Once upon a time there was a little girl how fell in love with the mix of drawings and the written word, today we call it graphic novels, manga or comic books, but in those days it was just plain and simple comics. And as most things when you are young everything in your life comes with fixed codes, what is suitable for a girl in that age, what you should and what you shouldn’t.
Like most part of my life and as a younger girl, I didn’t play by the “rules”. In this case it happened to be that I read and collected “boy’s” comics, just loved all those superheroes, all detectives and the spies, both new ones and old. Remember rumbling through magazine in secondhand shops looking for Superman, Batman, Garth, Corrigan, Rip Kirby, XII just to name a few and as soon as I got my monthly pocket money I’d ran to the kiosk to buy the latest comics. And it was here that I pretend to have a brother and always said that I was running an errand for him, so I wouldn’t get those looks. It was a time and a town that it simply wasn’t appropriate for a girl my age to read those kinds of comics and it was most certainly not considered to be “real” litterateur and as such it was not really accepted by the general public or in the libraries.
Some time passed and along with it came my teens and then early adulthood, I kept buying whatever I felt like reading, unfortunately I still remember those looks and comments at the supermarket (and we are talking about when I was around sixteen to twenty-ish).
Cashier lady
– “oh that looks violent…”looking up at me with a displeased expression on her face
-“So we sell that kind of…hum…”(turning the magazine) “didn’t know we sell that kind of magazines…” and looking at me as I just handled her something foul.
– “Are you sure that’s what you want, isn’t that more for children/boy’s”?
Well the list can go on forever, at the the end I got sooo tired of defending myself and well as the years went by it did became harder to get the graphic novels I wanted, so I started to order them instead, so much easier to just pick up a package at my local post office.
Luckily today, at least in most cases, comics/ graphic novels/ manga is not considered “bad” litterateur, or not suitable for girls, or just simply for children at a certain age. Today we read all kinds of story’s that has drawings AND word in it and “we” well yes thats you girls and boys, in all form, shapes and ages!
So here is my walk down memory lane, my walk through some of those lovely comic books I read back then. It was hard to just pick a few, so I went a bit overboard and now there is magzines everywere in my flat. There is soooo many to choose, I just couldn’t publish every singel one of them.
Oh well, here is a small selection of “oldies”. It felt nice to revisiting all those lovely, wonderful, bizarre or horror filled worlds.
Enjoy 😀
Yoko Tsuno by Roger Leloup
Kelly Green by Stan Drake
Elfquest by Wendy and Richard Pini
Modesty Blaise created by Peter O’Donnell
Judge Anderson created by John Wagner
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec by Jacques Tardi
Indian Summer by Hugo Pratt & Milio Manara
The Passagers of the Wind by François Bourgeon
The Death of Superman published by DC Comics
The Crow by J.O. Barr
Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
The Twilight Companions by François Bourgeon
Sandman written by Neil Gaiman
Batman: Arkham Asylum by Grant Morrison & David McKean
the road so far... 
