Out next month is a dynamite pairing of two comic properties with old-fashioned flavor. Rocketeer / The Spirit: Pulp Friction works so well because the creators know their stuff. The characters sound right (and different from each other), their histories are acknowledged (without leaving out readers who don’t know them), and the look is nicely retro, clear and easy to read. It’s 1941, and the Spirit, Commissioner Dolan, and Ellen Dolan go to Los Angeles, where they run into Cliff […]

The Bojeffries Saga is my favorite Alan Moore title. It’s got a strong sense of humor, for one thing, and while the writer is almost single-handedly responsible for shaping the dark and introspective US comic market from 1986-1993 (with Watchmen, which launched the grim’n’gritty trend; Swamp Thing, a key title responsible for the Vertigo imprint; and V for Vendetta, among other works), many of his comics are too depressing for me to truly love them. (And thankfully, this book doesn’t […]

I thought Liz Prince’s first book, Will You Still Love Me If I Wet the Bed?, was charmingly cute in its portrayal of hipsters in love. But it’s been almost ten years since then (with Delayed Replays along the way), and Prince is now single and grumpy. Alone Forever: The Singles Collection collects her webcomic strips on the subject. The style is still raw and hand-lettered, as though we’re peeking into her sketchbook journal, but the figures and panel construction […]

It’s 1867, and every English town has its monster. While the townsfolk pretend to be scared when it comes down from the hill, it’s really part of a shared excitement, everyone doing their jobs and playing their parts. Except for Stoker-on-Avon, whose monster is depressed and mopey. He doesn’t attack the town, and the leaders want something better to improve morale and avoid the “enormous sighs and groans” that are all they get out of the pathetic beast. They send […]

I never would have thought I’d be reading, let alone recommending, a My Little Pony comic. (Thanks, review copies.) I’ve never seen the show, but these stories are fun and entertaining. I occasionally wonder about how horses, with their hooves, manage to do everything we see, but as long as I can suspend my disbelief, I enjoy the character interactions and humor. Both volumes are written by Katie Cook, with book 1 art by Andy Price and book 2 art […]

Polly and Her Pals 1933 reprints that year’s worth of the daily comic strip often described as surreal. Without the Sundays, you won’t see cartoonist Cliff Sterrett’s most imaginative layouts, but the characters and situations are still funny, if not as artistically accomplished in the smaller space. It’s in the Library of American Comics Essentials format, which means the book is short and wide, the shape of a comic strip, with each day’s entry getting a full page. The series […]

It’s been an astounding year for non-fiction comics, with such exceptional works as Economix, Science Tales, and Dirt Candy (also drawn by Dunlavey) released — and I haven’t even mentioned memoir! Probably the most fun of any such book — as well as the most self-referential in subject matter — is The Comic Book History of Comics by Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey. It’s an incredibly dense book, with packed panels and wide-ranging coverage. It begins with the credited […]

Jennifer Hayden‘s autobiographical slice-of-life comics fall into a well-known genre, but her position — as the middle-aged mother of two — provides a viewpoint we don’t often see expressed in comics from such a position of knowledge. Underwire began as a webcomic, and this Top Shelf collection includes 22 of those stories, plus 17 new pages. She tells tales about her family, influenced by sitcom structure. How can you not enjoy cartoons by someone who compares being middle-aged to “like […]