. There’s a puritan streak in you that doesn’t sit well with that gun on your hip.” The same Doc Massey described his situation after being mortally wounded as “being a little drunk with valediction.” “Powder” Horn wasn’t that bad with words either, as seen above in fig. 1 and in the below panel (in an old comics tradition the direct discourse is reproduced in pronunciation spelling).

"Custer," Evening News, 1964. 

 Tony Weare’s drawing style evolved from a more conventional naturalism to a rough impressionism that’s quite impressive in its mixture of looseness and preciseness. Besides admiring Weare’s uncanny ability to lay out a scene it’s amazing how he could instill life and expression to a couple of brush strokes depicting a face. Ditto for the body language.

Violence had true consequences in “Matt Marriott.” Notice how Tony Weare could convey shock and dismay in the background characters’ faces with just a few brush strokes. “Trail Drive,” Evening News, 1965.

Tony Weare was also a master at shading. He was able to depict any moment of day or night simply by the intelligent use of black, white and the way he did the hatching and cross-hatching. I particularly like his dim lunar light.

“Trail Drive,” Evening News, 1965.

Other times I just like the nice touch of the little dog that no one seems to notice.

"Custer," Evening News, 1964. 

“Matt Marriott” was a daily strip published six days a week. Most of the strips had three panels which Tony Weare varied from medium shot to close up, varying the size of the panels accordingly (the closer the distance between the picture plane and the “object,” the smaller the panel; this is what Benoït Peeters calls: the rhetorical use of the page). This wasn’t a rigid rule, or anything, of course. Below, for instance, is an establishing shot in a two, not three, panel daily.

“When the Bear Runs,” Evening News, 1972.

Like the Fates of old James Edgar was great at weaving plots. In his stories situations build on situations in a relentless pace. Actions have  (sometimes brutal) consequences. In “The Territory” (a “Matt Marriott” story arc that appeared in the Evening News between May 4, 1973 and August 23 of the same year) a series of unfortunate events lead to the death of a young Indian followed by the kidnapping of “Powder” Horn (the Miniconjou want to punish him) and a hazardous rescue by Matt Marriott and friend Sam Folsom; a man who lives with an Indian woman and knows a lot about Indian culture and the hunger inside the  reservations.
 

The grin in Horn’s face is explained by the fact that he’s a racist who feels pleasure in killing an Indian. This is one of those occasions in which Tony Weare would subvert the script – in cahoots with James Edgar or not, we’ll never know – going completely against the grain. The narrative implications of this simple drawing are huge. To say it in mass art lingo: the hero’s sidekick is suddenly a villain which means that the hero kills innocent people to save a guilty character. That’s what I call a good drawing (a drawing with meaning): technical skills only seems like a poor “set” of criteria to me. “The Territory,” Evening News, 1973.

Sam Folsom and ‘Relish’: The sexual politics of the “Matt Marriott” series could be a post of its own. “The Territory,” Evening News, 1973.

As in any other Western there are lots of evil doers in “Matt Marriott” (in “The Territory” the enemy is racism and the unscrupulous store keeper who sold alcohol to the young Indians), but Manicheism is softened as much as possible because Tony Weare avoided the “bad guy” stereotype and James Edgar gave plausible motivations to his characters. If you want to know “whom” the real enemy is, read below: it’s one of my favorite comic panels of all time.

Light and shadows and shades of gray. “Gospel Mary,” Evening News, 1973.

James Edgar's and Tony Weare's Matt Marriott - Coda

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Images:

1. newspaper clippings glued by Tony Weare in a scrapbook: "Belle Benson's Daughter"'s two first strips (1956);

2. Tony Weare's drawing style would get looser in time; it was a nice mix of impressionism, hatchings, cross-hatchings, anatomical and emotional accuracy (looseness and preciseness): panels from strip ten of "The Territory," I think; early seventies (original art);

3. a rare one panel strip in what is, in my opinion, the series' best story: "A Man Called Shannon" ("Tragedy on the plain" - 29 - as it was published in Camillo Conti's Matt Marriott: November 1978 [1965]);

4. Matt Marriott's stand against manichaeism: "Gospel Mary," last panel of strip seventy three as it was published in Mundo de Aventuras Especial # 12 (October 1976 [1973]): "-It is a confusing world, with good people and bad people. When money is involved most good people become bad people!..." Shadows and light underline the characters’ words;

5. in a great essay about Superman, Umberto Eco noticed how strange time in a series is (it's a compromise between the frozen time of myth and the consuming time of fiction; he called it the iterative scheme: from an adventure to the next it's as if nothing happened before: it's a continuous of successive beginnings); in this image, dated 1989, Tony Weare gets a revenge against said limitation (published in Ark magazine # 31, undated, c. 1990);

6. Tony Weare: "I eventually developed a technique of my own when I did Matt Marriott (1955 - 1977). I wouldn't draw the outlines of objects and people but would have two different shades meet." (Ark # 31: 45.); "Rookwood" by William Ainsworth and Tony Weare: Look and Learn # 961 (August 9, 1980).

This Art Form Deserves To Die - Coda

Carlos Alberto Santos, Mundo de Aventuras (first series) # 1128: "Drama em Orchre [sic] Flat," May 6, 1971 (the issue reprints "Marshall of Ochre Flat," [London] Evening News, December 19, 1968 - April 18, 1969).

Nikai Andrews asked me: "How did you come across Matt Marriott anyway?"

Here's my answer:

A lot of the Matt Marriott story arcs were published in Portugal in a mag titled Mundo de Aventuras [a world of adventures]. The production values were as poor as poor can get: with pulp paper, layouts completely changed, drawings chopped up or expanded by some hack, ugly mech types, balloons all over the art, etc... Since I think that the series improved dramatically during the 1970s and production values in Mundo e Aventuras improved a lot, I was old enough to be impressed by such 1970s tales as "Mary A Pregadora" ("Gospel Mary") or "Uma Nota de Dez Dólares" ("A Ten Dollar Bill").

