“Tonight, tonight is Christmas!” Thank you for all these wonders! » sang the Wampas. So to make the party truly beautiful, here is a farandole of comics, novels and beautiful books selected from our favorites for the end of the year.
Also find other gift ideas, between books and various selections in our n°168, available on newsstands and online and our weekly n°179.
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Rébétissa by David Prudhomme (Futuropolis)
In 2019, David Prudhomme published the excellent and multiprint Rebetiko. Today, he picks up his characters a few years later, still in Greece where censorship is tightening under the dictatorship and where art is becoming a matter of state. Rebetiko born in 1922 at the end of the Greco-Turkish War is often called Greek blues. He was the tool of resistance of Turkish exiles, bouzouki players. This music from the depths told of exile, poverty, love and hope. Rébétissa is the feminine side of all this. We bet that this sumptuous book will not go unnoticed.
Altar California by Nine Antico (The Association)
A pretty box set bringing together the diptych Blue Moon and Treat me well immerses us in American culture from the 1950s to 1970s with its ephemeral muses and the appearance of the modern myth of the star. In the midst of the decline of the hippie utopia, while groups are breaking up and icons of the counterculture are diving into alcohol and psychotropic drugs, Miss Pamela des Barres, aka Bouclette, a young candid girl will become one of the most famous groupies. With the participation of Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Jimmy Page, Phil Spector, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger…
Poor beasts! by Coco (Les Échappés)
“If I had not been a designer, I would have been a naturalist” declares Coco, cartoonist for the Charlie Hebdo team in the introduction to this book. A series of reports drawn as an investigation where she takes stock of the situation of animals in our societies in order to denounce the exploitation and mistreatment of which they are victims. But also to salute those who fight every day to change the situation and support global awareness of animal dignity.
Two naked girls from Luz (Albin Michel)
Ten years after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Luz pays homage to the so-called “degenerate” expressionist painters under the Third Reich by investigating a painting by Otto Mueller painted in 1919. A mute witness to its era, the work reveals what it has in his field of vision over the years, powerless to reverse the inexorable. On the complexity of an artist and the far right at our doors. Winner of the ACBD 2024 grand prize (Association of Comic Strip Critics)
The fossil heritage of Philippe Valette (Delcourt)
In this galactic fable, we follow an old astronaut and his daughter trudging on a hostile and desert exoplanet where 20,000 years previously, a ship had been sent with the aim of founding a colony. The opportunity to recall that La Route de Mc Carthy, masterfully adapted by Larcenet, is also a success.
Cowboy Henk – La Nouvelle Blague de Herr Seele & Kamagurka (FRMK)
Cowboy Henk aka Cowboy Jean or Maurice the cowboy for short is back and fans are delighted with this luxury edition! This totally absurd character born in 1981 in the flat country is “a radical humorous proposition” warns the publisher.
The rest of the warriors by Edmond Baudoin (Editions Ouïe/Dire)
Paradoxically, the dreamiest of cartoonists spent three weeks in a residence in the south of France reserved for convalescing or retired legionnaires. In exchange for a portrait, some agreed to answer his question: “Tell me what you want about life.” Humanity sketched with light brushstrokes and with an economy of words.
Kisses from LA by Anna Haifisch (Misma)
During an artistic residency which took place in Los Angeles, the German designer was struck by the visual saturation of the city's signs and panels. From her stay, she brought back a very beautiful graphic inventory, a sort of postcard from California, not as golden as that.
Antipodes by David B. (screenplay) and Éric Lambé (drawing) (Editions Casterman)
In 1557, off the Brazilian coast, the Frenchman Villegagnon established a colony on an islet where the Tupinambas, cannibalistic Indians, lived. A young, candid Catholic tasked with infiltrating the tribe will owe his salvation to his melodious voice. Inspired by a historical fact, this comic returns to the failed attempt of the French Huguenots to settle in Brazil.
