The winter of the cartoonist /

In a book about rebels, reading against the presented order is highly recommended. Eisner-nominated Roca (The House, 2019) is part of the Spanish graphic novel elite, already awarded virtually all the Spanish honors, and this is the work he's "always wanted to create": both an homage to and exposé of Editorial Bruguera, Spain's legendary comics publisher that owned its artists--and all their work. In 1957, five major cartoonists chose defection from Bruguera's control. For a difficult yet glorious year, the quintet created a thrilling new magazine, Tio Vio, until reality forced four of the rebels back into Bruguera's clutches. To begin at the end is to gather the background--cultural context, short biographies of the vast cast--that further elevates and illuminates Roca's graphic history, deftly translated into English by Rosenberg. That titular winter in 1958, presented in panels of colder blue background, is repeatedly interrupted by warm brown and reddish backgrounds as artists plot their creative escape. Page after page, Roca excels at show-don't-tell, keeping dialogue to a minimum, deftly relying on detailed expressions to radiate hope, frustration, determination, and, of course, rebellion.

In this elegantly drawn but moribund historical graphic novel from Roca (The House), a quintet of cartoonists working for a large publishing house strike out on their own to create Tio Vivo, "the first magazine in Spain to be founded and directed by its authors." The story opens in the winter of 1958, when the five have hauled themselves back to their former employer, Bruguera, to return to work after their experiment failed. Roca cuts to the previous year, the change in seasons signaled by a wash of summery tones. He shows how this band of artists evolved from just wanting to keep rights to their work (a perennial cartoonist complaint) to branching out on their own. Their collaboration is nicely composed in cheery urban detail, the tie-wearing cartoonists smoking, gabbing, and nibbling on tapas. But the backdrop of Franco-era oppression is only lightly sketched and the central drama is almost over before it begins--Bruguera, with its 500 employees and million-strong subscribers, crushes the fledgling Tio Vivo with ease. Roca has a gift for conveying personalities and camaraderie, and while this will appeal to independent-minded artists invested in intellectual property issues, there just is not enough at stake in either the characters or the slim story line to sustain the attention of a broader readership. This snappy tale of creativity under pressure aims to inspire but is too thinly plotted to leave an impression. (May)

In the 1950s, Editorial Bruguera was one of the largest and most powerful publishing houses in Spain, owing in no small part to the work of their talented, wildly popular cartoonists. In Spring 1957, a group of five artists, tired of being underpaid, overworked, forced to make changes at the whims of their editors, and denied ownership of their original art, broke away to start their own magazine. While they saw themselves as creating history, their former employers saw them as setting a bad precedent and set out to crush them. Roca (The House) leads off this absorbing history with the cartoonists, out of money and desperate for work, returning to Editorial Bruguera just before Christmas 1958. As an opening scene, it's incredibly disorienting. But Roca moves back and forth in time, from one chapter to the next, juxtaposing the origins of the cartoonists' rebellion against its sad end, successfully deepening the tragedy, especially as a character who appears absolutely despicable at first is revealed to be deeply sympathetic by the final scene. VERDICT While structurally challenging, Roca's massively appealing illustration and masterly sense of narrative make this true story exceptionally compelling.