Maladies

Henriette Valium

Conundrum Press

Mysterious maladies and dubious doctors

The head sickness. The super swelling syndrome. The hallucinating hand. These are among the disturbing diseases readers will discover in Henriette Valium’s Maladies. Perhaps more concerning, however, are the cures. Absurd and grotesque, Maladies is a tour through an impossibly monstrous landscape of disease, with Valium at the wheel. It perfectly encapsulates Valium’s longstanding fascination with the human body, as well as society’s cultural quirks and taboos.

Maladies was a graphzine published in France in 1994, now available in English for the first time. Pairing blunt observations with surrealist line drawings, this offering by one of Quebec’s most notorious underground comic artists will truly bend the mind.

About the Author

Montreal native Henriette Valium has been called the greatest French-Canadian cartoonist of all time. Until his sad passing in September 2021, he was one of underground comic’s elder statesmen. Over the past three decades his creations have been widely dispersed in numerous anthologies, fanzines, self-published oversized silkscreened comics, and various mixed-media collaborations. His work has been regularly published in almost every independent zine, compilation and catalogue in North America and Europe.