Best Comics of 2019: An International Perspective Part 2:

Year in Review

Let’s continue exploring the planet in search of the most exciting, interesting comics published last year, Here are more reports from my International Correspondents and Connoisseurs. Widen your horizons and marvel at the bigger world of comics out there. Click on your country of choice below to be re-directed to that section:

BRAZIL - DENMARK - INDONESIA - ITALY - MALAYSIA - NEW ZEALAND - PORTUGAL - RUSSIA

Read Part 1 of this International Perspective here…, and Part 3 here…

Brazil

Selected by Heitor Pitombo

Heitor Pitombo began his career in Brazilian comics in 1990 writing articles for the Carioca newspaper Tribuna da Imprensa. In the following year he was a member of the Rio de Janeiro International Comics Biennale’s staff, the first major Brazilian event of its kind. From 1992 on, he began a long association with the Brazilian Mad magazine as assistant editor and then a Portuguese translator, and started writing for most of the country’s specialist comics magazines. In 1998 he won the HQ Mix award for The Universe of Super Heroes, the first Brazilian CD-ROM about comics. As a translator, he wrote Portuguese versions of comics originally produced by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, John Byrne, Garth Ennis and several others. He wrote two books about comics: 300 Mangas and Endless Beings: The Oneiric Universe of Neil Gaiman. A third book is on its way. Right now he’s a member of Mundo dos Super-Heróis’s (World of Super Heroes) staff, the most important publication about comics in the country.

Luzes de Niterói (‘Niteroi Lights’)
by Marcello Quintanilha
Veneta

Four years after his last graphic novel release, Talco de Vidro (‘Glass Powder’), Marcello Quintanilha launched a new major work in 2019. Fortunately, it’s another spectacular achievement by one of Brazil’s most prominent artists of this century. Even though he lives in Europe since the beginning of the 2000s, he’s always turning his attention to his roots. That’s why his new book takes place in his native Niteroi, the second largest city in Rio de Janeiro state, and is inspired by his father’s former career as a football player in the local Athletic Club Manufatura during the 1950s. Despite this influence, Niteroi Lights is an adventure book following the main characters torturous journey through the seemingly placid Guanabara Bay. Some of the sequences are mind-blowing and the most captivating of them all is the one that takes the main characters to island of the bombshell model and feminist Luz del Fuego, notably the first naturist campsite in Brazil. The way Marcello portrays action scenes and recreates the 1950s atmosphere is quite unique. Quintanilha’s career has been receiving international acclaim, most recently due to the awards he’s been getting – such as the 2016 Fauve Polar SNCF award at the 43rd Festival d’Angoulême – and the other media his work has been expanding into. Marcelo’s book Tungsten, for example, was adapted into a movie by the Brazilian director Heitor Dhalia in 2018.

Três Buracos (‘Three Holes’)
by Shiko
Mino

Francisco José Souto Leite, aka Shiko, has been working on smaller projects in the last few years, but his 2019 graphic novel was in fact a major work, his most notable since Lavagem (‘Hogwash’). Its plot involved three main characters and its main focus was the power which evangelical priests have over the most humble people in Brazil and their connections to devilish actions. Shiko’s new work Three Holes maintains this high level of productivity and reasserts its author as one of the best Brazilian comic book pencil artists of today. The beauty of his panels and his masterful strokes find a parallel in his writing, which is now focused on a mix of terror, suspense and western, deep in the heart of Paraíba’s dry wilderness. Three Holes’ main character is Tania, heiress of a gold-mine landlord in search of a huge and precious tourmaline which has been hidden by her father. This valuable gemstone would solve most of Cleonice’s (her mate) and Tibério’s (her brother) problems. Tibério, by the way, has just escaped from prison. The aftermath of it all is unpredictable. Undoubtedly, Shiko gets most of his references from Brazilian culture and this is no different in Three Holes. It’s most notable when he mentions the Buraco de Tatu, a “xote” or a common type of “forró” dancing, or a classic song by legendary “forró” singer Luiz Gonzaga, and when he evokes elements of Brazilian films from all times – from 1964’s Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol to 2019’s Bacurau.

Último Assalto (“Last Round”)
by Daniel Esteves & Alex Rodrigues
Zapata

Within the Brazilian independent comics scene, the scriptwriter Daniel Esteves has been one of the most dedicated creators in terms of his perseverance during the last 15 years. He used to be one of the heads of Quarto Mundo (‘Fourth World’), a creators co-operative that changed how the Brazilian alternative market works, providing (or trying to provide) solutions for problems such as distribution, marketing and reach. After the end of the co-operative’s activities, Esteves turned his attention to greater projects and the most intense of them all is Last Round, probably his and the penciller Alex Rodrigues’ best work to date. Esteves has created a story focused on São Paulo’s boxing universe and centred on Kevin’s saga, a youngster’s typical journey in the city’s surroundings, where sport can be seen as a means of salvation from the hardness of life. Along with that, Kevin must deal with the harshness of a criminal past and an unknown future where everything is shady. Daniel’s words are as sharp as the art is fascinating and enticing.

