Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books
One expects a cat manga to be adorable, and Sue and Tai-Chan volume 3 does not disappoint. It’s by Konami Kanata, after all, who’s well-known here for Chi’s Sweet Home, also about a kitten. This series doesn’t have the melancholy notes of a youngster missing mom that that one did, though. Instead, it’s all about how cats behave and how fun they are to watch. It’s also printed left to right and published in soft, relaxing color, to better appeal […]
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Cartoonist Glenn Dakin has turned his skills to an illustrated set of short, inspirational essays in Sherlock Holmes’ Little Book of Wisdom: How to Deduce What on Earth Is Going On. He aims to show the reader how to apply the detective’s skills to everyday life, with chapters on the topics of observation, deduction, fisticuffs, setting a trap, and others. As Dakin explains in his introduction: “Instead of being dazzled by Sherlock’s genius, as others are, we have taken a […]
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With volume 10, Otherworldly Izakaya Nobu has really settled down into a comfort read, much like the comfort food it promotes. One of the soldiers who’ve been frequent customers of the pub has an issue. His wife is pregnant, and her family has sent them excessive amounts of dried squid from her homeland. They want to give it away, so they enlist the izakaya’s help. (I was reminded of a similar problem that arises with Southern US home gardens, although […]
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Let’s Make Dumplings!, the comic book cookbook by Hugh Amano and Sarah Becan, is incredibly thorough, which makes it ideal for a deep dive into a cuisine almost everyone loves: Asian dumplings. The book, illustrated in simple style but brimming with detail, is friendly in tone, as though the authors are keeping you company in the kitchen. The reader will learn legends, ingredients, equipment, and techniques, including how to fold different shapes and how to eat them. The recipe section […]
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The three exciting stories James Otis Smith tells in Black Heroes of the Wild West — those of Mary Fields, Bass Reeves, and Bob Lemmons — represent only a small part of the variety of Black experience on the American frontier. All three people were born into slavery but used their skills to set their own paths. These tales are told to refute the popular assumption that cowboys and other Wild West denizens were white. Mary Fields was a stagecoach […]
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From 2018-2020, IDW put out three Enola Holmes comics. They were slim graphic novel hardcovers by Serena Blasco, translated from the French. As comics, they were well-done; most of the issues I had were with the source premises from the novels by Nancy Springer. And even those were required by the young adult genre, ridiculous as they are. Now, for the price of one of those, you can get all three, with the paperback Enola Holmes: The Graphic Novels coming […]
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I am a huge fan of both Sherlock Holmes and the BBC Sherlock TV series. (Those two things don’t always go together.) As a fan of the latter, I have, of course, wondered if the show was really done. It’s been 12 years since it debuted, five years since the final episode of season 4 (the last so far) aired. Both Benedict Cumberbatch, who starred as Sherlock Holmes, and Mark Gatiss, co-creator, writer, and Mycroft Holmes actor, have recently been […]
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There Are Things I Can’t Tell You is a single-volume M/M friends-to-lovers manga romance. You probably know whether you want to read it just from that description. I found it charming, well-paced, and with two young men I was rooting for. The blond Kyousuke is a popular, hard-working graphic designer. Dark-haired Kasumi is shy and clumsy. They’ve been friends since school, when Kyousuke looked out for the lonely Kasumi. Now, as adults, they still care for each other. However, Kyousuke’s […]
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