Looking forward to this spring, Zainab Akhtar of Comics and Cola has a column at The Guardian on graphic novels to look forward to. Blutch’s Peplum, due out in April, is one of the launch titles for New York Review Comics, New York Review of Books’ new comics imprint.
The man known as Blutch is one of the giants of contemporary comics, and Peplum may be his masterpiece: a grand, strange dream of ancient Rome. At the edge of the empire, a gang of bandits discovers the body of a beautiful woman in a cave; she is encased in ice but may still be alive. One of the bandits, bearing a stolen name and with the frozen maiden in tow, makes his way toward Rome—seeking power, or maybe just survival, as the world unravels.
Thrilling and hallucinatory, vast in scope yet unnervingly intimate, Peplum weaves together threads from Shakespeare and theSatyricon along with Blutch’s own distinctive vision. His hypnotic storytelling and stark, gorgeous art pull us into one of the great works of graphic literature, translated into English for the first time.
“Blutch is a master. No other cartoonist renders with such casual virtuosity. It’s long overdue for his books to be translated into English.†—Craig Thompson
“One of the greatest living cartoonists (and if you don’t think Blutch fits this bill you really, really need to read more Blutch).â€â€”The Comics ReporterÂ
“One of the most important European cartoonists of the past 20 years.â€â€”Robot 6