Silvestre (“Wild”)
by Wagner Willian
Darkside

Never before have Brazilian comics explored the interaction between the beauty and the fierceness of our forests in all its depth. Even after huge achievements such as Bulldogma (2016) and O Maestro, O Cuco e A Lenda (The Maestro, The Cuckoo and The Legend, 2017), it’s fair to say that Wild is, by far, Wagner’s best work as an illustrator. His evocative panels and masterful choices of colours and techniques (oil painting, iron oxide, black ink and even the author’s own blood) create quite an immersive atmosphere. The book gets its inspiration from Henry David Thoreau, as its plot centres on an old man who lives in the forest and talks to its animals. Or, more accurately, on myths and legends that create a rich environment, a fertile soil in which the author displays his ideas in a very knowledgeable way. Willian uses this basis to tell the story of a hunter who decides to bake a pie after chasing a very rare animal. The smell he produces ends up attracting all sorts of entities to this home, where a conclave is held. Wagner chooses to tell a non-linear tale, taking the reader on a trip full of pop and literary references, where the reconnection to nature is incited. But what’s more notable about the artist’s work is the freedom that pushes him forward and urges him to create situations that allow multiple interpretations.

Denmark

Selected by Matthias Wivel

Matthias Wivel is Curator of Sixteenth-Century Italian Paintings at the National Gallery, London. He has written about comics widely for about twenty years.

Tatovøren og klitoris (‘The Tatooist and Clitoris’)
by Rikke Villadsen
Fahrenheit

Rikke Villadsen will, by now, be known to American art comics cognoscenti, having had her first graphic novel, The Sea, published by Fantagraphics in 2018, with her second, Cowboy, slated for release this year. In Denmark she put out her third big book last year, the one here under review, and it’s her best, strangest, most affecting yet. It is marred somewhat by didactic and slightly rambling interspersed text pieces on sexual politics, but one quickly forgets about them while reading this intoxicating comic. The story starts with a woman fainting on a harbour pier and giving birth to a placenta-like speech balloon that grows into a broccoli tree while she is passed out. It disappears and she spends most of the story flicking about with clown’s makeup around her eyes and her jumper pulled up awkwardly to reveal her breasts. Perhaps she is looking for the lost child, perhaps not. She is at various times courted and helped by a warmly stoic man, the Tatooist of the title. They go to India where she meets an amorphic blob that becomes her therapist; she plunks down in a soldiers’ mess hall in the Korean war and proceeds to participate in an air raid in a sequence derived directly from Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. And so on. Villadsen is transcribing her dreams to decidedly surreal ends here, with equal amounts humour and horror. The atmosphere is redolent of David Lynch, while her charcoal-with-visible-palimpsests rendering style remains heavily indebted to Anke Feuchtenberger. But despite such obvious sources, Villadsen’s voice is becoming increasingly distinct. She deals with themes of female sexuality and motherhood in ways that are her own, and builds her narrative to a beautifully haunting finish.

Death Save
by Rune Ryberg
Forlæns

The death save is a maneuver in pinball whereby you can save a ball that would otherwise be lost down one of the board’s outlines by gently pushing the machine one way, then jerking it in the opposite direction to make the ball ricochet back up into the game. It’s a cheat, but if executed right it will give you a second chance. That’s the central metaphor for this classically conceived coming-of-age story,. At its centre is Bass—drawn as a red bird—who comes to that point in his young life where he has to make important decisions in order not to lose himself to self-destructive impulse along with his friend, the desperado Rick—drawn as a reptile reminiscent of Randall Boggs in Pixar’s Monsters Inc. Both are pinball fanatics, which provides the book with a handy symbolic device in the form of individual gaming situations—played on real, historic pinball machines—that reflect important points in the story. Rune Ryberg stages this drama masterfully, with soft and pliable character designs, swift panel-to-panel propulsion and high-fructose colouring. His training in animation serves him well, not just for his memorable character designs, but also their situation in a believable milieu. The central achievement of Death Save is its urban setting, sampling and combining elements of cities the world over, from Naples to New York, Chicago to Copenhagen. It breathes post-industrial decay, but is touched by a romantic patina. The plot may be a bit predictable and the characters rather typological, but its executed with such passion and energy that this seems secondary. Ryberg deservedly won the Ping Award for Best Danish Comic for it last year (note that Villadsen’s comic fell outside the nomination period).

Dr Murder and the Island of Death
by Emil Friis Ernst
Baggaardsbaroner

Emil Friis Ernst is among the talented recent graduates of the world-class Graphic Storytelling programme at the Viborg Animation Workshop. This was his graduation comic in 2017, but was released in a newly-coloured, English-language edition last year and created a bit of a buzz on the American festival circuit. It’s easy to see why: Friis Ernst has a striking sense of graphic patterning and effect and for dynamic panel-to-panel storytelling, and he tells a spectacularly expressive story rooted in pulp tropes that evokes a distinct sense of melancholia and precocious reflections on growing old. And he colours like a latter-day flower child. Friis Ernst also published his first book-length comic last year too: Reservat, written by crypto-fantasy author Dennis Gade Kofod. It’s a near-future, dystopian story of climate change and revelation, detailing the movement of five different people on a single, apocalyptic day between Copenhagen, the island of Bornholm and Mars. Unfortunately, its writing is rather purple and off-puttingly impersonal. Although slighter, more limited in scope and less visually accomplished, Dr Murder would therefore be my first-stop recommendation for discovering Friis Ernst’s work.

Indonesia

Selected by Hikmat Darmawan

Hikmat Darmawan is a critic and curator specialising in popular culture. Currently Hikmat is head of film committee in Jakarta Art Council and creative director of Pabrikultur. His book, Sebulan di Negeri Manga (A Month in Manga Country) published by Gramedia publishing. Recently, he co-edited a 1600+ pages of writings in Indonesian language on film titled Tilas Kritik (Critical Path). He is also the Indonesian advisor for the exhibition, Mangasia: Wonderlands of Asian Comics.

