Doug Wagner & Nicholas Nic Rummel, The Hard Place (Image Comics, 2018), $16.99, pb. I love crime comics, but I am pretty religiously a trade-waiter these days, so I had to wait my turn to get ahold of this book, which launched in floppies late last summer. It was pretty much worth the wait—an exciting, well-crafted […]
Box Brown, Is This Guy for Real?: The Unbelievable Andy Kaufman (First Second, 2018). $19.99, pb. Growing up in the 1970s there were many things that confused me: OPEC, Watergate, and vinyl jumpsuits being just a few. But nothing confused me more than Andy Kaufman. I mean, I thought I got his early schtick on […]
Anders Nilsen, Tongues #1, $15. https://www.andersbrekhusnilsen.com/shop/tongues-001 An eagle wings over a mountain and across a dry, flat, stretching plain, then alights on a scene of human catastrophe: armored cars overturned, the ground cratered as if from a bombing, and a sprawled, broken-looking man’s corpse lying nearby. The eagle frees a frantic skittering monkey from the downed hulk […]
Dan Gearino, Comic Shop: The Retail Mavericks Who Gave Us a New Geek Culture (Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 2017). 264 pp, $26.95. Dan Gearino’s Comic Shop is a book I wish I could have written. Here’s why: In my comics studies classes, I often teach the history and structure of the comic book market. Sometimes […]
Eleanor Davis, Why Art? (Fantagraphics, 2018). $14.95, pb. Why Art?, like Davis’s glorious 2014 collection How to Be Happy, flirts with another genre in its title—this time not self-help books but popular guides to art appreciation (perhaps simply another kind of self-improvement). Its opening pages speak in a voice of assured matter-of-factness even when saying stupid or terribly […]
Leslie Stein, Present (Drawn and Quarterly, 2017). $21.95, hc. Leslie Stein is a tremendous talent in the comics world, so when I saw her new book Present on the ‘new releases’ shelf at my local library I snapped it up with glee. Call the stories in this book autobiographical, call them diary-based, call them slice-of-life… they are […]
Igor Hofbauer, Mister Morgen (Conundrum Press, 2017). $25, pb. If you are an aficionado of the avant-garde, especially poster-art constructivism, and have a tolerance for perversity and despair, this book is for you. First published in French (2016) by the independent publishing house l’Association, Conundrum International has brought a stunning example of the Croatian alternative comics […]
Future Quest Presents (DC Comics), ongoing series. $3.99. Nostalgia is a powerful lure, drawing many of us to return to our childhood heroes in the hopes that we can rekindle the thrill of those first indelible encounters. Perhaps that’s what has drawn writers like Jeff Parker and Phil Hester to recapture the sense of wonder they […]
Mister Miracle #6 (DC Comics, 2018). $3.99. This is by far one of the greatest single-issues of a monthly comic book I’ve read in years. It’s one thing to pick up an issue of an ongoing series from Drawn & Quarterly or Fantagraphics if it only comes out once or twice a year and be […]
Trina Robbins, Last Girl Standing. Fantagraphics, 2017. 200 pp, $19.99. Trina Robbins is often mentioned as the token woman of the underground comix scene of the 1970s. In the standard narrative, she stands out amidst the boys club and often rails against the misogyny of the scene, highlighting how her exclusion led to the founding […]
Héctor Germán Oesterheld & Francisco Solano Lopez, The Eternaut (Fantagraphics, 2016). $39.99. In 2016 the Anglophone world was introduced to the English translation of Argentinian Héctor Germán Oesterheld’s El Eternauta (1957-69). Not only were English-speakers presented with a 1950s science fiction story of alien invasion, time travel, and displacement, but they were also confronted with a dystopic […]
Tales from the Vault: 40 Years, 40 Stories. Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum & Library. March 25 – October 22, 2017. What a challenge it must be to choose between all the remarkable possibilities available for display in a collection as deep as the one at the Billy Ireland! The curators, Jenny Robb and Caitlin McGurk, […]