Mexican Summer & Anthology

In the long history of alternative comics, few works are as venerated, or as underseen, as Saga de Xam, the legendary French graphic novel by Nicolas Devil and Jean Rollin. Originally published in 1967 in limited quantities, the book earned a devoted cult following for its innovative psychedelic visuals and avant-garde sensibilities, even as it spent decades out of print. Saga de Xam chronicles the adventures of Saga—a blue-skinned female alien on a mission to Earth—as she encounters both the cruelties and the possibilities of human civilization, from prehistory to the Middle Ages to the radical 1960s. No synopsis, however, could do justice to the book’s explosive graphic style, its narrative and linguistic complexity, and its countercultural fervor. Anthology Editions is honored to reintroduce Saga de Xam, a visionary landmark of comics storytelling, in its first-ever English translation.

Nicolas Devil was born Nicolas Deville in 1943 in French-occupied Vietnam, but moved back to France with his family as a child. In his twenties, he steeped himself in the Parisian countercultural art scene, presiding over a communal studio and partnering with celebrated writers and artists, including Philippe Druillet and the filmmaker Jean Rollin, his best-known collaborator. After having begun Saga de Xam in 1965 as an outline for a science fiction film, Devil and Rollin released the finished story as a comic in 1967 with Éric Losfeld, a Belgian-born publisher known for his commitment to edgy and controversial work. Though he followed the celebrated Saga de Xam with several other works over the next two decades, Devil left France for Quebec in the 1980s, where he became a Green Party activist and philosophy professor.

Jean Rollin (1938–2010) was a French film director and writer renowned for his work in the low-budget horror and fantastique genres. Rollin's career spanned over five decades and featured work in film, comics, and literature, but he is best known for his genre movies, which including Le viol du vampire (1968), Requiem pour un vampire (1971), and La morte vivante (1982), among many others. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Fantasia International Film Festival in 2007, and remains a central figure in the history of cult cinema.

Saga De Xam will ship in June.

Flexibound
10.25 inches x 13 inches
120 pages, 89 Images
ISBN: 978-1-944860-71-4