Simon Says (2019) TPB

This kick-starter project represents the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust as observed by the United Nations.

Simon Says is a graphic novel loosely based on the life of Simon Wiesenthal as told by Andrea Frattino and Jesse Lee. Like his real-life counterpart, Simon is a death camp survivor who lost his family to the NAZIs. He survived by using his artistic skills to paint swastikas on train cars. Following his liberation and the end of the war, Simon is employed by the Americans to hunt war criminals. When the operation is curtailed, Simon began a vigilante operation with help from a former camp guard and angel of mercy.

Simon Says (2019) TPB

While using Wiesenthal’s life story as a springboard for the graphic novel, Frattino pulls from other post-war fiction tropes. As the world recovered, paranoia ran rampant as survivors looked for lost persons, both innocent and guilty. Simon Says is reminiscent of many 1960s and 1970s paperback thrillers on the hunt for escaped war criminals.

It was Frattino’s goal to raise $5,000 to publish the first issue. As of April 2020, 474 backers had pledged $11,667. The same year, Simon Says was nominated as Best Original Graphic Novel in the Ringo Awards.

The Holocaust has become known as the systematic destruction of European Jews during World War II. Over six million Jews were murdered in German-occupied Europe, equivalent at time to about two-thirds of the Jewish population in Europe.

International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust was established 2004 to commemorate the anniversary of the liberation of possibly the most notorious concentration camp, Auschwitz on Jan. 27.

While many of the Holocaust’s engineers and practitioners were tried and prosecuted, as many if not more escaped justice. Simon Says is a story keeping the story of those silenced still in the public ear.