London, UK (August 15, 2024): SelfMadeHerois delighted to announce a quartet of original graphic novels for Autumn 2024. These include the Brazilian detective story They Shot the Piano Player about the disappearance of a Bossa Nova jazz musician; the bonkers yet true story Madame Choi and the Monsters, about the kidnapping of South Korean filmmakers by Kim Jong-il; Adieu Birkenau, the graphic memoir of Holocaust survivor Ginette Kolinka; and Andrzej Klimowski’s latest surreal tale Edifice, which features the graphic Grand Hotel of our dreams, desires, and nightmares – and a Christmas Carol like no other. All titles are published by SelfMadeHero in UK and North America.
OCTOBER
THE ANXIETY CLUB
Writer: Dr. Frédéric Fanget and Catherine Meyer Illustrator: Pauline Aubry
Paperback/color/128pp ISBN: 978-1-914224-21-8
An illustrated guide to help identify, understand, and manage anxiety.
In The Anxiety Club we are introduced to three characters, each with a different form of anxiety. After hearing their stories, we follow them into the therapy room, where they discover the behavioral, cognitive, and emotional tools to help free themselves from anxious thinking. Many people believe that there is no treatment for anxiety: they try to soothe their inner suffering with medication, alcohol, drugs, or binge eating. However, there are healthy ways to manage such negative thoughts and feelings. This self-help handbook, written by leading anxiety expert and psychiatrist Dr. Frédéric Fanget and editor Catherine Meyer and drawn by Pauline Aubry, helps the reader to identify, understand, and find freedom from anxiety.
Publication date: October 1st (US), July 18th (UK)
NOVEMBER
MADAME CHOI AND THE MONSTERS: A TRUE STORY
Writer: Patrick Spät Illustrator: Sheree Domingo Paperback/ color/ 176pp ISBN: 978-1-914224-22-5
The incredible-yet-true story of celebrated South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee, abducted in 1978 by North Korean secret agents on the orders of their film-crazed future leader Kim Jong-il. Six months later, filmmaker Shin Sang-ok, Choi Eun-hee’s ex-husband, is abducted in turn. Choi and Shin remain unaware of each other’s fates until they meet again at a dinner hosted by Kim Jong-il in 1983. Kim forces Choi and Shin to make films, including the infamous kaiju cult classic Pulgasari (1985), all while convincing the world that they serve North Korea willingly. Choi and Shin’s love rekindles slowly in this reunited captivity. Only at the 1986 Vienna Film Festival do they escape, fleeing in a daring car chase to the American embassy.
Publication date: November 5th (US), October 10th (UK)
ADIEU BIRKENAU: Ginette Kolinka’s Story of Survival
Writers: Ginette Kolinka, Jean-David Morvan, Victor Matet Illustrators: Ricard Efa, Cesc F. Dalmases Hardback/ color/ 112pp ISBN: 978-1-914224-23-2
It is April 1944. 19-year-old Ginette Kolinka arrives at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Her father and little brother are immediately gassed. Ginette is selected as a worker. She survives. It is October 2020. 95-year-old Ginette takes advantage of a lull in the COVID-19 epidemic to accompany a group visiting Birkenau one last time. As a farewell, she brings with her a journalist (France Info’s Victor Matet) and a comic strip writer, J-D Morvan. From this trip a comic book is born. Ginette tells of her life before the war and subsequent imprisonment, as well as her present situation today. Still sharing what she witnessed with the world, Ginette tells everything with her trademark liveliness and biting humour. If we laugh and shudder, it’s because the story she tells is ours too.
Publication date: November 19th (US), October 24th (UK)
DECEMBER
THEY SHOT THE PIANO PLAYER
Writer: Fernando Trueba Illustrator: Javier Mariscal
Hardback/ Colour/ 256pp ISBN: 978-1-914224-24-9
From the authors of Chico and Rita and adapted into an animated feature from Sony Pictures. An investigation and celebration of the origins of the world-renowned Latino musical samba-jazz movement Bossa Nova,They Shot the Piano Player captures a fleeting time bursting with creative freedom at a turning-point in Latin American history in the ’60s and ’70s, before the continent was riven by totalitarian regimes. Francisco Tenório Cerqueira Júnior, born in Rio de Janeiro, was one of the most recognized musicians of the samba-jazz movement. At 3 a.m. on 18 March 1976, after giving a concert at the Gran Rex in Buenos Aires, the 34-year-old pianist went out to get some cigarettes. He was never seen again. What happened that night? This is the question that moves the narrator of this documentary graphic novel to initiate an investigation into the fateful events that led to the death of a musician destined to change the course of Brazilian music forever.
Publication date: December 3rd (US), September 26th (UK)
EDIFICE
AUTHOR: Andrzej Klimowski
Paperback/ B&W/ 296pp ISBN: 978-1-914224-25-6
At the heart of the dream city of Engelstadt stand the tall storeys of an ancient apartment block, home to a nightmare labyrinth of corridors and secrets. Christmas is coming, but the mysterious disappearance of one of its tenants causes a cast of characters (or suspects?) to be assembled before us. Meanwhile, a dark cloud threatens to envelop the city, caped crusaders (or marauders) wander the park, and there is a film screening to attend. A pan-European Pandora’s Box of narrative Russian dolls and Chinese boxes, Edifice builds into an Expressionist graphic vision of our archetypal, metamorphic Shadows and proves to be one of the strangest Christmas stories you will ever read.
Publication date: December 19th (US), November 7th (UK)