As you can see below the production values of the ADCCC (All Devon Comics Collectors Club) aren't stellar exactly (I would say that they are uneven, being the example at hand one of the worst).  

James Edgar (w), Tony Weare (a), Daily Strips # 144 published by the ADCCC (this issue reprints "Zincville Colorado," [London] Evening News, June 22, 1970 - October 10, 1970).

Even so, look at the strips above as a page in Mundo de Aventuras below. I don't even know where to start; I'll just say that the whole shebang is there and I don't need to repeat it.   

James Edgar (w) [translator ?], Tony Weare (a) [with some hack], Mundo de Aventuras (first   series) # 1201: "A História de Vinc Bill," [sic] September 28, 1972. 

Those who read The Crib regularly know that I don't have a lot of respect for comics publishers and comics editors (small wonder, with examples like these), but it goes without saying that there are some exceptions like the great Héctor Germán Oesterheld (let's not forget that he was also a publisher; that's, of course, the only explanation to the question: how is it even possible that such stories were published back in the 1950s?). Chris Oliveros is another one, and let's not forget those guys at L'Association and Sins Entido and Frémok and Christian Humbert-Droz and Gary Groth and Kim Thompson (I miss you Kim!) and... and... I would not put those responsible for the second series of Mundo de Aventuras in the same league (far from it), but the fact is that they were responsible, during the 1970s, for three Matt Marriott comic books that respected the original material denying Mundo de Aventuras' terrible past (see below). 

Tony Weare, Mundo de Aventuras (second series) # 23: "Uma Nota de Dez Dólares," March 7, 1974 (the issue reprints "A Ten Dollar Bill," [London] Evening News, May 9, 1972 - September 7, 1972). There's a Portuguese fanzine (or prozine) reprinting all the Matt Marriott strory arcs, but about that, the less said, the better.

When I was in my teens I loved Matt Marriott (strangely enough I loved Tony Weare's style - I also loved the work of Eric Parker, by the way), but I couldn't realize what to me today seems painfully obvious: as good as Eric Parker's drawings are Buck Jones isn't Matt Marriott. It's the difference between a childish, manichean, racist, comic book and an adult, complex comic strip. It's as simple as that.

James Edgar's and Tony Weare's Matt Marriott

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If Matt Marriott was a series of films instead of a British newspaper comics series it would be compared with Howard Hawks' and John Ford's Westerns. Things being what they are Matt Marriott isn't even known, let alone celebrated as the comics masterpiece that it is. To begin with the good news, here's a great text by David Lloyd (it explains exactly why this series is so good visually; scroll down a bit, please): http://www.cartooncounty.com/cartoonstripped.html A few years ago I championed Matt Marriott on the Comics Journal's messboard (as usual, I did some changes, mainly because I wanted to tone down my Dom - sorry for the pun, it's also how it's written in Portuguese - Quixote day's rhetoric):

"September 16, 2003 04:36 PM

Matt Marriott is a British comic and it is forgotten there. We can't really expect it to be remembered elsewhere. It seems that what they remember the most are children's comics: The Beano, "Dan Dare," "Judge Dredd," etc... The Journal did publish an obituary page remembering Tony Weare: issue # 174, February 1995, page 34. It was (very well) written by comics connoisseur, Steve Holland.

September 19, 2003 07:25 AM

Milo George: Domingos: Why in the world would you champion Matt Marriott? That strikes me as a particularly odd pick from you. What makes it so great?

I, like everybody else, forgot all about Matt Marriott for the last couple of decades or so (same for Guido Buzzelli, as a matter of fact). While discussing on this board about the putative greatness of Giraud's Blueberry (the best comics Western, ever!), I said to myself: it can't be true; Giraud is a great craftsman, but the series is poorly written (just formulaic children's comics). Jeet's title for this thread is: What deserves reprinting, aside from Peanuts? For some strange reason I read: What [post fifties newspaper comic] deserves reprinting, aside from Peanuts? Putting two and two together, I remembered Matt Marriott. So, why is it so great? First of all, why isn't it so great? Because it is a piece of masscult (I'm reading McDonald right now, ah ah). I. e. the hero and his sidekick can't die in a fight, for instance. Because of the unfortunate occurrence that I lost my innocence long ago, whenever Marriott fights a criminal, supposedly being in danger, my reaction is: yeah, right! I fail to see why grown ups don't say the same thing when they're reading every superhero comic ever made, but I digress... The greatness of it all: Tony Weare's art is gorgeous! His people look like real people. Their body language is just perfect. The shading is masterful. Etc... Also: Jim Edgar's writing. It's miles and miles away from Charlier's mediocre stuff. Even when there's a formulaic fight he gives a reason for what happens (not solving the problem, of course, no one working in a commercial milieu - or in a commerce before art milieu, to be exact - can do that, but he tones it down). His characters are some of the best characterizations in comics history. Their feelings are real, the story is never manichaean (Marriott is too perfect, of course, but oh well...). I particularly remember Marriott saying good bye to Sister Eulalia. It's as great as Hugo Pratt's Corto Maltese (a character I have no sympathy for, but don't get me started) saying good bye to Changai Li in Corto Maltese in Siberia. Both Weare and Edgar do it with just the right doses of detachment and melodrama. A difficult cooking to be sure, but masterfully done here.

