Perramus

A political fugitive gives up his memory and takes the name Perramus from his raincoat. His travels with a shifting group of companions move between exile, satire and encounters with power that seem too grotesque to be real.

Sasturain and Breccia made the work during Argentina's military dictatorship. Its surreal episodes give the experience of political fear a form that a straightforward adventure story could scarcely hold.

The work's importance lies in how directly its formal invention answers its political moment. Memory loss is both a plot device and a question about what a society can bear to remember. Fantagraphics' English collection brought this major Breccia work to a new readership.

Perramus uses political allegory, picaresque travel and dark comedy. Its impossible figures and sudden changes of setting keep the reader alert to the gap between official stories and lived reality.

Breccia's black-and-white pages favor unstable textures, abrupt shifts of scale and expressive distortion. The changing look of the images makes the world feel as unreliable as the protagonist's memory.