Is that all there is? Joost Swart

This collection of comic strips from 1972 - 2010 from the Dutch artist Joost (rhymes with 'post' not 'juiced' as Chris Ware informs us in the introduction) Swart, is a delight from start to finish for fans of the European style of cartooning.

Joost was strongly influenced by Hergé's Tintin adventures, and his style is similarly precise and clear, meticulously crafted and elegantly coloured by watercolour. Yet his content could not be further from the innocent Tintin, taking it's cue across the Atlantic from the adult content of the underground American comics scene, and artists like Art Spiegelman and Robert Crumb.

Joost Swart's most popular creation was Jojo de Pojo, a lad sporting a quiff and plus-fours, yet who, rather than save the world from crime and evil, indulges in activities Tintin never even dream of. His audience, brought up as boy scouts, and now young adults in the seventies, experimenting with narcotics, alcohol and sex, would have appreciated the artist struggling with complexities that they encountered in their everyday lives.

Swart is a renaissance man, and is a graphic designer and architect, has designed furniture, murals and stained glass windows. He designed a theatre in Haarlem (his hometown), and designed the interiors of the Hergé Museum in Brussels. He founded a publishing house in the eighties and in the nineties instigated the Comics Event held in Haarlem. Chris Ware also writes in his introduction that, when he visited the artists studio, he had just finished designs from pastries for his local patisserie, and how he faxed him a beautifully drawn map showing how to get to the studio. This charming and innocent approach seems to underpin much of his work, and he operates at the personal level, getting involved in projects close to his heart (and his home), rather than the one with the largest pay-cheque.

This small book will introduce one of the greats of European comics to a new audience, bringing together strips that were published over 40 years ago, in obscure Dutch magazines, and re-presenting and translating them for fans of comic books the world over.

Written by Mike Stonelake, illustrator, cartoonist and designer. See www.mikestonelake.com

Tintin. The Art of Hergé

Hergé is probably the most important figure in cartooning and Tintin his most popular creation. This coffee table tome runs to almost 500 pages of reproductions from the Archives of the Hergé Museum, and will delight anyone who has enjoyed the books.

The first chapter is dedicated to the Hergé Museum, which is a shame, as it gives the book the feel of a catalogue, which would be a disservice to such a wonderful book. I feel this chapter should be the last chapter, especially as, chronologically it comes last in the Tintin story.

However, that's a small fault, in an otherwise very satisfying book, crammed full of treasures. There are early sketches of Hergé, from when he was a young teenager of 16 years old - fine drawings, showing he was a talented draftsman from the start. It contains some pages from his early cartoon, Totor, the boyscout, a forerunner of Tintin, and important frames from the first Tintin drawings, black and white, printed in Le Petite Vingtième in 1929, for example, the moment Tintin gets his quiff, as the wind blows back his hair as he speeds away in a car.

There are also many photographs, documenting important events, for example, the moment a young lad and a bleached fox terrier arrived at Gard du Nord station, met by crowds of children, already fans of the young reporter.

There are also examples of his other cartoons. Quick and Flupke and Jo, Zette and Jocko, which featured a family, in response to Tintin's unmarried status! Also of interest are the examples of Hergé's graphic design and advertising illustrations and posters, very much of it's time, but beautiful nonetheless.

The book reproduces many working drawings, black and white line art, as well as some of the original versions (the books that most of us know where later workings of serialised adventures, many originally reproduced in black and white.

The book plots the development of Hergé, as he became more interested in accuracy and detail, and documents some of the source information he used: postcards; newspaper cuttings; museum exhibits.

The real hero shots in the book, however, are the enlarged colour panels, watercolour on printed proof, showing the artwork in all its subtlety.

The book has a debossed, black and white reproduction of Tintin's iconic head, enlarged many times over. The edges of the pages have a pleasing red and white, checkered pattern from the rocket in Explorers on the Moon. Unfortunately the process made the pages of my copy stick together, which took a while to unstick. But that was just a tiny fly in a beautiful ointment!