The Indonesian comics scene has remained in an ambiguous state since 1998’s political revolution (we always called it “Reformation”, but it is a revolution, really). On one hand, Indonesian comics always give a promise of the second coming of a once great local comics culture and its industry. The emergence of groups of exciting new voices from young artists with skilful techniques of drawing and colouring, the excitement of the new generation of readers generated in social media and comic communities’ events, the bold experimentations in the medium from the mid-‘90’s through the early 2000’s, etc.—these are the most immediate indications for some that an Indonesian comics resurrection is imminent. On the other hand, the promises of resurrection seem to be stuck in the promised land. The lack of artistically ambitious works in Indonesian graphic novels for the past, say, 5 years, is quite worrying for me. Off course, there are few exceptions here and there. But the majority of Indonesian comics subculture seems to be more occupied with the ambition to create an Indonesian version of the Marvel Cinematic & Comics Universe business model. While the more daring and exuberant works are left to wander in the obscure parts of zine subculture, the self-publishing and indie movement, galleries and art collectives, or Insta-world. Within that context, here are my best Indonesian comics in 2019:

Gugug! #2
by ‘emte’ (Mohammad Taufi)
Gramedia Pusraka Utama

2018’s best Indonesian comics was, for me, Gugug! And in 2019, Emte published the sequel of the adventure of the “paw-some” street dog, named only on the cover as Gugug. His 111 silent comics pages are full of highly skilful and acerbic drawn images of Jakarta’s crowded streets and city-kampongs filled with a wide array of charmingly hideous characters. Great character design, confident line art, and fluent panelling make this “im-paw-ssible adventure” a really fun and compelling read. It is also very nice to have this kind of work published by the biggest publication company in Indonesia.

Siapa Layak Mati(?) (‘Who Deserves to Die(?)’)
by Muhammad Iqbal
Instagram .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Iqbal already created a string of experimental comics characterised by his playful use of the medium and a deeply reflective tone that betrayed his age. We can sense that Iqbal, who actually just graduated last year from university, is really immersed in contemporary global culture from manga subculture to sufi discourse from Rumi and beyond. In between, you would find his comics addressing issues such as obesity and body-shaming, mental illness, manga addiction, Islamic fundamentalism in everyday’s life, and the discourse of death in popular songs and traditional Javanese-Islamic texts. In this particular short comic published on his Instagram account IG@iqbalmstrmnd, he reflects how we as a society or a community think about who deserves to die. Charmingly (or disappointingly for some, probably) it takes a sharp turn in the last page into a personal love letter. But the whole comic is a bold statement/question about the value of life in our current complex-but-flat world.

Badai dan Asmara di Teluk Tiram (‘Love Storm in Tiram’s Bay’)
by Teguh Santosa
Tjergam Klasik Indonesia

This historical romance graphic novel was published for the first time in 1968. Within a short period of 1967-1969, Teguh Santosa achieved his first phase of creating masterpieces marked by a string of one-shot graphic novels on the theme of pirates and colonialism. This title told the story of deadly rivalry between two complex characters, Timor and Tigor, to claim power over Nusantara’s pirates and also the love of Nesia. The period setting was the attack of the British armada lead by Lord Minto against the Dutch in Batavia in 1811. Timur used this attack for his own agenda. This remastered edition is hightened the great line art and masterful chiaroscuro technique from Teguh Santosa. Also great from this line of publications: the remastered editions of Sandhora by Teguh Santosa, often considered as one of the greatest Indonesian comics, and of Ganes TH’s masterpiece, Taufan.

Keluarga Lalala (‘Lalala Family’)
by Sheila Rooswitha Putri
Koloni

A lighthearted chronicle of daily life with Sheila (“Lala” to her friends) and her two children: Ara (her first-born son) and Djani (her daughter). Mostly one-page comic strips that were published online for free on her Facebook page, this compilation not only recorded the charming growth of her two children, but also charted the development of Sheila’s early artistry. Her seemingly effortless creative panelling captures perfectly the imaginative minds of her two children and her ability to capture their movements with effective lines informed by manga and European comics make this compilation a really delightful read. Warning: cuteness overload!

Karimata 1890
by Toni Masdiono
Creativ Media

Toni Masdiono is a senior Indonesian illustrator and comic artist. He is quite influential on Indonesian comic artists post-1998’s political reformation with his book, 14 Jurus Membuat Komik (‘14 Stances to Makes Comics’). In many conversations, Toni expressed his disdain for the overly text-heavy approach in old comics, while also often expressing his admiration for the great command of shadow and light in Teguh Santosa’s work. I think these two viewpoints laid a foundation for this work. Karimata 1890 is a labour of love for Tony: a silent comic about historical action-romance with pirates as its main characters. The art is good, but I cannot shake the feeling that this is still essentially a non-silent comics story. Probably because I have always identified silent comics as reflective storytelling, whereas this comic is more akin to American-style action comics. But it’s still an interesting experiment in contemporary Indonesian comics.

Gundala & Friends: Audisi Jagoan {'Heroes Auction')
Story: Oyas Sujiwo & Wahyu Hidayat. Art: Diyan Bijac & Erfan Faja
Bumi Langit + M & C!

After last year’s success of Gundala The Movie directed by one of the best Indonesian horror directors, Joko Anwar, the younger generation in Indonesia are more exposed to this classic character created by Hasmi in 1969. Bumi Langit’s creative team apparently wanted to introduce this character and his leagues of Indonesian characters further with this comics-cum-activity book for children. It’s a fun way to get to know classic Indonesian characters such as Sri Asih (the first Indonesian superhero characters – and it’s a female superhero! – created by R.A. Kosasih in 1954), Godam (created by Wid NS), Aquanus and Merpati, with a cameo by Kapten Nusantara.

