Summer’s always full of comics turned into films. We’ve had Superman, Iron Man 3, Wolverine, 2 Guns, Red II and Kick Ass II, with R.I.P.D. still to come. But comics aren’t all about superheroes – in fact this year’s Cannes Palme D’Or winner, Blue Is The Warmest Colour (opening Nov 15 in the UK), was based on a graphic novel.
The world of comics is much more diverse than some people realise, as demonstrated by The Hartlepool Monkey, a French graphic novel which I co-translated with the multi-award-winning Frank Wynne, published in the UK in early October. It’s based on the true story (the details of which are shrouded in legend) of a monkey who was washed ashore from a wrecked Napoleonic vessel, and hanged by the Hartlepool locals who mistook the small, hairy brute for a Frenchman.
To this day, the Hartlepool football team has a monkey as its mascot. In a bizarre twist of fate, the man in the monkey suit ran for mayor in 2002 on a platform of free bananas for school children… and won. He was even reelected in 2005 and 2009.
The graphic novel is terrific, so much so that it recently won the prestigious “Rendez-vous de l’histoire” prize, awarded by a distinguished panel of historians. Sadly, my excitement at opening an advance copy was somewhat diminished by discovering that the English-language edition had one salient omission: our translators’ credits were mistakenly left off! Ah well. Virtue is its own reward. (And the fee, of course.)
You can find advance previews here: Propermag, The Times (paywalled), Hartlepool Mail, Forbidden Planet, and The Crack magazine. To pre-order from Amazon, click here.
London, Hollywood 