View the book here.

Written by Mike Stonelake, illustrator, cartoonist and designer. See www.mikestonelake.com

Red Moon by Carlos Trillo and Eduardo Risso

Red Moon, a flame haired princess meets a travelling acrobat, Antolin, and they form an unlikely friendship, setting off on several quests together, in a medieval world of magic, witches and fairies.

The protagonists are both around ten years old, and the book is aimed at this age group. Drawn in a typically Bande Dessinée style, the Argentine author and artist are obviously drawn to this European tradition, rather than the American comic book.

Carlos Trillo, who died in 2011, was a prolific writer, collaborating with many notable artists, and this is one of several efforts with Eduardo Risso (of 100 Bullets fame). Originally published in four editions by SAF Comics, they have now been brought together in an omnibus edition, and should have enough excitement, fantasy and adventure to satisfy most young children.

It is good to see this kind of European comic book on sale in the UK (I bought it from Forbidden Planet, in Shaftesbury Avenue, London) and Risso’s artwork is accomplished, his lines part pen, part brush, he draws the characters expressively, and  I cannot fault his drawing, his research, nor his style.

If I did have to find a fault, it would be the colour, which is very ‘photoshopped’, with very flat areas of colour and very precise graduations. To make things worse, it is printed on gloss paper, which seems to emphasise this crudeness.

I also found it clumsy in its ‘story boarding’, and at times it seemed too hurried, and I think it would have been better if it had tarried somewhat at certain points of the story, and if the creators had spent more time acquainting us with the characters. I did not feel much empathy with anyone in the story, as they all seemed rather two-dimensional.

I also found the ending rather unsatisfying, not very believable and a bit of an anti-climax. I know the story is for young children, but they will still respond to engaging and believable characters and situations, as the early Asterix books atest.

Written by Mike Stonelake, illustrator, cartoonist and designer. See www.mikestonelake.com

Blankets by Craig Thompson

‘Achingly beautiful’ is how Time magazine described Blankets. It is a story about first love and self-awakening, tempered with regret for a lost childhood.

Craig and his brother Phil, the children of fundamentalist Christians, are growing up in a small town in Wisconsin. A skinny child, not interested in sport or Heavy Metal, Craig is marginalised and bullied at school, and an easy target for the teachers. As is common for those with extreme beliefs, the home and church become a refuge from the evil, sinful world, and they see themselves as the persecuted faithful.

The story revolves around the beautiful Raina, a mutual misfit he meets at ‘Church Snow Camp’, and the first stumbling steps of their romance, which blossoms as Craig stays with her during the holidays. Away from his parents, the pull of fundamentalism is diminished, and his guilty conscience is unable to put up much of a fight.

I have read the book three times now, and every time I also fall in love with Raina. Beautiful, sensitive, intelligent, creative, generous and fun. Is this nostalgia, for the perfect woman who does not exist, except as a memory?

The beauty of Blankets is not just in the story, it is in the artwork as well. Craig is an accomplished artist, and worked for DC, Marvel and many other top publications. He uses brush and ink, working in black and white. His work has a strong line, which is never merely a contour, but a description of form and volume, light and shadow and expression and movement.

Craig communicates so much, sometimes without any words at all. In one scene, Raina’s devoutly Christian father, looking into the spare room one morning, seeing Craig’s bed neatly made, storms into Raina’s room and finds them in bed together, clothes strewn over the floor. Then he looks at the sleeping face of his daughter, seeing such contentment there, and maybe, reflecting on his own failures, backs out of the room, quietly closing the door behind him.

To what extent the hero of the book actually is one and the same as the author is difficult to say. He is an innovative story teller, not content to regurgitate mere facts. That said, it is so well observed that it must be grounded in true events and real people.

