Full-on, 1967 / Summer of Love psychedelia meets science fiction via Prince Valiant and Weird Tales in this period classic. Starting out as what was an unrealized science fiction film script by Jean Rollin, Saga de Xam was adapted by cartoonist provocateur, Nicolas Devil (née Deville) who, with the aide of some peers including Philippe Druillet, Barbara Girard, ran it through the psychedelic mixing bowl of the times to produce a work that, together with its bookends – Guy Peellaert's Adventures of Jodelle (1966) and Iris (1968) by Thé Tjong-Khing, Lo Hartog van Banda and Rudy Voorman – provides a sort of unoffical trilogy documenting the swinging-psychedelic-era of continental Europe, comics-style (And it's worth noting here that the titles of all three of these works* incorporate the name of their respective – and sexy [aka sexualized] – female protagonists; which points to the fact that thse comics – and so, by extension, this era – can be defined at least to some degree as men looking at women and thinking about (imagining) their bodies, and so worked to bring to the surface of critical consciousness the concept of "the male gaze").
This edition from Anthology is a nice – and hefty – oversize (10" x 13") hardcover that reproduces the complete original work in full color and black & white (as it originally appeared) and also includes a lengthy introduction by Christian Staebler. Amazingly, this is the FIRST ever English language translation of this work, courtesy Anna Bialostosky.
Learn more about this work and this edition by heading over to TCJ.com and reading Joe McCulloch's in-depth review, HERE.
Learn about its Lovecraftian elements – and get some peeks at the original 1967 edition – via Bobbie Derie's write-up, HERE.
AND, we've posted a hefty gallery of spreads upo on the Copacetic Tumblr that will give you a pretty good idea of what's in store, HERE.
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*Contrary to what will be the immediate impression of most Anglophone readers, the "Saga" of the title refers not to a saga, in the sense of a story, but rather to the protagonist, Saga, a blue-skinned (alien) woman from the planet Xam.
