Larry Gonick’s books are impressive: they’re wickedly funny, culturally insightful, and more educational than some college classes I’ve attended. His latest series, following up from the The Cartoon History of the Universe books… well, I’ll let the PR explain it: Cartoon History of the Modern World Part I covers the history of ancient Mexico, the Spanish conquests, the Portuguese empire in Asia and Brazil, national and religious upheavals in Europe and India, the colonial ventures of France, Britain, and the […]

43-year-old Miriam Engelberg decided to cope with a diagnosis of breast cancer by creating a comic journal. The back cover calls Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person “devastatingly humorous”, but much as I appreciate black humor and laughing in the face of trouble, I didn’t find the book funny at all. Her style is best described as naive or primitive; it’s flat, with no backgrounds and a heavy reliance on text, both dialogue and captions. Most of the art is […]