(art meet life, life meet art: Moore with some of the Occupy protestors outside St Paul’s London)

“At the start of the 1980s when the ideas that would coalesce into V for Vendetta were springing up from a summer of anti-Thatcher riots across the UK coupled with a worrying surge from the far-right National Front, Guy Fawkes’ status as a potential revolutionary hero seemed to be oddly confirmed by circumstances surrounding the comic strip’s creation: it was the strip’s artist, David Lloyd, who had initially suggested using the Guy Fawkes mask as an emblem for our one-man-against-a-fascist-state lead character.

When this notion was enthusiastically received, he decided to buy one of the commonplace cardboard Guy Fawkes masks that were always readily available from mid-autumn, just to use as convenient reference.

To our great surprise, it turned out that this was the year (perhaps understandably after such an incendiary summer) when the Guy Fawkes mask was to be phased out in favour of green plastic Frankenstein monsters geared to the incoming celebration of an American Halloween.

It was also the year in which the term “Guy Fawkes Night” seemingly disappeared from common usage, to be replaced by the less provocative ‘bonfire night’.

At the time, we both remarked upon how interesting it was that we should have taken up the image right at the point where it was apparently being purged from the annals of English iconography. It seemed that you couldn’t keep a good symbol down. ”

(members of the Polish parliament don V masks recently in protest at economic, repressive copyright & web intrusion laws and other measures. V is no longer just for the street activist)

(details from the first plate in the Harlot’s Progress series by Hogarth)

And yet it wasn’t ever sure Maus would become this iconic book – as Art explains in the forthcoming MetaMaus many publishers rejected the concept when his agent pitched the book to them. It may seem a little like the infamous man who turned down the Beatles, but to be fair to most English language book publishers back then a full length graphic novel was an unusual item most wouldn’t be familiar with, or know how to deal with (some probably didn’t even know exactly how to read it, I suspect – being able to read a comics page is a learned skill). But eventually it was accepted, with neither the publisher or artist having any idea that it would go on to become such a literary landmark.

I’ve been lucky enough to have a read at an advance copy of MetaMaus, a fascinating look by Art back into how Maus came into being, from the original short three pager in Funny Animals through his talks with his father for his personal recollections, years of research, struggling to decide how to portray some characters and scenes, trying to secure a publisher and, even after the book is published and had become a huge success, the effect this had had on him and his life – something he likens to being akin to Heller with Catch-22, wondering if anything else you create afterwards will be judged fairly on its own merits or held up against Maus as the standard, not an easy shadow to live in. The book also talks about how it has affected his own family, asking some questions I hadn’t considered about Maus before (and I’ve re-read it a number of times over the years). Packed with rarely seen work, sketches and other pieces of Maus history, the lovely hardback also comes with a DVD packed with various multimedia items to supplement it. It’s pretty much essential reading for anyone interested in the artform of serious comics and a fascinating (and sometimes personal and touching) insight into the creation of one of the most important comics works of the last quarter century, all built around a series of talks by Art with Hillary Chute of the University of Chicago.

In addition to MetaMaus, Penguin Viking are also publishing a gorgeous 25th anniversary hardback edition of the Complete Maus, in the same matching format as MetaMaus (quite lovely hardbacks with cloth spines), which is also published this week. And thanks to the generosity of our friends at Penguin we have 5 sets of MetaMaus and the Complete Maus 25th Anniversary Hardcover just waiting for 5 lucky readers to give a good home to. To be in with a chance of winning a copy of both books email in the answer to one simple question – what is the name of Art’s father? Send your answer (and contact details) to joe (dot) gordon (at) forbiddenplanet (dot) co (dot) uk before Monday 14th of November to be in with a chance of winning this gorgeous set of books.

Today is June the 6th. To those of us who grew up on a diet of comics like the immortal Commando Book (still going strong from DC Thomson), Warlord, Battle, Victor, Hotspur and many more we’ve known and respected this day since we were kids, as the ‘longest day’, when Operation Overlord saw the enormous invasion fleet carrying Allied troops to liberate Nazi occupied Europe, a great many of whom would never return from the bloody beaches of Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno and Sword, but who secured for all of us the rights such as freedom of expression and speech which we sometimes take for granted. Sadly it seems this enormous armada and the brave souls who sailed with it into history (and the many equally brave souls in the French Resistance who struggled in the dark to make it possible) is fading from the memory of some younger generations; one wonders if one day it will, if recalled, be thought of like a myth, like the thousand ships at Troy, or if it is half-remembered it will only be from comics, films and video games.