In Blankets, the events of his childhood are seen through the eyes of an angy, 24 year old man, and the book is cathartic, as he exorcises his demons and satirises his tormentors. Yet he is not blinded by anger – he has time for an affectionate portrayal of his parents, and he claims that he retains a belief in the teachings of Christ, if not the teachings of the church.

The things we angrily throw away one day, we later return to for comfort, as we realise that the adversity we faced as a child has made us the person we are today. I wonder if Craig would change one moment of his childhood, which has shaped him into a strong individual, and a talented artist and story teller.

Written by Mike Stonelake, illustrator, cartoonist and designer. See www.mikestonelake.com

The Bloody Streets of Paris, by Jaques Tardi, adapted from the novel ‘120 Rue de la Gare’ by Leo Malet

“My name’s Nestor Burma. I used to be a private detective. Before the war I used to run the Fiat Lux Agency.” We are already 8 pages into the comic before our hero enlightens those of us that do not know, exactly who he is. Leo Malet’s character, the subject of 33 novels, is his most well known and best loved character, a household name in France, but little-known by English speakers.

The story unfolds in a German prisoner of war camp, Stalag XB, full of French soldiers after their capitulation to the Nazis in 1940. A mysterious prisoner arrives, unable to remember who he is or anything else for that matter. Needless to say, the mystery is finally explained in the denouement at the end of the book, and the complicated twists and turns are all satisfyingly put together.

Nestor Burma lives in a time that many Frenchmen consider Frances darkest and most shameful hour, when moral compromise was the norm, even for Hergé, for example, working for the collabative Nazi newspaper ‘Le Soire’. Burma, however does not compromise himself, keeping a disdainful distance from the Germans, and in fact, just about everyone. Usually wearing a frown, the best he can manage by way of a smile is a self-satisfied smirk or a wry grimace.

Tardi is a master when it comes to drawing believable faces and expressions. His characters are so real and lifelike, with the years of pain and disappointment etched into their faces, or indulgence, like the flabby face of the attorney, and sometimes, when Tardi is feeling kind, innocence and naivety.

He also draws the streets of Lyon and Paris, the huts of the stalag and the interiors of the rooms Burma visits, with great skill and meticulous research. The office of the policeman Bernier is one beautiful example of this, with typewriter, lamp, fireguard, filing cabinets and telephone, the two men framed by these details.

The book is black and white, with tones of grey, and Tardi’s excellent handling of light and shadow creates strong moods and atmospheres, such as the snowflakes falling against a darkening sky as they visit a country house, and the deserted snow-filled streets of Paris after the curfew, as they are caught in the middle of an allied air-raid.

The English translations of the graphic novels are quite hard to come by, although ‘The Bloody Streets of Paris’ is available on Amazon. It is 190 pages long, so a quite substantial book, beautifully drawn and well researched, which is the reason I keep on re-reading my copy.

Written by Mike Stonelake, illustrator, cartoonist and designer. See www.mikestonelake.com

The Rainbow Orchid, by Garen Ewing

Any fan of Tintin will remember the childhood thrill of sitting down to read one of Hergé’s comic books for the first time, and I felt something of this when I saw Garen Ewing’s new series ‘The Rainbow Orchid’ in Waterstones.

Every Tintin fan will have been disappointed to discover Hergé only completed 22 colour albums, which is far too few. Although the poor quality of the Asterix books produced after the death of Gosciny, bear out Hergé’s wisdom to not allow new Tintin stories to appear after his death - and we must applaud Hergé’s wife, as the guardian of the Hergé Estate, for honouring Hergé's wish.

But now Hergé has an heir who is producing new, swashbuckling adventures, that we can freshly devour!

The mark of Tintin is all over these books: the boyish hero, Julius Chancer, the motley cast of characters, the 1920s’ setting, the villains, the exotic backdrop, the fast pace of the story, the A4 portrait format, with Hergé’s strict grid of four rows of pictures, and of course the ligne claire style, synonymous with the master!

