I got a quick taste of the Dance Class comics by Beka and Crip as part of the Papercutz Free Comic Book Day comic. Since then, I’ve had a chance to read the two slim volumes released so far, and I’ve enjoyed them. So, You Think You Can Hip-Hop? The books, translated from the French (where it’s called Studio Danse), consist of single-page strips that each provide a gag. Yet reading a bunch of them together, a picture of these […]

Be prepared. This manga by Takashi Murakami is not so much the “heartwarming” tale it’s been promoted as; the word I’d use is “heartbreaking”. It’s still worth reading, but I found it emotionally wringing, something I kept thinking about long after finishing the book. Stargazing Dog begins with a Titanic-style “everyone winds up dead” scene, as officers investigate an abandoned car with two dead bodies inside, a man and his dog. Yet it’s surprisingly tranquil, opening with gorgeously drawn dragonflies […]

Renaud Dillies’ dreamlike meditation on creativity and finding value in life is not understood so much as succumbed to. Charlie the Mouse is a writer and guitarist, and as the book opens, he’s telling us how wonderful his solitary life is. It comes across as protesting too much, as though he’s trying to convince himself as well as us. His town is preparing for a Carnival, and that event draws him out of his garret to interact with a giraffe […]

Consistency is a wonderful thing in a comic series. Once a year, out comes another chapter of Rick Geary’s A Treasury of XXth Century Murder, and each is an informative, impressively crafted read. Moving into the more modern era (after his previous Victorian murder series) has allowed Geary to expand his approach to explore different facets of killings. The first two books were relatively well-known single cases (the Lindbergh kidnapping, a famous director’s murder), but the third explored a place […]

The tendency of the first book to work around its heroine, making her an observer instead of a protagonist, is even more pronounced in this followup, to negative effect. In short, throughout Miss Don’t Touch Me Volume 2, Blanche is a victim. She’s picked on, taken advantage of, drugged, and abused, and the closest she gets to learning anything or taking action is having others tell her, “you should have done this instead, but it’s too late now.” This volume […]

When I first heard that Networked: Carabella on the Run was a co-production with a non-profit organization, I was leery. PrivacyActivism is dedicated to helping people “understand the real-world implications of privacy losses” and protecting this fundamental human right. I feared that the message, although from a cause I support, would overcome the story. Thankfully, that’s not the case. I quickly got caught up in the adventures of Carabella and her classmates as we learn more about where she came […]

It’s summer, which means it’s time for another gloriously grisly entry in Rick Geary’s Treasury of XXth Century Murder series. The previous books covered The Lindbergh Child and director William Desmond Taylor in Famous Players. This time out, we don’t meet celebrities of the twentieth century; instead, the famous victim is one of its best-known cities: New Orleans. The first chapter of The Terrible Axe-Man of New Orleans functions as travelogue and brochure of historical high points, taking us through […]

All books are from NBM Publishing and were provided by the publisher for review. On the Odd Hours by Eric Liberge The latest entry in the series co-published with the Louvre Museum is slim but elegant, with subdued colors and French flaps. I found the story more approachable than the other books in the series — On the Odd Hours is about a deaf student who takes a position as a guard at the museum. An older night guard, also […]