British publisher SelfMadeHero has announced a quartet of original graphic novels for Autumn 2024. These include the Brazilian detective story, They Shot the Piano Player, about the disappearance of a Bossa Nova jazz musician; the bonkers, yet true, story Madame Choi and the Monsters, about the kidnapping of South Korean filmmakers by Kim Jong-il; Adieu Birkenau, the graphic memoir of Holocaust survivor, Ginette Kolinka; and Andrzej Klimowski’s latest surreal tale, Edifice, which features the graphic Grand Hotel of our dreams, desires, and nightmares – and a Christmas Carol like no other.
All titles are published by SelfMadeHero in UK and North America.
SEPTEMBER
THEY SHOT THE PIANO PLAYER
Writer: Fernando Trueba
Illustrator: Javier Mariscal
Hardback/ Colour/ 256pp
ISBN: 978-1914224249
Publication date: 26 September (UK)
• Buy it from AmazonUK | bookshop.org (Affiliate Links)
From the authors of Chico and Rita and adapted into an animated feature from Sony Pictures. An investigation and celebration of the origins of the world-renowned Latino musical samba-jazz movement Bossa Nova, They Shot the Piano Player captures a fleeting time bursting with creative freedom at a turning-point in Latin American history in the ’60s and ’70s, before the continent was riven by totalitarian regimes.
Francisco Tenório Cerqueira Júnior, born in Rio de Janeiro, was one of the most recognised musicians of the samba-jazz movement. At 3 a.m. on 18th March 1976, after giving a concert at the Gran Rex in Buenos Aires, the 34-year-old pianist went out to get some cigarettes. He was never seen again.
What happened that night? This is the question that moves the narrator of this documentary graphic novel to initiate an investigation into the fateful events that led to the death of a musician destined to change the course of Brazilian music forever.
Javier Mariscal is a multi-disciplinary artist and designer. After winning instant acclaim in 1979 for the bar-sky-wave logo for his adoptive city of Barcelona, he went on to create Cobi (the mascot of the city’s 1992 Olympics) and Twipsy, a character designed for the Hanover 2000 Expo that later featured in an animated TV series.
Born in Valencia, he opened Estudio Mariscal in Barcelona in 1989, and was the subject of a major retrospective at London’s Design Museum in 2009. An exhibition of his work opened in Barcelona in September 2010 at the Pedrera, one of Gaudí’s most famous buildings.
Fernando Trueba is a multi-award-winning writer, director, and producer, with a career spanning more than three decades in film, television, documentaries, theatre, and music. His many directing credits include Belle Époque (1992), La niña de tus ojos (1998), and Calle 54 (2000), a Latin-jazz documentary that prompted his enduring collaboration and friendship with Javier Mariscal.
OCTOBER
MADAME CHOI AND THE MONSTERS: A TRUE STORY
Writer: Patrick Spät
Illustrator: Sheree Domingo Paperback/ colour/ 176pp
ISBN: 978-1914224225
Publication date: 10 October (UK)
• Buy it from AmazonUK | uk.bookshop.org (Affiliate Links)
The incredible-yet-true story of celebrated South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee, abducted in 1978 by North Korean secret agents on the orders of their film-crazed future leader, Kim Jong-il. Six months later, filmmaker Shin Sang-ok, Choi Eun-hee’s ex-husband, is abducted in turn. Choi and Shin remain unaware of each other’s fates until they meet again at a dinner hosted by Kim Jong-il in 1983.
Kim forces Choi and Shin to make films, including the infamous kaiju cult classic Pulgasari (1985), all while convincing the world that they serve North Korea willingly. Choi and Shin’s love rekindles slowly in this reunited captivity.
Only at the 1986 Vienna Film Festival do they escape, fleeing in a daring car chase to the American embassy.
Patrick Spät lives as a freelance author and editor in Berlin. He studied philosophy, sociology and literary history in Mannheim, Leipzig and Freiburg, ultimately receiving his doctorate in philosophy in 2010. As an author, he mainly deals with historical and socio-political topics. He was a finalist for the Berthold Leibinger Stiftung Comic Book Prize in 2019 with the graphic novel Der König der Vagabunden (The King of the Vagabonds), published by Avant Verlag (A sample translation in English is available here).
