After years of speculation, we finally get to see this comic book masterpiece!
It began as an idea Rolling Stone magazine had in the early seventies about getting some musicians and comic book artists together to tell the story of the then past decade, the sixties, in comic book form, and then publish it as either a special supplement to the magazine or a 20 page comic book. They called in Michel Choquette, then working for National Lampoon, to coordinate and serve as editor for the project. Choquette, however didn't want to limit the project to only America and American comic book artists, and went all over the world to gather artists from around the globe. He also thought it'd be better if the artists were given a tabloid size format, like the one newspapers used for their comic section every Sunday, instead of the usual comic book format, and so make this a one-of-a-kind, special project. Unfortunately, Rolling Stone got cold feet after a while and left Choquette alone with the burden of the project (or with the "hot potato" as it's generally known in the business). So M. Choquette went around the world looking for a publisher, even going so far as to preparing a dummy for the Frankfurt book fair in the mid-seventies. Again, he got turned down by everyone. Choquette would have to wait nearly forty years, before an article appeared in the Comic Journal telling about his amazing venture in getting all this incredible people together to do a comic book about the sixties. Soon after, some publishers started knocking on Choquette's front door, and Abrams finally published the book. Guess it was worth being patient after all...
Though we've seen other compilation comic books, wherein different artists draw about a certain topic (AIDS, the Iran-Contra affair, the war in Bosnia, Human Rights, 9/11, etc.), this book, had it been published in the early seventies would have been the first of them all. But that's not really the issue here. What's so astounding about this book is the people gathered in here. We get comic book artists from all over the world (well, almost), ranging from underground, superhero, European (though conspicuously absent are any Asian or South American artists), to illustrators, musicians, and other people that aren't even connected to comic books. People like writer Tom Wolfe illustrates his own story (and he's a quite good artist himself) as does Fellini (who disliked being interviewed in English because he said he didn't speak the language, yet writes his story in fluent English) and the list goes on. Actually in one of the introductions of the book, there's a list of people Choquette contacted to be part of the project, many of whom never made it eventually (there are some letters reprinted in the endpapers).
The main problem most of these compilation books have, is that it's pretty tough on the contributors to come up with a satisfying one page story, unless it happens to a be a humorous gag. Also, since the art styles vary so much, it can be tough to get a homogeneous result. Yet, it works here, as every contributor gets to tell his or her, sometimes idiosyncratic, version of the sixties, and some stories are really funny and in most instances, even auto-biographical. To avoid having everyone tell the same story, a list of different events was handed out to the many different writers and artists. And to keep everything in some sort of order, every artist was asked to leave a blank space on their pages, so that said space could be filled in some way as to keep some sort of continuity with the whole project. This is where the book ultimately fails. Not knowing really what to do with those blank spaces, they are eventually filled in with drawings which are supposed to tell us M. Choquette's adventure as he compiled this book. Unfortunately, the style of the "artist" chosen to do this clashes badly with the artwork of the other artists (the fact that the drawings look as if they were done by a five-year old trying out his crayons for the first time, doesn't help much), and also don't make any sense at certain times. It's actually so unsettling, that I thought there was a printing mistake somewhere. However, I managed to pull out those images from my mind to fully appreciate the stories, and finally could actually enjoy them. And there are some gems in here, too, which is rarity for a book like this (see the Wednesday Comics)!
Though throughout the years I've seen a couple of these stories reprinted elsewhere, without knowing they were done for this book, I'll say that most of the work included has never been seen before!
As so many years have passed since this project was first compiled, a little restoring was done, mainly in what concerns the coloring, which now has been done digitally (on a computer). However, the digital coloring follows the original color of the strips, and most come out fairly close to the original (Giraud's Blueberry page and Morris' Lucky Luke are really like the original), but others, mainly those of some of the American artists (especially the ones of the superhero genre) don't come out as good, and look as gaudy as most Marvel and DC comic books do nowadays. I don't know whether it was indeed a good idea or not to recolor all the work... I guess it's all a matter of taste.
A cool thing is that all the contributions are kept in their original language, but have no fear, you don't have to be multilingual to read this book, as all the stories that aren't written in English are translated at the end of the book. We also get at the end of the book a summary on the topic the creators were covering in their stories (useful for those who don't remember or know the sixties, and sometimes helpful to explain what on earth are certain artists talking about), plus a brief biography on every contributor. Cool!
A series of introductions tells almost everything we have to know about this book (though some errors do appear; at one point this book is compared to Heavy Metal magazine, which we are led to believe saw publication in 1974, when actually, it wouldn't appear until a few years later, 1977, to be precise, and even its French counterpart wouldn't appear until 1975; and by the way, Heavy Metal doesn't resemble this book at all, as the original Metal Hurlant was a project started by some artists who wanted to draw sci-fi stories for a more adult reader; mainly, they wanted to draw naked girls and rocketships, which isn't at all the purpose of this book!). We also get the original cover under the new dust jacket, so all in all this is excellent.
While I won't list the artists included (most are already dead or are by now retired, and the art-styles vary a lot), let's just say that many of the American contributors already worked for the National Lampoon, and the foreign artists include some of the best known European artists. This doesn't mean that all the best comic artits are in here or that you'll find your favorite artist (though you might), but I don't know where else you can get Morris (Luck Luke) and the team of Goscinny-Uderzo (Asterix) in the same book (these were, along with Tintin's Hergé, the biggest selling comic book authors in the world, and probably still are to this day).
Now, many of you might wonder what's the big deal about having a book that covers the decade of the sixties. Well, let's just say that without the sixties, we wouldn't be where we are now. The sixties were the first truly modern decade of the past century. It gave us pop/rock music with all its excesses, women's lib, anti-war demonstrations, man on the moon, racial integration, free love and s-e-x. It also brought in global terrorism, drugs and leftist guerrilla warfare. Uhmm, seems this is exactly the sort of world we're living in right now.
Lastly, I must say that this is truly an extraordinary book that any comic book aficionado, whether he lived the sixties or not, should have. Think of it as the catalog of a museum exposition featuring comic book artists from all over the world (well, almost), printed in a tabloid format, in hardcover and on sturdy paper. Yum!
All in all, I give this book five stars, although there were certain things I didn't like, but the sheer scope of the whole endeavor is just mind-boggling. A masterpiece!
