Olive is back and struggling with friendship in Kayla Miller’s Clash. The young woman, first seen in Click, normally makes friends with everyone. That’s why she’s happy to volunteer to show new student Nat around. Unfortunately, Nat may not have the best motives in return. She’s quick to join up with the cheerleaders. She declares things “dorky” or “old news.” She’s a show-off, and soon Olive is afraid that her friends will like Nat better. Miller does an excellent job […]

Olive, the plucky heroine of Kayla Miller’s Click and Camp, returns in Act. It’s a timely story, as so many young people are becoming more socially and politically aware. She participates in her school elections and navigates some tricky political waters, and it’s thrilling to see her awareness open to the struggles of others. Like so many people, Olive gets involved in politics when she discovers an issue that matters to her. Her class goes on a theater field trip, […]

Olive, the lead of Click, is off to summer camp with her friend Willow in Camp. As seen in the previous book by Kayla Miller, Olive has no problem making lots of friends, but Willow is less outgoing and jealous of the time Olive spends with others. As the two weeks of camp continue, Olive begins to resent Willow for her clinginess, and the two have to learn to understand those different from themselves in order to save their friendship. […]

Olive has a wide variety of friends — some from class, some on the bus, some in the neighborhood. When it’s time for the school variety show, though, she feels left out, because all her friends have formed their own little groups and acts. In Click, Kayla Miller shows us a different portrait of what friendship can be in a simple, direct manner. The colorful pages reflect the various interests and attitudes of the many kids, whether cheerleading, karate, music, […]

I’ve enjoyed the previous comics I’ve read by Liz Prince, such as Alone Forever. Those were collections of strips, though, short moments of humor or observation punctuated with a certain cynicism. Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir is her first long-form work, in the popular autobiographical comic genre. And it’s fascinating, mainly due to her honesty about her gender struggles. As a four-year-old, Liz refused to wear dresses, preferring baseball caps and sneakers. Her parents were generally accepting; it was schoolmates that […]

With the popularity of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, many readers wanted to see more work by her. Her earlier series, Dykes to Watch Out For (DTWOF), is good reading, but hard to catch up on, with 11 books released over two decades, some of which are out of print. Thus, this omnibus edition. In addition to 330 of the previously published strips (out of 457, or about 3/4 of them), The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For contains an additional […]

As she did in her previous book, Gemma Bovery, Posy Simmonds here sets the plot of a classic novel in the modern day. This time, it’s Far From the Madding Crowd (another one I haven’t read). Glen Larson, an American professor (although he doesn’t really sound like one), has come to Stonefield, a country retreat for writers. He’s aspiring to create a novel. Beth runs the place while her husband Nicholas works on his latest mystery. She’s a wonderful, helpful […]

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 […]