Longform: An Anthology of Graphic Narratives

By HarperCollins

Longform Annual presents stories that subvert conventional narrative; stories about ordinary people; autobiographies; travel tales - and through these stories establish comics as a permanent feature on a reader's shelf. The name 'Longform' is inspired by a Joe Sacco essay on the shrinking space to tell long graphic stories. The anthology takes us through the streets of Rome and Kolkata, modern day Tehran and ancient Bhutan, around-the-corner dystopias, imaginary cities and kaleidoscopic dreamscapes. The artists presented here include well-known names from India and elsewhere, such as Prakash Moorthy, Barroux, Venkat Shyam, Allen Shaw, as well as emerging artists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Apr 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9789352775989

Book preview

barroux

The ace illustrator, Barroux is a household name in France and has successfully created a new signature visual idiom.

breaking boundaries with comics

T

he collaboration between the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, and Alliance Française flourished from 2010 onwards. The director, Phillipe (my mad brother), was a like-minded person who helped us in getting legends like Eryc Abicasis, Jaques Remy and Georges Lacroix to light up the campus.

In 2014, when the amazing duo of Stephane Barroux and Julien Joubert spent a week in the sleepy NID campus, we expected them to break few more boundaries. On the night of 8 March, they set the stage on fire with an amazing comic book performance of Barroux’s cult classic, Line of Fire. I got two lovely originals from Barroux as a token of love, and my daughter Abonti got one as well! What a treasure to cherish! I was lucky to see Barroux’s seamless black ink drawings come to life in a live performance which tells the grim tale of war from the perspective of an unknown soldier in World War I.

In their own language, the philosophy of the project was, ‘To bring back to life, orally and visually, a story which could have been forgotten — to convey a shard of collective memory. A rare witness which tells the everyday life of a simple man, with whom anyone can identify. He is not a hero. In this performance, electric guitar sounds and brush strokes intertwine and answer one another, forming a surprising alchemy. This modern storytelling uses today’s media, and thus allows everyone to re-appropriate history. Music and drawings only suggest, leaving the spectator enough freedom to let his imagination wander, to build his own journey throughout this story, so distant but nevertheless so close.’

We are really honoured and thankful for Barroux’s generous support and contribution of his India sketches for this edition. They were all created during his stay in the western part of India. The free-flowing lines document the day-to-day life of Ahmedabad and other places, be it tailors or strangers. A unique contribution and a gentle reminder to budding graphic storytellers that, if you don’t draw and write every day from your context and break boundaries, you will be lost in the fakeness of Photoshop quicksand!

Sekhar Mukherjee, one of the Longform!