Italy

Selected by Matteo Stefanelli

Matteo Stefanelli, as a critic and curator, works on the edge between the comics industry and media scholarship. Artistic director of Comicon festival (Naples) and founder of Fumettologica.it, the leading source of comics news and criticism in Italy, he is also a lecturer on media and communication at the Catholic University in Milan and the University of Bergamo, and teaches comics history/theory at EESI in Angouleme and Scuola Internazionale di Comics in Milan. He wrote for Corriere della Sera, Repubblica, Il Fatto Quotidiano, Il Post, Lo Straniero, Flash Art, Neuviéme Art, Link Idee. Among his books: Bande dessinée: une médiaculture (Armand Colin, 2012) and Fumetto! 150 anni di storie italiane (Rizzoli, 2016).

Celestia vol.1
by Manuele Fior
Oblomov

You can feel the space and place of a fictional city in Fior’s latest graphic novel (in two parts; the second has just been released). Set in a futuristic Venice, the story revolves around the telepath Dora, who joined a group of her fellow ESP-endowed people, from whom, however, she escapes, unable to control her own powers. The girl meets Pierrot, a young man who draws a tear on his face, trades food for books and has a difficult relationship with his father, leader of a team of super-beings. The two will flee together, kindred souls in passions and anti-conformism, seeking a role in an era of great changes. Celestia is a dystopian parable about culture as resistance, and a four year-long labour of love for gouache, architecture, X-Men and Miyazaki. In Fior’s words, “I have tried to put together all the things that in all honesty formed me.”

Dogmadrome
by Lorenzo Mo’
Eris Edizioni

This is a debut graphic novel, a fantasy adventure set in a role playing game. More precisely: set within a RPG campaign, where the narrator is the game’s master player, and where the characters get lost themselves into a sort of storytelling maelstrom, trying to escape the game’s rules. So don’t think you’re reading a “geek project”: it’s a comedy - a disturbing one - , a funny monsters-and-sorcery adventure, a metafiction, and a gorgeous gallery of weird and well-crafted character designs. Lorenzo Mo’ blends the look and feel of vintage modern animation and advertising into a fictional world, offering a wild exploration of the struggles of the imagination in the age of pervasive entertainment.

Momenti straordinari con applausi finti (‘Extraordinary moments with fake applause’)
by Gipi
Coconino Press

Thanks to his latest graphic novel, Gipi is in the running again for the main literary prize in Italy, the Premio Strega. The reason is clear: he is now a cultural celebrity, and the most critically acclaimed comics auteur within the Italian landscape. Not everyone in comics praised this book, mainly because there’s nothing new in terms of either subject matter (the relationship with a dying parent; the existential dilemmas of an adult man; the amazement of youth) nor in style (watercolours and sketchy black ink). It’s a sort of compendium of Gipi’s storytelling and art, closely linked to previous books such as LMVDM, A story and S. But it’s a compelling, riveting, absorbing one. And an impressive deep dive into the core issues of his work: humanity, and the reasons we relate to each other.

Mercurio Loi
by Alessandro Bilotta & various artists
Sergio Bonelli Editore

One of the most original, well-crafted and unusual Italian comics series of the last few years has ended its run in a brilliant way. Mercurio, the peripatetic hero, gifted with nothing but a particularly brilliant mind, had accustomed us to stories from Rome in 1826 that became the pretext for meditations on the mechanics of storytelling and the human mind. If the penultimate episode - “Ciao core”, drawn by Andrea Borgioli - dramatically closed the sentimental affairs of Mercurio and his assistant Ottone, the last book significantly titled ‘The Death of Mercurio Loi’ - drawn by Matteo Mosca - broke up the protagonist of the series into many narrative stereotypes, each of them taking the lead in their own, and all reunited in the finale.

La Gameti (‘The Gametes’)
by David Genchi
Hollow Press

A love story made of bickering and reconciliation, told through the lenses of brutal and disgusting symbols of deformations. Aesthetically, it’s a take that blends Clive Barker and Giovanni Boccaccio, medieval iconography and Go Nagai, David Lynch and Mike Diana. The pace of the book, with its wide layouts and landscape-mode compositions, is that of a progressive amplification of the ordinary contrasts of a couple - intended as paradoxical gametes or reproductive cells - that drives them to a final explosion and putrified state. A nightmarish tale of life and death, and the overestimation of the usual paths of emotional experiences.

Malaysia

Selected by Ct Lim

Lim Cheng Tju writes about history and popular culture in Singapore. He co-authored The University Socialist Club and the Contest for Malaya: Tangled Strands of Modernity (Amsterdam University Press/NUS Press) and co-edited Liquid City Vol 2 (Image Comics), an anthology of Southeast Asian comics. He is the country editor (Singapore) for the International Journal of Comic Art and his articles have appeared in the Journal of Popular Culture and Print Quarterly. He was an advisor for the Barbican touring exhibition Mangasia. He writes comics sometimes too.

Kartun Anti Racism
by Zunar
Self-published

Zunar has won the fight. His nemesis, former Malaysian prime minister, Najib, and his wife, Rosmah, are facing trial for corruption. So what’s next? That’s the challenge for political cartoonists. They are only as good as their next opponents. And they better have features and characteristics that one can caricature. A political cartoonist’s worst nightmare is to have someone who is so bland and colourless that it is almost impossible to portray and make fun of them. Zunar has a problem now. Now his enemy is racism. As a concept, we all know racism is bad. But how do we show it in a cartoon? There is no one person you can attack to highlight this problem. You can choose to caricature a particular race to do so. But one is then reduced to racist caricatures to caricature racism. It is to Zunar’s credit that he has largely avoided that. He walks that straight line to be honest and true to his ideals. He is still the cartoonist with balls to get the job done. Read this collection together with his memoir, Fight Through Cartoons (Marshall Cavendish).

