Dull Margaret

by Jim Broadbent, Dix

Overview

The Academy-Award winning actor collaborated with a Guardian cartoonist to create a graphic novel inspired by the Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Dulle Griet (1561) painting.

Inspired by Dulle Griet (aka “Mad Meg"), Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 16th-century painting of a “strong, intense woman striding determinedly across a violent landscape," Dull Margaret is the first graphic novel by Academy Award winning-actor Jim Broadbent (Harry Potter, Game of Thrones) and artist Dix (perhaps best known for his Roll Up! Roll Up! comics in the Guardian newspaper). The Dulle Griet painting shows a breastplated woman with a sword in one hand in front of the mouth of hell, and Broadbent uses that single, vivid image as a launching point to explore what the rest of Dull Margaret’s bleak existence may have been like.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683960980
Publisher:	Fantagraphics Books
Publication date:	06/26/2018
Pages:	150
Product dimensions:	7.30(w) x 10.10(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	16 Years

About the Author

Jim Broadbent is one of his generation’s most acclaimed actors, on stage or screen. He lives in England.

Dix is an illustrator and comic book artist living in Wales. He has created strips for the Guardian, Crisis, and many more publications. He lives in Hay-on-Wye, Wales.

Editorial Reviews

07/16/2018
Greed is unquenchable in this bleak meditation on vengeance and desire by Dix (Klaxon) and Academy Award–winning actor Jim Broadbent. Margaret—dull marsh-dweller, eel-catcher, and hermit—pursues her desires through dark magic. She is granted lovers and gold in abundance, but she remains unsatisfied and swiftly descends into covetous madness. This is a determinedly desolate fable of mud, tarnish, and viscera, rendered in swampy earth tones with brief, rich interludes of red. Margaret’s monologue comprises nearly every word in the book, and she mutters to herself constantly: as she reels in her catch, as she degrades a man in her thrall, and as she counts her ill-gotten riches. It is her chant, her ceaseless, abject assertion of “I’m Margaret, I’m Margaret... strong and clever,” which lingers most hauntingly after the last page is turned. The book’s inspiration, the painting Dulle Griet by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, is most faithfully represented in this aspect; Margaret’s desperation mirrors Griet’s frantic trek across a hellish landscape. The ruthless, brutal Margaret proves a satisfying antiheroine for this vicious morality play. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"An intense incantation filtered through a fever dream."

The Beat

"Enticing and loathly, this sorry soggy fable abounds with rich mordant humor and powerfully seductive sentiment, all compellingly realized by Dix’s muted palette and amorphous, soft-edged designs."

Now Read This

"Dull Margaret is a powerful read that’s open enough to take multiple interpretations, with the space to grow over several rereadings. If you enjoy dark, literary graphic novels, Dix and Broadbent have dished up a treat."

Grovel

"Dull Margaret is a dark, vicious reimagining of 16th century peasant life with a remarkable main character."

Sequential State