(The Cap on a ficticious comic book D-Day, art by Michael Larking, found via Bob Mitchell’s blog)

While the version of ‘history’ we were exposed to as young comics readers wasn’t exactly textbook and certainly jingoistic and biased for the most part, it was for many young lads their first knowledge of events which had, let’s be clear, shaped our world, so when we came to proper history books later in school we already knew the basics. Lacking those comics today’s kids, as this cartoon by Cox & Forkum shows, seem rather unfamiliar with this important turning point of history:

(remembering D-Day by and (c) Cox & Forum)

I’m sure plenty of kids are aware of their history but it is sad to think that the above cartoon may be all too accurate for others. These were momentous events that shouldn’t be forgotten, they preserved our freedoms at a huge cost and some elements of that day in 1944 still leak into today’s culture, witness the great Steve Bell’s cartoon with presidents Obama and Sarkozy on ‘Obahama Beach’:

But as I looked around the web for suitable cartoon and comics imagery for today I think the one that seemed most appropriate and most touching was this fairly simple but quite effective one by Brian Fray, the shadow of history but also the long shadow of a long life cast by one of those who was there but did come home. A reminder to us not only of that day but that when we look at an elderly man today perhaps we should pause and think; he wasn’t always an old man, once he was young and when he was perhaps he was one of those men who fought for us all. And they should be remembered.

(cover art to Deutschland, Ein Bilderbuch by Isabel Kreitz, published Dumont Buchverlag)

The events range from the world-shattering (Berlin in the 50′s or the unification in the 1990′s and the introduction of the Euro) to the almost mundane (the disappearance of that most German of all letters, the Ringel-s), and in every case, they are visualised rather by suggesting them than by showing them.  The profound impact of the return of the German prisoners of war from the Soviet Union in 1955 is expressed by showing the grey men from the past in the colorful, hopeful streets of 1950′s Germany.  The separation of the two Germanies, and their reunification some decades later, only play at the background of what people are actually talking about : football and whether they will still have a job tomorrow.

(page from Deutschland, Ein Bilderbuch by Isabel Kreitz)

The book is a very sharp analysis of contemporary Germany, and of how it came to be, but at the same time it is full of irony and lightness, and that would seem to be what German weekly Der Spiegel liked about it when it lauded it with praise.  I can only hope that, just as German literature gets translated now and then, an English-language publisher will have the audacity to publish this book in English.  Not only is it a great graphic novel full of great art, it is also a book that’s not just about Germany, but about how today’s Europe came to be.

The Atlantic reports on a blast from the past – an atomic blast from the past, in fact. Between the 50s and 90s the USA tested hundreds of nuclear devices in the deserts of Nevada. Understandably residents of Nevada and neighbouring Utah and California weren’t entirely comfortable with the idea of their government detonating hundreds of nuclear test weapons in their proximity, so the government created a booklet to assuage citizen’s fear – the cartoons in the pamphlet are hilarious.

As the Atlantic observers they are somewhere between ‘school house rock’ and an airline safety instruction manual; all are both amusing and disturbing to modern eyes for the seemingly unconcerned stance they take on being close to a nuclear explosion, as locals calmly open their shop doors to ‘equalise pressure’ following a blast, or images of happy cowboy-ish couples in sunglasses smiling and enjoying the after-flash of a nuke going off in their backyard. (link via Olivia Solon)

(details from the first page of The History of British Comics, by and (c) Bryan Talbot)

(cover to Yuri’s Day by and (c) Peter Hodkinson, Piers Bizony and Andrew King)

Fifty years ago this very day, the early days of the Space Race, and the thunder of the great genius Korolev’s rockets carry Yuri Gagarin on a journey that no human being in all the ages of the world had every undertaken, the voyage into space. For the first time in the entire history of the world a man was orbiting our little world from above, passing over countries and entire continents in minutes; science fiction had just become science fact, earlier than anyone might have dared dream, and the Soviet Union, only 20 years after reeling from the Nazi invasion that cost their country so dear, was the one to do this amazing thing.  Seems sad today that so few folks seem to know or care about this astonishing, heroic feat. When I was a boy people like Gagarin and Armstrong were heroes, today quite a few people I spoke to weren’t even sure who I was talking about; sadly I suspect more people care about X-Factor contestants than events like this.

But I refuse to be depressed by this, it’s a day to celebrate Gagarin and the heroic age of early space exploration. The BBC archives has the original radio broadcast announcing Gagarin’s flight online along with other historic clips, and as I mentioned last month, the trio of Peter Hodkinson, Piers Bizony and Andrew King have created a comics history of the early days of the Soviet space programme (the triumphs but also the tragedies, including the gulags some of the top scientists were sent to by Stalin) which you can learn more about here.

(Google have this lovely retro-Soviet propoganda style graphic today to mark the anniversary of Gagarin’s astonishing flight, art (c) Google)

Retelling History with Graphic Novels: A Multicultural Approach from OITQ on Vimeo.