Fatah: Kartunis Akbar Terengganu
by Sabri Said
RKKM Cartoon and Comic Gallery

In 2015, there was this big Gila Gila exhibition that took place in Kuala Lumpur. Since then, I have been trying to find out more about the history of 1970s Malay cartoons and cartooning beyond Lat. Thankfully, the RKKM ((‘Rumah Kartun & Komik Malaysia’) Cartoon and Comic Gallery was opened in April 2017 and they have been archiving, exhibiting and publishing the works of some of these pioneers. The big one that came out last year was on the 66-year-old cartoonist Fatah, who is suffering from a nerve disorder. Now wheelchair-bound, he could no longer draw or paint. This new biography by Sabri Said, a former editor of Gila Gila, filled with reprints of his old cartoons, is a treasure trove. Sabri Said writes: “Fatah is part of the first generation of cartoonists in Malaysia who made comic history and was part of Malaysia’s comics renaissance during the 70s. He was the first to create a character in the 1960s with a rich background story and the first to use the Terengganu dialect in comics.”

Silent Horror Gold
by KS Tan
DarkBox Studio

There are two major themes I have identified in Southeast Asian comics. One is politics due to the political turmoil we face in the region. The other is horror, given the paganism that was thriving in pre-Islamic and pre-Christian Southeast Asia. KS Tan picks up and updates traditional Asian horror comics with short, silent stories of sex, greed, pride, other deadly sins and plain old fashioned evil. His manga/manhwa style comics are a breakout hit on social media and his stories feature some of the evils associated with social media and technology. You can read his stories for free on instagram (@darkboxofficial). But this book is something he published to reward his fans who have been asking for a ‘Best-of’.

New Zealand

Selected by Adrian Kinnaird

Adrian Kinnaird has been involved in the New Zealand comics community as a cartoonist, writer and blogger for almost two decades. He is the author of From Earth’s End: The Best of New Zealand Comics published by Random House NZ in 2013, and is co-founder of Earth’s End Publishing, a boutique publishing house dedicated to producing New Zealand comics and graphic novels. For more information, you can visit his blog and his website.

Let Me Be Frank
by Sarah Laing
Victoria University Press

Let Me Be Frank brings Sarah Laing’s popular autobiographical comic series together for the first time. Sarah Laing began blogging her comics in 2009 as a way to shed light on her fiction writing and to record life before it evaporated. The comics soon had a large audience, eager for the next installment about Sarah’s parenting failures and successes, writing, her obsession with Katherine Mansfield, her family’s history, pet mice, sex, clothes and more. Let Me Be Frank is a witty, whip-smart comic collection that is ever disarmingly frank. Sarah Laing is an award-winning cartoonist, short story writer, novelist and graphic designer. Let Me Be Frank is her fifth book, and she has also illustrated children’s books, made zines and co-edited Three Words: An Anthology of Aotearoa/NZ Women’s Comics. Her most recent graphic memoir, Mansfield and Me, was longlisted in the 2017 Ockham book awards, and was published in New Zealand and the UK, where it was favourably reviewed by The Guardian and The Sunday Times. Sarah has been the recipient of both the Michael King and the Frank Sargeson literary fellowships in Auckland. She now lives in Wellington.

Rufus Marigold
by Ross Murray
Earth’s End Publishing

Rufus Marigold is a primate with a problem: every social encounter is a harrowing ordeal. A budding artist, Rufus spends his days working in an office, but as life becomes increasingly more of a struggle, he yearns to be defined as something other than a complete nervous wreck. This volume collects and significantly expands upon the original web comic, resulting in a darkly hilarious yet moving account of living with anxiety. Ross Murray is an illustrator based in Mount Maunganui, New Zealand. After studying graphic design he developed a diverse range of styles while working as an inhouse artist at an Auckland ad agency. These days he’s most well-known for his colourful comic book-inspired artwork and his `vintage travel’-style illustrations, including covers and internal work for the ongoing Lonely Planet EPIC series. In additional to his commercial work, Murray has also been making comics since 2014 when his Pets Talk Records strip appeared online. In 2015 Murray contributed to the Faction High Water anthology, and 2018 saw his humorous takes on Star Wars and Home & Away featured on the Vice website comics section. Rufus Marigold is his first graphic novel.

Palimpsest: Documents From a Korean Adoption
by Lisa Wool-rim Sjöblom
Drawn & Quarterly

Thousands of South Korean children were adopted around the world in the 1970s and 1980s. More than nine thousand found their new home in Sweden, including the cartoonist Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, who was adopted when she was two years old. Throughout her childhood she struggled to fit into the homogenous Swedish culture and was continually told to suppress the innate desire to know her origins. “Be thankful,” she was told; surely her life in Sweden was better than it would have been in Korea. Like many adoptees, Sjöblom learned to bury the feeling of abandonment. In Palimpsest, an emotionally charged memoir, Sjöblom’s unaddressed feelings about her adoption come to a head when she is pregnant with her first child. When she discovers a document containing the names of her biological parents, she realizes her own history may not match up with the story she’s been told her whole life: that she was an orphan without a background. As Sjöblom digs deeper into her own backstory, returning to Korea and the orphanage, she finds that the truth is much more complicated than the story she was told and struggled to believe. The sacred image of adoption as a humanitarian act that gives parents to orphans begins to unravel. Sjöblom’s beautiful autumnal tones and clear-line style belie the complicated nature of this graphic memoir’s vital central question: Who owns the story of an adoption? Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom is an illustrator, cartoonist and graphic designer living in Auckland, New Zealand, with her partner and two children. She has a master’s degree in literature from Södertörn University and has studied at the Comic Art School in Malmö. Palimpsest is her first graphic novel. She is an adoptee rights activist.

