Peplum [Paperback]

The man known as Blutch is one of the giants of contemporary comics, andPeplummay be his masterpiece: a grand, strange dream of ancient Rome. At the edge of the empire, a gang of bandits discovers the body of a beautiful woman in a cave; she is encased in ice but may still be alive. One of the bandits, bearing a stolen name and with the frozen maiden in tow, makes his way toward Rome—seeking power, or maybe just survival, as the world unravels.

Thrilling and hallucinatory, vast in scope yet unnervingly intimate,Peplumweaves together threads from Shakespeare and theSatyriconalong with Blutch’s own distinctive vision. His hypnotic storytelling and stark, gorgeous art pull us into one of the great works of graphic literature, translated into English for the first time.

This NYRC edition features new English hand-lettering and is an oversized paperback with French flaps and extra-thick paper.“Famous in his native France and nearly unknown here, the cartoonist who goes by Blutch (real name: Christian Hincker) has a magnificently expressive line, so bold and ragged that it often looks as if he’s snapped his brush in half and is mashing its splintered end into the drawing board.”
Douglas Wolk,The New York Times Book Review 

Blutch’s art is truly exquisite, rendering battles, orgies, and conversations in dense, inky lines akin to Mattotti, but completely his own and completely haunting.... The book requires rereading to grasp the scope of storytelling and linework, which is effortless enough to make the greatest American cartoonists jealous. —Publishers Weekly

“Peplumreads like a dream... Here, in poetic and aesthetic glory, Blutch explores the attraction of death and the psychotic longing to encounter the sublime.” Shea Hennum,The AV Club

“Blutch works in scratchy black: his lines are elemental and start and his frames helÓç