Alternative Visions
Alternative Visions |
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Page 8 of 29  Raw The final ingredient in the Raw mix was foreign material - mainly from Europe, but also occasionally from South America and Japan. The Euro-strips were largely down to Francoise Mouly's influence, though Spiegelman was enthusiastic. Often, the European creators themselves had been influenced by punk, and represented the post-Heavy Metal generation. They included: from Belgium, Ever Meulen, whose work was characterized by a precisely rendered expressionism; from France, Pascal Doury who specialized in bizarre fantasies, and Jacques Tardi who produced strips best described as noir realism; and from Spain, Javier Mariscal who injected into the comic an avant-garde whimsy. Above all, there was the Dutchman Joost Swarte, whose elegant linework and sophisticated designs spoke of cool irony, and did much to give early issues of the magazine their character. 'Raw One-Shots' developed as a separate line of titles by individual contributors, published by Raw Books. Highly designed, they were intended as a means to showcase a body of work or tell stories longer than could be handled in Raw itself. The first was a collection of Panter's strips, Jimbo (1983), printed on newsprint and bound between cardboard covers with gaffer tape. It was followed by another Panter outing, Invasion of the Elvis Zombies (1985) and Charles Burns's Big Baby (1986) about an odd-looking suburban child who lives in fear of monsters and Jerry Moriarty's Jack Survives (1985), which had an acetate cover in which the colour slid out. There were also two books by illustrator Sue Coe: How to Commit Suicide in South Africa (1983), an anti-apartheid protest, and X (1993), a paean to Malcolm X.  'The Gurley Family' (1989). Art/script: Joost Swarte.  Maus and Maus II (Penguin, 1987 and 1992). Art/script: Art Spiegelman. The epic story of one individual's experience of the Nazi Holocaust, as told in anthropomorphic terms, with Jews as mice, and Nazis as cats (a sort of deadly serious Tom and Jerry), and a milestone in the history of comics. Originally serialized in Raw, it was in the form of the twin graphic novels pictured here that it received widespread attention in the mainstream media, and Spiegelman was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1992: the first cartoonist ever to be so honoured.  Maus and Maus II |