Below you'll find an article by Reinhard Kleist written in Spring 2023 at the time of publication for STARMAN: Bowie's Stardust Years, reshared here to whet your appetite for the May 2025 publication of the concluding part: LOW: Bowie's Berlin Years!
Dear readers,
“David Bowie saved my life”: I wrote that sentence in the list of thanks at the end of STARMAN, my graphic novel about Bowie, because it has twice been true. I was a kid of about eight or nine when I first heard “Ashes to Ashes” on the radio, and was transfixed. Though I didn’t understand the lyrics, the music made me somehow afraid and fascinated at the same time. The singer later appeared in teen magazines like Bravo, and in music videos on the TV and… I was smitten! Not only was he extremely good-looking, he was also, it seemed to me, in some mystical way, announcing the presence of another world that someday could be mine; that it was possible for me to leave behind the fenced-off environment of my little village outside Cologne and become, quite simply, somebody else. That was the first time Bowie saved my life. And, as I later found out, the lives of so many others.
Over the last few years I have written a number of graphic biographies about sporting champions (the boxers Emile Griffith and Hertzko Haft and the athlete Samia Yusuf Omar), the revolutionary Fidel Castro, and even a couple of musicians (Johnny Cash and Nick Cave). But creating something about Bowie has always been a long-lasting dream. I had to wait for the right moment to finally grasp how to convey a character with so many different aspects to him: where to lay the focus, what biographical span to include, and how to portray him, not just from my perspective of loving admiration, but also to include his many dark sides, and those of his personas.
One recurring theme in particular suddenly emerged: I call it “the abandoned mission” – a mission to save the world, and everyone in it, that somehow ends up in the gutter. The arc of that storyline leaves its traces in Bowie’s songs (“Space Oddity”, “Ashes to Ashes”), films (The Man Who Fell to Earth), and above all in his Ziggy Stardust album. That masterpiece seems to me a deeply dark portrayal of everything it means to be a “rockstar” – a hero who lives and fulfils the dreams of so many, and shows them the way to the top. But as Bowie was absolutely aware, stardom is closely aligned to the abyss.
So I started work on this first book – with the second already germinating in my mind, which will address some of the questions left hanging at the end of the first. At least, I hope it will. In STARMAN, I focus on how Bowie became Ziggy, and how that character increasingly engulfs his creator – before, of course, having to be killed off on stage, before an unsuspecting audience, for Bowie to become Bowie again. He will go on to lose himself again in the USA, and resurrect his career in what is now my hometown: Berlin…
But that is a theme for LOW: Bowie’s Berlin Years. As for STARMAN, it was enormous fun to draw the crazy costumes and haircuts of Bowie’s 1970s heyday, and the book looks as good as it does thanks in part to an amazing designer called Thomas Gilke, who chose a colour palette I would have never even dreamed of, but which perfectly captures the life and spirit of the Ziggy Stardust performances. I used a vast amount of archive material that helped me find images, but somehow the most important footage was of the audience and their reaction to what was happening on stage, which became a huge part of the finished book. They were so happy – dancing and screaming, laughing and crying, dressing up as Ziggy, living the moment – and not a smartphone in sight! How I wish I’d been there.
The second time David Bowie saved my life was during my work on this book. We all suffered from the worldwide impact of the Covid pandemic, but I must confess that it hit me hard. So many aspects of my life seemed to be going down the drain, and I struggled to either fix them or know where to turn. So instead I focused on drawing Bowie, and as I did so, it appeared that the work itself extended a helping hand to stave off the depression forming around me. So there he was again for me: the trickster messiah from outer space with the crazy hair, telling of an inner world of salvation and potential. And then… he disappeared. Because in the end it is only us who can save ourselves (though possibly with a little helping hand from a friend).
So thank you, David Bowie – and thank you for reading this. Reinhard Kleist, 2023Thank you from us, as well, for joining in on this little look back through time to the release of STARMAN, two years ago!
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Thank you from us, as well, for joining in on this little look back through time to the release of STARMAN, two years ago!
LOW: Bowie's Berlin Years is set for release on May 22nd in the United Kingdom, and July 8th in North America!
