Time for classics for comics

Sometimes, a book's imposing appearance reflects its enormous weight in cultural history. The volume that compiles all the pages of Paracuellos is a good example of this. It is a moving river novel in vignettes, guided by a personal and incorruptible voice, and whose drawings are capable of conveying both pain and tenderness. Paracuellos. Edición total (Reservoir Books) is a 600-page large-format volume that compiles this indisputable masterpiece by an essential author, Carlos Giménez . Giménez delves into the childhoods of children who, like him, grew up in the Social Assistance Homes during the post-Franco era. Paracuellos portrays hunger, cold, and the oppressive presence of religion; also moments of play and comics, the only way to escape from reality. On the album's cover, eighteen children look at us, and not one of them smiles. Those glances will remain with the reader forever. Paracuellos ' eyes are unforgettable, nor are the emotions that run through these pages.

More classics being reissued. Coinciding with the Netflix series, El Eternauta (Planeta Cómic) is being revived in another giant volume (380 pages in landscape format) featuring the original comic strips written by H.G. Oesterheld and drawn by Solano López about the struggle of a group of citizens against an alien invasion. Years later, the writer would revisit the story with a more political tone and the expressionist drawings of Alberto Breccia, resulting in El Eternauta 1969 ( Reservoir Books), a reading that complements the previous one (we published the full review here ).

⁄ Reissues of timeless titles like 'Paracuellos' alongside new stories like that of the Harari brothers

From Beto Hernández we have a new edition, in two volumes, of his contemporary classic, Palomar (La Cúpula), the name of a fictional Latin American town where Luba struggles to raise her seven children; a choral tale that's both real and mythical, because Palomar is the Macondo of comics . The publisher's ongoing work in republishing great authors like Herriman, Max, Gallardo, Shelton, and Calonge is highly commendable, and that effort continues with a fascinating and disturbing comic like Dr. Vertigo (La Cúpula) by Martí, a cross between the black-and-white expressionist films of Murnau and the comics of Dick Tracy; a personal and intoxicating universe with a tremendously dark, clean line.

From Japan comes one of the mangas Osamu Tezuka was working on when he died in 1989, Neo Fausto (Planeta Cómic), which transfers the Faustian myth to contemporary Japan and raises a parable about immortality through a scientist who offers his soul to obtain a second life. Tezuka's drawings, sober and effective, are put to the service of a script that combines the philosophical part with the portrait of the turbulent Japanese society during the decades of 1960 and 1970.

Among the other new releases, one title stands out as a future modern comic book classic: The David Zimmerman Case (Astiberri), by the Lucas brothers and Arthur Harari, an ambitious Hitchcockian thriller set in a beautifully rendered Paris. The starting point is evocative: a photographer encounters a young woman at a party and, in the morning, wakes up trapped inside the woman's body.

We conclude this section with a historic figure of Franco-Belgian comics, Gaston Elgafe, who, like Asterix or Lucky Luke, continues his journey in other hands. In The Return of Elgafe (Norma Editorial), André Franquin's character returns with gags written and drawn by Delaf, faithful to the aesthetic and spirit of this idealistic character with little love for office work. The same publisher is currently publishing Franquin's original pages in a five-volume, priceless collection.

Non-fiction comics

In the field of non-fiction, we highlight four titles: two essays and two biographies. In How the Rich Plunder the Planet / Com els rics sacagen el planeta (Garbuix Books), Hervé Kempf and Juan Mendez write a lively essay in cartoons that denounces the link between the ecological crisis and the social crisis, while in Artificial. A Love Story (Salamandra Graphic), Amy Kurzweil traces the history of three generations of her family united by love, art, and artificial intelligence. In the biographical field, the famous Hispanist Ian Gibson teams up with the cartoonist Quique Palomo in The Incombustible Life of Salvador Dalí ( Planeta Cómic ), a book that explores the artistic and personal career of the Catalan surrealist painter without shying away from controversial topics such as his political ideas, his relationship with Lorca, or his life with Gala. Less well-known in Spain is the life of Italian activist Giuseppe Impastato, whose legacy is vindicated in Peppino Impastato: The Satire Against the Mafia (Liana Editorial), with a script by Marco Rizzo and drawings by Lelio Bonaccorso, which describes a coherent and tireless struggle that began at a very young age when he clashed with his mafia family and ended with his life.

Halfway between fiction and reportage is Is She a Witch? / Ès una bruixa? (Garbuix Books), where Raquel Gu examines the origins, myths, and lies surrounding the figure of witches throughout the centuries. An album suitable for adults and young adults alike because it combines documentary rigor with humor to demand a new look at these women, who were persecuted but also admired for their knowledge. Another title that blends historical reality with contemporary fiction is How to Survive in the North (Nórdica), by Irish author Luke Healy, which combines an expedition to the Arctic in the early 20th century with a story about a midlife crisis.

Modern and contemporary

In a contemporary key and with a blatantly modern aesthetic, comes, only in Catalan, The Flame ( Finestres) where Nino Bulling immerses us in queer Berlin through an intimate and evocative story with fine, vaporous line drawings. Also from Germany comes Mia Oberländer's debut comic, Anna (Salamandra Graphic), a whimsical story with a modern fairy tale feel that reflects on three generations of women who feel strange for being too tall.

Fans of harrowing thrillers will enjoy the new work by brothers Juan and Javier Gallego, The Plague (Reservoir Books), whose protagonist suffers from what he sees, but which perhaps only exists in his mind. It's powerful and open to multiple interpretations. And for those seeking new perspectives on classic texts, we recommend The Song of Renardo (Fulgencio Pimentel), where Joann Sfar takes the famous medieval satirical poem as his inspiration and playfully transgresses it with elements from his personal universe: the Jewish golem, the magician Merlin, and the singer-songwriter Georges Brassens.

More comics For children and young people

For the little ones, our suggestion is Elma, a Bear's Life (Astiberri), written by Ingrid Chabbert and with drawings by Léa Mazé, acclaimed author of The Muértimers ( a trilogy already recommended here ), who changes tone with this moving story about a girl raised by a bear, an adventure that addresses issues such as maturity, resilience and mourning. And for teenage readers we suggest The Cartoonists' Club (Maeva Young), where best-selling author Raina Telgemeier teams up with Scott McCloud to explain how a comic book is written, drawn and published, which we discussed in this section a few weeks ago . A book to awaken vocations.