Name: Peplum
ISBN: 9781590179833

Blutch

Tegneserie - graphic novel. An epic of ancient Rome. At the edge of the empire, a gang of bandits discovers the body of a beautiful woman in a cave; she is encased in ice but may still be alive. One of the bandits, bearing a stolen name and with the frozen maiden still in tow, makes his way toward Rome - seeking power, or maybe just survival, as the world unravels

Peplum

Gavin

Both oblique and direct, earthy and lofty. Everyone looks dead - except for the objects / people of desire. Everyone is eloquent, even as they are degraded, even as they scrabble and thieve. Lots of boys wandering around with no shirt for no particular reason. Ends suddenly after months of betrayal, shipwreck, stabbing, opportunism.

Emmett

The book jacket was right to call it a 'grand, strange dream'. The dialogue is rendered (or translated) poetically, but what really stands out are the images - bold and dark and nightmarish. His use of thick lines, menacing shadows and liberal use of silhouettes reminds me of the horror manga artist Junji Ito. Figures are thrown into sharp relief by harsh white, couched in pure black gloom, some with large staring eyes like bottomless pits. Its impressionistic style is the source of its fascination, every panel speaking a visual language, eliciting emotions and affects that transcend words. It was interesting to me that Blutch sometimes opted for hurried strokes but at moments of action each panel freezes the characters into wonderfully composed tableaux, like a long take in slow-motion. There was definitely a cinematic quality to his composition; it doesn't feel as if it follows the usual flow and logic of a comic book or a graphic novel narrative, his images work more like graphic montages.