In association with Comica and VIP Brands, join us at The Century Club in Soho on May 30th for a special launch event and talk by Reinhard Kleist! Tickets here: https://centuryclub.co.uk/bowie_celebration/
Or, catch Reinhard signing copies of LOW at Gosh! Comics on May 31st between 1 and 2pm!
Today marks the UK release of Kusama: Polka Dot Queen, the brand-new graphic biography of the visionary modern artist Yayoi Kusama!
To mark the occasion, we decided to ask author-artist Simon Elliott some questions about how this book came to be, and why he chose Yayoi Kusama as the subject of his third graphic novel.
Simon Elliott is criminal barrister, artist, and lover of all things colourful. As a self-taught graphic novelist, his two previous works are Hockney: A Graphic Life (Frances Lincoln, 2023) and Vincent: A Graphic Biography (Frances Lincoln, 2024).
SelfMadeHero: You’ve spoken before about how you rediscovered a lifelong love of art and painting during lockdown. Since then, your work as a graphic novelist (separate from your work as a barrister) has focused on the lives of other artists. Did learning more about artists’ stories play a part in reviving your own passion for art?
Simon Elliott: Absolutely! I am such a fan of art and I am always curious about the person ‘behind the canvas’. I read a lot of artist biographies, and I am particularly drawn to stories of people who have managed to produce art often in the most difficult of situations – either because they grew up in modest circumstances and access to art/art education was limited (as with Hockney), or because mental health challenges were or are a part of their lives (as with van Gogh and Kusama) or because they faced religious and racial discrimination (as with Marc Chagall, my next project).
I suspect that lots of people took to art in lockdown as I did – I am always looking to art for inspiration and Hockney’s message at that time – ‘spring cannot be cancelled’ really resonated with me. I have been drawing every day since because it has become an essential part of my life. I don’t subscribe to the idea of the ‘tortured artist’ in that I don’t think that difficulty is a prerequisite for making (great) art, but I am a huge believer that we can all overcome certain difficulties through art. The fact that Hockney personally approved my first book is a source of constant inspiration.
SMH: David Hockney, then Vincent van Gogh, and now Yayoi Kusama. Why did you decide to return to a living, modern artist after dipping into the 19th century?
Simon: I am an art lover, not an art expert – so I am working my way through the artists whose work speaks to me the most. I like a fluid approach to art, so I am more interested in themes than artistic periods, dates , schools and so on. I think that great art speaks to us with an immediacy and a sense of connection – but for me that can be as true of a painting from thousands of years ago as it is of a work that someone has just made, with the paint still wet.
SMH: Did telling the life story of Vincent van Gogh, who famously suffered from mental ill health, also inspire you to tell Kusama’s story as well? Did you bring any lessons learned from van Gogh with you to Kusama?
Simon: I started drawing graphic novels because I connect to stories through pictures and so it just seemed a very natural fit. I try to make work in a way that conveys the style and the vibe of the artist whose story I am telling. If I do a good job, then the book should be an artistic conversation between my style and the subject’s style. I have grown in confidence since my van Gogh book, so hopefully this work will feel like a progression. I am always building on the styles, techniques and the technical iPad stuff, which I am learning as I go along.
SMH: As a self-taught graphic novelist, did you encounter any unique challenges when it came to capturing and adapting Kusama’s artistic style into this book?
Simon: I wanted two distinct styles in the Kusama book – one that gives a grounding in reality, and one designed to convey what I think of as ‘Kusama vision.’ I understand that Kusama doesn’t do any drafting, she just makes her beautiful work based on her incredible artistic skills, abilities and instincts. In order to reflect that, I set myself the challenge of only drawing the ‘Kusama vision’ pages once. There was no drafting, no redrawing and no editing as I went along. Nobody would ever know that, but I hope that something of the energy and rawness of Kusama’s process is conveyed.
SMH: What was your relationship with Kusama’s works and story before tackling this project? During the different stages of production, did you discover or rediscover anything about her life or her art that surprised you?
Simon: I am a huge Kusama fan. I have travelled all over the world to see her exhibitions, and I think one of the greatest pleasures of life is a few minutes spent in one of her Infinity Mirror Rooms. For me, the best bit about making books about artists is discovering work by them that I haven’t yet seen. In Kusama’s case, that was a lot of the work from her childhood and early years in Japan. She has always been hugely prolific (50 – 100 new works a day, at certain times) and seeing those works and understanding the roots of a lot of her key themes and motifs was seriously fascinating and fun.
