Alack Sinner: The Age of Disenchantment

(Paperback)

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Description

The concluding volume of the international bestseller and winner of many of Europe's top comics awards, now available in English for the first time. The Age of Discontentment is the second of two volumes presenting the complete Alack Sinner comics by the Argentine-born team of artist Jose Munoz and writer Carlos Sampayo. Hard-boiled private detective Alack Sinner's adventures wear all the trappings of traditional detective stories, but are imbued with such deep political conscience and scathing critiques of corruption in society, that to think of them as nothing more would be a grave error. Juxtaposed with meditations on the nature of violence and exile in a noirish New York at the end of the 20th century, these themes force us to confront the gritty injustices of our real world, making them as evident as the grime and desperation that pervade traditional detective fiction. Alack Sinner stories play out against a jazz soundtrack, beginning in 1975 and running through the 2000s. The authors have rearranged the stories by series chronology, rather than date of publication, providing a novel reading experience for fans both new and old. The Age of Disconetentment presents eleven stories, including "Nicaragua," "Private Stories," "The USA Affair," and "The End of the Road."

Reviews

One of the 100 great comics of the last 20th Century and one of the ten all-time best drawn, [when] IDW does bring us a complete edition of Jose Munoz and Carlos SampayosAlackSinner, that will be a line drawn across the page at or near the top on the missing comics editions list in this golden age of reprints. That is just a lovely comic, cynical and cool, theur-modern crime comic.Tom Spurgeon,The Comics Reporter

Author Bio

Carlos Sampayo is an Argentine writer best known for his work in comics, particularly in collaboration with artist Jose Munoz. Sampayo met Munoz in Spain after he fled from the military junta. They created 'Joe's Bar' (short stories about clients of a cafe in New York), 'Alack Sinner' (a hard-boiled detective in the style of film-noir), 'Jeu de Lumi res', 'Billie Holiday' and other stories. Sampayo also worked with Oscar Zarate, Jorge Schiaffino and Solano L pez. Born in 1942 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as a child Jose Munoz manifested a great passion for design, and a particular interest in the world of comics. He emerged as an independent artist in 1963 with his detective series "Precinct 56". In 1974 he met the Argentine writer Carlos Sampayo and this fundamental event would mark the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration. Thus the character of Alack Sinner was born--a private detective whose human adventures were played out to the sound of jazz, and whose stories described both the misery and nobility of a New York that was imagined in such a way that it could almost have been real.