Is That All There Is? by Joost Swarte (198x267mm)
I was going to keep this blog series All-American, but let’s digress for one post (ahem) and have a look at this book.
I guess all comics collections have to have an introduction by Chris Ware, and this one isn’t too bad.
This is allegedly a complete collection of all comics Swarte has created — and it’s just 140 pages, which explains the title of this collection.
Swarte is, of course, the most Hergé artist of all artists inspired by Hergé, and that extends beyond his line.
Swarte basically does all of the pieces (they’re mostly fewer than six pages long) using this style, but varying how it’s coloured.
Oh, and there’s this one. Hold your phone upside down.
This book is a bit smaller than normal “album” size… which is an odd choice. I mean, a smaller book looks cuter and thicker, but it means that more than a handful of the strips have to be printed sideways to be legible. Sideways printing is fun in pamphlets, but not so much in books, I think. I’d love to have an oversized version of this book. I mean, the artwork’s so gorgeous…
The stories are mostly pretty straight forward and funny, but here’s a political one, and I guess it shows that the football organisations haven’t changed much (Argentinian dictators then; Qatari slavery now).
And this book is also very edumacational: Here’s how colour separations are done.
The book reads like what it is: A collection of all the comics a person has made, mostly presented chronologically. So there’s not really any… coherence… it’s more like a treasure trove.
This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.