The Tea Dragon Festival
Katie O’Neill
Oni Press

Revisit the enchanting world of Tea Dragons with an all-new companion story to the two-time Eisner Award-winning graphic novel The Tea Dragon Society. Rinn has grown up with the Tea Dragons that inhabit their village, but stumbling across a real dragon turns out to be a different matter entirely. Aedhan is a young dragon who was appointed to protect the village, but fell asleep in the forest eighty years ago. With the aid of Rinn’s adventuring uncle Erik and his partner Hesekiel, they investigate the mystery of his enchanted sleep… but Rinn’s real challenge is to help Aedhan come to terms with feeling that he cannot get back the time he has lost. Critically acclaimed graphic novelist Katie O’Neill delivers another charming, gentle fantasy story about finding your purpose, and the community that helps you along the way. Katie O’Neill is a self-taught writer and illustrator based in New Zealand. To date she has published three books, which have won Eisner, Harvey and Dwayne McDuffie awards for children’s comics, as well as being Cybils Award finalists and featured on the ALA Rainbow List.

The Adventures of Tupaia
by Courtney Sina Meredith & Mat Tait
Allen & Unwin NZ

The incredible story of Tupaia, Tahitian priest navigator, who sailed on board the Endeavour with Captain Cook on his first voyage to Aotearoa (New Zealand). Follow Tupaia as he grows up in Ra’iatea, becoming a high-ranking ‘arioi and master navigator. Join him as he meets up with Cook in Tahiti and sails as part of the crew on the Endeavour across the Pacific to Aotearoa. Witness the encounters between tangata whenua and the crew as the ship sails around the coast, and discover the important role Tupaia plays as translator and cultural interpreter. Written in dramatic prose and verse by Courtney Sina Meredith and stunningly illustrated by Mat Tait.

Mophead
by Selina Tusitala Marsh
Aotearoa Books

At school, Selina is ridiculed for her big, frizzy hair. Kids call her ‘mophead’. She ties her hair up this way and that way and tries to fit in. Until one day – Sam Hunt plays a role – Selina gives up the game. She decides to let her hair out, to embrace her difference, to be WILD! Selina takes us through special moments in her extraordinary life. She becomes one of the first Pasifika women to hold a PhD. She reads for the Queen of England and Samoan royalty. She meets Barack Obama. And then she is named the New Zealand Poet Laureate. She picks up her special tokotoko, and notices something. It has wild hair coming out the end. It looks like a mop. A kid on the Waiheke ferry teases her about it. So she tells him a story…This is an inspirational graphic memoir, full of wry humour, that will appeal to young readers and adults alike. Illustrated with wit and verve by the author – NZ’s bestselling Poet Laureate – Mophead tells the true story of a New Zealand woman realising how her difference can make a difference.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi / The Treaty of Waitangi
by Toby Morris with Ross Calman, Mark Derby & Piripi Walker
Lift Education

This ground-breaking graphic novel illustrated by Toby Morris provides a fresh approach to the story of Te Tiriti o Waitangi / The Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding document. It covers a wide time span, from the arrival of Polynesian explorers to the signing of Te Tiriti, to the New Zealand Wars, and through to the modern-day Treaty settlement process. A special emphasis is put on unpacking the two versions of Te Tiriti and exploring their ongoing significance. This dual-language flip book is written with Māori and Pakeha authors Ross Calman and Mark Derby, with text in te reo Māori version developed by Māori Language Commission-registered translator Piripi Walker. Reviewed by some of Aotearoa’s foremost Te Tiriti o Waitangi experts to reflect current scholarship, this book fills a gap in the market for an accessible book about New Zealand’s founding treaty. It includes a link to both versions of the treaty translated into thirty other languages and New Zealand Sign Language.

Portugal

Selected by Gabriel Martins

Gabriel Martins has been writing about comics since 2006, on several blogs and websites. He also wrote a couple of prefaces on Portuguese editions and is, since the beginning, a jury for the Portuguese Comic Con Awards. Occasionally he writes for comic fanzines (or just for himself) and has been nominated at Amadora BD for a Portuguese-German collaboration entitled OhZona, that explores the wonders and terrors of Carnival.

This year, 2019, was an interesting one for Portuguese Comics, in the sense that it brought and consolidated some new artists, such as Gonçalo Duarte, with his first longer publication Parícutin. At the same time we had the return of some of the most well-known national authors, namely Filipe Abranches (the only Portuguese author in 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die) and José Carlos Fernandes. To be honest, José Carlos Fernandes did not return to the world of comics… unfortunately. However, thanks to the work of two publishers (G. Floy & ComicHeart) we were able to read one of his last scripted books, never published before, with art by Roberto Gomes. So here are the five standouts of Portuguese comics in 2019.

