Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books
I enjoyed Faith Erin Hicks’ The War at Ellsmere so much that I wanted to read her previous book. I hadn’t checked it out when it was released last year because I don’t like zombies. Big mistake on my part. Zombies Calling is fun and entertaining. Joss is a geek struggling with college exams and student loans. Her roommates are Robyn, who’s girl-crazy, and Sonnet, a goth who seems a little more comfortable in her own skin than Joss does. […]
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With the movie opening tomorrow (although the reviews are in already, and it’s not looking good), I figured now was a great time to get caught up on my reading of the classic reprint series The Spirit Archives. Volumes 23-25 are the three most recent. Volume 26, the last in the series, is due out next week. It features Eisner’s Spirit material from after 1952, when the original series ended, including work originally published by Harvey and Kitchen Sink. Volume […]
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In early 2006, Dirk Schwieger was living in Japan and creating comics based on “assignments” from readers. They’d ask him to try different things — visiting a love hotel and a pod hotel, exploring Harajuku fashion, trying foods like okonomiyaki or natto — and he’d post his results, drawn in a Moleskine notebook, to his blog. Now, they’ve been collected as Moresukine: Uploaded Weekly From Tokyo, the Japanese pronunciation of the name of his notebook. Contributing to the reader’s feeling […]
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Jay Hosler continues his impressive streak of graphic novels that make science fun. Clan Apis told us of the life cycle of a bee. The Sandwalk Adventures used a mite in Charles Darwin’s eyebrow to explain evolution. But Optical Allusions may be the weirdest yet. Developed in part with a National Science Foundation grant, it’s the story of how Wrinkles the Wonder Brain searches for a lost eye and learns all about the science of vision and eyeballs. Each chapter […]
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Token, last of the Minx line, is also the best. Alisa Kwitney writes a story about a fifteen-year-old Jewish girl in Miami in 1987. Shira’s best friends are her grandmother and her buddy, a former movie star. They feed her nostalgic dreams of glamour, which don’t help when her father gets seriously involved with his secretary. She feels like she’s losing his love, with no one’s support to replace it. Some of the elements are standard — mean blonde classmates, […]
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I didn’t read Faith Erin Hicks’ first graphic novel, Zombies Calling, because, you know, I hate zombies. But I enjoyed The War at Ellsmere so much I need to rethink that. Juniper is a scholarship student joining Ellsmere Academy, a private girls’ school she’s attending for its excellent academic record. Being away from her home and family is a challenge for her, but her most immediate battle is with Emily, queen bee. Jun didn’t expect to make friends, which is […]
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Based on reader recommendation, I tried The Incredible Hercules, and I’m glad I did. Now I have a superhero title I can follow and enjoy. I started right when the title changed, with #112. (Previously, the series was The Incredible Hulk.) That issue through #115 are collected as Against the World. Written by Greg Pak (whose work I loved in the already-forgotten Warlock) and Fred Van Lente (Action Philosophers, Comic Book Comics) with art by Khoi Pham with Paul Neary […]
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The Lindbergh Child kicks off a new series for author/artist Rick Geary. Previously, he’d released nine volumes of A Treasury of Victorian Murder; now, this book moves into a more recent era, starting “A Treasury of XXth Century Murder”. (The odd spelling of Twentieth is apparently intentional.) Based on this first case, “America’s Hero and the Crime of the Century”, these stories will feel more familiar to the modern reader. Once Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean, he […]
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