March 1, 2010 Johanna Toon Books 3 comments

Zig and Wikki: Something Ate My Homework

This is something of a departure for the excellent Toon Books line of comics for early readers. Zig and Wikki: Something Ate My Homework is non-fiction, intended to interest kids in science. Zig and Wikki are aliens, trying to capture something for the class zoo as a homework assignment. Zig is the one-eyed red one, with tentacle arms, while Wikki pops up factoids on his head screen. (That’s the educational part.) When they get lost and wind up on Earth, […]

February 10, 2010 Johanna First Second One comment

Prime Baby

Due out in April from First Second is Gene Luen Yang’s newest book, Prime Baby. It’s 64 pages for $6.99 in paperback. However, there’s no need to wait — the story was originally serialized in The New York Times Magazine and you can still read it all online. Based on doing so, I have to admit, I still don’t get Yang’s work. I know he’s highly acclaimed for American Born Chinese, but I couldn’t recommend or finish it because of […]

February 3, 2010 Johanna Other Publishers 2 comments

Love and Capes #11-12

After a bad day, there’s nothing that picks me up like the romantic comedy of Thom Zahler’s Love and Capes. Issue #11 has the couple, Mark and Abby, preparing for their upcoming marriage. Abby’s having problems finding the right wedding dress. When she does find the perfect gown, there’s a catch … it’s connected to Mark’s ex-girlfriend, Amazonia. That’s a bit of a stretch, but it does allow us to see a lot more of the superheroine than her previous, […]

January 30, 2010 Johanna Image Comics 2 comments

Underground

Stillwater Cave is a battleground. The townspeople of nearby Marion, Kentucky, want the cave open to the public for the business it will bring. Conservationists want its limited access status as a state park maintained, because they worry that tourists will destroy the natural formations. Two park rangers find the discussion becoming personal in Underground. They work together, they’ve just slept together, and now they find themselves with different opinions. One, Seth, is from the area and understands the economic […]

January 25, 2010 Johanna Other Publishers 2 comments

Comic Book Comics #4

Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey pack issues of Comic Book Comics full of history and humor. Even when you’ve heard these stories before, you’ll find a new perspective or detail you weren’t previously aware of. And they don’t stick just with the obvious, well-known stories — this issue’s 40 pages covers The creation of Crime Does Not Pay, a notoriously horrific comic, and what happened to Charles Biro and Bob Wood, its founders. How Marvel Comics and Stan Lee […]

December 23, 2009 Johanna Pantheon 3 comments

Asterios Polyp

It’s a shame that such an artistically accomplished work doesn’t have a story of the same high quality. Asterios Polyp is beautiful, with all kinds of formalist and craft tricks to push the medium of comics. But the characters are cliches and you’ve seen the content before, making it an ultimately disappointing book, emptier than I hoped it would be. Asterios Polyp is an architect. Well, a professor, really, because the point is made early on that the building he […]

December 21, 2009 Johanna Drawn & Quarterly 3 comments

Masterpiece Comics

Only in comics could something this creative and unusual happen this brilliantly. Classical literature is mashed up with the lowest popular culture in Masterpiece Comics, and the result sheds a new light on both. R. Sikoryak has an amazing ability to mimic whatever art style is needed to make these stories work with familiar comic characters. Stories here include: Adam and Eve as Dagwood and Blondie. This kicks off a strip-oriented section which also includes Dante’s Inferno with Bazooka Joe, […]

December 21, 2009 Johanna Other Publishers 3 comments

Drawn to You

I had the pleasure of discovering the work of both Lucy Knisley (Radiator Days) and Erika Moen (DAR) this year. So imagine my glee when I discovered that the two had teamed up for this conversational comic collaboration. The two artists passed the pages back and forth between themselves over a period of about six months. Via the internet, they drew themselves talking to each other, but it’s the subjects they cover that make this fascinating. They talk about deciding […]

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