Love in Vain
Robert Johnson 1911-1938, the graphic novel
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- £11.99
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- £11.99
Publisher Description
From 'Crossroads Blues' to 'Sweet Home Chicago', 'Hellhound on My Trail' to 'Come On In My Kitchen', Robert Johnson wrote some of the most enduring and formative songs of the original blues era, songs that would go on to help shape the birth of rock'n'roll in the 1960s. Beloved of Clapton, Dylan and the Stones, Robert Johnson remains one of the most iconic and mythologised figures in popular music (and the first of many to die at the age of 27). Born in the in the South in Mississippi, Johnson made his way to the urban North as a travelling musician, but it was only when he returned to the South that he recorded the twenty-nine songs, in two sessions, which would create his legacy.
Exploring the stories and legends that surround his life and death - his childhood, his womanising, his pact with the devil at the crossroads - Mezzo and DuPont have produced a fittingly creative and beautiful depiction of this most extraordinary life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Everyone knows that Robert Johnson supposedly met the devil at a crossroads and that's where he got his gift for ungodly guitar playing to this day, his skill seems almost supernatural. Dupont's graphic biography of America's most infamous bluesman doesn't aim to answer that question, although it suggests that the answer would be "hardship and hard times." The basics of Johnson's brief life are detailed in a dark and almost succulent level of prewar woodcut-style detail by artist Mezzo. Dupont's intimate and prying narrative tracks Johnson's life closely from his dirt-poor Mississippi youth through his later vagabond years as a womanizing roamer and guitar slinger. Dupont takes an interventionist role in the narrative, interrupting it to provide his own opinion and noting where the biographical record is incomplete. The key question of the devil's involvement is left for readers to decide.
