Contrapaso - The Children of Others Review

Madrid, winter of 1956. Franco’s fascist dictatorship controls the press and maintains the fiction of an idyllic nation. Faced with the Regime’s attempts to cover up the country’s most sordid crimes, two journalists from the crime beat, the jaded veteran Emilio Sanz and the young and intrepid Léon Lenoir, seek to reveal the truth. Confronted by a wave of unexplained murders, the duo sets out to uncover the dark secret connecting them, buried in a cruel past. Brilliantly written and illustrated by Teresa Valero, Sanz and Lenoir’s investigation plunges us headfirst into an era and society as dark and as violent as it is full of hope. A bracing journalistic thriller revealing the lengths the Francoist regime was willing to go to in its attempts to stifle any form of dissent.

I requested Contrapaso without many high expectations, simply because Spanish history with these years, in particular, is not something I often see written about and I wanted to give it a chance even if it ended up being bad.

Contrapaso ended up being one of the best graphic novels I have ever read. It was also one of the hardest, theme-wise.

General Impressions

This is both an extremely straightforward plot and one of the most complex and detailed graphic stories I've ever read. If you are a fan of tropes, this follows plenty of fan favourites such as disillusioned old cop/excited rookie, second chance romance and serial killer hunt. Even if this is a story set in a XX century fascist Spain and characters political inclinations are very important, every character in this book is incredibly complex and well rounded, making them feel like people rather than stereotypes. You see villains thinking of themselves as and trying to be kind, good people and heroes on the other side of history and blinded by their privilege.

Corruption inside the church, patriarchy, fascism, political intolerance, sexism, homophobia, censorship, sexual abuse and so many other themes are present throughout the story not only in the plot and character's dialogue but also in the illustration backgrounds and between the lines making this a read that always gives you more after each time.

I NEED a sequel and to find out everything this book's author has worked on before now.

Thank you to Europe Comics and NetGalley for this DRC.

Rating: 5/5