A biography in comics of the amazing rock singer Janis Joplin with the
highlights of her journey from childhood after the Second World War to
her abrupt death in late 1970. It is one of the most fabulous musical
adventures in America of the second half of the twentieth century, yet
it lasted only five years. How did a very young, messed up woman, a drug
addict filled with doubt, become a planetary icon of rock music in a few
years? Thanks to a worldwide movement of emancipation which would
consecrate for a long time the ideals and modes of alternative
lifestyles from counterculture to the flower power generation, Janis,
the ugly duckling, gave free rein to her impulses. Fed by the thirst for
freedom of the Beat Generation and the desire for emancipation expressed
by American youth in the early 1960s, Janis Joplin left for San
Francisco, the epicenter of cultural innovation. There, she abandoned
herself to all impulses, overcoming without hesitation all the taboos of
the time: bisexuality, alcohol, and drugs, doing so not only with
delight, but with the taste for excess which came naturally from her
spontaneous character.