First, a ship that has slipped its moorings and a baby paratrooper on a special mission disappear into Goodbye, friends. Nightmares in Ex-Machina II follows, as does a sense of dream manipulation used by the British secret services during World War II.
According to scholars of the genre such as Mandel, the police officer is born when a disappearance becomes a mystery. From Agatha Christie to George Simenon, Preminger to Hitchcock, the focus shifts from absence and its consequences to the machinery of crime, placing the weight of the plot on the detective’s investigation. Yet mystery is not confined to fiction alone; it is a constant presence in daily life, sometimes barely noticed. The things we fail to see or understand can be as unsettling as they are revealing, depending on what remains somewhat intangible. Begoña García-Alén in Goodbye Friends (Apa Apa comics) outlines three forms of disappearance, three degrees that become a central axis: the first is the everyday absence, the void imposed by work that keeps life moving while a present void lingers, a void that signals the imminence and the accidental.
Second comes the unexpected, the mystery that defies explanation, appearing without warning and sparking stories carried from person to person like a rolling snowball. This kind of mystery grows into fiction that transcends ordinary reality, bending logic and venturing into fertile ground. The third disappearance is the most daunting, linking the everyday with the enigmatic and creating a deeply human drama. It presses readers to step away from fiction and confront real possibilities that threaten to overwhelm and break hearts. García-Alén extends the insights and tools of graphic poetry to the graphic novel, showing that emotions and feelings can drive reflections and doubts with the same force that her poetry awakens. The poetic compositions crafting a story as striking as it is magnetic have just earned the Castelao Graphic Novel Award.
Mechanisms of Mysteries
Yet as noted, this drama can yield tragedy or pivot toward pure mystery, hovering around the classical boundaries of the genre. Thierry Smolderen and Jorge González plunge into Pesadillas Ex-Machina, published by ECC Comics and translated by Isabel Moragón, producing a metafiction that examines the genre from within. The plot centers on an impossible murder solved from the very first page, a deliberate trick that invites readers to examine the conventions they and the authors embrace. Smolderen, a scholar of popular culture, has repeatedly shown the talent to reflect on history through the fictions society creates, catching that odd feedback loop that keeps history moving forward while clues once neglected resurface with renewed force. Jorge González complements this with atmospheric texture, guiding the mystery through a dialogue between characters drawn from early 20th century novels and those persecuted by the Nazis, their esoteric illusions weaving a tale that probes gender dynamics. The work offers a provocative look at how power, fear, and fantasy intersect in storytelling, creating a fresh lens on familiar figures and motifs. A surprising analysis of the means that govern gender emerges as part of the narrative, reshaping how readers understand both crime and character.
Mysteries arise from the author’s everyday mind or a mind in fever, yet over time they become truths that oscillate between tragedy and comedy. They remind readers that life may not be far removed from the fictions that mirror it, and they invite a reconsideration of what counts as truth when imagination and reality blur. The writers here do not merely entertain; they challenge assumptions about how stories are built and who gets to tell them, inviting a deeper engagement with the mechanics of suspense and the ethics of depiction.
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