Cherrypicker
Bizarre Life Stories

On just one book page, comic artist Simon Schwartz presents his whimsical and varied historical vignettes.

By Holger Moos

© avant-verlag The multi-award-winning comic illustrator Simon Schwartz regularly publishes comics and illustrations in newspapers and magazines. As early as 2012, his Vita Obscura series appeared in the weekly newspaper der Freitag. These are one-page historical vignettes in which Schwartz depicted unusual life stories in extremely abbreviated form. The comic series was published as a book by avant-verlag in 2014.

In 2019, FAZ magazine contacted Schwartz: Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, whose “Karlicatures” they had printed for six years, had just died. They were looking for a successor to design the orphaned magazine page and Simon Schwartz seemed to be the right man.

After continuing his comic series Vita Obscura in FAZ magazine from September 2019, 50 of Schwartz’s “incredible biographies” from around the world have now been published, again by avant-verlag, under the title Vita Obscura – Life Bizarre. Schwartz not only draws each life story in a different style, the accompanying texts also reveal his narrative talent. Clearly, a lot of research goes into this undertaking.

Interred in an espresso pot

Mileva Marić, one of the first women to study mathematics and physics and Albert Einstein’s first wife, is among the more famous personalities Schwartz chose. Then there’s Renato Bialetti, the Italian inventor of the iconic octagonal Moka Express espresso pot. Incidentally, Bialetti’s ashes were buried in an oversized espresso pot at his request.

Schwartz often portrays unknown or forgotten personalities such as the Indian street artist P. K. Mahanandia, who cycled more than 7,000 kilometres in 1977 to propose to his great love in Sweden. The couple still lives together happily today.

No happy endings, but plenty of wit

Happy endings are more the exception in Schwartz’s comics. Victoria Woodhull was the first US presidential candidate in 1872. Not only did she not win; she was arrested for her (illegal) candidacy. The same happened to Liliʻuokalani, last queen of the Kingdom of Hawai’i from 1891 to 1893, who fought for better living conditions for the Indigenous rural population. After a coup d’état supported by American military, she was sentenced to life under house arrest. Another vignette tells the story of the American teacher Annie Taylor. She lived beyond her means and aimed to achieve fame and, above all, fortune in 1901 by throwing herself down Niagara Falls in a barrel. She survived, but her fame quickly faded. Her dreams of wealth didn’t come true either; she died in a poorhouse in 1921.

Schwartz’s account of the personal physicians of the French “Sun King” Louis XIV is more amusing. It is almost inconceivable that he not only endured the various radical methods of treatment, including a broth of snake powder, horse dung, and incense, but also survived all his doctors!