There is a subtle sense of displacement in Chris Reynolds comic books. It springs from the tension between his drawing style and his fragmented storytelling, somewhere between Raymond Carver and Shirley Jackson. His stories are haunted by the ghost of a meaning that appears to be at hand’s reach, but can never be fully grasped.

Reynolds tells compelling stories avoiding drama: following his characters is like looking inside a fish tank. That is how he lets us observe everything – interplanetary wars, time travels, enigmatic characters and mysterious disappearances – from a distance that amplifies the sense of estrangement.

Now, after years of silence, arrives in Italy Un mondo nuovo, a collection of his main stories (for Tunué). For the occasion BilBOlbul devotes an exhibition to one of the most important contemporary comic book authors.

After Mauretania, a seminal graphic novel released in the early Nineties, Chris Reynolds has disappeared from the comics scene. BilBOlbul celebrates his return with an exhibition that brings together the original drawings from A New World, a collection of his most relevant stories edited by Seth, some unpublished illustrations and Mauretania, whose protagonist Monitor, an entity with a face always covered by a helmet, is among his most famous characters.

with Chris Reynolds, Paul Gravett

 in collaboration with Erasmus Mundus in Culture Letterarie Europee, Tunué

with Chris Reynolds, Raffaele Alberto Ventura
moderated by Matteo Gaspari

supported by Tunué

Chris Reynolds is a British comics artist. He wrote for Escape magazine and self-published the  series Mauretania Comics in 1986, in which he introduced characters like ‘Monitor’ and the ‘Cinema Detectives’. Reynolds also published a Mauretania graphic novel, of which the final installment appeared in 1991. Much of his work was collected in the graphic novels The Dial and Other Stories and The New World, edited by Seth and published by The New York Review Comics.

mauretania.cinemadetectives.com