A Gift for a Ghost, pg. 78 (2018)

I'd owned a couple of pages from Borja González's A Gift for Ghost (also published as The Black Holes) and regretted letting them go. Fortunately, as I was scrolling through the listings at a recent auction, I saw this page, one of my favorites from the book, and snapped it up.

This page stood out to me for its juxtaposition of a staged theatrical moment, the spotlighted pianist, amidst a forest setting. In many respects, the page encapsulates the approach of the book as a whole, which relies on a similar series of juxtapositions and collisions between past and present, between urban and natural worlds, and between the supernatural and everyday life. A recommended read.

As an artist and visual storyteller, González relies heavily on a deep focus technique to prioritize foreground, middle ground, and background equally on the page. That approach lends itself to pages in which the background and environment take on as much life as the characters on the page. González often accentuates this dynamic through the use of twisting vines and foliage, as you can glean from this piece and others of his in my collection.

González is an artist on the rise and whose work has been recognized by the government arts organization in his native Spain. His most recent graphic novels have been translated into English through Dargaud.

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PUBLISHER’S SYNOPIS

An untalented punk band and a parallel dimension―what could go wrong? In Borja González’s stunning graphic novel, two parallel stories reflect and intertwine in a tale of youthful dreams and desires.

In 1856, Teresa, a young aristocrat, is more interested in writing avant-garde horror poetry than making a suitable marriage. In 2016, three teenage girls, Gloria, Laura, and Cristina, want to start a punk band called the Black Holes. They have everything they need: attitude, looks, instinct . . . and an alarming lack of musical talent. They've barely started rehearsing when strange things begin to happen. As their world and Teresa's intersect, they’re haunted by the echo of something that happened 160 years ago.