Tutti Frutti
by Marco Mendes
Turbina (Mundo Fantasma)

Tutti Frutti is the compilation of all the comic strips under the title Diário Rasgado that were published in the daily Jornal de Notícias between June 3rd and December 23rd , 2018, including the strips that were refused by the newspaper. This is Marco Mendes at his best, both on the political and the satirical side, as well as in his more personal approach, in the way he always explores the sensibilities of everyday life. It is rich, subtle, melancholic and quite romantic at times. All the major international events from 2018 are represented at some point here, with references spanning from ex-president Lula’s incarceration to the surprisingly still-in-charge President Trump, culminating, of course, with the most recent Portuguese struggles, the biggest of which are the growing difficulties of living in the big centres such as Lisbon or Oporto due to gentrification. Thanks to Diário Rasgado, Marco Mendes is becoming the greatest chronicler of our times in this medium. Hopefully, we can keep counting with his work for many more years to come.

Selva!!! (‘Jungle!!!’)
by Filipe Abranches
Umbra

This was a full year for Filipe Abranches. Not only for his own authorial return with this new original comic, but also thanks to the start of his own editorial and publishing efforts, with the new anthology Umbra whose second issue will be available soon in 2020. Selva!!! bring us back to the times when we were children exploring the pure joy of playing. But it’s a story so imbued in different layers that, at some point, we no longer can distinguish at which stage we really are. Of course there is more to it: it is not random that Abranches chose military toys to tell his tale. At a certain point, there is a scene in which one of the characters states that this is not their doing and in truth there is someone else orchestrating the war. In fact, there always is. A child using toy soldiers to play a war is a huge echo of the reality where real human soldiers are nothing but pawns as well. Children imitating adults, evoking in a way William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, is one of several points to ponder upon as one reads Selva!!!. And there is plenty of fun as well.

Andromeda, Or The Long Way Home
by Zé Burnay
Self-published

In 2019 Zé Burnay presented us with a luxurious self-published edition of his ongoing saga Andromeda, Or The Long Way Home. It gathers the first two chapters, Bugonia and A House In The Horizon, with the third, new one, Our Mother The Mountain. Besides the quality of the content and the edition itself, it comes with a soundtrack (also available online here) and with a pin-up gallery that includes works by Mike Mignola, Artyom Trakhanov, Frans Boukas, John Kenn Mortensen, Matt Smith, Simon Roy, Aaron Conley and Christian Degn. I’ve known the work of Zé Burnay for quite some time. We were even published in the same fanzine (Zona) many years ago and it is incredible to have been one of the witnesses of his evolution as an artist. Burnay has come a long way (pun intended) and Andromeda is, without a doubt, a beautiful piece of art. This story of a nomad travelling across a terrific land is full of surprises and self-discovering moments. Much of this travel is still a huge mystery; one might even never fully solve it. Is this simply a long way home? And/or is he meant to save someone that personifies Andromeda? Something to discover in the future, and revisit at all times.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
by AAVV
Chili Com Carne

This anthology was the winner of the sixth annual competition entitled Toma 500 Paus E Faz Uma BD (which can be loosely translated as “Here’s 500 Bucks To Make A Comic”), organised by the association Chili Com Carne. The idea for this volume came from a Richard Brautigan poem, from which the title comes. In the words of the publisher, this is a book that explores the dynamics articulated in the solipsism of this cyberspace that we have created. In this collection of stories, we can see through different angles and experiences the way digital technology has been covering all aspects of our daily lives, which in turn meddles with the way we are interacting with each other. In the end, all of us are now being watched over by machines, and probably not all of them benificently. This work counts with stories from Amorim Abiassi Ferreira and Ana Maçã, André Pereira, Cátia Serrão, Cláudia Salgueiro, Dois Vês, Félix Rodrigues, João Carola and Vasco Ruivo.

Mar De Aral
by José Carlos Fernandes & Roberto Gomes
G. Floy & ComicHeart

…And we’re back to the world-building of José Carlos Fernandes: among tales of social disorder we find here some of the cleverest and definitely most Kafkian stories of Portuguese comics. Stories about a bull on a rooftop (probably about everything else except a bull on a rooftop); about the art of tailoring the dead; or about the eternal wait of Lady Marília to attend the inauguration of the Panama Canal, this last one the most real and saddest story of the book. These are the type of stories that made J.C. Fernandes one of the best writers of his generation, whose work is best known through his suburban tales in A Pior Banda do Mundo, which can been seen as in the vein of Ben Katchor’s Cheap Novelties. The artist Roberto Gomes becomes a master of adaptation by giving a different take on every single story, searching for the style that suits them best. Based solely on the work of Gomes, one could easily believe that Mar de Aral was an anthology of different artists. The book did not not go unnoticed, since it won several comic book awards at the Amadora BD festival and the Portuguese Comic Con. It seems the author has really been missed and hopefully he got that message.

Russia

Selected by Denis Denisov

Denis Denisov is a journalist living in the centre of Russia, in a Siberian city called Krasnoyarsk. For many years he has been collecting, studying and writing about comics published in Russia. He is a big fan of self-publishing and non-fiction. Denis is one of the founders and editors of a comics compilation of Siberian authors, Kras Comics Zine. He is an author of articles and reviews for ComicsBoom! – a big news portal dedicated completely to comics in Russia. The portal specialises in news and reviews of comics, collaborating with publishers throughout the country. ComicsBoom! was founded in 2012, and after three years it started its own ‘ComicsBoom Award’, an annual prize, the most prestigious one in the Russian comics industry.

