IDW Brings An Affecting Look At Life In Post-War Spain Back to Print In Carlos Gimenez’s ‘Paracuellos’

Comics have an incredible knack for telling stories about history. Whether it's something as comedic and informative as Action Philosophers or something as small and personal as Jack Kirby's Street Code, the way words and pictures work together to tell these stories allows a creator to recreate feelings like nothing else. And if you need proof, look no further than Paracuellos, a memoir of life in post-World War II Spain by Carlos Giménéz.

Originally published in 1975, the award-winning graphic novel is coming to print in English for the first time courtesy of IDW's EuroComics imprint. Check out a preview below, including a short foreword by Will Eisner. Click the pages for full size.

Here's the official solicitation from IDW:

Paracuellos, Vol. 1
Carlos Giménez (w & a & c)

Paracuellos is a work of great courage, created at a time when telling the truth about Spain's political past could get one killed. It is arguably the most important graphic memoir ever created in comics. Carlos Giménez’s autobiographical account of the plight of children in post-World War II Fascist Spain has won virtually every comics award in Europe, including “Best Album” at the 1981 Angoulême Festival, and the “Heritage Award” at Angoulême in 2010.

In the late 1930s when Spanish fascists led by Franco, and aided by Hitler and Mussolini, overthrew the elected government, almost 200,000 men and women fell in battle, were executed, or died in prison. Their orphaned children—and others ripped from the homes of the defeated—were shuttled from Church-run “home” to “home” and fed a steady diet of torture and disinformation by a totalitarian state bent on making them “productive” citizens. Carlos Giménez was one of those children. In 1975, after Franco’s death, Carlos began to tell his story. Breaking the code of silence proved to be a milestone, both for the comics medium and for a country coming to terms with its past.

An illustrated essay by Carmen Moreno-Nuño, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Kentucky, places the comics in historical perspective.
TPB • B&W • $24.99 • 136 pages • 8.5” x 11” • ISBN: 978-1-63140-468-9

Bullet points:
· “The stories transcend just being about a historical moment in Spain. Their humanity will speak to everyone. The stories are heartbreakers, but Carlos never loses his sense of humor.” —William Stout