This has been a good year for graphic novels, and I’ll get to my highlights in a moment. First, though, my comic book of 2014: Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Bloomsbury £18.99) by Roz Chast. I know, I know… a book about crumbling parents, care homes, incontinence pads, memory loss and, well, death, doesn’t sound like much of a Christmas present. But this is also the year’s funniest book; I simply can’t imagine the person who wouldn’t be happy to receive it. George and Elizabeth Chast, married for 63 years, still live in their chaotic apartment in la Brooklyn Profonde. But it is increasingly clear they can no longer cope alone. What should Roz, their only child, do? And will she be able to rein in her exasperation while she works it out? Hysterical, but also plangent and thoroughly ghoulish, this is a seriously brilliant book. Invest in multiple copies.
Now let’s move on. Graphic novels take their readers all over the place these days, and in about the same time it takes most of us to get into town on the bus. On this score, I recommend Polina, Bastien Vivès’s vivid ballet-school drama, set in Moscow and Berlin; Fatherland by Nina Bunjevac, a devastating memoir that explores the impact of one man’s Serbian nationalism on his family; and (my favourite) Just So Happens, in which Fumio Obata tells the story of a young Japanese woman returning to the country of her birth for her father’s funeral, deftly unpicking the idea of what it means to be an exile as he goes along (all three are published by Jonathan Cape, £16.99 each).
Keen cyclists and francophiles alike, meanwhile, are bound to adore Legends of the Tour, Jan Cleijne’s exquisitely illustrated history of the world’s greatest road race (Head of Zeus £14.99), a book so gorgeous, it deserves to be put on display as if it were an illuminated manuscript. Rembrandt (Self Made Hero), a vivid graphic biography of the great artist by the Dutch cartoonist, Typex, came out last year. But it’s worth revisiting now if you’ve seen – or simply long to see – the National Gallery’s amazing show of his late works.
A couple of collector’s items. I love Drawn & Quarterly’s deluxe anniversary edition of Tove Jansson’s Moomin comics (£12.99 each), which brings together all the strips she drew in the 50s for the London Evening News (Drawn & Quarterly rediscovered the cartoons in 2006, publishing them in a series of separate volumes for the first time in 40 years outside of Scandinavia). This single volume edition, which comes with several full-page, never-seen-before character studies and sketches, runs to 400 pages, and weighs in at about 2kg, and if you love Sniff, Snufkin and the rest, you’ll find it irresistible. Equally covetable, though of a very different order, is Jacques Tardi’s WWI (Fantagraphics £28.99), which brings together the great French cartoonist’s two incroyable masterpieces of the first war, It Was the Year of the Trenches and Goddamn This War!
At the other end of the scale, those in search of stocking fillers might like the pocket-sized Even More Bad Parenting Advice (Drawn & Quarterly £8.99), Guy Delisle’s follow-up to last year’s A User’s Guide to Neglectful Parenting. It does what it says on the tin, sending up Delisle’s inadequacies as a father in a series of beady vignettes. Or what about Plumdog (Jonathan Cape £16.99), Emma Chichester Clarke’s adorable book about Plum, her whoosell (a whippet, mixed with jack russell and poodle). Its publisher claims, with justification, that this one will charm the pants off even those who ordinarily prefer cats.
Fans of Grandville, Bryan Talbot’s anthropomorphic steampunk series, will be pleased to know that a new volume has arrived just in time for Christmas. In Grandville Noel (Jonathan Cape £16.99), Detective Inspector LeBrock of Scotland Yard must investigate the disappearance of his housekeeper’s niece, Bunty Spall, alone; his trusty sidekick, Detective Sergeant Ratzi, is away for Christmas. The trail leads to a religious cult, at whose head is a unicorn messiah. He and his cronies are about to lead a crusade for the ethnic cleansing of the French Empire’s doughfaces (this the derogatory slang used by the animal-headed population to describe humans). Can LeBrock stop the slide into fascism? Can he even rescue Bunty Spall? Will he be back in time for Christmas dinner? Huge fun, this is Talbot at the top of his storytelling game. Meanwhile, don’t forget about Sugar Skull (Jonathan Cape £12.99), which concludes the trippy Tintin-inspired trilogy that Charles Burns began in 2010 with X’ed Out, and in which the truth about Doug and his nightmares is finally revealed. A cult must-read.
I enjoyed Mimi Pond’s Over Easy (Drawn & Quarterly £16.99) very much indeed. Something of a comeback for Pond – she hasn’t published a book in more than 15 years – this is a coming of age story about a student called Margaret, who drops out of art college for financial reasons and winds up waitressing in an Oakland diner. It’s also a sublimely evocative depiction of California in the 70s. Probably Nothing (Viking £16.99), Matilda Tristram’s funny and honest cancer memoir, might not seem very festive on the surface of things, but rest assured: it comes with a happy ending, and is one of those books that somehow makes you feel better, stronger, generally more celebratory and positive about life.
Finally, some almost-but-not-quite-graphic novels. I like a new series of art primers (Laurence King, £7.99 each) in which Catherine Ingram, an art historian, and illustrators Andrew Rae and Peter Arkle use comic book techniques together with photographs and other illustrations to explore the lives and careers of artists (titles so far include This Is Pollock, This Is Warhol and This Is Dalí). Succinct and inexpensive, these short but lovely-looking books explain complicated ideas and histories with wit and great cunning.
The Paper Doll’s House of Miss Sarah Elizabeth Birdsall Otis, aged Twelve by Eric Boman (Thames & Hudson £14.95) is a curiosity of a picture book, in which Boman, the Vogue photographer and biographer of fashionista Iris Apfel, tells the story of a little girl called Birdie Otis. In 1884, at her home on Long Island, Birdie made an extraordinary paper doll’s house in the form of a book of collages – a reproduction of her three-dimensional doll’s house, to be used when travelling. Boman includes glorious photographs of its rooms in his book, and tells Birdie’s story, or what little he knows of it. By way of a bonus, it also comes with eight press-out dolls and costumes copied from Birdie’s original collection. An uncommon object sure to delight interiors fanatics everywhere.