February 24, 2004 08:27 AM [the ed. down there is yours truly, not the interviewer]:

Tony Weare (who did Matt Marriott and is one of the few artists in my list who worked in the mainstream sez: "Paul: We were talking earlier about how you would have liked the characters in Matt Marriott to develop. Tony: Yes. I would have liked the characters to have been fallible, but, of course, being cowboys they have to be infallible. If there was a scene where Matt and Powder were camping out in the bush at night and they heard a noise, Powder would ask Matt if that noise meant there were Indians. Matt would calmly announce that it was an owl, and he'd be right. In another episode, Powder would say it was an owl and Matt would say it was Indians, and Matt would be right again. I always wished that they'd change it around for once. That side of cowboys is very boring. It's the same with Batman. He can't make a mistake either. Paul: They pretend he makes a mistake, but he doesn't really. Tony: That's right. In the first Matt Marriott story Matt had to shoot someone for the first time and he felt sick. I would have liked to have continued in that manner and have Matt lose fights so that he would have to find other ways to win. He might have triumphed in the end [of course, being this a mainstream strip and all... ed.], but I didn't want it easy for him all the time. In the gun fights the baddies shoot ten bullets and they all miss whilst the goodies shoot one bullet and it's on target. I hated that side of it. If you had to be your own law in the west you wouldn't go around showing off, you'd shoot people in the back to get revenge. You'd also feel bad about it. It's those sort of human values which should have been in the strip, but weren't allowed." [Interview with Paul Duncan: Ark magazine, # 31, undated, c. 1990] Even so Matt Marriott has enough human values in there to fill the lack of them in all the rest of the world's mainstream. The proof? In a milieu that just values simplistic children's comics, Matt Marriott is completely forgotten and was never reprinted."

Images:

1. part of a sequence as it was originally created (Matt Marriott, Futura, 1988 [the [London] Evening News, 1955]);

2. the same series of panels as they were published in the children's magazine Knockout (1961): to show violence to kids is perfectly all right, but to show the "hero" feeling sick after killing a man, is unbearable to watch - or was it censorship because of powder's last remark? (In the missing panels: "Then, the tension of the last weeks suddenly ceases.”; “- Excuse me.” / “- Are you all right, Matt?” / "I think that I'm no good as a gunman! To kill a man - even Carper - makes my stomach turn!"; "- The same thing happened to me, but now it's as natural as killing a fly!)";

3. ...aaand... another cut (these were definitely panels unsuitable for children: Mundo de Aventuras # 446, February 25, 1958).

On Stagecoaches and Indian Attacks, Again! Can the Indians Attack a Stagecoach Successfully In a Sea of Eurocentric Mass Media Formulaic Products?...

...They can, at the hands of a truly great writer like James Edgar. If the result of the attack was drawn by a truly great artist like Tony Weare, it's the icing on top of the cake!

James Edgar (w), Tony Weare (a), "Shannon Gunfighter," published in the [London] Evening News on October 19,1961 (Photo by 

Jorge Machado-Dias).

A repro made in Italy (why did they change the caption's place, though?...), Matt Marriott di Tony Weare [no need for the scriptwriter's name to appear, of course! Sigh!...], Edizioni Camillo Conti, November 1978.

What's Wrong With American Newspaper Comics? Coda

David Wright, Illustrators # 2, 2012.

My last post ended thus:

So, what's wrong with newspaper comics, you may ask? It's a commercial medium that must both entertain and sell paper(s). In spite of their straitjackets some great comic strip artists did remarkable work once in a blue moon, I'm not denying that, but from the moment that 99 % of what they did isn't that good they're overrated in The Crib's book.
"Matt Marriott" by James Edgar and Tony Weare excepted, of course, but "Matt Marriott" and "Carol Day" are Brit realistic newspaper series. And those are a different animal altogether. It's a shame that no one ever noticed the difference.

That's not exactly true. Roger Clark, at least, knew the difference.

Here's what he has to say about "Carol Day" (Illustrators # 2, "My Affair With Carol Day," 39, 40):

What I found [in the "Carol Day," comic strip] was: 

● Tightly plotted stories set in the real, recognizable world 

● 3-dimensional, often psychologically troubled, characters with dysfunctional family relationships 

● An absence of easy answers and happy, tidy endings 

● Minor touches that add a great deal to the texture of the strip, for example the surprisingly blunt observations of characters about each other, particularly Carol. Another example is Wright's habit of casting people from his family and daily life or the movies as characters for example his son Nicky as Ian Carr in 'Ebb-Tide', and Burl Ives in 'Caribbean Captives'. 

● The universe of 'Carol Day' is not a benign one. Most situations don't resolve happily for everyone or even most people. Carol doesn't smile and laugh a lot-in fact it's so rare that when you encounter an episode in which Carol expresses joy it immediately stands out. Most characters have serious psychological problems and dysfunctional families. Difficult relationships between siblings are the norm. Treachery abounds. Jealousy, greed and self-interest drive many situations. In short Carol Day doesn't live in a neat and tidy soap opera bubble where problems get worked out, relationships get back on track, the evil get punished and the good rewarded.

Roger adds:

The somewhat dark universe of 'Carol Day' stands in stark contrast to the major American strips of the time, such as Leonard Starr's 'On Stage', Stan Drake's 'Heart of Juliet Jones', or John Prentice's 'Rip Kirby'.

Yup!

It's official: I will only fully believe that comics publishers deserve my respect when a complete Carol Day collection sees the light of day (no pun intended).

The sad reality is that in any other art form "Carol Day" would be considered and admired as the master piece that it is. Not among comics readers, though, because they're still attached to children's comics such as The Fantastic Four or "Dan Dare" (to stay in the UK). If they present their laughable children's canon to "normal" readers instead of the truly great comics like "Carol Day" how can they support their mantra "comics are not just for kids anymore"? It's a small wonder that they can't, obviously.

Visit Roger's Carol Day site and buy the ebooks.

