I told The Comics Journal that my top dozen of 2018 were: The Prince and the Dressmaker, Jen Wang (First Second). The Dragon Slayer, Jaime Hernandez (TOON Books). On a Sunbeam, Tillie Walden (First Second). Flocks, L. Nichols (Secret Acres). From Lone Mountain, John Porcellino (Drawn and Quarterly). Love & Rockets #4-6, Los Bros Hernandez (Fantagraphics). Frontier #17, […]
Dominick Grace and Eric Hoffman, eds., The Canadian Alternative: Cartoonists, Comics, and Graphic Novels (University Press of Mississippi, 2018). 304 pp, $65. While published by an American publisher, this book is quite Canadian in character, not making grand claims, but instead going with the diplomatic, “kinder, gentler” image of the Canadian alternative in comics. The Canadian […]
In our second annual survey, our voting panel grew substantially: Inks editors, advisory board, contributors, Comics Studies Society board members, and Extra Inks folks. I assumed with this many people voting, we would end up with some clear winners—instead once again we ended up with well over 100 titles we all loved this year. As with last […]
Influences on Ben Passmore’s Daygloayhole #1 By now, you’ve read and loved Your Black Friend (2016), Ben Passmore’s minicomic about the anger African-Americans feel when white people exhibit unconscious and insensitive racism. Perhaps you read it in the recent collection Your Black Friend and Other Strangers (Silver Sprocket, 2018), where the minicomic joins other Passmore strips, including several (“Letter from […]
Aisha Franz, Shit is Real (Drawn & Quarterly, 2018), $24.95, pb. This book continues and expands upon many of the themes Franz explored in her previous work, Alien (published in English as Earthling), here focusing her exploration of loneliness and the alienation of modern life through the eyes of Selma, a young adult adrift in a vaguely […]
Max de Radiguès, Wauter Mannaert, Weegee: Serial Photographer (Conundrum, 2018). $18, pb. Instead of attempting to tell the story of Weegee’s life from his childhood immigration to the U.S. through his final years in Hollywood and Europe, de Radiguès and Mannaert choose to focus on a slice of the life: his final years working the streets of […]
Gary Groth, ed., Sparring With Gil Kane: Debating The History and Aesthetics of Comics (Fantagraphics, 2018). $22.99, pb. Sparring with Gil Kane is a book of conversations, but its title suggests a contest or bout, as if intellectual disputation were a knuckle-bruising donnybrook or prizefight—or perhaps the equivalent of a few rounds among friendly but formidable partners. […]
Ander Nilsen, Tongues #1 (No Miracles Press, 2017). $15. 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 […]
Bob Batchelor, Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). $22.95, hc. Ask any true believer who Stan Lee is and you’ll get the following responses: • The face of Marvel Comics. • The creator of The Fantastic Four, X-Men, and The Avengers. • The old man appearing in the Marvel superhero films. Stan […]
Michael Kupperman, All the Answers (Gallery 13, 2018). $25, hc. For those who are familiar with Kupperman’s previous work, All the Answers will be a very different thing in terms of both style and substance. Compared to the belly laughs (and spit-takes) of his Tales Designed to Thrizzle, this is a fairly sombre and deeply earnest book. And […]
Nicolas Wild, Kabul Disco: How I Managed Not to Be Abducted in Afghanistan (Humanoids, 2018). $19.95, pb. Originally published in France in 2007, Kabul Disco tells the story of Wild’s experiences working for a communications organization in Afghanistan in 2005—a job he took on a whim when his housing in Paris suddenly evaporated. Despite the subtitle, Wild […]
Experiences of immigration, migration, exile, and diaspora have a long and rich history in global comics, as we will hear from a variety of presenters at the inaugural CSS conference in August. Recently, the Executive Board has been discussing what, if any, should be our collective and individual responses as comics scholars to the growing […]