Writer G. Neri has a cousin, Gail Ruffu, who’s an opinionated horse trainer working to make racing a more ethical sport. She was also the first person in 150 years to be charged with Grand Theft Horse, taking her case for rescuing an injured thoroughbred all the way to the California Supreme Court. Here he tells her story, illustrated by Corban Wilkin. It’s a gripping tale of dedication and a real-life fight for justice. This graphic biography is all the […]

The Wild Ocean anthology, edited by Matt Dembicki, was produced with PangeaSeed, an ocean conservation organization, so it’s got an obvious message — ”to showcase 12 iconic endangered ocean animals” in order to encourage changes in human behavior when it comes to pollution and overfishing — but the following 12 stories are inspiring, all the same. “Tortuga, the Island That Swims” by Jay Hosler, about a hawksbill sea turtle’s life cycle and the other creatures that live on its shell […]

Jim McClain, a middle school math teacher, loves comics, so he made his own super-team to teach mathematical concepts. The first Solution Squad comic story introduces the team members: La Calculadora – fast computation and team leader Absolutia – changes temperature to demonstrate absolute value Equality – duplicates the abilities of others The Ordered Pair twins – Abscissa (runs fast horizontally) and Ordinate (flies and dives vertically) Radical – a time-lost kid from the 80s who surfs invisible triangles They […]

Luke Finch emailed me out of the blue to send me a copy of his comic The Little Bookshop Between. I wasn’t sure it sounded like my kind of story, but I loved it. It could be called horror, but it’s very much about hints and attitude, not gore or conventional scares, and there’s a surprising note of optimism under it all. An author coming from being told he needs to write more commercial, escapist work settles down at his […]

It’s an amazing period we live in, one where great comics from all eras are reprinted in book format and much more easily available than they used to be. The flip side of that boom in collected format is that a lot of publishers are sweeping the corners of the archives to find anything that might reach an audience. The Beatles Story feels like a cash-in, but that may be a side effect of how work from an earlier era […]

After a three-year hiatus, I was curious to see how this supernatural noir mystery picked up. Smartly, writer Dave Ebersole begins the issue with a “story so far” section that fits nicely into the hardboiled PI’s tendency to monologue, in keeping with the genre, while bringing the forgetful reader up to speed with the current case. After a reminder that Dash was drummed off the police force for being gay, there’s a resurrected Egyptian mummy to stop and a mystical […]

Michael Kupperman, better known for his satiric cartoons, here tries his hand at graphic biography. All the Answers is about his father’s time as a child star. His dad was Quiz Kid Joel Kupperman. During World War II, there was a radio show starring young geniuses. Joel was the youngest, a math prodigy pushed into fame by a stereotypical stage mother regardless of his personality or wants. As Michael tells it, his father hated it but felt he had to […]

If you’re looking for a really well-drawn, classically paced and staged comic strip, you need to check out Bear With Me by Bob Scott. You can follow it either at GoComics or the artist’s website. Scott is a former Disney animator and previously co-penciled the strip U.S. Acres with Jim Davis (Garfield). He knows his stuff. The premise is basic — a 900-pound talking brown bear moves in with 11-year-old Molly and her parents — but it’s the simplicity of […]