A stunning bit of storytelling by David Wright, below:

David Wright, "Carol Day: Where There's a Will," December 1959. Notice how Michael flows in the reading sense in the first panel in contrast to a worried Carol in the third panel and how that changes completely afterwards until disaster occurs. Michael is already off-balance at the beginning (the composition is tilted), but the left to right direction helps the slippery slope in the second panel. David Wright, like his friend Tony Weare, was a master of chiaroscuro (conveyed by hatching, cross-hatching, thick blacks, negative space and white paint). Here the ghastly weather at night is perfectly conveyed. Peter Richardson also calls our attention to: "Wright's sublime use of silent panels to add to the already oppressive atmosphere." (Illustrators # 2, "A Brush With Fitzrovia," 31.) 

My Comics Canon

It was February 24, 2004, 08:27 AM, on the Comics Journal Messboard. I'm not sure if this was the first time I listed these comics there (probably not), but that's what I did in that particular occasion. If I remember correctly (unfortunately I didn't write a crib sheet at the time) I did previously post what I now call "my canon" because I was fed up with the accusation of not liking comics at all because I found children's comics (and I do like Carl Barks' oeuvre) somewhat wanting (melodrama and manichaeism in particular bother me plenty).

This is a different list because I added a few titles over the last years: My Canon:

Anon (Cantigas de Santa Maria de Alfonso X El Sabio)
Hans Holbein (Les Simulachres & Historiées Faces de la Mort)
Gilles Corrozet (Les Simulachres & Historiées Faces de la Mort)
Romeyn de Hooghe (The Siege and Liberation of Vienna in 1683)
Jacques Callot (Les misères et malheurs de la guerre)
William Hogarth (A Harlot’s Progress; Rake’s Progress)
Francisco de Goya (Los desastres de la guerra; Caprichos de Goya)
Katsushika Hokusai (Thirty-Six Views; One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji)
Gustave Doré (Histoire de la Sainte Russie)
Gustave Henri Jossot (Le credo; Dressage)
Theophile Alexandre Steinlen (La vision de Hugo)
Frans Masereel (Mein Stundenbuch; Die Stadt)
George Grosz (Ecce Homo)
Pablo Picasso (Songe et mensonge de Franco; La suite Vollard)
Charlotte Salomon (Leben? Oder Theater?)
Francis Bacon (Triptych May - June 1973)
Héctor Germán Oesterheld (Ernie Pike; Amapola Negra, Mort Cinder; El Eternauta; Randall, Loco Sexton)
Alberto Breccia (Ernie Pike; Mort Cinder; Un Tal Daneri; Versiones; La Gallina Degollada; Buscavidas)
Hugo Pratt (Ernie Pike)
Carlos Trillo (Un Tal Daneri; Buscavidas)
Solano Lopez (Amapola Negra, El Eternauta)
Arturo del Castillo (Randall, Loco Sexton)
Tony Weare (Matt Marriott)
James Edgar (Matt Marriott)
David Wright (Carol Day: Jack Slingsby)
Chago Armada (Sa-Lo-Mon)
Guido Buzzelli (Zil Zelub; I Labirinti; L’Agnone; Intirvista)
Philip Guston (Poor Richard)
Roy de Forest (Too The Far Canine Range And The Unexplored Territory Beyond Terrier Pass)
Nicholas Africano (The Scream, Struggling with him, He's afraid of loneliness)
Martin Vaughn-James (The Cage, The Park)
Yoshiharu Tsuge (Red Flowers; Oba’s Electroplate Factory; L’homme sans talent)
Ana Hatherly (O Escritor)
Fred (Le Petit Cirque; Le journal de Jules Renard lu par Fred)
Dino Buzzati (Poema a fumetti)
Tardi (La bascule à Charlot; C'était la guerre des tranchées; La veritable histoire du soldat inconnu)
Edmond Baudoin (Le portrait; Le premier voyage; Éloge de la poussière; Terrains vagues; Couma àco)
Richard McGuire (Here)
Andrzej Klimowski (The Depository: A Dream Book; The Secret)
Martin tom Dieck (hundert Ansichten der Speicherstadt; Monsieur Lingus; Territirroirs)
Fabrice Neaud (Journal (I); Journal (III))
Chester Brown (The Playboy; I Never Liked You)
Lynda Barry (The Freddie Stories; The Most Obvious Question; One! Hundred! Demons!)
Anke Feuchtenberger (Die Hure H; Die kleine Dame; Somnanbule)
Katrin de Vries (Die Hure H; Die kleine Dame)
Geneviève Castrée (Lait Frappé, Susceptible)
Shannon Gerard (Unspent Love; Hung)
Debbie Drechsler (Daddy's Girl; The Summer of Love)
Kiriko Nananan (Blue)
Nick Drnaso (Sabrina)
Ben Katchor (Julius Knipl Real Estate Photographer;The Jew of New York)
Eric Lambé (Ophélie et les directeurs des ressources humaines; Alberto G.; La Pluie; Un voyage)
Stefano Ricci (Tufo)
Philippe de Pierpont (Alberto G.; Tufo; La Pluie; Un voyage)
Jiro Tanigushi (L’homme qui marche; Le journal de mon père)
John Porcellino (Sam; Perfect Example)
Ed Brubaker (Here and Now, An Accidental Death)
Stefano Gaudiano (Here and Now)
Eric Shanower (An Accidental Death)
Sylvain Victor (Le Doute)
Vincent Fortemps (Cimes; La Digue; (Coulisse); Par les sillons)
Olivier Deprez (Le Chatêau)
Olivier Marboeuf (Une Ville, un Mardi)
Pierre Duba (L'Absente; Racines)
Dominique Goblet (Souvenir d’une journée parfaite; Faire semblant c’est mentir)
Andrea Bruno (Sabato Tregua)
Chris Ware (Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth; Acme Novelty Library # 18; Building Stories)
Barron Storey (The Adjustment of Sidney Deepscorn; Slidehouse)
Carl Barks (The Twenty Four Carat Moon; Valley of Tralla La; Back to Long Ago; A Financial Fable)
Yoshihiro Tatsumi (Goodbye and Other Stories; Kept)
Harvey Pekar (American Splendor # 4; American Splendor # 8)
Robert Crumb (American Splendor #4; American Splendor #8)
Jose Muñoz (Sudor Sudaca; Alack Sinner)
Carlos Sampayo (Sudor Sudaca; Alack Sinner)
Gary Panter (Daltokyo; Cola Madnes)
Art Spiegelman (Maus)
Carel Moiseiwitsch (This Is a True Story)
Federico del Barrio (El artefacto perverso; Lope de Aguirre, la conjura; Las memorias de amoros; La Orilla)
Elisa Gálvez (La Orilla)
Felipe Hernandez Cava (El artefacto perverso; Lope de Aguirre, la expiación; Lope de Aguirre, la conjura; Las memorias de Amoros; Soy mi sueño)
Pablo Auladell (Soy mi sueño)
Ricard Castells (Lope de Aguirre, la expiación)
Aristophane (Les Soeurs Zabîme; Conte démoniaque; Faune)
Montesol (Fin de semana; Speak Low)
Ramon de España (Fin de Semana)
Joe Sacco (Palestine; Safe Area Gorazde; The Fixer; Footnotes in Gaza)
Mattotti (Stigmate; Il rumore della brina)
Jorge Zentner (Il rumore della brina)
Claudio Piersanti (Stigmate)
Eddie Campbell (The King Canute Crowd; Graffiti Kitchen; Alec: How to Be an Artist; From Hell)
Alan Moore (From Hell)
Mat Brinkman (Teratoid Heights; Heads 44)
Yvan Alagbé (Dyaa; Nègres jaunes)
Thierry van Hasselt (Brutalis)
David B. (L’Ascension du Haut Mal)
Daniel Clowes (Ghost World; David Boring)
Peter Blegvad (The Book of Leviathan)
Blanchet (La nouvelle au pis)
Max (El prolongado sueño del Sr. T.; Nosotros somos los muertos; Bienvenidos al infierno)
Seth (Clyde Fans; It’s a Good Life if You Don’t Weaken)
Rutu Modan (Jamilti; Exit Wounds)
Pedro Nora (Mr. Burroughs)
David Soares (Mr. Burroughs)
Filipe Abranches (A Morte do Palhaço)
Marco Mendes (Diário Rasgado)
David Mazzucchelli (Big Man; Discovering America; Asterios Polyp)
Moebius (Cauchemar blanc)


