Americus

Books can be keys to fostering imagination and new ideas, and some people hate that. Americus, by MK Reed and Jonathan Hill, dramatizes the conflict that occurs when a lonely boy’s favorite fantasy series is targeted for censorship in his small Oklahoma town. There’s even an heroic librarian, to charm those of us who love books and their keepers. Neil and his best friend Danny are mesmerized by the series “Chronicles of Apathea Ravenchilde, the Huntress Witch”, reading every volume […]

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MetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus

Art Spiegelman’s Maus is a completely unique graphic novel, the only comic to win the Pulitzer Prize. It is meaningful — telling the story of Spiegelman’s father, a Holocaust survivor, through his son’s eyes — and worth study, yet it turns on the simplest and silliest of visual imagery — the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice. It opened readers’ minds to what the comic format could do, 25 years ago. Now, this companion volume serves to elaborate on how […]

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Green River Killer: A True Detective Story

They’re billing Green River Killer as a “true-crime comic”, but that’s misleading. Where this story really shines is in its portrayal of a working police detective frustrated by the length of time it took to catch a Seattle serial killer. Writer Jeff Jensen is better known as an entertainment reporter, but here, he tells the story of his father Tom, who investigated the Green River Killer in Seattle for twenty years. The GRK, Gary Leon Ridgway, is attributed as “the […]

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Comic Book Comics #6

This self-referential series, a history of comics in comic form, ends with this issue. It’s a mixed bag, looking both forward and backward. The first chapter tackles the question of identifying the first graphic novel. As someone interested in comic history — that’s why I’m reading this comic — I’d already heard most of this information, so I found myself skimming. Various titles, including Gil Kane’s Blackmark and It Rhymes With Lust, are mentioned in a panel or two each. […]

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Lily Renee, Escape Artist: From Holocaust Survivor to Comic Book Pioneer

As expected (and suggested by the title structure), Lily Renée, Escape Artist: From Holocaust Survivor to Comic Book Pioneer falls squarely in the category of inspirational biographies for young people. It’s written by Trina Robbins with pencils by Anne Timmons and inks by mo oh. We read, in clear, straightforward text, about how Lily Renée grew up privileged in Vienna, Austria, until the Nazis invaded. I was impressed by how Trina Robbins explains a horrific situation — planned genocide — […]

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The Simon & Kirby Library: Crime

Review by KC Carlson “As long as the crime comic books industry exists in its present forms, there are no secure homes.” — Senate testimony by Dr. Frederic Wertham, author of Seduction of the Innocent (back cover pull-quote) Published in a deluxe hardcover, beautiful and substantial enough to give Dr. Wertham nightmares, Simon & Kirby: Crime collects over 300 newly restored pages of stories and covers from comics’ most brutal genre — possibly proving crime does pay! The beneficiary is […]

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Amelia Rules!: The Meaning of Life… and Other Stuff

I was pondering the other day how hard it is to keep a good independent comic series going. There are the creative struggles — how do you top yourself? how do you keep coming up with good ideas? — and the natural audience attrition. Sometimes making “just” another consistently good installment bores readers, who want more and better and different. Other times, a creator understandably wants to try something else, instead of committing years or decades to the same characters, […]

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Usagi Yojimbo: Fox Hunt

I’ve enjoyed the recent issues of the Usagi Yojimbo series I’ve sampled, so I was eager to try the latest collection. Fox Hunt is the nearly unbelievable 25th in the series, although it’s smartly not numbered as such — that way, it doesn’t turn off new readers like me, and it stands alone just fine. The volume reprints issues #110-116 of the comic series by Stan Sakai along with the Usagi piece from MySpace Dark Horse Presents #18. The stories […]

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