Swoon Soon! Signing! Glyn Dillon - The Nao of Brown

SelfMadeHero & Daves Comics presents:

Glyn Dillon

The Nao of Brown

Saturday 29th September

1pm -3 pm

Open publication - Free publishing - More glyn dillon

Nao Brown suffers from OCD, but not the handwashing, overly tidy type that people often refer to jokingly. Nao suffers from violent morbid obsessions, while her compulsions take the form of unseen mental rituals. Working part-time in a “designer” vinyl toy shop, while struggling to get her own illustration career off the ground, she’s still searching for that elusive love – the perfect love. And in meeting the man of her dreams, she realizes… dreams can be quite weird. Nao’s meditation practice is an attempt to quieten her mind and open her heart, and it’s through this that she comes to understand that things aren’t so black and white after all. In fact, they’re much more... brown.

Something for the Weekend! Rebetiko & A Chinese Life

Two new books from SelfMadeHero have come our way which are worthy of attention:Using one medium to convey another is always going to be a challenge and as with Chico & Rita, Rebetiko attempts to bring music to sequential art. Set in Greece in 1936 it brings us the story of backstreet musicians, the 'rebetis', driven underground by the military dictatorship at the time. The Comics Journal likened writer/artist David Prudhomme to Nicolas de Crecy (see here) in his ability to capture human expression and the artwork is beautifully evocative with moody coffee-toned colouring. See here for a review on BrokenFrontier.

A Chinese Life is an autobiographical retelling of illustrator Li Kunwu's life from his birth in 1955 including 30 years as a state artist for the Communist Party. Working with writer Philippe Otie, Kunwu offers a unique vantage point straddling a pivotal era in China's political history as well as charting the effects on his family and friends. The illustrations are wonderfully loose and emotive and at a whopping 691 pages it's suitably epic enough to meet it's ambitions.

For more information about all the titles from this publisher you can pick up a free SelfMadeHero catalogue in store.

Plugged! Chico & Rita signed (and more...)

Those good fellows at SelfMadeHero have furnished us once more with signed books. We have signed copies of Kiki De Montparnesse (see here for a previous post about this book) and also signed and sketched copies of Baby's in Black, the story of Stuart Sutcliffe and Astrio Kitchherr.

We also have copies of Chico & Rita that are not only signed by co-creator Javier Mariscal (see here for a profile) but also include a lovely print tucked inside. Rather unsually, the book is an adaptation of an animated film of the same name (aren't we so used to seeing our comics turned into movies?) about a piano player, a singer and their journey from the small time in Cuba to the bright lights of Las Vegas and how their star-crossed romance struggles to survive.

Swoon Now! SelfMadeHero

Last year I wrote about the publisher NoBrow (see here) who ended up the recipient of the Daves Comics Publisher of the Year Award for 2010 for some beautiful and challenging art books and graphic novellas (there was a gold statue and everything but I think it got waylayed in second class post).

This year SelfMadeHero is pushing hard for the coveted top spot. As with NoBrow there is strong consistency of product strengthening their profile not only in terms of quality but also in format (all books are of similar size and price point). They begun in 2007 focusing on literary adaptations, expertly picking on novels in the tough-going classics category such as works by Edgar Allen Poe and Franz Kafka as well as the Manga Shakespeare line which relocated the plays to settings more accessible to teen readers.

Adaptations, whether they be from a movie or a novel have historically been of a variable quality at best usually because they are side projects for publishers. But with the company focusing solely on this genre the books were receiving good word and by 2010, having added the Sherlock Holmes adaptations to their cannon, they moved into another rather maligned genre: Biography. Procuring the rights to Johnny Cash: I See Darkness, it was critical success and - once again carefully choosing its subjects - has been followed by Gonzo: A Graphic Biography of Hunter S. Thompson, Kiki De Montparnasse and Baby's In Black (regarding Stuart Sutcliffe).

Throw into the mix beautiful Dance By The Light Of The Moon - based on a true story - and we're only just getting to their first fictional graphic novel soon-to-be-released Hair Shirt by the talented Canadian artist Patrick McEown.

Securing their own place in the shop, SelfMadeHero is in the ascendancy. We occasionally receive signed copies of their books so pop in and check out.