BOOK REVIEW EPILOGUE Author: Pablo Velarde From the reader report by: Jan Surmann By his graphic novel Epílogo, the recognized and award-winning comics artist Pablo Velarde pursues a crucial topic of Spain´s society of today in an exciting and compelling way: that is coping with the Franco era. Velarde succeeds with this in a particularly sensitive way, as the hook he uses is locating this socio-political debate within a family context. In the process, the author takes the reader with him on an emotional roller coaster ride which is deeply characterised by the point of view of the main protagonist and from which one becomes disentangled only at the end of the story, thus regaining a more objective view at the family history. In this context, the passed on family myths are metaphors of the social amnesia of the post-Franco era as well as of the question of how social narratives are passed on but also manipulated. Remarkable in this context is the author´s skilfulness when he makes also the reader becoming entangled with this spider web. Thus, the debate on the interpretational sovereignty over historic periods may be considered the crucial leitmotif, which is why the topical location of this graphic novel is definitely of universal interest. In terms of style, the design of the graphic novel Epílogo is very appealing. The hardcover underlines the claim to high quality. The drawings are frequently in black and white, and their symbolic language is very appealing to this reviewer. […] The artistic expression is strong and is even underlined by the sometimes long sequences without any text at all.
PUBLISHED IN NEW SPANISH BOOKS DE
118 · |
