Graphic novel about Leonard

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jarkko
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Graphic novel about Leonard

Post by jarkko »

Philippe Girard: Cordialement, Leonard Cohen will be published in France by Casterman on September 9.
120 pages. More info to follow.

Thanks to Dominique Boile for letting us know!
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The graphic novel, Leonard Cohen: On A Wire, is set to be released in French and English in 2021

Post by I'm your fan »

A graphic novel about the Life of Leonard Cohen to be released in French and English in 2021.

I copy-paste the text of this notice from cbc.ca:

Quebec cartoonist traces the life of Leonard Cohen in black and white

Mariella Steuter-Martin - CBC News

Shortly after Leonard Cohen died in Nov. 2016, Quebec cartoonist Philippe Girard had an idea.

Girard, a Quebec City native who has published more than a dozen graphic novels and comic books, felt that there was a great story to be told about the life of one of the province's most beloved artists, but he figured someone else would beat him to the punch, and maybe even do a better job, so he held off.

"But I couldn't stop thinking about it and I wanted to draw Montreal. Then I heard a Leonard Cohen song on the radio and I said to myself that I had to stop circling around the idea," Girard told Radio-Canada.

In fact, no such graphic novel based on Cohen's life appeared, and so Girard dove in, beginning to work on what would become Leonard Cohen: On A Wire.

The book is set to be released in French in March 2021 by Belgian publisher Casterman. The English version will be available through Montreal publisher Drawn & Quarterly in Nov. 2021.

Girard said he wanted the project to be an ode not just to Cohen, but to Montreal and the artists it helps shape.

The book's cover shows Cohen walking through the Golden Square Mile, carrying a guitar case and puffing on a cigarette.

"He's coming back from a concert. He's passing by Ben's Deli — an important restaurant for Montreal and for Leonard Cohen. On his guitar, there are pictograms which serve as winks to themes in the book," said Girard.

"It's Leonard Cohen at the end of his work day, probably at night, heading home like any other working Montrealer, not in a limousine or a helicopter, but on foot, walking the streets of his city."

Girard said he envisions this as the first instalment in what may be a series, featuring biographical anecdotes from different periods in Cohen's life.

The book opens with Cohen in Los Angeles on the last night of his life, reflecting on his accomplishments and adventures.

A fan of Cohen's work, Girard said he'd listened to the 1992 album The Future "at least 1,000 times."

Considering the breadth of Cohen's career, Girard had to be selective in the episodes he wanted to capture in the book.

Leonard Cohen: the phoenix

He explained that he began by drawing a Star of David and assigning each point as a decade in Cohen's life.

"And for each decade I would choose a song, a woman and an item," said Girard.

He added that the moments he chose to include in the graphic novel tie into a central theme.

"Leonard Cohen is a man who has been declared dead at least 10 times in his life, but who rises from the ashes every time. He was extremely resilient and able to reinvent himself. So I decided to talk about Leonard Cohen: the phoenix, the one who always ends up bouncing back, even when he's down on his knees."







Source:
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5821352
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Re: Graphic novel about Leonard

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Additional details from Dominique Boile:

Image

LEONARD COHEN: SUR UN FIL (ROMANS GRAPHIQUES) (French) Hardcover – 17 Mar. 2021
By Philippe Girard

Product details
• Hardcover : 120 pages
• ISBN-10 : 2203203978
• ISBN-13 : 978-2203203976
• Publisher : CASTERMAN (17 Mar. 2021)
• Language: : French
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Re: Graphic novel about Leonard

Post by pe swijngedouw »

pre-order possible, 20€, Fnac France.
not the largest book, 19x26cm, but it looks nice enough to go for it
your local bookshop will probably find it for you, too, so perhaps it's better to go find it there, and support the smaller stores
... precisely ...
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Re: Graphic novel about Leonard

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Another update from Dominique:
This book was to appear in France (and therefore in French) under the title Cordialement, Leonard Cohen (Sincerely, Leonard Cohen) on September 9, 2020.

It will be at Casterman, a Belgian editor.

The French release date is now postponed to March 17, 2021 (at Casterman).