Image:

Carol Day by David Wright (strip # 2963). In the last panel we can see a medium close-up of Adam Boone, a character "played" by Matt Marriott's co-creator, Tony Weare.

Another Ridiculous Comics Canon - The Unicómic Canon

The ridiculous comics canon I'm talking about in this post's title comes from Alicante, Spain, this time. Sincerely, I can't understand this... Put a similar canon in a literary or film context and you are laughed out of the room. What can be the reason that explains these ridiculous comics canons all over the place? I stopped trying to fully understand this many moons ago, but I have at least one explanation. To put it bluntly: comics as an art form failed to attract people with good taste. I can't imagine those who put Shakespeare, Marcel Proust, Rembrandt, Francis Bacon, Mizoguchi, Rossellini, etc... etc...in their respective canons constructing such an inane canon as the following one:

1.º - Maus (Art Spiegelman)
2.º - Blueberry series (Jean-Michel Charlier & Jean Giraud 'Moebius')
3.º - Astérix series (René Goscinny & Albert Uderzo)
3.º - Tintin series (Hergé)
5.º - Paracuellos (Carlos Giménez)
6.º - A Contract With God (Will Eisner)
6.º - Corto Maltese series (Hugo Pratt)
6.º - The Sandman series (Neil Gaiman and others)
6.º - Watchmen (Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons)
10º - Adolf (Ozamu Tezuka)
10.º - Black Hole (Charles Burns)
10.º - Calvin & Hobbes comic strip (Bill Watterson)
13.º - The Eternaut (Héctor Germán Oesterheld & Francisco Solano López)
13.º - Little Nemo In Slumberland comic strip (Winsor McCay)
13.º - Mort Cinder series (Héctor Germán Oesterheld & Alberto Breccia)
13.º - Prince Valiant comic strip (Harold Foster)
13.º - The Spirit series (Will Eisner)
13.º - V for Vendetta (Alan Moore & David Lloyd & Tony Weare - I have added the last name and they forgot it; most great artists are always forgotten in these ridiculous canons)
19.º - Akira series (Katsuhiro Otomo)
19.º - Animal Man series [# 1 - 26] (Grant Morrison & Chas Truog)
19.º - Arrugas (Paco Roca)
19.º - Batman Year One (Frank Miller & David Mazzucchelli)
19.º - My Father's Journal (Jiro Taniguchi)
19.º - Flash Gordon comic strip (Alex Raymond)
19.º - From Hell (Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell)
19.º - Jimmy Corrigan (Chris Ware)
19.º - Spirou and Fantasio series (André Franquin)
19.º - Mafalda comic strip (Quino)
19.º - Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi)
19.º - Superlópez series (Jan)

Well... to tell you the truth, I'm speechless... How is such a monster even possible? It's simple existence (along with others like the one published in The Comics Journal) proves that there's no future. This art form definitely deserves to die!

The Reading Gaze

From left to right: Héctor Germán Oesterheld as Ernie Pike by Alberto Breccia, Matt Marriott by Tony Weare, the character in Nejishiki by Yoshiharu Tsuge, Jules Renard by Fred, the statue of the tyrant by Guido Buzzelli in Zil Zelub, Moussa in Nègres jaunes by Yvan Alagbé

What you see above is the cover of half my book. This is part one which contains two chapters: 1. Comics Theory And Criticism and 2. The Expanded Field of Comics. It's a virtual book, for now, but maybe it doesn't matter if it will be a real book someday or not. What really matters is that it exists already and that's enough for yours truly...

