I almost didn’t read this book, because it’s about zombies. I don’t like zombies. I don’t get the appeal. I have liked one zombie comic, but that’s because it had a really big, really good sense of humor about the whole thing. By prominently promoting this graphic novel as containing “a foreword by Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead“, it’s clear that this effort is trying to speak to zombie fans, not people like me. But I did read […]

The Big Kahn has an immediately gripping concept — at his funeral, a beloved rabbi is revealed to not be Jewish. He’s a con man who 40 years ago fell in love and decided to become what he was pretending to be. His long-lost brother appears to say his final goodbyes, telling everyone the truth. His family — the widow; his son Avi, a rabbi following in his footsteps; his daughter Lea, previously non-observant; and the youngest child, Eli — […]

Rick Geary continues his Treasury of XXth Century Murder series with Famous Players, covering “The Mysterious Death of William Desmond Taylor”. This murder case, long an unsolved mystery, took place in 1922 Hollywood, where moving pictures were just settling into being an industry. William Desmond Taylor was a director for Famous Players, the most prestigious studio of the time, and actress Mabel Normand was the last person to see him alive. When Taylor was found dead, suspicion fell on young […]

The following books were provided by the publisher NBM. Little Nothings: The Prisoner Syndrome by Lewis Trondheim, color paperback, $14.95 US This second volume of Little Nothings continues where the first left off, reprinting more material from Trondheim’s comic blog. The work is gorgeous, due to the artist’s skill, observations, and especially watercolors. Material includes the goofy things Trondheim’s bird-headed alter ego does on vacation, as well as simple observations about everyday life. I found them fresh and funny, showing […]

In early 2006, Dirk Schwieger was living in Japan and creating comics based on “assignments” from readers. They’d ask him to try different things — visiting a love hotel and a pod hotel, exploring Harajuku fashion, trying foods like okonomiyaki or natto — and he’d post his results, drawn in a Moleskine notebook, to his blog. Now, they’ve been collected as Moresukine: Uploaded Weekly From Tokyo, the Japanese pronunciation of the name of his notebook. Contributing to the reader’s feeling […]

The Lindbergh Child kicks off a new series for author/artist Rick Geary. Previously, he’d released nine volumes of A Treasury of Victorian Murder; now, this book moves into a more recent era, starting “A Treasury of XXth Century Murder”. (The odd spelling of Twentieth is apparently intentional.) Based on this first case, “America’s Hero and the Crime of the Century”, these stories will feel more familiar to the modern reader. Once Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean, he […]

Classics Illustrated relaunched with Rick Geary’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Previously published in 1990, this short reprint hits the high notes of the story of orphan Pip growing up to become a gentleman. I find illustrations very handy in understanding the context of a classic set in another time and place, and Geary doesn’t disappoint. His unique faces are well-suited to a story with so much conversation, since the cast can be instantly distinguished, and he shows their […]

Little Nothings reprints painted pages from Lewis Trondheim’s comic blog. He draws himself as a bird-headed man, with small, everyday observations: watching people at the train station, his failure at gardening, conversations with his kids, watching movies, travel. There’s a whole sequence about going on vacation to a tropical island. Instead of being jealous of him, though, it’s a comedy, as his paranoia about disease carried by mosquito prevents him from enjoying himself. The running gag becomes visual, with the […]