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, […]
Ezra Claytan Daniels & Ben Passmore, BTTM FDRS (http://www.ezracdaniels.com/#/bttmfdrs/) BTTM FDRS is the longest piece of sustained storytelling that I bought at last December’s CALA (Comics Arts LA) festival. Creepy and charming, it mashes up oozy, sick horror and dark, politically barbed comedy. The story satirizes racism, structural and environmental, via a blighted Chicago neighborhood and an imposing, […]
Ben Katchor, ed., Best American Comics 2017 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). $25, hc. The Best American Comics is an annual collection of previously released excerpts from both established and up-and-coming talents. The beauty of this ongoing series is that it is guest-edited each year by a different comics creator (previous editors include Harvey Pekar, Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, Charles […]
Joëlle Jones, Lady Killer Volume 2 (Dark Horse, 2017). $17.99, pb. I confess I am not usually a fan of ultraviolent slash-n-gore comics. Just because, as the great Ernie Bushmiller put it, anything can happen in a comic it doesn’t mean that everything should happen in a comic. But, oh, have I fallen for Lady Killer, by the […]
Pieter Coudyzer, Outburst (SelfMadeHero, 2017). $22.95, hc. This is one of the most visually arresting books I have read in some time. Sadly the script doesn’t come close to keeping pace with the art, in what ends up being a fairly trite story of alienation and isolation (and unfortunate “inadvertant” revenge) that fails to connect us […]
James Cadelli, Getting Out of Hope (Conundrum, 2017). $18, paper. At first glance this book might look like an amateur affair. Do not be deceived: although his work can look at first raw and untrained, Cadelli is a master graphic storyteller already in every sense. Weaving together the story of a range of seemingly unlikable characters […]
Despite the proclamations of a few naysayers, 2017—horrible in so many respects—was actually a particular rich and deep year in comics. In fact, our voting panel (the editors, advisory board, Inks contributors, and the Comics Studies Board) ended up with well over 100 titles they loved this year. So instead of trying to find a […]