Les Sentiers d'Anahuac by Bertrand and Dytar
I don't know much about the Aztec empire and it's conquest by the Spanish, but I've been fascinated by what little I know. Les Sentiers d'Anahuac (the paths of Anahuac) is a gorgeous large format graphic novel in French that tells the real story of a series of encyclopedias of Aztec culture put together by Franciscan monks in order to better understand the beliefs of the natives, with the idea that it would be easier to bring them to Jesus if their traditions were better understood. We follow the narrator Antonio Valeriano, a young Aztec born after the conquest and educated by the Franciscans in this quest to understand his own culture and preserve the documentation assembled from Church politics. It's not only visually superb, but very Meta as well as the graphical styles oscillate and blend between Renaissance gravures and Aztec paintings depending on the parts of the story and the people met. Fantastic.
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