Anderson (Weeds) whisks readers to the liminal space between daily life and fantasy in this tender collection of comics stories. By toying with color, panel boundaries, and layered narration, she explores themes including loss, anxiety, and connection with nature. Often gender-ambiguous characters lend the volume a queer undertone. In “The Basement,” a young child copes with a parent’s death by following their cat into a hidden realm of memories. A queer person’s depression manifests as red flowers blooming on their light blue skin in “Weeds.” The protagonist of “At the Seaside” finds solace from a mundane existence in the meditative world of a sleep app, only feeling truly alive as they slumber. Nestled between each chapter are interludes following a quirky wizard’s efforts to protect a forest, overlaid with a skeptical narrator’s commentary (“I just think he ain’t right”). Collectively, the stories leave readers feeling safe in Anderson’s hands, despite the heavy subject matter. Her soft drawing style, calming color palette, and willingness to step outside the boundaries of the comics form are inviting. Anderson proves a savvy guide to what it means to live and be seen in the world. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

With this quartet of meditative and painterly stories, Koch (After Nothing Comes) juxtaposes humankind’s general instability and search for permanence against the organic, regular flow of nature’s rhythms. The title piece follows a nameless female protagonist’s travels, which include a stopover with some old friends. Koch intercuts scenes of the woman pondering the unknowable outcomes of her destination, illustrated by sequences of two rivers that ultimately meet: “The water never thought about what would happen... it was just moving.” In the fable-like “A New Year,” a village’s denizens decorate the surrounding forest, hanging “messages and gifts” across all the trees to both honor and keep secret from authorities the specific location of a tree thought to be where “all the souls went.” Koch returns to water imagery in the tone poem “The Forest” as well as in “Man Made Lake,” where a patient describes to a therapist their former life as a sea creature: “My cells were part of everything and everything was connected.“ Koch’s lovely, softly colored minimalism zeroes in on small, specific details, such as the blue polka dots of a woman’s socks as she climbs a staircase—resulting in an innovative image that looks like drops of water floating up the steps. This and other abstractions suffuse the work with a beguilingly ambient quality. Koch’s artful interludes offer much to ponder. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Hando and Hoshino’s North American debut, an in-depth manga account of Japan’s surrender in WWII, is dry and workmanlike in its early chapters but develops the tension of a well-crafted thriller as it builds to the fateful moment of Japan’s surrender. The long setup to “the longest day” begins in 1853, when the forced reopening of Japan’s ports by U.S. commodore Matthew Perry after more than 200 years of isolation sparks a power struggle between the government, military, and imperial court that continues into the 20th century and the crowning of Emperor Hirohito. Moving rapidly through the decades, the volume’s first half leaves many questions unanswered—WWII itself passes in a handful of pages. The entire second half, however, covers the two days from Hirohito’s surrender to the broadcast of his speech informing the Japanese people that the war is over. An incredible story of intrigue and rebellion unfolds. Factions of the military plot coups, bloody sword battles break out in government offices, generals and politicians die by suicide, and imperial loyalists risk their lives to smuggle the recording of the emperor’s surrender to a radio station before pro-war radicals can destroy it. Hoshino’s meticulously rendered battle scenes and weaponry display the firm, slashing lines of classic samurai manga. Readers who can forgive the slow pace of the opening will be rewarded by a solidly crafted dramatic history. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

This playful graphic adaptation of historian Cline’s study of the late Bronze Age employs cheerful art by Fawkes (Charlotte Brontë Before Jane Eyre) to bring archaeological scholarship to life. Together Cline and Fawkes tackle one of history’s great mysteries: the sudden fall of the Egyptian empire in 1177 BCE. Readers are guided by Pel, a son of the mysterious invaders known as the “Sea Peoples” who attacked Egypt, and Shesha, a young Egyptian scribe. “It’s the late 12th century B.C., and the world Grandpa describes is gone!” Pel exclaims, and with Shesha’s help he sets out to discover what happened to the flourishing empire their elders remember. They have a lot of ground to cover, and the narrative jumps rapidly through time and space as it attempts to illuminate interconnected cultures, rulers, military campaigns, and natural disasters. Cline and Fawkes periodically step in to explain how archaeologists learn about the past and discuss the historical evidence for events like the Trojan War and the biblical story of Exodus. The graphic format allows readers to envision the ancient world, as Fawkes fills the pages with meticulously researched drawings of cities, people, art, food, and fashion. Her loose, colorful picture-book art is welcoming to all ages. This ambitious and detailed visual history rewards multiple readings. Agent (for Fawkes): Anjali Singh, Ayesha Pande Literary. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

The squelching heart of a low-budget creature feature beats schlocky as ever in this vibrant but predictable graphic novel scripted by Frantz and Cuffe (the Metalshark Bro series) with art by Williams (the Bountiful Garden series). According to Sheriff Carla McCord, the only notable event in the history of backwoods burg Kankakee, Va., was the government’s construction of a “fancy-pants” research facility in the 1970s. But things get exciting fast when mosquito-like aliens invade through a power surge at the facility (where their pod has been held since it returned from space) and begin draining the life out of Kankakee County. Carla teams up with a man in black from the facility, Agent Ronald Smith, and two stoners from the local pest control company to save the day. The mismatched crew attempt to squash the beasts, as depicted in deliciously gaudy cartooning, bright coloring, and wonderfully slimy gore sure to sate any horror junkie’s needs. In contrast, the script, while quickly paced and never missing a chance for comedy, falls into the trap of being self-aware about genre tropes but unwilling to push their boundaries. Still, readers in the mood for revolting scares will bask in the blood and guts. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 03/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