ADIEU BIRKENAU: Ginette Kolinka’s Story of Survival
Writers: Ginette Kolinka, Jean-David Morvan, Victor Matet Illustrators: Ricard Efa, Cesc F. Dalmases
Hardback/ colour/ 112pp
ISBN: 978-1-914224232
Publication date: 24 October (UK)
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April 1944. 19-year-old Ginette Kolinka arrives at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Her father and little brother are immediately gassed. Ginette is selected as a worker. She survives.
October 2020. 95-year-old Ginette takes advantage of a lull in the COVID-19 epidemic to accompany a group visiting Birkenau one last time.
As a farewell, she brings with her a journalist (France Info’s Victor Matet) and a comic strip writer, J-D Morvan. From this trip a comic book is born…
Ginette tells of her life before the war and subsequent imprisonment, as well as her present situation today. Still sharing what she witnessed with the world, Ginette tells everything with her trademark liveliness and biting humour. If we laugh and shudder, it’s because the story she tells is ours too.
Ginette Kolinka is a 99-year-old survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Since the 2000s, she has been an “ambassador for memory” who speaks to young people about her experiences in the Shoah. In 2019, she and Marie Ruggieri published Return to Birkenau (Grasset), as well as A Happy Life in 2023.
Jean-David Morgan (a.k.a. JDMorvan) is a comic book writer fascinated by issues relating to war. His work includes an adaptation of Dorgelès’ Les Croix de Bois with Facundo Percio (Albin Michel), the Irena series with Tréfouël and Evrard (Glénat) and Madeleine, résistantewith Madeleine Riffaud and Dominic Bertail (Aire Libre). For the latter, he was awarded the René Goscinny Prize for best scriptwriter.
Victor Matet is a journalist and presenter at France Info. He produced several reports on Ginette Kolinka before co-creating a comic strip about her. Ricard Efa is a self-taught comic book artist. He has published around twenty titles since 2001. He is particularly known for biographical comics, such as those of Django(Aire Libre), Degas ou Monet (Le Lombard). The latter earned him a nomination for the Eisner Awards in 2018. He lives in Barcelona. Cesc F. Dalmases, born in Sabadell (Barcelona), is the author of various comic strips, including adaptations of such novels as The Bridge of the Jews (Marti Gironell), Victus (Alvert Sanchez Piñol), and The Immortal Pyramid (Javier Sierra). His works have been translated into several languages. He often works on sports-themed comics, like Barcelona: The School of Dreams and Barcelona: Eternal Barcelona at Dupuis.NOVEMBER
EDIFICE
Author: Andrzej Klimowski
Paperback/ B&W/ 296pp
ISBN: 978-1-914224-25-6
Publication date: 7 November (UK)
• Buy it from AmazonUK | uk.bookshop.org (Affiliate Links)
At the heart of the dream city of Engelstadt stand the tall storeys of an ancient apartment block, home to a nightmare labyrinth of corridors and secrets. Christmas is coming, but the mysterious disappearance of one of its tenants causes a cast of characters (or suspects?) to be assembled before us. Meanwhile, a dark cloud threatens to envelop the city, caped crusaders (or marauders) wander the park, and there is a film screening to attend.
A pan-European Pandora’s Box of narrative Russian dolls and Chinese boxes, Edifice builds into an Expressionist graphic vision of our archetypal, metamorphic Shadows and proves to be one of the strangest Christmas stories you will ever read.
SelfMadeHero aim to publish ground-breaking and beautiful work by authors and artists from across the globe, from the quirky and humorous to the political and profound. We are proud to bring readers graphic novels and visual narratives that provoke, entertain, inspire, and inform.
Releases for 2024 include a paperback of Peter Kuper’s Ruins, first published in 2015, Jean-Marc Rochette’s The Last Queen, Dr. Frédéric Fanget, Catherine Meyer & Pauline Aubry’s The Anxiety Club, released in July, and Séverine Vidal & Kim Consigny’s George Sand: True Genius, True Woman.
• SelfMadeHero is online at selfmadehero.com
The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.
He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: British Comics - Current British Publishers, British Comics - Graphic Novels, Comics, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News
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