Coming in the spring of 2012 from Drawn & Quarterly, The Making Of —published this autumn, 2011, under the title De Liefhebbers in Belgium and Les Amateurs in France —is the new offering from Flemish cartoonist/visual artist/musician Brecht Evens, who shook the English-speaking comics world by the lapels last year with his gorgeously illustrated graphic novel, The Wrong Place (which regular readers will remember received a “Heads Up” and a capsule review here at RCN):
Via Amazon, here’s the publisher’s description of Evens’s new book (ISBN-10: 177046073X; ISBN-13: 978-1770460737):
The Making Of is the follow-up to international sensation Brecht Evens’s Eisner-nominated debut, The Wrong Place. With lush watercolors and his characteristic wit, Evens details the fumbling, amateurish foibles of the participants of a small art festival in the Flemish countryside. Pieterjan is invited to a small town as an honored guest. From the moment he arrives, things start going wrong, and since no one seems ready to step in, Pieterjan takes over the show. He decides to build a giant garden gnome as a symbol of Flemish identity, but the construction process brings buried tensions to the surface as the other artists become jealous of Pieterjan’s authority. In The Making Of, Evens delves deep into the petty tensions, small misunderstandings, and deadpan humor that pervade modern relationships. With a keen eye for the subtleties of body language, Evens’s The Making Of builds on the iconic visual style showcased in The Wrong Place, which was published around the world. Sweeping watercolors jump off the page, surrealist scenery intermingles with crowds of people, and small suburban plot homes have never looked so lovely.
For me, any painted graphic novel by Brecht Evens is a must buy! How about you?
Ragged Claws Network 