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Alack Sinner #12-18
Alack Sinner: The Age of Disenchantment
The concluding volume of the international bestseller and winner of many of Europe's top comics awards, now available in English for the first time.
The Age of Disenchantment is the second of two volumes presenting the complete Alack Sinner comics by the Argentine-born team of artist José Muñoz and writer Carlos Sampayo.
Hard-boiled private detective Alack Sinner's adventures wear all the trappings of traditional detective stories, but are imbued with such deep political conscience and scathing critiques of corruption in society, that to think of them as nothing more would be a grave error. Juxtaposed with meditations on the nature of violence and exile in a noirish New York at the end of the 20th century, these themes force us to confront the gritty injustices of our real world, making them as evident as the grime and desperation that pervade traditional detective fiction.
Alack Sinner stories play out against a jazz soundtrack, beginning in 1975 and running through the 2000s. The authors have rearranged the stories by series chronology, rather than date of publication, providing a novel reading experience for fans both new and old.
The Age of Disenchantment presents eleven stories, including Nicaragua, Private Stories, The USA Affair, and The End of the Road.
The Age of Disenchantment is the second of two volumes presenting the complete Alack Sinner comics by the Argentine-born team of artist José Muñoz and writer Carlos Sampayo.
Hard-boiled private detective Alack Sinner's adventures wear all the trappings of traditional detective stories, but are imbued with such deep political conscience and scathing critiques of corruption in society, that to think of them as nothing more would be a grave error. Juxtaposed with meditations on the nature of violence and exile in a noirish New York at the end of the 20th century, these themes force us to confront the gritty injustices of our real world, making them as evident as the grime and desperation that pervade traditional detective fiction.
Alack Sinner stories play out against a jazz soundtrack, beginning in 1975 and running through the 2000s. The authors have rearranged the stories by series chronology, rather than date of publication, providing a novel reading experience for fans both new and old.
The Age of Disenchantment presents eleven stories, including Nicaragua, Private Stories, The USA Affair, and The End of the Road.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
1 person is currently reading
55 people want to read
About the author
Carlos Sampayo
99 books44 followersEscritor y guionista, es autor de novelas, relatos cortos, poesía y guiones de historieta y cine. Además es especialista en jazz, tema sobre el que ha publicado ensayos y ficciones, y dirigido y coordinado enciclopedias. Su obra ha sido ampliamente publicada en América y en Europa. En 1974, conoció a su compatriota José Muñoz, con el que comenzó a dar vida al célebre detective Alack Sinner. Sampayo ha colaborado con Igort en una biografía en historieta de Fats Waller, y con Oscar Zárate, en los libros «Tres artistas en París», «Fly blues» y «La faille».
Writer best known for his work in comics, particularly in collaboration with artist José Muñoz. He is also poet and a literature and music (particularly Jazz) critic. He left Argentina in the early 70s for political reasons, stayed in Italy, France and settled in Spain
Writer best known for his work in comics, particularly in collaboration with artist José Muñoz. He is also poet and a literature and music (particularly Jazz) critic. He left Argentina in the early 70s for political reasons, stayed in Italy, France and settled in Spain
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 11, 2018
This second volume of Alack Sinner collects Muñoz and Sampayo's noirish series of graphic novels originally published from the 1980s through the early 2000s. In the narrative the authors, politically radical Argentines exiled to Europe by their country's 1970s right-wing dictatorship, keep time politically.
The first Sinner story in this volume of avowed disenchantment is set against the backdrop of U.S. involvement in Nicaragua as the titular detective tries to keep visiting Nicaraguan leftists safe in the atmosphere of the Reagan '80s, all the while falling in unrequited love with one of them, a woman named Delia. As the series progresses, Muñoz and Sampayo's storytelling style, never very linear to begin with, becomes even more dream-like and uncertain: the centerpiece of "Nicaragua" is a hallucinatory puppet show the white Sinner attends with his young black daughter, Cheryl, a horrifying pageant that displays the history of U.S. imperialism in Latin America. "My mom said that Nicaragua is like...black people..." Cheryl hesitantly muses on the spectacle, a phrase that compresses a unified theory of white western dominance.