V de Vitória?

Como estou sem pachorra para estas coisas aqui fica o link para um post anónimo (helas!) com o qual concordo, embora com reservas.

Para que não restem dúvidas, aqui ficam as minhas discordâncias:

1) Não vejo a qualidade de V de Vingança em parte nenhuma. Para mim só é importante porque contém as ultimas páginas de Tony Weare (eu e David Lloyd somos ambos fãs incondicionais da série "Matt Marriott").

2) Se o número 1 me deixa dúvidas (mas, apesar de tudo, os nomes implicados merecem-me respeito), acho chocante que seja atribuído um mínimo de credibilidade a Fax de Sarajevo. Por favor! Joe Kubert transformou a guerra da Bósnia numa história do Sgt. Rock! E nem sequer se deu ao trabalho de investigar os uniformes. Se o problema era a guerra nos Balcãs, exigia-se Safe Area Gorazde de Joe Sacco, como é mais do que evidente.

De resto... nomes imprescindíveis? Os que o autor cita e Anke Feuchtenberger, Martin tom Dieck, Fabrice Neaud, Aristophane, Yoshiharu Tsuge, Chris Ware, Thierry van Hasselt, Olivier Deprez, Vincent Fortemps, Yvan Alagbé, Eric Lambé, Mat Brinkman, Federico del Barrio, Felipe H. Cava, e um longo etc...

Concordância absoluta: Debbie Drechsler!

Nota

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (e), Arturo del Castillo (d), "Jinetes Vengadores" [cavaleiros vingadores], Hora Cero Suplemento Semanal # 21, 22 de Janeiro de 1958. Randall e Martine.

Reparo agora que juntei nos meus últimos posts aqueles que foram os maiores criadores de westerns da história: John Ford, James Edgar, Tony Weare. Faltou apenas a dupla Oesterheld, Pratt e a dupla Oesterheld, Castillo. Mas, cá para mim, e se excluir "Randall", dos dois últimos, esses vêm a seguir. (Mas também há páginas memoráveis em "Sgt. KIrk", claro.)

Reviewing a Review

I began writing about comics in a fanzine published by my good friend Manuel Caldas: Nemo [in the subtitle's last version], O Fanzine Dos Que Gostam Da Banda Desenhada (Nemo, the fanzine of those who like comics - March, 1986 - June, 1998). This is a strange concept: no one likes music or cinema (i. e.: all music or all films). Anyway, it was back then, in Nemo # 21 (March, 1996), that I initiated my campaign against most mainstream comics (the exceptions being Carl Barks' duck stories, Matt Marriott by Reg Taylor, James Edgar and Tony Weare, lots of stories written by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and a couple of David Wright's Carol Day story arcs; I'm not sure if comics by Carlos Trillo and Alberto Breccia are mainstream or not). I tried to explain my reasons, of course... but Manuel wasn't kidding when he put that subtitle on his fanzine's cover: some people do like all comics, especially the mainstream ones (they think that alternative comics are badly drawn, so, I'm not sure if they like all comics or just the "for the youth from 7 to 77" kind). Needless to say that I was "the enemy within" subsequently ... I was bitterly expelled from the escapists' (aren't they all?) paradise...

Most of what I wrote back then I recently found in a review of Martin Sheridan's Comics and Their Creators (Hale, Cushman and Flint, 1942) by the New York Intellectual David T. Mazelon. It was published in Dwight MacDonald's Politics magazine (May, 1944: 117 - 118). Unfortunately some of us are condemned to reinvent the wheel, I suppose...

Bazelon opens his review writing that: "Mr. Sheridan has something to say about some seventy-five comic strips. But what he says is singularly unimposing. Each of these strips is covered by a thumbnail biography of the creator, or an interview in the worst newspaper manner. The histories of the cartoonists and their work are presented by banal anecdotes, salary figures, and relative merits at golf. Sheridan's understanding of the comics and the men who draw them really seems to be limited to a hungry appreciation of their salaries." This is a criticism of the author's approach (from the point of view of the social critic and art lover), not a critique of American newspaper comics and comic books (that comes later). (Bazelon also quotes Sheridan's publishers when they say that his book will appeal to "every young-minded American" - it's the "from 7 to 77" cliché again -; he counterattacks stating the existence of the "undiapered reader;" as a huge fan of the "babymen" epithet I have to add that I laughed with gusto when I read the expression.)

He goes on quoting Sheridan and sandwiching comments: "The comics cartoonist "is expected to please everybody." He believes that readers "will follow the strip which offends no one." With these directives, the tendency, of course, is to produce vacuous stereotypes." I could not say better...

I also agree with Bazelon's aesthetic ideas (if they were born with Romanticism, so be it): "One of the greatest effects of good art is to make people see themselves differently, by identification in new, fruitful perspectives. This is the other side of artistic creativeness, for it is the expression of such perspectives which provides the artist's essential worth. However, when the needs of class control determine the material of art, and when these needs are reactionary and disease-like, creativity is sharply limited or completely smothered. Art is dangerous; it tends toward freedom." In the highly commodified world of the 21th century this statement seems a bit naive, but I believe in its core idea: the stereotype can never be great art. And mainstream comics are stereotype-ridden...

