British comic book publisher Self Made Hero is moving into the United States with a first wave of hardcover comics—I guess most people would call them "graphic novels," although that term's pretentiousness still rubs me the wrong way—and it's pretty interesting stuff.

The book that immediately captured my attention was David B's Black Paths. David B is a French cartoonist who is best-known in America for his outstanding comic memoir Epileptic. Black Paths is based in reality—it's set during the real-life siege of the city of Fiume (which is now the Croatian city of Rieka) in the aftermath of World War I. It's a fascinating story: The raiders were under the command of an Italian poet-pirate, and his reign was brief and orgiastic. The main characters of Black Paths are a former soldier and a beautiful young woman. They fall in love, even as the city falls apart around them. David B's impressionistic art style is perfect for illustrating a period of unrest—nearly every scene devolves into (or in some way references) a hyper-stylized fistfight that is made up of a circuitous maze of noodly arms and fists and angry faces. The fictional parts of Black Paths can't catch up to the sheer audacity of the historical truths (the love story felt a little boring in comparison to the wildness of Fiume as drawn by David B) but it's an impressive achievement all around.

Canadian Patrick McEown's Hair Shirt is, for me, the dud of the bunch. McEown's art style resembles Joann Sfar's—sketchy and occasionally giving off an unfinished air, although his figures offer more expression than most of Sfar's work—and the story is fairly unoriginal. A young man and a young woman who were childhood sweethearts come back together as young adults, and the situation is awkward. McEown spruces things up with some disturbing human-faced dogs, but the whole thing feels less like a coherent artistic statement and more like an indie romantic comedy directed by a man with aspirations to be the next David Lynch.

But the book that blew me away of the first Self Made Hero wave was Judith Vanistendael's When David Lost His Voice.

David is a comic about an older man who is diagnosed with cancer at the same moment that his oldest daughter gives birth to his first granddaughter. His family comes together—he has a much younger wife, and a daughter with that wife—to comfort each other, but David doesn't want the comfort, and he doesn't seem especially comfortable with all the women in his life under one roof, either. There's not much, plot-wise to When David Lost His Voice, but the book's long, lingering sense of pacing and cinematic, sketchbook-style energy makes this very much unlike any kind of cancer story you've ever read. It's meditative and subtle and sad. This book alone is ample reason for Self Made Hero to bring their books to the States; I can't think of any American comic publisher who is doing anything like this.