SAGA DE XAM is a French comic masterpiece written by Jean Rollin & Illustrated by Nicolas Devil, and published by Eric Losfeld. It is one of the rarest examples of psychedelic comic art from 1967. We came across it for the first time about five years ago in a bookshop in France – they only took cash, we only had credit cards, so all we could do was look in awe and hope that at some point we would be able to find one. Well, now we have, a beautiful 1967 hardback first edition on heavy weight paper in its original dustcover.
As you would expect with a book over forty years old, there are signs of wear on the dustcover, and the writing on the spine of the dustcover has faded, but inside it is eyeball-poppingly magnificent. The quality and variety of the graphics will blow you away. And while it may be stating the bleeding obvious, it is in French. Nicolas Devil – nice surname by the way – was one of Frances first erotic comic book artists. His illustrations were originally drawn on large format paper and then reduced and accompanied by captions and dialogue written in microscopic characters. Eric Losfeld was a French publisher who had a reputation for publishing controversial material with his publishing imprint Editions Le Terrain Vague. He published the well known Barbarella science fiction comic book created by Jean-Claude Forest.