To see how the New York Intellectuals changed their minds about mass consumption of the arts from 1944 to 1960 we just need to compare these two quotes... Bazelon (being a revolutionary idealist): "This approach [by Sergei Eisenstein who roughly says that if we give something good to the people they will like it] conflicts with the Philistine attitude that good art is for a small section of the population, while any trash can be tossed to the masses." MacDonald (being a post-revolution realist): "the great majority of people at any given time (including most of the ruling class for the matter) have never cared enough about such things to make them an important part of their lives. So let the masses have their Masscult, let the few who care about good writing, painting, music, architecture, philosophy, etc., have their High Culture, and don't fuzz up the distinction with Midcult." ("Masscult & Midcult," Against the American Grain, Vintage Books [Partisan Review, Volume 17, # 2, Spring, 1960 - Volume 17, # 3, Summer, 1960], 1962: 73). As Neil Jumonville put it: "[the New York Intellectuals] disliked mass culture partly because the working class never turned out to be as revolutionary, noble and cultured as radical intellectuals had hoped. Some of the Partisan group had assumed that, if unimpeded by capitalist commercial values, the mass of citizens would voluntarily seek out high culture themselves. When it became evident that would not happen, most New York Intellectuals deplored middlebrow as much as lowbrow culture." (The New York Intellectuals Reader, Routledge, 2007: 205.) Pierre Bourdieu confirmed scientifically what Dwight MacDonald suspected: high culture is not the culture of the dominant class, high culture is the culture of the dominated fraction of the dominant class (La distinction, Les Editions de minuit, 2002 [1979]). In a word: the intelligentsia. Large parts of the dominant fraction of the dominant class have middlebrow or even lowbrow taste because these "things" are not "an important part of their lives."

Bazelon likes Krazy Kat by George Herriman and that's about it. I put no American newspaper comic strips in my canon, but being forced to do it I would also choose Krazy Kat (see header above), some Sunday Pages from Gasoline Alley by Frank King (the dailies' story arcs seem as bowdlerized as the Sunday Pages, but they're not half as poetical), Dot and Dash by Cliff Sterrett (for their formal ingenuity), some Skippy by Percy Crosby (and not Peanuts... having to choose between the master and the apprentice I choose the former), but not much else... David Bazelon condemns Bringing Up Father (by George McManus): "[Jiggs] prefers corned-beef-and-cabbage and poker with the boys to the life that wealth offers. The sop here is patent[;]" Radio Patrol (by Ed Sullivan and Charles Schmidt) because: "Almost tautologically, art serving banalities itself becomes banal" (I'm not sure if I agree with this one, but that's a story for another time); The Timid Soul (by H. T. Webster): "an extreme caricature against which the pin-point ego of any harassed petty-bourgeois can release itself."

After saying that "Politically, Superman is a pre-fascist creation" David T. Bazelon ends his review contradicting what psychiatrist Lauretta Bender (who was part of Superman's publisher, National Comics' - later DC -, editorial board) has to say about said character: "(He) would seem to offer the same type of mental catharsis Aristotle claimed was an attribute of the drama." Bazelon: ""Superman" gives vicarious satisfaction to explicit social frustrations. It cannot be tragic or displeasing, nor can it contain that essential realism which is a quality of all good art. For it has a purpose: this is art in the service of social neuroses. And that service is the meaning of most comic strips... Pearls are produced not by serving but by opposing disease."

Image:

The cover of Politics, May, 1944.

PS A page about David T. Bazelon: http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/findaids/bazelon/index.htm#bio

PPS This is post # 100. I'm amazed that I arrived this far, really...

Matt Marriott Published By Manuel Caldas

If I look at the list of my favorite comics (my personal canon, as this blog's subtitle claims) I inevitably notice that many, if not most, are out of print or were never reprinted decades after the first printing (almost 60 years, if we don't count a confidential reprint in 2014, for my #1).

"Matt Marriott," (links here, here, and here) the Western series by James Edgar and Tony Weare, is no exception. Of the 70 stories published between 1955 and 1977 few were reprinted and none had a wide circulation. I would love to see the complete series reprinted with Drawn & Quarterly or Fantagraphics production values quality. It would be a Matt Marriott library to join the Oesterheld's Frontera library of my wildest (and nerdeshly wettest) dreams. This will never happen, of course, because the former is a British newspaper series, and the latter was an Argentinian publishing house. The only reprints we can expect are the ones with best seller status; which obviously mostly means, reprints of mediocre stuff. If the above isn't enough we know that most countries are completely out of the great production values, classic comics reprint equation, the UK and Argentina among them...

But enough whining: enter: Manuel Caldas...

As you can see below Manuel marvelously published three Matt Marriott story arcs in Spanish, directly reproduced from the original art.

I wrote the intros, but, unfortunately, I need to correct some mistakes committed by the translator. I'll do it in a coda to this post. In Spanish, maybe?...

September 25, 2008

This blog is 6 years old since last September 25. Did the situation of the real great artists in comics history improve since then? Are they recognized as such instead of the parthetic comics canon that we had 6 years ago? Not by any far-fetched stretch of the imagination! The situation is as if people considered the greatest films of all time to be B series films instead of the masterpieces by Mizoguchi, Ozu, Rossellini, Bergman, et al... In other words: money continues to talk and the canon continues to be upside down.

James Edgar (w), Tony Weare (a), "Gospel Mary," [London] Evening News, April 3, 1973.

The Labyrinth by Guido Buzzelli

 

Guido Buzzelli, The Labyrinth, Floating World Comics, 2023 [1970]

Since Google's policy is to delete dead accounts I'm reviving this blog to announce that I wrote the Intro to the above book. I hope it does well out there...

Guido Buzzelli is, as you know, if you have been following this blog, a favorite at The Crib, the others being Héctor Germán Oesterheld, Chago Armada, James Edgar, Tony Weare, Yoshiharu Tsuge, John Porcellino, and a few others...

I must also add the following: I was so shocked by João Paulo Cotrim's death, and since I mentioned him on my last post, that I froze, not knowing what to say... He died way too soon...   

João Paulo Cotrim, Photo by Tiago Fezas Vital 

Colecção de Romances Gráficos do Público

A primeira prancha de "Sudor Sudaca" ["Sudore Meticcio"] com dedicatória de Carlos Sampayo. Frigidaire # 19, Junho de 1982. 

O jornal Público vai editar uma colecção de doze romances gráficos, facto que se saúda. Devo acrescentar, no entanto, que, a meu ver, é mais uma ocasião perdida.

