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 […]

The third Love and Capes collection reprints the five-issue Ever After miniseries and the 2010 Free Comic Book Day issue (aka #13), but that’s not the important thing. What’s important is that, in Wake Up Where You Are, Abby and Mark are now married. This book covers them starting their life together — after a world-spanning Hawaiian honeymoon. You see, Mark is the Crusader, a superhero, and Abby knows his secret — and enjoys some of the perks, like having […]

This is the kind of book that makes me ecstatic to read comics. Just the fact that it — a wordless porn comic about a Victorian woman and her robot lover — exists is a wonder. That Chester 5000 XYV turns out to be quite accomplished in its art is even more pleasant. (Note: this is an adults-only book with explicit illustrations.) Although story isn’t the point, the premise is simple enough: a scientist’s wife is indefatigable in bed. Since […]

This extraordinary volume, first in a series, is impressive in both content and sheer size. It’s the same shape as the traditional newspaper comic page from its original era, making it humongous by current standards. At 12″ x 16″, you’ll need a table or other flat surface to enjoy it, and it’s a wonderful feeling to be totally taken in by the color pages filling your entire field of vision and beyond. Polly and Her Pals is a strip revered […]

Cartoonist Lora Innes does an excellent job balancing both halves of her story in the first volume of The Dreamer: The Consequence of Nathan Hale. When we first meet the lead character, Beatrice is waking suddenly from a sexy dream about kissing a Revolutionary War soldier. At high school, she’s trying out for the play and wondering about going to the upcoming Halloween dance, but when she sleeps, she’s another person, helping the brave Alan Warren fight against the redcoats […]

Here’s where Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County hits its peak, covering the 1984 election by having the various animals enter politics as members of the Meadow Party. (This was also about the midpoint of its run, since the strip ran from 1980-1989.) Bill the Cat is running for President in spite of his scandals, bad habits, and state of mortality — dead. Today, when politics have become so nasty and fragmented and hateful, it’s quite amusing to read the satire of […]

I approach comics written by Kathryn Immonen with curious trepidation, because I know no matter what subject she covers, I’m going to be challenged. She doesn’t talk down to her readers, and her structures and characters are refreshingly complex. I’m left thinking about what I read long afterwards. That’s even more true with Moving Pictures, since the subject matter is particularly unusual and affecting. Ila is a low-level museum worker in Paris; Rolf is a German bureaucrat. It’s World War […]

It’s an unusual project, but one uniquely suited to the talents involved. Darwyn Cooke (The New Frontier, The Spirit) is adapting Richard Stark’s Parker novels into comic form; The Hunter is the first of four planned graphic novels. I haven’t read any of the original books myself, but since Cooke clearly has a great affinity for retro-styled works, and since crime/noir stories of this type work best with that kind of timeless feel, I expected an excellent match. This brief […]