Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books
The author of Land of the Blindfolded, Sakura Tsukuba, has another story about a girl who sees things others can’t. In Penguin Revolution, Yukari sees wings on people who have the talent to be stars. Since Dad’s a flake who’s almost taken them to ruin, Yukari dreams of stability; her goal is to become a public servant. She’s nonplussed when she once again sees wings on a classmate. As if all that wasn’t enough, it turns out that the classmate […]
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I really enjoyed the first issue, and I’m thrilled to see that there’s more. It’s even better for being a Christmas issue. After Abby and her boyfriend Mark (who’s also the Crusader) attend a friend’s wedding, we get to the meat of the issue: What should Mark get Abby for Christmas? And how will holiday family visits go? Although the situations can be familiar, the humor stays fresh. Actually, it probably works so well because the reader sortof kindof knows […]
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Thank you, readers, for recommending this title by Fuyumi Soryo — I enjoyed it! It’s intriguing in its premise and characters. The almost-stand-alone first chapter works as a lengthy introduction to ES, later renamed Ryousuke. He’s a psychic, capable of adjusting people’s memories and reading their impressions. We first meet him playing a kind of parlor trick. Someone asks him to pay for something he’s taken or used, he stares at them briefly, they blankly look back… and then they […]
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Eddie Campbell’s latest, The Fate of the Artist, is more experimental than his previous works. It’s something of a grab bag, with comic pages, fake strip clippings, prose pages with inset doodles, and photo comics, among other techniques, suggesting the detritus of a cluttered, but fascinating, mind. The reader may not be sure what to make of the title page subtitle and caption: “His Domestic Apocalypse: An Autobiographical Novel, with Typographical Anomalies, in Which the Author Does Not Appear as […]
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Alison Bechdel has been writing and drawing the lesbian soap opera Dykes to Watch Out For for decades. Her comic strip characters are true to life, with one in particular resembling her and her attitudes closely. In her new book, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, she sets aside the fictionalization to present a memoir of her childhood. The book revolves around her relationship with her father. As she describes him, he was an obsessive redecorater, consumed with the 18-year historical […]
Read moreI was honored to participate in the PW Comics Week first annual critics’ poll. You already know my choices; now find out how all the critics’ votes added up. It’s a widely diverse list demonstrating the great variety of terrific graphic novels available today.
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I’d previously tried the first book in this series, but then, it didn’t click with me. Now, I felt less like I was reading a book, and more as though I was meeting a new group of people, friends of friends (since I’ve had so many recommendations about the series). That approach helped, since there was a lot I wasn’t told about these characters — it is volume seven, after all. Still, it didn’t matter. If I didn’t know them, […]
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This odd little book could appeal to many of the various readers that make up the comic audience: It’s manga-sized (although fewer pages and in color) with bizarre talking animals. The style is European-influenced, and the art crowd will appreciate the dream logic and symbolism. Unholy Kinship is ambitious in its themes, and it’s a debut work from a young Swedish woman, Naomi Nowak. Sadly, this boundary crossing means that it’s likely that few readers will give the book a […]
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