August 23, 2023 Johanna First Second Leave a comment

Science Comics: The Periodic Table of Elements

The Science Comics line continues with The Periodic Table of Elements: Understanding the Building Blocks of Everything, an introduction to the basics of chemistry by Jon Chad. Mel is anxious about her upcoming chemistry test on the elements, because pressure makes her nervous. She dreams herself into the Land of the Elements, where the elements take on the forms of various blobby creatures. Her help is needed to defeat the Elemancer, who wants to destroy the world, and — what […]

August 16, 2023 Johanna Abrams / Amulet One comment

Washington’s Gay General

Two of the biggest trends in graphic novels over the past few years are graphic memoir (biographies and autobiographies in comic format) and non-fiction comics (particularly those about scientific topics or history). I love both, as I find them both educational and a terrific use of the combined textual/visual nature of comics. Nothing gives you a better way of sharing someone’s experience or understanding new material. I thought Washington’s Gay General, by Josh Trujillo and Levi Hastings, was going to […]

August 14, 2023 Johanna Other Leave a comment

Kiss Number 8

We not only live in changing times, but we live in quickly changing times. Kiss Number 8 came out in 2019, and as the story of a girl realizing she’s gay, complicated by the unspoken family history she discovers, it already feels a little like a period piece. (Not enough of one, though, given current events.) To be fair, the author’s interview in the back makes that point as well, based on how long the book took to write and […]

August 12, 2023 Johanna Other Publishers Leave a comment

The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Deya Muniz’s The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich is a wonderfully silly romance with plenty of cheese puns. You probably already know from that description whether you’d like it or not, but let me elaborate. Count Camembert has a daughter, but she cannot inherit. So the two of them decide to have her become a man, since she doesn’t want to marry because she doesn’t like men that way. With the aid of beloved servant Feta, the young Count […]

August 12, 2023 Johanna Tokyopop Manga Reviews Leave a comment

Why I Adopted My Husband

I’m glad to see more manga memoirs coming out. Comics is such a great format for nonfiction true-life stories, as they show what happened in such approachable fashion, including the emotional affect. The trend seems to have started with My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness (2017), with more recent examples including Until I Meet My Husband, Until I Love Myself, and Embrace Your Size. Why I Adopted My Husband by Yuta Yagi is the true story of his relationship (and the […]

July 29, 2023 Johanna Mysteries Leave a comment

The Fatal Folio

I was so impressed by The Fatal Folio, third in the Cambridge Bookshop mystery series by Elizabeth Penney, that I went back and read the first two. The series began with Chapter and Curse and continued with A Treacherous Tale. They’re great cozy mysteries, particularly for Anglophiles. Molly Kimball and her mother move from Vermont to Cambridge, England, after the death of her father and to help her aunt run a family bookshop, one of the oldest in the city. […]

July 29, 2023 Johanna Comic News Leave a comment

Pow Pow Press Titles Available Through Lunar Distribution

Pow Pow Press is a small publisher out of Canada with the goal “to make the work of Québec cartoonists available to an English-speaking audience in both Canada and the United States.” Along those lines, their graphic novels will be easily available in the US comic book direct market (comic shops) for the first time through Lunar Distribution this fall. I previously recommended The Pineapples of Wrath by Cathon several years ago, when I found it at TCAF. That’s one […]

July 29, 2023 Johanna DCU Original Animation Leave a comment

Scooby-Doo Teams With Krypto in Upcoming Animation

Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too! has been announced as available on September 26… but there’s a catch. It’s not a bad idea to team up the Scooby-Doo gang with superheroes — I’ve enjoyed seeing the team work with Batman both in animated movies and comic books. The catch is that you can “buy” a copy of the digital movie on your favorite service on September 26 for $14.99 (or $19.99 at Amazon Prime Video — what’s that about?), or on DVD […]

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