10 comics to give and read this Christmas 2021

True stories, dystopian, critical, autobiographical or pure fiction are part of the diverse and creative range of powerful comic novelties that are ready to be given away and given away this Christmas.

‘Blacksad. Everything falls 1 ‘

Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido. Editorial Standard. € 16

The long-awaited eight-year wait for the famous Chandlerian detective cat’s sixth adventure was worth it. The cult black series, with anthropomorphic animals, which won the National Comic in 2014, returns in the New York of the 50s, controlled by mafias, plagued by urban and political corruption and with a final surprise that its fans will appreciate.

‘The hunting accident’

Landis Blair and DavidL. Carlson. Windows. € 35

Unbeatable premiere of the new comic book publisher in Catalan from the Finestres bookstore is this ambitious book, between ‘true crime’ and prison drama, awarded for Best Work at the last festival of Angulema. Black on White, tells the true story of a son who discovers that his father was blind during a robbery and not in a hunting accident and that he was saved in prison by the murderer of a child.

‘Vernon Subutex’

Luz / Virginie Despentes. Salamandra Graphic. € 32

The French cartoonist survived the attack on the satirical magazine ‘Charlie Hebdo’ that killed several of his friends and colleagues. Still threatened by Islamists and withdrawn from public life, he has built a monumental graphic version of the Despentes novel. This is the first part, in which it is impossible not to empathize with Vernon, accompanied by his music and his loneliness and surrounded by an unforgettable ‘troupe’ of characters.

‘Fiuuu & Graac’ / ‘Fiuuu & Graac’

Max. The Dome. € 14.90

The Barcelona cartoonist has curled the curl in search of the essence of the comic and has emerged victorious with a comic without words, without vignettes, without background and without sandwiches. In an event that evokes the harassment of the Coyote to the Road Runner, two protagonists: Fiuuu, a powerful and aggressive wind, and Graac, a defenseless but cunning little bird.

‘Totem’

Laura Pérez. Astiberri. € 20

The Valencian illustrator continues to consolidate her career in the comic strip after winning the first Critical Eye Award for Comic in 2020. With the dreamlike, sinister and disturbing touches that he already developed in ‘Ocultos’, he now intertwines in ‘Totem’ experiences and journeys –physical and / or spiritual- of various characters. The starting point: crows feeding on the naked corpse of a woman.

‘The death match’

Pepe Gálvez and Guillem Escriche. Defile. € 16.90

In 1942, in Nazi-occupied Ukraine, a macabre football match took place that would go down in history for the courage and heroism of the Ukrainian team, made up of dissident players from Dinamo and Lokomotiv in Kiev, forced to face a team of German soldiers. Gálvez, screenwriter of ‘Miguel Núñez. A thousand more lives’, and Escriche’s drawing convey the fear, rebellion and drama of a story that inspired the film ‘Evasion or victory’.

‘The inmortal’

Carlos Gimenez. Reservoir Books. € 17.90

In the year in which he has celebrated his 80th anniversary, the author of ‘Paracuellos’ remains committed to his relentless criticism of today’s society in this fierce satire starring a retired hypochondriac doctor who fears death. Through it, which tells how some aliens have shown him the dystopian future of humanity, he talks about climate change, poverty or capitalism.

‘The club of forbidden books’

Kim Hyun Sook, Ryan Estrada and Ko Hyung-Ju. Sapristi. € 17.90

Real and multi-award-winning memoirs in the United States of the author, Kim Hyun Sook, a model student from South Korea until she entered a forbidden book club in the 1980s. There he became an activist with books such as ‘Moby Dick’ or ‘The Scarlet Letter’, which denounce the oppression and censorship of the government and urge to rebel against a corrupt system. Unmissable example of manhwa, the South Korean manga.

‘Wild horses’

Jordi Cussà and Kap. Farmers Publishers. € 20Jordi Cussà died in July without seeing this version published, rewritten by himself, of his landmark novel ‘Cavalls salvatges’ by the graphic humorist Kap. In black and white with relevant touches of red, this comic, from Pagès’s new collection in Catalan, reflects the generation of the counterculture, marked by heroin, of which the author himself was a victim.

‘A World of Raw Art’ / ‘A World of Raw Art’

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Oriol Malet and Christian Berst. Norma / Comanegra. € 24

Graphic display of Oriol Malet who embarked on this comic to the French gallery owner Christian Berst to vindicate Art Brut, a fascinating marginal and silenced art that originally referred to the one made by the mentally ill in psychiatric patients. It was Jean Dubuffet who coined the term, which ended up welcoming art created by self-taught people outside the academic world.