Peplum
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
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 the Satyricon 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.
This NYRC edition features new English hand-lettering and is an oversized paperback with French flaps and extra-thick paper.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Blutch (aka Christian Hincker) is a revered cartoonist in France, but this is only the second of his books to be translated into English. Considered one of his masterworks, it's a rough continuation of The Satyricon, with Blutch's own feverish story line providing the counterpoint. Roman Publius Cimber finds the statue of a woman in a cave, and madness and obsession follow accompanied by faux-Shakespearian dialogue, finely captured by Gauvin's translation. Blutch's art is truly exquisite, rendering battles, orgies, and conversations in dense, inky lines akin to Mattotti, but completely his own and completely haunting. The storytelling likewise consists of simple grids of panels. Despite all this clarity, the story is elusive and disjointed, as men, beasts, and monsters all stand in the way of Cimber's quest for love. The book requires rereading to grasp the scope of storytelling and linework, which is effortless enough to make the greatest American cartoonists jealous.