Set in Canada’s sparsely populated north, these pleasantly meandering vignettes from McCreesh (Norths) document 10 years committed to adventure and freedom, before taking a turn for the elegiac. In 2008, when she’s in her early 20s, McCreesh heads from Quebec to Dawson City, a small Gold Rush town in the Yukon. For the next decade, first with friends, later with her partner Pat, and eventually with their two young children, she lives a semi-nomadic artist’s life in campers, houseboats, and shacks, earning money as a translator and an art teacher. Refreshingly, she offers no definitive explanation for her wanderlust; instead, the narrative bears gentle, slow-paced witness to her rural, off-the-grid lifestyle, including observations of local Inuit communities, both historical and contemporary. As McCreesh reckons with the demands of adult life, she reflects on the gentrification of a beloved old shanty town, and the devastating effects of climate change on Indigenous life, delicate ecosystems, and local infrastructure. “All is connected... all is changing,” she observes. The panels are densely populated with loose-lined, casual sketches of figures, and interspersed with realistic and detailed illustrations of the northern lights and various artifacts of rural life. It’s poignant ode to the vastness, and interconnectedness, of the North and the people who make their homes there. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

Härmälä’s wit glows as warmly as her saturated pastel colors in her semi-autobiographical debut about tackling parenthood alone. Her partner dumps her while she’s pregnant, leaving her to shoulder the responsibilities of birthing and then raising their daughter, Alma. After she fantasizes about burning the house down, she imagines being visited by angels who decree, “From now on, you shall always suffer judgment more than other mothers.” Through short, interconnected vignettes, Härmälä deals with insensitive couples, overly sensitive friends, friendships with other single moms (Sara, an aspirational single mother figure, “smells expensive” and is “emotionally scarred but in a gentle, approachable way”), dating as a single parent, applying for a mortgage alone, and accepting the hard truth that, no matter how exhausting and exasperating her situation is, she has to keep going for the sake of her daughter. Through it all, Härmälä is bitingly funny and visually innovative; she imagines losing her partner in a game show, depicts herself in woodcut-style art as a witch banished from the Village of Couples, and transforms into a half-woman, half-stroller cyborg. Her smooth, rounded art is delightfully expressive and self-deprecating. Parents, single and otherwise, will find plenty to laugh about, in solidarity. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

“History is the only field in which the MORE courses students take, the STUPIDER they become,” according to this striking graphic adaptation by cartoonist Powell (the March series) of sociologist Loewen’s groundbreaking 1995 study, which challenged the prevailing version of American history taught in public schools. From elementary school mythology surrounding Christopher Columbus through the falsehoods, half-truths, and purposeful omissions that inform a typical student’s understanding of slavery, the Civil War, Vietnam, and post-9/11 political discourse, Loewen and Powell’s insightful and often irreverent approach upends standard narratives. They examine the underlying motivations and trends that informed and bolstered a Eurocentric and often idealized version of history—which never let the truth get in the way of a good story in favor of nationalism. Powell’s characteristically fluid art lends new depth to revisited figures including Helen Keller, known by most Americans solely for her disabilities and not for her radical activism, and abolitionist John Brown, condemned by U.S. history books as a mentally disturbed violent extremist rather than a dedicated social progressive. Long a favorite of radical educators, Loewen’s original text receives the vital and accessible adaptation it deserves. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

Henley, creator of the long-running weekly comic strip Maxine, recounts in this fearless and lyrical graphic memoir her decision to tell her adopted son, William, about her history as a sexual assault victim. Triggered by language degrading women in the pop music he listens to, she sits William down and discusses the two times she was raped: in her dorm room at age 19 in the 1970s, and at gunpoint in a clothing store in the ’90s. With brutal clarity, she depicts the attacks and their aftermaths, noting the callous way she was treated by the justice system in the ’70s, in particular. She excoriates the families of the perpetrators, describing how the mother of her first rapist, a privileged young white man, tried to get her son off the hook. The friends and family of Henley’s second attacker, who was Black, are depicted glaring at her with the labels “whore” and “white trash.” Lasting trauma arises at unexpected moments: “Rape is like a bomb,” she writes, “leaving part of you destroyed and part of you perfectly intact.” Henley’s loose, quivering linework is acrobatic; simple, understated panels periodically give way to a vividly rendered memory or a fiercely expressive face. The pain in her story is braced by her hope, elegantly expressed, that sharing it can make a difference, and her lithe art makes a difficult topic approachable. This joins the ranks of works like Diane Noomin’s Drawing Power that raise awareness of sexual violence through the immediacy of comics memoir. Agent: Betsy Amster, Amster Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 03/22/2024 | Details & Permalink

Ahn debuts with a warmhearted homage to community work that also captures the complex pressures on children of immigrants. In 2005, Eddie is a young adult working with AmeriCorps for an after-school program in Oakland, Calif. There, he discovers the small joys of helping underserved communities. However, his Korean immigrant parents, who own a liquor store, expect upward financial mobility. He goes to law school and discovers a knack for high-stakes poker, but eschews both to pursue a career in environmental justice, which he calls “the gamble of my life.” His personal and professional lives are constantly underfunded, and he’s nagged by guilt that he’s disappointed his family. He becomes the executive director of the nonprofit Brightline Defense, and serves on San Francisco’s environmental commission. A strong running motif is the casual racism he experiences in the gentrifying city, where he’s regularly mistaken as a car service driver or waiter. The graphic memoir is drawn with realistic, detailed portraits of Eddie, his comrades, and his beloved Bay Area, painted in alternating pink, green, yellow, and purple watercolor panels. Each scene is given the same weight and tone, which can flatten the narrative, and there’s a tendency to overexplain. Still, readers who have heeded the call of people over profit will find resonance here. Agent: Chad Luibl, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/22/2024 | Details & Permalink