The book has not changed, only its title became Leonard Cohen: sur un fil (Leonard Cohen: on a wire).

The English version, logically titled Leonard Cohen: on a wire, will appear, in tribute to the fifth anniversary of Leonard's death,on November 5, 2021 at Drawn & Quarterly, a Montreal publishing house.
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Re: Graphic novel about Leonard

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From publisher's website https://drawnandquarterly.com/blog/2020 ... ppe-girard:
Drawn & Quarterly announces the Fall 2021 book Leonard Cohen: On A Wire by Philippe Girard, a biography of the legendary musician and poet, to be translated by Helge Dascher. Leonard Cohen: On A Wire opens in Los Angeles on the last night of the man’s life in 2016. Alone in his final hours, the beloved writer and musician ponders his existence in a series of flashbacks that reveal the ups and downs of a storied career. A young Cohen traded in the promise of steady employment in his family’s upscale Montreal garment business for the unlikely path of a literary poet. His life took another sharp turn when, already in his 30s, he recorded his first album to widespread international acclaim.

Along the way he encountered a who’s who of musical luminaries, including Lou Reed, Nico, Janis Joplin, and Joni Mitchell. And then there’s Phil Spector, the notorious music impresario who held a gun to Cohen’s head during a coke-fueled, all-night-long recording session. Later in Cohen’s life, there’s the story of Hallelujah, one of his most famous songs, and its slow rise from relative obscurity when first recorded in the 1980s to its iconic status a decade later with covers by John Cale and Jeff Buckley. And then there’s the period when Cohen went broke after his manager embezzled his lifetime savings, which ironically sparked an unlikely career resurgence and several worldwide tours in the 2000s.

Written with careful attention to detail and drawn with a palette of warm, lush colors by Quebec-based cartoonist Philippe Girard, Leonard Cohen is an engaging portrait of a cultural icon.

Submitted by Kaiya Smith Bla... on Tuesday, November 24, 2020 - 12:36pm.
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Re: Graphic novel about Leonard

Post by HugoD »

The fall of 2021, that is practicing "p" for experts only. Why does this has to take so long?

Will be forced , in order to protect myself, to ignore this topic for the next 6 months or so since my "p" skills, by a long way, do not meet this expert level.

Would have been such a nice Christmas present this year.
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Re: Graphic novel about Leonard

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Leonard Cohen: Sur un fil
Comic book by Philippe Girard
The French edition will be published on March 17 by Casterman, France

Image

Sample page:

Image

ISBN 978-2-203-20397-6
120 pages, Dimensions 19,1 cm × 26,9 cm × 1,7 cm


Information from Dominique Boile & several other contributors
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Re: Graphic novel about Leonard

Post by Heather1969 »

Pre order for November in the uk is now on Amazon, as usual I have no idea how to upload the link :D

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Re: Graphic novel about Leonard

Post by HugoD »

Heather1969 wrote: Sat Feb 27, 2021 7:21 pm Pre order for November in the uk is now on Amazon, as usual I have no idea how to upload the link :D

Heather
https://www.amazon.com/Leonard-Cohen-Fr ... =8-1-fkmr0

;-)
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Re: Graphic novel about Leonard

Post by HugoD »

Today in the Dutch newspaper "De Volkskrant"


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Re: Graphic novel about Leonard

Post by HugoD »

It is available in Dutch now also :D
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Re: Graphic novel about Leonard

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Just cross-referencing relating info - https://www.leonardcohenforum.com/viewt ... 37#p377737
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Re: Graphic novel about Leonard

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More info plus some additional inside images - https://montrealgazette.com/entertainme ... d-his-city
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Re: Graphic novel about Leonard

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More info about this Graphic novel by Girard and another book, LC Untold Stories by Posner -

Raising the bard
Cohen’s life and legacy explored in graphic novel, oral history

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts- ... 22022.html
Five years after its benefactor’s death, the Leonard Cohen industry continues to churn out product, the latest being two Canadian-authored books that serve opposite purposes.

Quebec cartoonist Philippe Girard’s graphic novel is a satisfying and cogent biography aimed at the casual fan of the great Montreal poet and singer-songwriter.

