Black Paths on Thursday, mojitos on Monday
I promised more book recommendations, so here are a couple that I'm recommending even though I haven't read them (yet) myself!
Last week there was a launch party for David B's Black Paths, at Clerkenwell Tales, a lovely little bookshop in Exmouth Market. I'd only heard about the launch the previous evening, which meant I was a bit late in getting a place - in fact I didn't get a response until 6:30 that evening, which was exactly when the event started. Oops! As a result, I entirely missed David B being interviewed by Paul Gravett, which was a bit annoying, but at least I got there in time for some free booze, and also a chance to catch up with Dan Lester before he flew off to teach English in South Korea the following day, as well as lots of other people.
I did have a flick through the book, however, and it looks pretty good, with lovely paper stock and full colours throughout. I have to say publisher Self Made Hero really excel at good production values, compared to some other publishers. Having only seen David B's work in black-and-white, where it works so well, it was nice to see that it translates well into colour too (you might think that's a given, but it isn't always). I definitely want to give it a proper read at some point, even though a couple of friends read it over the weekend and said that although it's visually stunning, the story isn't very compelling. I wondered whether this might partly be to do with translating a work from another language, and having read this fascinating post by the book's translator, it seems quite likely. On the other hand, I do remember that, as much as I appreciated the artwork in David B's Epileptic, the story did lose me along the way (although it's been almost 10 years since I read it, so I may feel differently now).
After waiting for friends to get their copies signed, I went to get some food with Woodrow Phoenix, Rob Davis and Glyn Dillon, which I mention only because it gives me a good excuse to plug Nelson again, as I discovered over dinner that even more amazing creators have signed up to participate. It's a shame I can't say who, because I'm sworn to secrecy, and if I told you I'd have to kill you, and there's no easy way to round up a bunch of mostly anonymous readers on the internet and quietly bump them all off, but trust me when I say NELSON IS GOING TO BE AWESOME. Glyn's new book (his first foray into comics publishing since, what, the 90s?), The Nao Of Brown looks likes it's going to be really good, too. If you want more proof than just my word, then have a long browsing session on Glyn's blog, which is chock-fulla-pretties. There's more on Space In Text, too.
Monday saw the launch of Reinhard Kleist's Castro, in the gallery upstairs at Foyles, which had a bit more space than Thursday's bookshop, but wasn't quite as well attended - even though there was the promise of free mojitos! And such promise: this is the pile of mint and limes at the start of the evening. A couple of hours later, the mint was all but gone and there were only about six limes rattling around the basket. The mojitos seemed to get exponentially stronger, too (my third drink was stronger than the first two put together!).
I took a few notes while Reinhard was being interviewed by Paul, which I've tried to knock into some kind of sense rather than the stream of consciousness that my notes read like. I should say to start with that I've not read Kleist's biography of Johnny Cash yet, and I'm not especially fascinated by Fidel Castro, but I am quite interested in the general history of Cuba, as it seems like a interesting country, albeit often romanticised, and in a constant state of some sort of flux (plus, I'll be honest, it is hard to say "no" to free mojitos!)
Kleist himself admitted that he initially had little interest in Cuba - "Cuba was for the old guys" - but he ended up visiting after a German editor asked him if he wanted to go and make a book about another country. This book was Havanna, which doesn't seem to have been translated into English (yet). In Cuba, he sometimes had trouble understanding people because "the Cuban people have horrible Spanish. It sounds very beautiful but they swallow all the syllables" (this made everyone laugh).
Kleist is pretty good at talking in snappy, visual soundbites. Describing some of Castro's early life, he said that "Havana university must have been like a Mafiosi melting pot" and that Castro has a nose "like a Greek statue." He'd wanted the art to look "a little bit more rough" than his art in Cash, but to keep it black-and-white because "you can do so much with black-and-white and create such a strong atmosphere." I'm inclined to agree, but I also think you can create strong atmospheres with colour too. His Greek publisher felt strongly enough that it should be in colour that they showed him a colourised version, but he hated it. (I'm curious about that, because Cuba is so strongly associated with colour in almost all media. Havanna is full colour, though, so maybe that'll get an English translation soon.)
The book was lettered in Photoshop, and Gravett pointed out the speech balloons are more "emphatic" than in Kleist's previous work. Kleist admitted that in earlier work he had tried to "erase" the balloons, but it didn't really work, as he realised that "text is important". This was an interesting point for me, because one of the things that has put me off reading his books are the cluttered-looking speech balloons - which is only exacerbated in something that is filled with pages of long political speeches, but is evident even in earlier work like Havanna (see pic below). I also noticed from looking at some pages displayed on the gallery wall, that, although Castro is lettered with capitals, there is also an inconsistent use of lower-case i's for no apparent reason other than whimsical idiosyncrasy, which doesn't really fit the general theme of the book and therefore irritated me a bit, because it kept distracting me from what was being said. But maybe most other people don't notice stuff like that.
The interview also touched on some other aspects, such as Cuba's ongoing political situation, and whether the state of the country was doing good for people or getting more corrupted. "Everything raised more questions." There were some comparisons made with China, and Kleist said "we might have a Chinese edition, but I don't know if we'll be allowed to print it." He also mentioned once being asked to sign a copy of Castro "to Fidel" and then learning that it was actually for Castro himself, and that Castro already owned a copy of Havanna, which was a bit nervewracking to discover.
The story itself is a fictionalised biography of Castro, using the character of a young idealistic journalist from Germany, whose look was based on a young French journalist that Kleist saw at an event in Cuba. (I don't know if the young man ever learned how he'd been immortalised), and of course other characters like Che Guevara appear in it as well. According to Kleist, in soundbite mode again, "the main point of the story is how to deal with your ideals" because "there is always another position and you have to show both if you want to be objective". With that in mind, I am quite interested in reading the book now. I quite like his artwork, which in moments reminded me of such disparate artists as Jose Muñoz, Hugo Pratt, Scott Morse and even a touch of Paul Pope in the brushier panels. Overall, it was a pretty interesting evening - and I'm not just saying that because of the free cocktails! Thanks once again to Self Made Hero for the invitations.