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, […]
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 […]