Looking at the first pages of book 1, I am reminded of Hergé’s opening pages in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets – although Garen Ewing’s style is not as immature as the pages of this first Tintin adventure, there is an awkwardness in the pictures, which definitely improves as the book moves on. I also found the colouring crude in places, and not a patch on Tintin – look at some of Hergé’s moody evening illustrations, in The Black Island, for example, as Tintin arrives in Kiltoch. Such subtlety! The colour seems to be translucent layers, rather than one flat colour. I wonder if the advent of photoshop caused the art of colouring to be lost. Once it was a skill in itself, done with colour inks, using glazes and washes. Ewing’s colour can seem quite dead and flat, in comparison, but I imagine Garen does not have the luxury of a studio of young and beautiful colourists to work on his cartoons (including one Fanny Vlamynck, who later became Mrs Hergé), and probably has to do it himself!

In fact the great Hergé had script writers, gag writers, research assistants, artists to help with drawing and inking, and towards the end of his career he managed a large studio, rather like a film director, without actually doing too much himself.

Times have changed! Cartoons were once big business and did not need merchandising and films to give them a raison d’etre!

I particularly don’t like Ewing’s clouds – they almost look like a different style. I also did not like the way some lines were coloured, and felt it would have been better to stick with black, rather than introduce a technique that is more Disney than Hergé. However, while comparisons with Hergé will inevitably be unfavourable, and the fact is that the best of Ewing’s drawings do come close – the station at Karachi and the truck driving down the street on page 7, both in volume 2, are both excellent examples of Ewing’s work, with attention to detail, great research and beautiful colour.

Ewings’ story writing and dialogue is certainly adequate, although the characters don’t seem to be very rounded, and you have little impression of their personalities, and therefore little emotional involvement with them. I wonder if this is because the plot is over complicated, and a lot of explanation is required, leaving less room for character development.

Despite my criticism, I salute Ewing’s attempt to bring a new series into being. He has set himself the highest challenge, and made an excellent start and am already looking forward to reading the third volume of this adventure.

Written by Mike Stonelake, illustrator, cartoonist and designer. See www.mikestonelake.com

The Adventures of Hergé, by José-Louis Bocquet, Jean-Luc Fromental and Stanislas Barthélémy

Tintin and his creator Hergé have always have legions of admirers: Charles de Gaulle once said ‘my only international rival is Tintin’. Pop artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein admired his comic strips, as have almost every comic book writer that has followed. Seth, in his picture novella ‘It’s a good life if you don’t weaken’ wrote the memorable line “Whenever I see a train, I think of Tintin”, and many comic book readers and creators see life through Tintin-shaped goggles.

There have been many biographies about Hergé and Tintin, and now José-Louis Bocquet, Jean-Luc Fromental and Stanislas Barthélémy have added a cartoon biography. Titled ‘The Adventures of Hergé’, following the format of the Tintin albums, the book is a pleasing romp through his life, from seven year old boy to his death in 1983.

In the first caption Hergé’s grandmother sings Bianca Castafiore’s signature aria the Jewel Song from Faust: “Ah my beauty past compare…”, the first of the book's many hints and references to the inspiration for his characters, which the Tintin fan can amuse themselves by spotting.

The creators also do not sweep the problematic elements of his life under the carpet, and tell the full story of working for the Nazi paper ‘Le Soir’, contrasting his own treatment with that of others who were shot for collaborating.

Hergé’s depression and marriage difficulties, are all documented, along with his love of art and his ideas of giving up cartooning to concentrate on painting.

The artist includes many iconic images from the Tintin series: the house of Professor Tarragon from ‘The Seven Crystal Balls’, the flying boat from ‘King Otokar’s Sceptre’, the Alfa Romeo from ‘The Calculus Affair’ and the telescope from ‘The Shooting Star’, which make a parade of memorable images from the books, which is, after all, the reason anyone would read this book in the first place.

Written by Mike Stonelake, illustrator, cartoonist and designer. See www.mikestonelake.com