Debby runs a vintage clothing shop, while Binny has a passion for used books. After fooling around at a party, they begin dating and trying to share their lives with each other. They both see stories in their hobbies, in the ways the books and clothes they acquire were changed and used by their owners. They’re very observant of the details of their property, while not noticing the most obvious signs about each other. Their respective passions sometimes get in […]

Andi Watson’s Breakfast After Noon tells the slice-of-life story of a British couple trying to deal with becoming unemployed. The Windsor Pottery, the town’s industry, has closed down, throwing Rob and Louise out of work. Not only are they worrying about everyday bills, but before the change, they’d been planning their wedding, adding another source of stress to their relationship. Rob learns some basic economics as he comes to terms with the idea that he’s not getting his job back. […]

Queen & Country: Declassified is a stand-alone spinoff of Greg Rucka’s popular spy series. This is a flashback story about Paul Crocker, the boss of Tara Chace, heroine of the regular Queen & Country. It’s 1986, and a younger Paul is doing the kind of job Tara does now. He’s a field agent, previously sent to get a defector through the Berlin Wall, but that effort was a failure. Newly married, he’s sent out again to Prague on a similar […]

In Skinwalker, an FBI agent, just promoted to the profiling unit, investigates the disappearance of his first partner after a panicked phone call. Ann Adakai, a Navajo Tribal Police officer struggling with the conflict between respected tradition and law enforcement methods, finds herself aiding him. This graphic novel was written by Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir with pencils by Brian Hurtt and digital inking by Arthur Dela Cruz. Skinwalking is a term for Navajo witchcraft, but someone’s been taking it […]

The Tomb, a mystical action movie on paper, is ably executed by artist Christopher Mitten and writers Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir. Jessica Parrish is a hard-charging archaeologist who lost her Harvard job after a political incident in Baghdad. She was trying to stop looters from robbing the museum, but soldiers arrested her to prevent her embarrassing them by doing the job they should have been doing. She’s the kind of “damn the consequences” bulldog fighter who’s sometimes envied but […]

There’s been a murder in Antarctica, and U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko has to find out what happened, who did it, and why before 90% of the base personnel ship out for the winter. In Whiteout, acclaimed writer Greg Rucka has set up a unique mystery situation with gripping characters while artist Steve Lieber does an amazing job of capturing the personalities, the setting, and especially the weather (a character in itself). The sense of movement in the drifting snow is […]

Love Fights is an everyday romance set in a superhero universe. Jack is an artist, illustrating The Flamer’s superhero comic, put out for public relations purposes. He meets Nora on the subway, but he’s too shy to ask her out. Jack feels inferior compared to the superheroes, you see. He’s convinced girls want them, and he’ll never measure up. He thinks their expectations are unrealistic, although so are his — he wants women to see how neat he is without […]

I love romantic comedies. There are too few of them in comics (which is one reason I’ve been reading more manga, where the genre is more firmly established). When I saw the publicity for this screwball story, I was eager to try it, but I was disappointed. It’s not that Three Days in Europe is a bad story, although it’s got some problems (of which more later). The problem is all the false advertising, from the cover quotes to the […]