If you appreciate The New Yorker or The Chicagoan as magazine lovers of the jazz age for their excellent reporting and artistic covers, you will enjoy the two-volume Gentlemind comic album series.

The story is set in the 1940s, where showgirl Gina Navit serves as muse and love interest to aspiring illustrator Arch Parker. Plagued by money troubles, Arch decides to go to Europe to cover the war. Gina, who can’t save herself from admirers, breaks heart and marries wealthy entertainment magnate Powell. When he dies, Gina inherits his estate, including a moribund men’s magazine, which she turns into a success by successfully altering its reports and graphics.

Things get complicated when Parker returns from the war. His cover illustrations make the magazine a bestseller, but the relationship between Arch and Gina remains melancholy.

The albums are graphically reminiscent of the style of the Chicagoan (of which, incidentally, only one complete collection exists), in which the elegance and verve of jazz music comes out. The rise and fall of the magazine are metaphors for the lives of the protagonists.

The volumes are published by Dargaud and cost 18 euros each.