Milano Eagles / The Marvelous Moo

by 

Bjorn d’Algevey (Jerry Joyner & Peter Blegvad)

 Amateur Enterprises is pleased to announce the publication of Milano Eagles/The Marvelous Moo, by Björn d’Algevey. Two stories in one full colour 48 page hardback, Eagles/ Moo is the work of two illustrator/authors, Jerry Joyner (Thirteen, All About Mud, How Far Will a Rubber Band Stretch?) and Peter Blegvad (The Book of Leviathan, Kew. Rhone.).

They began work on these stories forty years ago, meeting on rare occasions in New York, London and Nashville to assume the rôle of Björn d’Algevy and produce another page or two. The result of their patient labour is a picture book that gleefully subverts genre conventions and reader expectations. 

The two stories are presented back to back with an introductory essay in the middle that explains how they were composed. As for why, the essay floats both celebration and revenge as possible motives. Joyner and Blegvad were free-lance professionals, accustomed to the tyranny of deadlines and the constraints of the marketplace. As Björn d’Algevey they could be amateurs again, free to express their love of illustrated narrative without commercial, editorial or temporal concerns.

When the two men met in the 70s, Joyner had been part of Push Pin studios, the celebrated graphic design team, and had collaborated with Remy Charlip on ‘Thirteen’ a structurally experimental picture book which “pays homage to—and exemplifies—the art of the page turn” (Publishers Weekly). Blegvad was a singer/songwriter who’d been affiliated with experimental bands in the UK but was now drawing occasional illustrations for the New York Times and other clients. They were both bibliophiles with a fondness for odd, absurd and obscure material and a particular interest in the synergy between words and pictures. The pages of Milano Eagles/The Marvelous Moo are a testament to all that. 

The book is a handsome full colour 48 page hardback printed in a limited edition of 300 copies signed by Joyner and Blegvad (and by Björn d’Algevey himself).