I knew lots about her later life, but not so much about her childhood and so I decided to make a large portion of the book the origin story that people may not know so well, or at all. I think what surprised me the most was how talented she was even at a very young age. Her ability, scale and ambitions may have grown – but the spark of genius was always very clearly there.
SMH: Kusama is a world-famous, legendary artist. But, is there anything that you want people to learn about her from this book that they might not know or fully understand?
Simon: I like the line about Ginger Rogers being more impressive because she did everything that Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in heels. I think Kusama is rather like that. She was a woman determined to set her own path within a very traditional, patriarchal Japanese society, she dealt with serious abuse, she fought against a lack of representation and recognition for female artists, she faced prejudice in a post-WWII America which was still hostile to Japan, and overcame so many other challenges. For those familiar with her story, I hope that this book represents a unique way of telling it – and for those who don’t know about her life, I hope that it gives a flavour of just how pioneering, visionary and brave the woman behind the polka dots has been throughout her long life.
SMH: And finally, as for yourself, what part of Yayoi Kusama’s story has stayed with you the most since finishing Polka Dot Queen? What will you be taking with you into future projects, or even just into your artistic life?
Simon: In Kusama’s words, she followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow her to live. I think that art can transcend politics and some of the problems of the world and be an inspiration – and that we can all overcome certain things through making art (or through some other kind of personal expression). I find her story incredibly inspirational. For me, it’s all about picking up the pencil and making something. She did it because she felt an irresistible urge to create – and I bet that anyone who follows her example will feel the incredible benefits of just making something.
Thank you for reading! Kusama: Polka Dot Queen is out today in the UK, and will launch in North America on May 20th!
In this interview, we ask author and journalist Victor Matet about the creative process behind Adieu Birkenau.
Victor Matet is a journalist and presenter at France Info. He produced several reports on Ginette Kolinka before co-creating a comic strip about her.
SelfMadeHero: Collaboration is essential to creation, to storytelling. In Adieu Birkenau the challenge wasn’t just to tell any story, but to give due reverence to the incredible life of an extraordinary human being. What was it like assembling and working with so many collaborators on this very unique book?
Victor Matet: It was a real challenge. The illustrators were based in Spain. My co-writer lives in eastern France and I live in Paris. But this resulted in a real wealth of culture, with all our ideas being mixed together. Everyone knew exactly what to do. The illustrators had the most trouble because they were waiting for the text and ended up with little time to draw. They are superheroes 😊
SMH: How did Ginette Kolinka’s personal involvement and your own experience as a journalist play into the artistic production of this book? Was there a particular process or structure when it came to bringing history and memory to life in graphic novel form?
Victor: Ginette is not a writer, in the sense she didn’t write this book herself. But without her there would be no story and no book at all. She hosted us many times, and we would talk for hours; she is the narrator, after all, and the protagonist. And, most importantly, we’ve been to Birkenau with her!
My journalistic approach was both an advantage and a disadvantage. What helped was the rigorous way of working and representing history. But sometimes we had to fill in some details and I would find myself thinking: “No, it’s not exactly and strictly the truth”.
For the structure, we chose to show her first and last time in Birkenau. The idea to interweave these two parts of her life came quite naturally.
SMH: Depictions and accounts of tragedies and atrocities like the Holocaust are such a key tradition in the history of graphic novels, and have led to huge advancements in the medium. How did it feel for you and your collaborators to be participating in that?
Victor: It’s a kind of honour to contribute to people’s education about the Holocaust, especially the education of children. We had no ambition to be compared to such incredible books as Maus by Art Spiegelman. But using less intense imagery was a deliberate choice; even when the descriptions are horrible, you don’t shut the book and stop reading because at least the illustrations aren’t so upsetting.
SMH: Going back to your journalistic background, you had produced reports about Ginette Kolinka before going on to work with her on Adieu Birkenau. Did you already have a working relationship with her when working on those reports? What was it like to share this responsibility for her memory, her testimony?
