SelfMadeHero’s Autumn Solicits: A New Quartet Of Graphic Novels

More great looking new books for you now from one of Britain’s finest graphic novel publishers… SelfMadeHero‘s quartet of Autumn 2024 books…

Since its founding in 2007, SelfMadeHero has developed a reputation for publishing a select yet high quailty list of books on a diverse range of subjects. Or, as they put it themselves:

‘Our mission at SelfMadeHero is simple: to publish ground-breaking and beautiful work by authors and artists from across the globe, from the quirky and humorous to the political and profound. We are proud to bring readers graphic novels and visual narratives that provoke, entertain, inspire and inform.’

Frankly, if you’ve never sampled the delights of Ian Edginton and INJ Culbard’s Sherlock Holmes adaptations or Culbard’s Lovecraft adaptations, Glyn Dillon’s The Nao of Brown, or The Motherless Oven trilogy by Rob Davis then you’ve really missed out. Similarly with their graphic biography, bringing some of the world’s finest comic makers on board – try Reinhard Kleist‘s magnificent one-two punch of Johnny Cash: I See A Darkness and The Boxer for example. They work with authors from around the world, bringing both English-language originals and translated works to comic shops and book shops – and your bookshelves.

For more recent brilliance, try Peter Kuper’s excellent Ruins, exploring contemporary Mexican history and society; Mylo Choy’s Middle Distance where running and self-acceptance combine in truly poignant ways; or No Surrender by Scarlett and Sophie Rickard, an adaptation of Constance Maud’s suffragist novel of women effecting change.

That’s just a few. There are plenty more. Just go have a look at the backlist and see just what there is to offer.

Now, onto the four being published this autumn – Already out in the UK but not out till October in the Americas, The Anxiety Club is a great guide to identifying, understanding, and managing anxiety. Then there’s the insane yet true tale of Madame Choi and the Monsters, about the kidnapping of South Korean filmmakers by Kim Jong-il. More true life adaptations come in Adieu Birkenau, a graphic memoir of Holocaust survivor and educator Ginette Kolinka. Then there’s Andrzej Klimowski’s latest tale Edifice, a Christmas tale of sorts, surreal and wonderfully strange.

Then there’s the one I’m perhaps most excited about, They Shot The Piano Player by Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal, the partnership behind the truly beautiful Chico and Rita animated film and graphic novel of love and music. They Shot The Piano Player looks every bit as beautiful, tracing the origins of the Bossa Nova through a Brazilian detective story.

.Right then, now for a little look at the titles SelfMadeHero have got coming out this autumn, with the PR bumf from the publishers…

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THE ANXIETY CLUB

Written by Dr. Frédéric Fanget and Catherine Meyer, illustrated by Pauline Aubry
Published on 18 July (UK) and 1 October (US)

An illustrated guide to help identify, understand, and manage anxiety.

In The Anxiety Club we are introduced to three characters, each with a different form of anxiety. After hearing their stories, we follow them into the therapy room, where they discover the behavioral, cognitive, and emotional tools to help free themselves from anxious thinking. Many people believe that there is no treatment for anxiety: they try to soothe their inner suffering with medication, alcohol, drugs, or binge eating. However, there are healthy ways to manage such negative thoughts and feelings. This self-help handbook, written by leading anxiety expert and psychiatrist Dr. Frédéric Fanget and editor Catherine Meyer and drawn by Pauline Aubry, helps the reader to identify, understand, and find freedom from anxiety.

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THEY SHOT THE PIANO PLAYER

Written by Fernando Trueba, illustrated by Javier Mariscal
Published on 26 September (UK) and 3 December (US)

From the authors of Chico and Rita and adapted into an animated feature from Sony Pictures. An investigation and celebration of the origins of the world-renowned Latino musical samba-jazz movement Bossa Nova, They Shot the Piano Player captures a fleeting time bursting with creative freedom at a turning-point in Latin American history in the ’60s and ’70s, before the continent was riven by totalitarian regimes. Francisco Tenório Cerqueira Júnior, born in Rio de Janeiro, was one of the most recognized musicians of the samba-jazz movement. At 3 a.m. on 18 March 1976, after giving a concert at the Gran Rex in Buenos Aires, the 34-year-old pianist went out to get some cigarettes. He was never seen again. What happened that night? This is the question that moves the narrator of this documentary graphic novel to initiate an investigation into the fateful events that led to the death of a musician destined to change the course of Brazilian music forever.

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MADAME CHOI AND THE MONSTERS: A TRUE STORY

Written by Patrick Spät, illustrated by Sheree Dominingo
Published on 10 October (UK) and 5 November (US)

The incredible-yet-true story of celebrated South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee, abducted in 1978 by North Korean secret agents on the orders of their film-crazed future leader Kim Jong-il. Six months later, filmmaker Shin Sang-ok, Choi Eun-hee’s ex-husband, is abducted in turn. Choi and Shin remain unaware of each other’s fates until they meet again at a dinner hosted by Kim Jong-il in 1983. Kim forces Choi and Shin to make films, including the infamous kaiju cult classic Pulgasari (1985), all while convincing the world that they serve North Korea willingly. Choi and Shin’s love rekindles slowly in this reunited captivity. Only at the 1986 Vienna Film Festival do they escape, fleeing in a daring car chase to the American embassy.

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ADIEU BIRKENAU: Ginette Kolinka’s Story of Survival

Written by Ginette Kolinka, Jean-David Morvan, and Victor Matet, illustrated by Ricard Efa and Cesc F. Dalmases
Published on 24 October (UK) and 19 November (US)

The graphic memoir of Ginette Kolinka, Holocaust survivor, educator, and “ambassador for the memory” of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

It is April 1944. 19-year-old Ginette Kolinka arrives at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Her father and little brother are immediately gassed. Ginette is selected as a worker. She survives. It is October 2020. 95-year-old Ginette takes advantage of a lull in the COVID-19 epidemic to accompany a group visiting Birkenau one last time. As a farewell, she brings with her a journalist (France Info’s Victor Matet) and a comic strip writer, J-D Morvan. From this trip a comic book is born. Ginette tells of her life before the war and subsequent imprisonment, as well as her present situation today. Still sharing what she witnessed with the world, Ginette tells everything with her trademark liveliness and biting humour. If we laugh and shudder, it’s because the story she tells is ours too.

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EDIFICE

By Andrzej Klimowski
Published on 7 November (UK) and 19 December (US)

At the heart of the dream city of Engelstadt stand the tall storeys of an ancient apartment block, home to a nightmare labyrinth of corridors and secrets. Christmas is coming, but the mysterious disappearance of one of its tenants causes a cast of characters (or suspects?) to be assembled before us. Meanwhile, a dark cloud threatens to envelop the city, caped crusaders (or marauders) wander the park, and there is a film screening to attend.

A pan-European Pandora’s Box of narrative Russian dolls and Chinese boxes, Edifice builds into an Expressionist graphic vision of our archetypal, metamorphic Shadows and proves to be one of the strangest Christmas stories you will ever read.

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And an extra treat… the trailer for Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal‘s Chico & Rita animated film…

… and the new trailer for their latest film and graphic novel, They Shot The Piano Player…