Sinner's relationship with Cheryl and the other women in his life, including Cheryl's mother Enfer, his on-again-off-again lover Sophie, and his sister Toni dominate the middle stories in the book, one of which is aptly titled "Private Stories." While Sinner's inner monologue refers to "my women," the series begins to dwell more consciously on gender, especially in the long story where Sinner struggles to save first his daughter and then his sister from various forms of imprisonment. Politics-with-a-capital-P is also touched on here, as the "private story" of Cheryl's false accusation of murder involves her extrication in Haiti's long oppression by the west.
The politics return in full in the final story, titled "The U.S.A. Case," as if to signal Muñoz and Sampayo's own object of criminal investigation: a country they do not live in but whose global dominance has shaped their lives nevertheless. "The U.S.A. Case" takes place a month before September 11, 2001, a month in which Cheryl, now pregnant, is threatened again, this time by a shady arms deal whose implication is U.S. intelligence services' foreknowledge of the coming terrorist attacks. As one ghoulish old agency man puts it on the book's final page, "Security? [...] That's the investment of the future, as long as the Bin Ladens and company are around." Too paranoid? Alack Sinner is about nothing other than the corruptions of power, global, economic, racial, and otherwise; in this world, as in its noir forerunners, you can't be too paranoid.
The passage of time makes these stories more affecting than those in the first volume, as we watch Sinner and his friends and lovers go from middle age to the brink of old age, and as we watch his daughter grow from child to mother. Muñoz's inkily fluid, shadow-laden pages remain the best thing about the work, even if his style ages, along with its hero, into sometimes illegible forms of looseness and abstraction. I don't know if Alack Sinner is one of the best comics I've ever read, but it's certainly among the best I've ever seen.
The first Sinner story in this volume of avowed disenchantment is set against the backdrop of U.S. involvement in Nicaragua as the titular detective tries to keep visiting Nicaraguan leftists safe in the atmosphere of the Reagan '80s, all the while falling in unrequited love with one of them, a woman named Delia. As the series progresses, Muñoz and Sampayo's storytelling style, never very linear to begin with, becomes even more dream-like and uncertain: the centerpiece of "Nicaragua" is a hallucinatory puppet show the white Sinner attends with his young black daughter, Cheryl, a horrifying pageant that displays the history of U.S. imperialism in Latin America. "My mom said that Nicaragua is like...black people..." Cheryl hesitantly muses on the spectacle, a phrase that compresses a unified theory of white western dominance.
Sinner's relationship with Cheryl and the other women in his life, including Cheryl's mother Enfer, his on-again-off-again lover Sophie, and his sister Toni dominate the middle stories in the book, one of which is aptly titled "Private Stories." While Sinner's inner monologue refers to "my women," the series begins to dwell more consciously on gender, especially in the long story where Sinner struggles to save first his daughter and then his sister from various forms of imprisonment. Politics-with-a-capital-P is also touched on here, as the "private story" of Cheryl's false accusation of murder involves her extrication in Haiti's long oppression by the west.
The politics return in full in the final story, titled "The U.S.A. Case," as if to signal Muñoz and Sampayo's own object of criminal investigation: a country they do not live in but whose global dominance has shaped their lives nevertheless. "The U.S.A. Case" takes place a month before September 11, 2001, a month in which Cheryl, now pregnant, is threatened again, this time by a shady arms deal whose implication is U.S. intelligence services' foreknowledge of the coming terrorist attacks. As one ghoulish old agency man puts it on the book's final page, "Security? [...] That's the investment of the future, as long as the Bin Ladens and company are around." Too paranoid? Alack Sinner is about nothing other than the corruptions of power, global, economic, racial, and otherwise; in this world, as in its noir forerunners, you can't be too paranoid.
The passage of time makes these stories more affecting than those in the first volume, as we watch Sinner and his friends and lovers go from middle age to the brink of old age, and as we watch his daughter grow from child to mother. Muñoz's inkily fluid, shadow-laden pages remain the best thing about the work, even if his style ages, along with its hero, into sometimes illegible forms of looseness and abstraction. I don't know if Alack Sinner is one of the best comics I've ever read, but it's certainly among the best I've ever seen.
March 20, 2025
First things first: having now read all of “Alack Sinner”, I can comfortably say that José Muñoz is one of my very favourite comic artists. I absolutely love his bold, expressionistic, chiaroscuro style; it's hugely atmospheric and just a joy to behold. What's especially interesting in this second volume – which contains work spanning the period from the 1980s to the 2000s – is seeing how his style evolved. Over time, he increasingly leaned into abstraction, his figures becoming more and more warped, and his lines also seeming looser and freer. As a result, I'm inclined to say I like his later art even more than the earlier material.