Victor: I love working with Ginette because of how much she smiles. She’s a real ray of sunshine, despite her tragic history. In France a lot of people talk about “duty of memory.” But she prefers the phrase “desire of memory.” I prefer that as well. She doesn’t have to tell her story, but she chooses to. And that’s the same for me. I write books, articles, and everything else because I want to. As she says to the children: “Now, you are ambassadors for memory too.” And so am I.
SMH: Are there any elements of Ginette Kolinka’s life story, or the Holocaust itself, that you now look at in a different light because of this book?
Victor: Her story shows that there isn’t just one story of the Holocaust. There are millions of them. When we say “one million, six million…” it’s impossible to imagine all those lives. But in this testimony, you see family and friends who become victims, and you can identify with them. What was incredible about Ginette as a young woman was her naivety. It could have killed her. But it saved her.
SMH: Part of Ginette’s story is that she stayed quiet about her experiences as a survivor for many years before going on to do all this incredible work in later life. Adieu Birkenauopens with something of a preface from Ginette’s son Richard Kolinka, who reflects on how as a boy he thought “all mums had numbers on their arms!” Do you, as a journalist, see any similarities between that memory of Richard’s and how public recognition of the Holocaust has changed over time?
Victor: When Ginette was working in a market, a woman asked her about the number on her arm. “Is it so you don’t forget your phone number?” Ginette was shocked, and it's one of the reasons why she started bearing witness. In France, Holocaust remembrance changed in 1995, around the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII. More survivors began to talk. It changed how everyone looked at this part of history.
SMH: Ginette is particularly known for maintaining both total honesty and her own sense of humour while choosing to revisit the most painful years of her life time and time again. What do you hope that readers of Adieu Birkenauwho might be unfamiliar with Ginette’s legacy will learn from not only her story, but how she chooses to tell it?
Victor: Readers must know that Ginette loves life. She loves laughing, joking, drinking (sometimes vodka), and she smiles a lot. She’s a living life lesson! When people become conflicted in their daily lives, they just need to think of Ginette. And life will be better!
Thank you for joining us on this day of remembrance.
How has January found you? Cold and reluctant? Understandable. But now it’s time for the reassurance you surely need most: the Spring 2025 list from SelfMadeHero! Here’s what’s coming up…
Kusama: Polka Dot Queen by Simon Elliott.
Monarch’s Journey: A Story to Color by Peter Kuper (North America only).
Low: Bowie’s Berlin Years by Reinhard Kleist.
The Compleat Angler by Izaak Walton, adapted by Gareth Brookes.
Following on from his previous works on David Hockney and Vincent Van Gogh, we are very happy to welcome Simon Elliott to our Art Masters series with Kusama: Polka Dot Queen.
From her days in 1960s New York as a proponent of free love and peace to her current position as internationally recognised Queen of Polka Dots and creator of infinity, Yayoi Kusama’s life is an extraordinary story of triumph over struggle through art.
Elliott’s new graphic novel vividly portrays Kusama’s unusual youth and family troubles, her discovery of a new style of painting, her struggles with mental illness, and her rise to international art stardom. For those seeking an introduction to this incredible artist or searching for a fresh take on her story – this is Yayoi Kusama’s life as you’ve never seen it before.
Of Vincent: A Graphic Biography (Frances Lincoln, 2024), Frost Magazine wrote: “I learned a great deal about the family Van Gogh, about painting, about the torments of genius, about the graphic novel. I think I’m in love…”
OUT IN UK: 10th April! 🇬🇧
After his Eisner-winning eco drama Ruins successfully returned in paperback last year, Peter Kuper is back with Monarch’s Journey: a colour-in story about this beloved but endangered butterfly and the environmental challenges it faces on its yearly flights.
Now Read This! on Ruins: “Clever, charming, chilling and compulsively engrossing, this delicious exercise in interconnectivity is a brilliant example of how smart and powerful comics can and should be.”
OUT IN NORTH AMERICA: 29th APRIL! 🇨🇦🇲🇽🇺🇲
Having explored the stardust years in STARMAN, the legendary Reinhard Kleist concludes his Bowie duology with Low, detailing the former Thin White Duke’s legendary time in Berlin as he searches for inspiration and records his 1977 album LOW.
In 1976, David Bowie escaped the frantic madness and substance abuse of his life in Los Angeles for the Wall of the divided city of Berlin. With his friend Iggy Pop in tow, Bowie quit drugs and created LOW, the first album of his “Berlin Trilogy”. But even here, during some of the happiest days of his life, Ziggy Stardust would not let him go…
Paper Phoenix Ink called STARMAN “a masterful synthesizing of all those changes and forces that assisted in the first birth of the artist that we know as David Bowie.”
OUT IN UK: 22nd May! 🇬🇧
In 2021 Gareth Brookes gave the world The Dancing Plague – no, not the plague itself, but a graphic novel the New York Times called “visually stunning … With fire and needle, Brookes crafts a book the likes of which we’ve never seen before.” This year Brookes returns with another mixed-media masterpiece: his graphic adaptation of Izaak Walton’s Civil War-era classic The Compleat Angler.
A foundational environmentalist text centuries ahead of its time, The Compleat Angler is one of the most reprinted books in the English language. From the ruins of the English Civil War to today, this adaptation is lovingly rendered in both linocut engraving and hand-drawn pen-and-ink to contrast the meditative and the instructional in Walton’s writing. As a guidebook on how to fish, this 350-year-old manual makes the perfect gift for any angling enthusiast, and its reflective writing connects with post-pandemic desires for calm, mindful pursuits and a return to nature.
OUT IN UK: 19th June! 🇬🇧
Thank you again for joining us this year! We hope you are as excited as we are!
It’s been another eventful year here at SelfMadeHero – 8 new titles, conventions, the next First Graphic Novel Award – so thanks for coming along with us for our 2024 wrap-up!
Migrating back onto shelves, the new paperback edition of Peter Kuper’s Eisner-winning eco-drama Ruins ushered us into 2024 on gentle butterfly wings…
We also started joining in with the worldwide celebrations of 100 years of surrealism by giving the spotlight to some of our own surreal titles like Armed with Madnessand Art Masters: Magritte!
Public appearances were aplenty this year! March kicked things into a new gear: Mylo Choy’s North American tour promoting Middle Distance (including MoCCA NYC), the Rickard Sisters at Cartoon County – and that’s just for starters!
Our next title wasThe Last Queen, the legendary Jean-Marc Rochette’s “saga of love and extinction.” (Comics Review)
May kept us busy as well, and busy in Canada no less! TCAF and VanCAF brought us back to the Great White North, so we brought Peter Kuper, Mylo Choy, and Jean-Marc Rochette with us!
What else came in May? Well, everyone got to know the legend that is George Sand, which was later named The Observer’s June graphic novel of the month!
Summer is a good time to self-improve and keep healthy, right? Our new “accessible, wise and understanding” (The Slings & Arrows) graphic medicine title The Anxiety Club arrived in July, with a special foreword from Dr Ian Williams, founder of GraphicMedicine.org!
September doesn’t have to be sad! We got to hang out with Peter Kuper again at Small Press Expo, and with the dream team of Oscar Zarate, Aimée de Jongh, and the Rickard Sisters at LICAF!
To further spite the season, things heated up even more in October: three titles in one month! First came They Shot the Piano Player, “a graphic novel to rival Maus or Persepolis” (The Indiependent) from the creators of Chico and Rita!
Next came the graphic Holocaust memoir Adieu Birkenau: Ginette Kolinka’s Story of Survival. The Morning Star called it an “invaluable educational testament” and “highly readable and engaging for adults and young people alike.”
Now we come to our last title of the year, and quite possibly the strangest. Edifice by Andrzej Klimowski is “comfortingly macabre… a sinister social comedy of errors if not terrors.” (Comics Review)
What? You thought that we were done for the year just because we’d launched its last title? Far from it! At Thought Bubble we were so excited to announce the return of the First Graphic Novel Award! Submissions open on January 9th 2025!
Now, at last, we’re about ready to leave you to your holiday preparations… unless you’re looking for some help! You might have heard about our exclusive SelfMadeHero gift packs, and if you’re still looking to get your hands on some of our graphic novels, it’s not too late! Email [email protected] for info on prices and shipping, or come THIS SATURDAY to Broadway Market and find Pete's book stall on London Fields, E8 (by Franco Manca 🍕)!
That’s it for now! Thank you to everyone who’s read along with us this year, and to all: Happy Holidays!
