INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS
(Company names beginning with N)
NBM
JOHN MUIR TO THE HEART OF SOLITUDE HC
(W/A) Lomig
1867: A sawmill is running at full speed with a terrible noise when suddenly workers run to rescue a man on the ground. He has seriously injured his eyes. John Muir is twenty-nine years old and has to be confined in a dark room: it is likely that he may remain blind. But miraculously, after months of an almost mystical convalescence, he regains his sight. This episode convinces him he's going to leave everything behind and embrace his lifelong dream: head south to meet the wilderness. Armed with only his courage, his youth, a magnifying glass and a botanical book, he treks hundreds of miles on foot from Indiana to Florida. This biography also covers his other life-changing pioneering trek along the Sierra Nevada Trail which now bears his name. Here, in breathtaking vistas, is the inspiration he got to found the Sierra Club, create the first national parks, and become one of America's first and foremost environmentalist champions. (STL360390) (C: 0-1-1)
HC, 8x11, 176pgs, 2C SRP: $24.99
EQUINOXES HC (O/A)
(W/A/CA) Cyril Pedrosa
In an equinox, day is as long as night, as if the world found perfect equilibrium between shadow and light, a fleeting equilibrium, similar to the stakes of our human destinies. Segmented into four tableaux for four seasons, unrelated people of all social backgrounds seeking equilibrium cross paths with other solitudes, weaving in and out of one and other's lives, all captivated and tormented by the enigmatic meaning of life. Every season has its visual identity and its individual voice, culminating in summer and, possibly, an answer. (STL012510) (JUN161646)
HC, 9x12, 336pgs, FC SRP: $44.99
PORTUGAL HC (MR) (O/A)
(W/A/CA) Cyril Pedrosa
Comics artist Simon Muchat is stuck. Suffering writer's block, uninspired, vegetating as a school art teacher, he is losing direction and his taste for life, until one day he is invited to appear at a comics convention in Portugal, the country his family came from and which he hadn't seen since his childhood. The experience proves cathartic. Even though he is not Portuguese himself and is a foreigner there, so many elements are familiar to him. Meeting its lively citizens, full of the zest for life, his distant yet welcoming family bringing back fond early memories, all prove reinvigorating, the breath of fresh air he so badly needed. (STL065315) (OCT171705)
MATURE THEMES
HC, 9x12, 264pgs, FC SRP: $39.99
THOREAU A SUBLIME LIFE HC (O/A)
(W) Maximilien Le Roy (A) Dan A.
'To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust.' This graphic novel biography relates the forward looking inspirational life of the great author, philosopher and pioneering ecologist. Henry David Thoreau was also the father of the concept, still fresh today (see all the recent protests), of 'civil disobedience' which he used against slavery and the encroachment of government. (STK698230)
HC, 9x11, 88pgs, FC SRP: $19.99
NEW YORK REVIEW COMICS
MISERY OF LOVE GN (MR)
(W/A) Yvan Alagbe
Colonial history haunts this stunning, spectral-looking graphic novel, a spiritual sequel to the author's Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures. Yvan Alagbé continues his interrogation of race and family in modern France. The book focuses on the dream-like memories of a woman named Clare, who is spending time with her family for her grandfather's funeral. Alagbé shifts between narratives of the family, all haunted by the legacy of France's colonial subjugation of Africa. Alagbé works in stormy grayscale washes, using comics, as he puts it, as 'a sacred dimension which celebrates, questions and perpetuates life.... I believe that life is not damnation but grace.' (STL361553) (C: 0-1-2)
MATURE THEMES
SC, 8x9, 232pgs, FC SRP: $27.95