Drawn in an impressively condensed 122 pages, Leonard Cohen: On a Wire (please forgive the dull title) touches most of the fabled moments of Cohenalia and some lesser ones as well.

At the other end of the concision spectrum is Toronto journalist (and Winnipeg native) Michael Posner’s second volume of Cohen oral history, Untold Stories: From This Broken Hill, Vol. 2.

On the heels of last year’s first volume, The Early Years, it drills down into Cohen’s exploits from 1971 to 1987. This covers his mid-30s, after his first flush of fame, until his early 50s, arguably his professional nadir.

Posner’s subtitle is a phrase from the 1984 song If It Be Your Will. He has transcribed several hundred interviews with those, famous and obscure, who knew Cohen intimately or just crossed paths with him.

He then cuts, pastes and arranges them chronologically, with bits of his own narration added to tie the pieces together.

The book is less accomplished than Girard’s artistically, because it contains so much repetitive and extraneous verbiage, and also because it buries its over-riding biographical arc amid such granular detail.

But it does deliver to Cohen obsessives and perhaps literary academics a window into Cohen’s private life — especially the seamy side of it — marked as it was by depression, substance abuse and his often predatory sex addiction.

More than 20 women have gone public with Posner to recall their extended affairs with Cohen during this period. Almost all were in their early 20s, sometimes half the age of the charismatic but commitment-phobic boulevardier, who was often sleeping with two or more other "little darlings" at the same time.

"He had really bad breath, so he had gallons of Listerine in his bathroom," notes Andreé Pelletier, daughter of the late Quebec politician Gérard Pelletier, whom Cohen seduced in 1976 when she was 25 and he was 41.

"We never talked about Suzanne or Marianne… He told me he had kids, but it was irrelevant to anything."

In the early 1980s, Cohen had a previously unpublicized five-year affair with a Costa Rican model and artist, Gabriela Valenzuela, beginning when she was 24. Fluent in Spanish, she helped him translate a Federico García Lorca poem that became his 1986 song Take This Waltz.

She also inspired the "tied to the kitchen chair" verse in Cohen’s most covered song, Hallelujah, after she gave him a home haircut that morphed into something more X-rated.

Cohen dumped Valenzuela in 1986 after she told him she was three months’ pregnant with his child, already named "September Cohen," whom she then reluctantly aborted.

"Leonard had the ability to go completely cold on a dime," observes his longtime friend, the filmmaker Barrie Wexler, "particularly when it threatened his freedom."

Unlike Posner, most of what cartoonist Girard chooses to draw has entered into the public domain: Cohen’s affluent childhood in Montreal: his early success as a poet and hipster; his expatriate years in London and on the Greek island of Hydra; and his first songs being taken up by the likes of singer Judy Collins and producer John Hammond in New York a few years later.

Needless to say, Girard also glories in Cohen’s conquests as a ladies’ man. His well-known relationships with Marianne Ihlen, Joni Mitchell, Janice Joplin, Suzanne Elrod (the mother of his two children, Adam and Lorca), Dominique Isserman and Rebecca DeMornay are lovingly and, in a couple cases, explicitly depicted. No wonder Cohen needed to rest in a Buddhist monastery for four years in the 1990s.

Presumably born into pure-laine Québécois Catholic stock, Girard deserves credit for both his understanding and portrayal of the centrality of Judaism in Cohen’s life and work.

The Jewish world view is even more pronounced in Untold Stories. But for Posner, a tribe member himself, this aspect comes naturally and is likely an important part of what attracted him to the project.

Cohen was 82 when he died in November 2016. Since then there has been no end of Cohen biographies, memoirs and documentaries. Posner’s concluding volume is a year away. A biopic, Posner predicts, will not be long in coming.

But you could argue that Girard’s heavily abridged version of the life is truer to the spirit of a poet and lyricist who agonized over paring his own lines to the bone.

Hallelujah indeed.
It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to B4real ~ me
Attitude is a self-fulfilling prophecy ~ me ...... The magic of art is the truth of its lies ~ me ...... Only left-handers are in their right mind!
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