Doughnuts and Doom is one of those modern fantasies for which I’m still looking for a good genre name. You know the kind… Young people work in a coffee shop — but they’re werewolves! Or they work at a call center — but they’re also on a fantasy quest! Or they’re looking to find a purpose in life now that they’re out of school — but they’re also witches! Or they throw a college party — but they’re fairies! It’s […]

For those waiting, while reading these graphic novel adaptations of the young adult novels made into a popular Netflix movie, for more involvement from the more famous Holmes, this is the volume you want. In An Enola Holmes Mystery: The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets, Enola Holmes has to rescue a kidnapped John Watson from a disturbing, murderous threat. (This is the third in the series adapted and illustrated by Serena Blasco from the novels by Nancy Springer, after The […]

It’s been so long since I’ve been surprised by the existence of a graphic novel that I think that was part of the appeal of reading British Ice, which came out earlier this year from Top Shelf. I hadn’t previously heard of the book, but I came across an old promo email and it sounded interesting, particularly since I’d just been telling someone else about Whiteout. The two have some situations in common. Although author Owen D. Pomery makes clear […]

An Enola Holmes Mystery: The Case of the Left-Handed Lady by Serena Blasco is the second graphic novel adaptation from the YA series by Nancy Springer, following The Case of the Missing Marquess. Unfortunately, the concept is not growing on me. The idea of a young, smart, adventuresome heroine is a great one, but using the Holmes name and characters without bothering to capture what made those stories so well-loved is frustrating. I’m reading this series because I’m a fan […]

From 2006-2010, Nancy Springer wrote six YA mysteries about Enola Holmes, the younger sister of Sherlock. The Case of the Missing Marquess by Serena Blasco, from IDW’s EuroComics imprint, adapts the first. Enola has been living with her mother, Lady Eudora, in the country. On her 14th birthday, her mother disappears. Upon notifying her much older brothers Mycroft and Sherlock, who haven’t visited for ten years, she’s told she will be sent to boarding school to become a proper young […]

I loved the concept of Tara O’Connor’s Roots, and I appreciate her flowing line and art style, but the result was disappointing, in large part because I disagreed with the result. Which is weird to say about an autobiographical story, but that’s my main feeling after reading it (several times, since it turned out I’d bought a previously self-published version of the same story at a convention several years ago). After an unhappy divorce, Tara is aimless and depressed. She […]

What a luscious cocktail of naughtiness! In the early 1980s, Trina Robbins adapted and serialized a terrible pulp novel from 1919 by Sax Rohmer (who created Fu Manchu, and whose ridiculous ideas about foreigners corrupting the English are similarly on display here). This collected edition of Sax Rohmer’s Dope is the first reprint of the work. It’s the story of a young actress who becomes addicted to drugs provided by a racist Asian caricature and his wife, Mrs. Sin, a […]