Alberto Breccia's Dracula

Alberto Breccia, 1919-1993

Book - 2021

In this wordless, full-color collection of satiric short comics stories, an internationally acclaimed cartoonist chronicles the waning days of the most famous vampire of them all. Alberto Breccia's Dracula' is composed of a series of brutally funny satirical misadventures starring the hapless eponymous antihero. Literally defanged (a humiliating trip to the dentist doesn't help), the protagonist's glory days are long behind him and other, more sinister villains (a corrupt government, overtly backed by American imperialism) are sickening and draining the life out of the villagers far more than one creature of the night ever could. This is the first painted, full-color entry in Fantagraphics' artist-focused Alberto Br...eccia Library, and the atmospheric palette adds mood and dimension. It also includes a sketchbook showing the artist's process. Dracula' has no co-author, and so Breccia's carnivalesque vision is as pure Breccia as it gets. Created during the last of a succession of Argentine military dictatorships (1982-1983), this series of short comics stories ran in Spain's Comix Internacional periodical in 1984. The moral purpose of Breccia's expressionistic art style is made explicit; he shows that every ounce of his grotesque, bloated characters' flesh and blood has been cruelly extracted from the less fortunate.

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Subjects
Genres
Graphic novels
Comics (Graphic works)
Wordless comics
Wordless novels
Published
Seattle, Washington : Fantagraphic Books, Inc 2021.
Language
English
Main Author
Alberto Breccia, 1919-1993 (artist)
Other Authors
Daniele Brolli, 1959- (writer of afterword), Jamie Richards (translator)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
83 pages ; color illustrations ; 31 cm
ISBN
9781683964391
  • The last night of Carnival
  • Latrans canis non admordet
  • A tender broken heart
  • I was legend
  • Poe? Yuck!
  • Selections from Alberto Breccia's Dracula sketchbook
  • Afterword: Old blood / Daniele Brolli [translated by Jamie Richards]
  • Alberto Breccia biography / by Ezequiel García.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

The late Breccia (Perramus) brings a stunning, nightmarish, and politically charged vision to Dracula's final days in this wordless volume, which tells five disconnected tales as the vampire wanders through a city, encountering old lovers, would-be victims, and Edgar Allan Poe. Breccia (1919-1993), whose major surrealist works satirized the Argentinian dictatorship, first published these full-color painterly comics stories in Spain's Comix Internacional in 1984. Their characters appear twisted and abstracted, an outward expression of moral decay. Together they reveal a desperately lonely figure who, despite the grandiosity of his mythology, is increasingly feckless in the face of a crumbling society. Some pieces run almost like jokes. For instance, Dracula roams a carnival, stalks a beautiful woman, and tries to victimize her, but he's thwarted by a man in a Superman outfit (sans logo); when the hero follows the woman, lured by the promise of romance, he discovers that she herself is a vampire. The fourth installment, though, ends not with a punchline, but with a descent into nightmare, as Dracula navigates a hellscape overrun by secret police, cannibalism, and mass starvation. His immortal power useless, Dracula becomes a scared witness, and the episode ends with him clutching a cross and praying in a church--while unsubtle, the commentary plays against the familiar conventions of the character. Breccia's gothic visions skewer the power of myth and make a salient statement about a society that would support fascist rule. (July)

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