-
Review: A Fire Story by Brian Fies
California has been repeatedly battered by a series of wildfires in recent years, and Brian Fies, author of Mom’s Cancer, had his life upended by the 2017 Tubbs fire. In response, Fies wrote A Fire Story, initially a short piece posted online. This 19-page off the cuff reportage of the incident at the time of…
-
Review: New Life, by Xavier Betaucourt and Yannick Marchat
I’m doing a 180° turn this week, writing about a graphic memoir I loved and then immediately reviewing a book I found unreadable. Part of Humanoids’ Life Drawn line, New Life is a 128-page softcover published in late January 2019. New Life details Xavier Betaucourt’s life after getting a divorce in the middle of a…
-
Review: Coyote Doggirl by Lisa Hanawalt
Lisa Hanawalt has a lot of talent as a short story writer. Her first two books, My Dirty Dumb Eyes and Hot Dog Taste Test established her as a cartoonist with a knack for finding humor in everyday objections and expressions, and as a person whose work borders the fluorescent and the surreal. But I…
-
Review: Sukibito Diary by Chu Nap
I’m starting to dig deeper into the comics I got at SPX this year, and one in particular has been stuck in my craw. Carta Monir, a fellow critic and previous collaborator, recommended I pick up a copy of Sukibito Diary, a 120-page perfect-bound softcover book from Chu Nap. Nap is a Toronto-based cartoonist and…
-
Review: Lovers Only #1 by Cathy G. Johnson, Mickey Zacchilli, and Sophia Foster-Dimino The Toronto Comics Arts Festival (TCAF) is thoroughly in the books at this point, and after two weeks of vacation & work-inflicted internet exile, I’m finally digging into some of the books I got at TCAF. Last year I wrote a show…
-
Review: Let’s Dance a Waltz Vol. 1 by Natsumi Ando This week is a week of manga reviews at Sequential State; the next on the pile is Natsumi Ando’s Let’s Dance a Waltz, a 3-volume shojo series originally published in Kodansha’s Nakayoshi manga anthology. Ando is known best in the United States for her titles…
