Sweathearts

Sweathearts, a drama in nine acts by Martin Groch, is a book of cartoons drawn between 2021 and 2023, chronicling the misadventures of the characters from Sweathearts (the typeface), published by Abyme in 2022.

A duck, a music-hall entertainer, an it girl, a Wall Street shark, a detective, a vampire, and a young curator – a collection of question marks. Twenty-six improbable entities stuck together into a pit of darkness. No logic, no reason, no explanation; just a prolonged nightmare in which fear, loneliness, and the unexplainable walk hand in hand through the shadows. We will not end the nightmare, nor explain it – but Martin, in his broken English, will:

‘Who am I? Where am I going? Those are the questions inherent to our Sweathearts, seriously. No jokes, a lot of fun. I swear. What else would it be? A bit of coolness, wearing masks and being lost, little dances – that might be true for most of the characters in the book. If not all. But drama is real – glimpses of stories rather than fully-fledged ones. Relationships are constantly trying to get a grip. But try to be steady while dancing on the oblique floor. Vaudeville hook is creeping around the corner. Most of the characters are falling short, being outdated. Those who feel the pulse of today are putting everything on fire. They all have a hard time finding where to go. I sweat all of it; it’s there.’—Martin Groch