Many of the stories from the previous three Little Lit hardcover volumes have been reprinted in this new paperback edition. It’s a wonderful anthology with contributions from a wide range of very talented artists, all edited by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly and now available at a bargain price. It’s a great sampler to expose kids to a variety of approaches to art, too; styles range from colorfully cartoony to classically illustrative. Like their classic forebears, the modern fairy tales […]

The latest chapter in this thrilling “gaslamp fantasy” series by Phil & Kaja Foglio reveals a number of secrets. Agatha Heterodyne and the Clockwork Princess opens with a narrow escape, as the traveling players (introduced in The Circus of Dreams) are set upon by a huge group of killing creatures. That allows for the sudden entry of three Jagers, my favorite characters. The Jagers as a tribe are bred for fighting, and I find their simplistic, amoral love of killing […]

Agatha Heterodyne encounters a brand-new group of terrific characters in this chapter of the “gaslamp fantasy” series by Phil & Kaja Foglio, Agatha Heterodyne and the Circus of Dreams. Agatha has escaped from the flying castle of Baron Wulfenbach (as seen in The Monster Engine). She’s accompanied by a grumpy talking cat that serves as comic relief. They quickly run into a traveling caravan of show people, a group that provides a wonderful opportunity for the Foglios to sketch a […]

Girl Genius by Phil & Kaja Foglio is a fun “gaslamp fantasy” starring a young woman just discovering her abilities. The first volume, Agatha Heterodyne and the Beetleburg Clank, establishes the setting and characters for the ongoing steampunk adventure series. Agatha’s world is one of mad science, run by privileged nobles who display the Spark needed to work steam-powered technological magic. She’s a lowly lab assistant in this Cinderella story. No one, including herself, yet suspects that she possess the […]

There’s never been anything in comics like Larry Marder’s Beanworld, before or since, and although the last collection came out in 1999, it’s still very much missed. Marder combined his original symbology with elements of Native American myth, the influence of Marcel Duchamp, and thoughts on ecology, community, and the nature of art. There wasn’t always a story so much as an exploration of some sort of philosophy, and much of it remains unexplained. That might be why it’s still […]