SHUV
by Olga Lavrentyeva
Boomkniga

The Russian comics industry only started its prominent development in the 2000s, and now it is on a remarkable rise. An artist from Saint-Petersburg, Olga Lavrentyeva, is considered to be perhaps the most respected comics author of her generation. Her gothic detective, SHUV, built a cult following from its sell-out release in 2016. Last year a second edition was published, which does not happen too often with Russian comics. SHUV talks about life in the most controversial period of our country’s modern history. The 1990s in Russia are associated with the collapse of USSR, racketeering, poverty and heroin abuse. Even though the plot of SHUV is fictional, it is closely connected to the childhood memories of the author. The main characters in the book are a brother and sister who often spend their holidays in the countryside near Saint-Petersburg. When their neighbour, a young doctor called Vasya Shlomov, shoots himself, and the children start their own investigation of his death. They document its course in their school exercise books. At first their diaries look childlike, naive and primitive, but as the children grow older, their art grows too. It becomes scary to see how interested and excited the children are about someone’s death. However, it was something commonplace in those days. People around you often died, and sometimes in quite humiliating ways. Olga Lavrentyeva manages to show honestly this blasé attitude towards death and the morbidity of the post-Soviet period. SHUV abounds in symbols and codes that can barely be understood by anyone who did not grow up in the USSR, but the worldview of Russian millennials is impossible to understand without these details.

Survilo
by Olga Lavrentyeva
Boomkniga

Yes, Olga Lavrentyeva appears twice in this list. This is because her art hits the target when it comes to topics that are especially important to Russian society. She is capable of looking at them from unexpected points of view. Her latest big work, a documentary graphic novel Survilo, speaks about the scariest events in the history of Russia: about Stalin’s terror, World War II and the Siege of Leningrad. This is also the first Russian comic book to be widely accepted beyond the usual comics readership; it is the only book out of this list in preparation for publishing in many foreign languages. The plot of Survilo is based on the memories of the author’s grandmother, Valentina Survilo. The facts are supported by official documents from the Soviet special service and photographs from family archives. Everything is hand-drawn by Lavrentyeva using various techniques. This is, in fact, an attempt to save a true memory of the most tragic Soviet generation. Olga’s great-grandfather - Valentina’s father - was falsely arrested and accused of treason. He was executed in secret. Valentina, her mother and sister were sent into exile. Having grown up and returned to Leningrad, she could not find a job and provide for herself because of her father’s assumed treason. When World War II started, the Nazis surrounded the city, cutting the citizens off from the outside world for months. Hunger, diseases, cold, bombings and death became common in the lives of the citizens. Valentina Survilo continued to work in a hospital. She ended up the only member of her family to survive and have children. She says about herself: “I live for everybody”.

Beef Tapeworm
by Vladislav Pogadayev & Evgeniya Chashchina
Molot Hardcorp / Komilfo

It’s the 1990s again. In a poverty-stricken Russian town, in a family of alcoholics, in disgusting conditions, a boy is born - who is no less disgusting. His body is covered in slimy appendages that look like worms. A slightly crazy old woman kidnaps him from the hospital and tries to raise him as best as she can in the dying village. The boy grows up as an outsider and a monster in everyone’s eyes. He is bullied. He is humiliated. He is desperately trying to save whatever is still good inside him, but the tentacles often take over his mind, and wherever the boy runs, he leaves a bloody trail behind him. Beef Tapeworm is concentrated violence, despair and fear. It is an extended metaphor showing that the Christian concept of saving the soul is impossible. It’s Dante in a Russian hell, on Earth. The atmosphere is mostly created through the art of Evgeniya Chashchina. Her style evokes nightmares, despite this being her first serious work, created at the age of 18. The fact that she was able to create such a mature and deep work at such a young age is at once admirable and scary. Beef Tapeworm is part of the Molot Hardcore universe, but this fact can be neglected. The difference in the depth of ideas and the originality of execution is too big to compare this book with the company’s other products.

Sobakistan
by Vitaly Terletsky & Katya
Terletsky comics

The state of Sobakistan in inhabited by the happiest and most content dogs in the world. They love their country, but most of all they love its leader, their Dear Comrade Friendo. They love him so much that they erect double monuments to him. And now, for the first time in history, Sobakistan is opening its borders, so that delegations from Bearsenia, Otterland and other countries can see for themselves how beautiful life is on the Canine Peninsula. As it happens in totalitarian regimes, they are going to pull the wool over the guests’ eyes to hide their real intentions. At first it seems like Sobakistan is The Interview put into the world of Zootopia. Bright colours and charming animals give off a feeling of something fun and cute. Moreover, Vitaly Terletsky is known for his talent at creating a hilarious mess out of anything. But the book soon turns out to be a serious political statement. It is not only about North Korea, it’s about dictatorships in general. The socialist aesthetics abounding in the art are reminiscent of the later USSR, but it is also full of grotesque and hidden allusions to certain Russian events. This book also features easy but elegant colour, composition and storytelling decisions, where Katya shows herself to be a very intelligent artist.

Igor Grom
by Aleksey Zamskiy & various artists
Bubble

In Russia there have been a few attempts to create one’s own comic book universe with one’s own superheroes. The Bubble publishing house has succeeded at this. To be critical, at first their series gave off an I’ve-seen-this-somewhere-else feeling, but with time the writers have managed to find their voice. A few years ago they relaunched their main series, and the monthly Igor Grom seems to be the best so far. The series used to be called Major Grom and told the story of a Saint-Petersburg police officer, who was an embodiment of all the traits of cult Russian book, film and TV show police officer characters. He was handsome, smart, strong and incredibly fair. Perhaps this explains the success of the series, since in reality the police gradually continue to lose the trust of the citizens, but Major Igor Grom behaves like a person to trust without hesitation. With the title change, the character changed as well. He was fired from the police force, and from a knight in shining armour he transformed into a gloomy and dramatic antihero. The plot lines became more complicated, and the topics of corruption, organised crime, social injustice and drug addiction are now closer to real life. You can read English-language versions of this series online here.