Dada a natureza deste blogue não podia deixar de redigir uma lista alternativa. A dita aqui fica:

Les soeurs Zabîme - Aristophane

Amapola Negra - Héctor Germán Oesterheld / Francisco Solano López

I Never Liked You - Chester Brown

Munô No Hito - Yoshiharu Tsuge

Matt Marriott: Isepinal The Apache - James Edgar / Tony Weare

Zil Zelub - Guido Buzzelli

Le journal de Jules Renard lu par Fred - Fred

C'était la guerre des tranchées - Jacques Tardi

Le portrait - Edmond Baudoin

Un tal Daneri - Carlos Trillo / Alberto Breccia

Sudor Sudaca - Carlos Sampayo / José Muñoz

Poderia ter escolhido outras coisas, como é evidente:   Ernie Pike de Héctor Germán Oesterheld e Hugo Pratt; Las memorias de Amorós de Felipe H. Cava e Federico del Barrio, para dar só dois exemplos... Ou... três: só poderia deixar de fora o extraordinário Journal III de Fabrice Neaud por razões práticas, ou seja, por ser tipo tijolo...

Ten Years Already!

It was Thursday, September 25, 2008: the day I wrote my first post on The Crib.

In my last post I wrote "Ten years is a long time in a person's life". What changed, according to yours truly, natch, in these ten years, both personally and in the comics field?

Personally I don't have much to say: let's just disclose that I'm less and less inclined to write and leave it at that... Proof enough of what I'm saying is my failing to deliver (thanks again to the seven of you who showed interest in reading my putative twenty five texts!, unfortunately I wrote only two!).

In the comics field many things changed. If we take Berlin by Jason Lutes and Clyde Fans by Seth (I still haven't read these fine graphic novels, I'm sure they are fine, in a sitting, something I intend to do in a not so distant future) we reach the following conclusions: first there were the pamphlets, then the volumes, and now the brick (or, in Berlin's case, the third volume and the brick at the same time). These are hinge books that were done over a huge period of time. Hence they witnessed the end of the pamphlet, the end of the trade paperback collection, and the triumph of the graphic novel. 

Are we better or worst than we were ten years ago? Sincerely, I'm not sure... Maybe it's just me and I lost touch with the field (I still haven't read My Favorite Thing Is Monsters or Sabrina or Barcazza, for instance), but I don't see any improvements, on the contrary. Don't ask me to explain why either, it's just a vague feeling, maybe provoked by my insistence in following my generation of creators (those so many who promised so much at the beginning of the 1990s and remain so few now) and my lack of interest in finding new voices... their drawing styles and sterile experiments leave me cold, to tell you the truth...

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w), Francisco Solano López (a), "Amapola Negra - 'Black Poppy'," Hora Cero # 15,  July 1958.

Enough whining and on to another thing. Since I promised and I didn't deliver, as I said above, at least I'm posting the list of my favorite comics as a kind of commemoration for The Crib's ten years. It's a list of 34 with a couple of "anomalies": John Porcellino, for instance has two titles at number 7; ditto Seth at number 18. Is this list wanting in gender and ethnicity equality? Yes it is and I have no excuses: I also refuse any kind of positive discrimination. 

Could this list be different? Of couse it could. Early on I discovered that this is an impossible task. To do it right is a full time job in itself. Most of the stories below are there because I vaguely remember liking them years ago. Would I like them as much upon rereading? I'm not so sure...

There's no Picasso, Goya or Hokusai below. Needless to say that they would be number one, two and three, with Jacques Callot following, in a more open minded list. These are my favorite restrict field comics, not my favorite comics, period.

1 – Amapola Negra – Black Poppy (Héctor Germán Oesterheld, Francisco Solano López)

2 – Matt Marriott: Isepinal the Apache (James Edgar, Tony Weare)

3 – Muno no Hito [The Man Without Talent] (Yoshiharu Tsuge)

4 – Convoy a Malta (Héctor Germán Oesterheld, Hugo Pratt)

5 – Zil Zelub (Guido Buzzelli)

6 – Sa-lo-mon (Chago Armada)

7 –  Sam / Perfect Example (John Porcellino)

8 – Le journal de Jules Renard lu par Fred (Fred)

9 – Randall: Jinetes Vengadores (Héctor Germán Oesterheld, Arturo del Castillo)

10 –  Fuck (Chester Brown)

11 – Les soeurs Zabîme (Aristophane)

12 – Sudor Sudaca (Carlos Sampayo, José Muñoz)

13 – The Most Obvious Question (Lynda Barry)

14 – Journal III (Fabrice Neaud)

15 – Conte demoniaque (Aristophane)

16 – La Orilla (Elisa Gálvez, Federico del Barrio)

17 – Nègres jaunes (Yvan Alagbé)

18 – Calgary, Clyde Fans (Seth)

19 – Graffiti Kitchen (Eddie Campbell)

20 – Haruka-na machi e [A Distant Neighborhood] (Jiro Taniguchi)

21 – Carol Day: Jack Slingsby (David Wright)

22 – Un tal Daneri (Carlos Trillo, Alberto Breccia)

23 – La bascule à Charlot (Jacques Tardi)

24 – Building Stories (Chris Ware)

25 – El artefacto perverso (Felipe Hernández Cava, Federico del Barrio)

26 – Le portrait (Edmond Baudoin)

27 – Par les sillons (Vincent Fortemps)

28 – Aruko Hito [The Walking Man] (Jiro Taniguchi)

29 – El prolongado sueño del Sr. T. (Max)

30 – Speak Low (Montesol)

31 – Somnambule (Anke Feuchtenberger)

32 – La Pluie (Philippe de Pierpont, Eric Lambé)

33 – Safe Area Gorazde (Joe Sacco)

34 – The Adjustment of Sydney Deepscorn (Barron Storey)