Walicho by Sole Otero (Editions ça et là)
The Argentinian author of the acclaimed Naphtaline returns with a feat of nine stories spanning three centuries. A supernatural comedy between animism and witchcraft, a choral tale with very personal graphics which appears in the official selection of the Angoulême festival.
BEAUTIFUL BOOKS
Nuggets in the tar! by Matthieu Morin with illustrations by Camille Lavaud Benito (Editions Knock Outsider!)
A “road trip without GPS” to discover a dozen self-taught American creators, creators of monumental, crazy and inspired works. Between an art book and a travelogue, meeting “those who make a rock into a buffalo, a story into a mountain, a life into a forest of steel”.
Magellan, dictionary of a revolutionary epic by Marc Wiltz (Éditions Magellan & Cie)
Publisher-traveler, Marc Wiltz, passionate about Fernand de Magellan to the point of having given his name to his publishing house, pays doubly homage to this exceptional navigator with his “lovers” dictionary. Dense and abundantly illustrated, it retraces the life and the incredible odyssey of this Portuguese explorer who left Seville in 1519 to reach the East Indies, thus initiating the first circumnavigation in history.
Garçonnes – the forgotten authors of the Roaring Twenties by Trina Robbins (Bliss éditions)
The designers of the jazz and prohibition era, little-known avant-garde artists symbolized by the extravagant figure of the “flapper” with a sexy Charleston-style look, are finally emerging from the limbo of oblivion! This, thanks to the tremendous research work carried out by the great Trina Robbins, herself a designer and historian who died last April. Between art, fashion and comics.
Charles Petit Photographe (Self publishing)
Died in 2022, the instigator of the famous creator incubator, Le Village, had put all his talent into nurturing that of others. Marc Bruckert, his sidekick, returns the favor with this collection of little architectural gems gleaned from the land of nostalgia and memory. We think of Martin Parr, Corbusier, the 1970s… and it’s very beautiful, my word.
David Bowie The artist, the albums, the music of Philippe Margotin (Éditions Glénat)
Immersion in fifty years of career of the greatest chameleon artist of all time by the tireless Philippe Margotin, collections director, columnist, editorial manager, who is dedicated to the history of music and rock in particular. From David Jones to Blackstar, 200 photos, all the songs, albums, concerts and enhanced with “backstage” chronicles.
Hokusai, the manga by Matthi Forrer (Editions Hazan)
For those with more money, Hukosai's imposing Manga drawn from 1760 to 1849 brings together 4,000 drawings, or fifteen entire volumes of sketchbooks, original and marginal studies. A phenomenal fresco and veritable pictorial encyclopedia of Japan at the beginning of the 19th century contained in a sumptuous box. Also note the publication of a small, less expensive booklet also devoted to the “Old Madman of Drawing”, Drawing with Hokusai Method and Philosophy of the Master of Manga, published by Editions du Chêne.
ROMANS
Listen to the sirens by Fabrice Melquiot (Actes Sud)
Freely inspired by the testimony of Suzanne Verdal to whom Leonard Cohen dedicated one of his most famous songs, this first novel by an author who already has around sixty plays to his credit, takes us on a breathtaking road trip. From Portland to Los Angles, from Albuquerque to Colorado, from the 1960s to the present day “scratching the rust off an abandoned American mythology”….
So it’s good by Clémentine Mélois (Gallimard)
Bernard Mélois was a sculptor, a genius handyman and an anarchist on the edges. And as with the Mélois, we are artists from father to daughter, Clémentine tells with talent, modesty, humor and delicacy this zany and inspiring father, from his childhood memories to the last days with the highlight, a real funeral of Pharaoh.
In the Shadow of Things by Anatole Edouard Nicolo (Calmann Lévy)
A family withers and disperses like a puzzle while the two brothers remain united in adversity. When the elder quickly finds his way and makes his way in music, the other remains in his shadow for a long time. “A true story with lies.” A sincere and touching first novel.
Loraine Adam
