The Adventures of Jodelle

Ensconced in the avant-garde of the extraordinary social and cultural upheavals that were drawing 1960s Europe into the building wave of postmodernism, a Belgian advertising dropout, fed up with the corporate world, conceived the first “adult comic book” virtually off the top of his head.

By creating The Adventures of Jodelle, a deluxe comics album that wore its revolutionary Pop sensibility on its sleeve, Guy Peellaert obliterated the conventions of what had up to that point been a minor, childish medium. Ironically appropriating the face and body of the teen idol Sylvie Vartan, he fashioned a new kind of heroine, a sensual, parodically beautiful spy. For his setting he chose a defiantly anachronistic Roman Empire, into which irrupted the most flamboyant symbols of a conquering America, the originator of all fantasies.

Every page of this fascinating saga features a flood of topical references and in-jokes, operating playfully on the border that separated so-called “high” and “low” cultures. Peellaert drew from the most exciting stimuli of his time, subjecting them to his powerful formal innovations: Pop Art, extreme fashions, strident advertising, shock graphics, and cinematic techniques all collided in virtuoso compositions of extreme sophistication, whose inspirations ranged from classical paintings to Gottlieb pinball machines.

Published to thunderous acclaim in France in 1966 and then throughout Europe and in the U.S., Jodelle was an instant classic, whose influence would spread far beyond the confines of comics. It also triggered Guy Peellaert’s “Pop Period,” a creative whirlwind marked by his 1967 creation of Pravda, an unforgettable character that has since been acknowledged as a major component of the European Pop movement.

Completely remastered and featuring a new translation, this long-awaited reprinting of The Adventures of Jodelle is accompanied by an 80-page, lushly-illustrated textual supplement created in partnership with the artist’s estate which traces the creative path travelled by this maverick artist, who multiplied his chosen means of expression, skipping from comics to cinema and moving through fashion, periodicals, and television, including collaborations with many of the great figures of mythical 1960s-era Paris, from Serge Gainsbourg to Yves Saint Laurent.        

Legendary satirical 1960s pop-art masterpiece of comics from acclaimed painter/illustrator.

The long-awaited definitive edition of the legendary 1960s pop art graphic novel from acclaimed visual artist Guy Peellaert. Includes the remastered original and the all-new exclusive 80-page supplement "Fragments of the Pop Years."

Best known for his collage-style images of celebrities (Rock Dreams) and a handful of classic record covers (David Bowie's Diamond Dogs and The Rolling Stones' It's Only Rock 'N' Roll), the Belgian painter, illustrator and cartoonist Guy Peellaert created two major graphic novels in the 1960s.

Originally serialized in the satirical French magazine Hara-Kiri and subsequently released as a very early adult graphic novel by the legendary French comics publisher Eric Losfeld, The Adventures of Jodelle (written by Pierre Bartier) melded the bold compositional skills of a top pop-art-era draftsman with a unique sensitivity to the comics medium.

Jodelle, a satirical spy adventure set in an Asterix-style anachronistic Cesarepoch fantasy Rome featuring both billboards and vampires, was published in English in 1967 by Grove Press, whose legendary editor-in-chief Richard Seaver also provided the translation.

Jodelle will be restored and re-colored digitally to improve on the original's sometimes shaky color separations, as well as re-translated and re-lettered, and will feature a major analytical/contextual essay by the French art and comics critic and historian Pierre Sterckx (Tintin Schizo; René Magritte: The Empire of Images) discussing the work and its historical context — plus a huge selection of never-before-seen archival art reproductions, sketches, photographs, etc. It will be printed as a lush, oversized hardcover, in a way that highlights the eye-popping, psychedelic color.

Guy Peellaert was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1934 and died in 2008.The late Pierre Bartier's only known credits consist of this book and the 1975 cartoon feature Tarzoon: Shame of the Jungle.