The second thing to say – which really hit me with this second volume – is just how weird the series is, in terms of content. Two Argentine émigrés in Europe making a hardboiled detective comic set in New York – where they'd never been – is already a little odd, but the really bizarre thing is where they take the series. The first half-dozen stories (all collected in the first volume) are rather conventional examples of the hardboiled genre, but after that it feels like they just used the series to do whatever they want. In this second volume, one story is a tirade against US policy towards Nicaragua (complete with a fever dream puppet show that lasts several pages, of course), another is a damnation of the 1990–1991 Gulf War, another is a expression of frustration about US comic artist Keith Giffen copying Muñoz's artwork, and one is just about a small town where the locals refuse to let a thirsty outsider have anything to drink. I don't know why the authors wanted to use their grizzled (ex-)PI as the vehicle for all these different stories, but I love their total disregard for reader expectations, and the unapologetically heterogeneous results.
Another aspect of the overall weirdness is the lack of traditional narrative structure. Most of the stories feel like a series of events piling onto each other in a disorientating mess: a bunch of things happen and then the story ends. What's more, there's little regard for realism in the writing; the things the characters say and do feel like they just stem from what the authors wanted, rather than any sense of verisimilitude. These might sound like bad things, but they're a big part of what makes the series so fascinating to me. It's so idiosyncratic, so uncompromising; I love it.
The second thing to say – which really hit me with this second volume – is just how weird the series is, in terms of content. Two Argentine émigrés in Europe making a hardboiled detective comic set in New York – where they'd never been – is already a little odd, but the really bizarre thing is where they take the series. The first half-dozen stories (all collected in the first volume) are rather conventional examples of the hardboiled genre, but after that it feels like they just used the series to do whatever they want. In this second volume, one story is a tirade against US policy towards Nicaragua (complete with a fever dream puppet show that lasts several pages, of course), another is a damnation of the 1990–1991 Gulf War, another is a expression of frustration about US comic artist Keith Giffen copying Muñoz's artwork, and one is just about a small town where the locals refuse to let a thirsty outsider have anything to drink. I don't know why the authors wanted to use their grizzled (ex-)PI as the vehicle for all these different stories, but I love their total disregard for reader expectations, and the unapologetically heterogeneous results.
Another aspect of the overall weirdness is the lack of traditional narrative structure. Most of the stories feel like a series of events piling onto each other in a disorientating mess: a bunch of things happen and then the story ends. What's more, there's little regard for realism in the writing; the things the characters say and do feel like they just stem from what the authors wanted, rather than any sense of verisimilitude. These might sound like bad things, but they're a big part of what makes the series so fascinating to me. It's so idiosyncratic, so uncompromising; I love it.
September 15, 2022
Early Alack Sinner works are better but the quality of this volume is also great.
September 16, 2022
Οι μεταγενέστερες ιστορίες του Alack Sinner συνεχίζουν στο γνωστό μοτίβο, αλλά μερικές φορές μοιάζει σαν κάτι να λείπει από το μεγαλείο του παρελθόντος.
January 6, 2024
Munoz’ art is amazing, though the ink is lighter and the drawing sketchier toward the end. Good hard boiled noir.
February 15, 2016
Nema sumnje da se u Dobu razočaranja Munoz oslobađa klasične figuracije, a Sampayo odrednica kriminalističkog žanra, no pitam se je li baš to razlog zašto me ovaj tom osvojio više od Doba nevinosti. Da, priče su složenije, slojevitije, možda čak i emotivnije, a slično vrijedi i za crtež, no bi li dojam bio jednak da nisam polako upoznavao likove Alackovog svijeta, pa i njega samog, kroz "obične" detektivske priče, da nisam postepeno uviđao svu kompleksnost i bogatstvo Munozovog crteža? Čisto sumnjam. Zato, iako je meni drugi tom za nijansu bolji, oba čine jedinstvenu cjelinu iz koje je grijeh bilo što izostaviti. Tom unikatnom svijetu potrebno se u potpunosti predati jer nakon plovidbe njegovim crno-bijelim stranicama nećete ostati isti.
June 3, 2024
It doesn’t get much better than this. Great noir tales with political commentary paired with some of the most jaw-dropping artwork to ever be produced in comics.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews