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Review: By Monday I’ll Be Floating in the Hudson with the Other Garbage by Laura Lannes
Part of my goal for these next few weeks are to get back to some comics I read in 2017 and early 2018 but didn’t properly evaluate. For the next few weeks I will be trying to get in some writing I’ve been putting off over the last few months. October and November were hard…
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Review: Things Go Wrong #1 by Jason Bradshaw
Paper Rocket Minicomics puts out a few books each year, and generally runs a small-ask Kickstarter each year to get them printed. This year the books were a new Missy comic from Daryl Seitchik and a reprint of Jason Bradshaw’s Things Go Wrong #1, originally published as Bore #14, from his zine series. Bradshaw is…
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Review: Ran and the Gray World vol. 1 by Aki Irie
The first volume of Ran and the Gray World was one of the first Japanese language books I ever purchased. It’s a series that has long held my fascination; the whimsical setting piqued my interest, its use of magic so completely different from other manga in the fantasy genre. And importantly, the cover is beautiful,…
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Review: I Hate You, You Just Don’t Know It Yet by Nadine Redlich
Nadine Redlich has a playful style that I’ve seen popping up everywhere over the last 5-6 months. I loved her recent Google Doodle celebrating the birthday of Erich Ohser (aka E.O. Plauen), a famous German cartoonist (I reviewed a collection of his Father & Son comics here). Her illustrations in the New York Times and…
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Review: Roly Poly: Phanta’s Story by Daniel Semanas
There are some books published every year that have a visual impact, books that say, “pick me up and read me!” One look at Roly Poly: Phanta’s Story, and you can see why this is one of those books. The book has a strong visual sensibility, beautiful colors, and a style influenced by cyberpunk and…
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Review: Giant Spider & Me, Vol. 1-2, by Kikori Morino
I’m fascinated by Giant Spider & Me, a recent release from Seven Seas. It’s genuinely unfathomable to me how a book like this got greenlit, because it’s about as unfocused a premise as possible. Giant Spider & Me is a grab bag of concepts; it’s a post-apocalypse setting, a slice of life story, a cooking…
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Review: Eternal Friendship by Anouck Durand
(This review of Anouck Durand’s Eternal Friendship was originally published by The Comics Journal on March 14th, 2018. You can find the original review here.) From the perspective of a reader of comics, the graphic novel is a mature aspect of the world of book publishing. But the larger literary world is hesitant to put unique and…
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Review: Incision, by HTMLflowers
It’s been hard to approach HTMLflowers’ latest work, mostly because of how ruthless and unsparing it is. I read Incision a few months ago and made this comment about a month ago. Grant Gronewold (HTMLflowers is his nom de plume) challenged me to review it. It took awhile, but here we are. Incision isn’t really…
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Transmissions From Cartoon Crossroads Columbus 2018
Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC) is a relatively close show; a day’s drive from where I live and you’re in the bustling center of Ohio, ready to hit the town. CXC isn’t exactly local, but it’s not a plane ride, if you can drive and hate yourself enough to spend hours of your life stuck on…
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Review: Mother’s Walk by Lauren Weinstein
Lauren Weinstein’s Normel Person, which migrated to Popula after the closure of the Village Voice, has been a powerful reflection on the state of the world. I’ve been drawn to her work this year, and it was exciting to learn that she would be contributing to Youth in Decline’s Frontier series. Over the last few…
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Review: A Projection by Seekan Hui
I’m trying to get a little more reading done as we get deeper into the fall convention season. This summer has been tough for me personally, but I’m excited to move into the fall. SPX is just a week away, and a lot of major releases are coming out at that show. (Sadly my backlog…
