Owly fans, rejoice! Now you get a chance to read an adventure of the adorable bird and his worm friend in oversized full color! In conjunction with Top Shelf, Simon & Schuster, under their Atheneum Books for Young Readers imprint, has released this hardcover children’s book, Owly & Wormy, Friends All Aflutter!. It’s still by Andy Runton, it’s still the same little owl, it’s still almost completely wordless, and it’s still wonderful. It’s just bigger — which means easier to […]

Max Ink, one of my favorite minicomic creators, has just collected much of his work as Blink: So Far. This 96-page, black-and-white volume contains the stories from “Up Leaves Fall Down”, “Experiencing Creative Difficulties”, “Barefoot in America, Breakfast in the Park”, and “Breathe in Beat”, as well as additional pieces that have appeared in anthologies. But the book doesn’t contain the “creatorial” illustrated author notes or sketchbook back sections with comments that also appeared in the minicomics. It’s as though […]

It’s been almost a year and a half since the previous issue (Nov 2009), but when you see how much is packed into this “All-Lawsuit Issue”, you’ll understand the wait. I imagine that the research for this installment was particularly important to get right, given the litigious topic. (While we’re on the subject, I know that publishers that run notices of this sort are only trying to protect themselves from bigger, sometimes mean companies — “Goofy & Mickey Mouse are […]

It’s sad to note that something as charming as this modern fairy tale for girls was such a complete failure in the U.S. I’ve been ordering the U.K. editions online so I can have a matched set in the cute digest size, with all the neat design touches: glitter highlight on the pastel cover with matching colored shading inside. There are four titles in the series by Andi Watson, starting with The Haunted Teapot. The Haunted Teapot, in addition to […]

I enjoyed reading Julia Wertz’s Drinking at the Movies so much that I picked up her previous book, The Fart Party Volume 2. I’m glad I did. It was a different experience than the book I’d read, but equally enjoyable. This book is much more a webcomic collection than the newer book, which has some longer stories. I like reading these volumes in backward chronological order, because it’s like getting to know a new friend and then hearing more stories […]

Scott Chantler has previously created some astounding historical fiction — Northwest Passage was one of my Best Graphic Novels of 2007 — but here, he expands into a real-life “graphic memoir”. Two Generals is based on his grandfather’s diary during World War II, as Chantler explains in an illustrated prologue. Law Chantler and his buddy Jack were officers in the Highland Light Infantry of Canada, but much of their service took place overseas as part of the Allied invasion of […]

I thought I was tired of autobiographical comics, but after reading this gem by Julia Wertz, I realized I was only tired of diary strips (or to use the upscale term, “graphic memoirs”) with nothing to say. In contrast, Wertz has in Drinking at the Movies a simple concept for a through-line: how and why she moved to New York (Brooklyn, specifically) from San Francisco. It’s not an unfamiliar story — and that makes it more relatable, as most of […]