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Review: A Year Without Mom by Dasha Tolstikova Groundwood Books sent me a copy of their recent release, A Year Without Mom, earlier this year, and in the intervening time between then and now, I’ve been thinking about personal narratives. In this debut graphic novel, Dasha Tolstikova tells the story of growing up in Moscow…
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Review: Frontier #9 by Becca Tobin I mid-October I wrote a micro-review (on Twitter, of course, because blogging is hard) of Becca Tobin’s comic published through the Youth in Decline monograph series Frontier. In a series of tweets I mentioned some stray observations I had made, including some of the thematic elements I found intriguing.…
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Review: Curveball by Jeremy Sorese Let’s start with the basics. Curveball, the first major graphic novel release written and illustrated by Jeremy Sorese, is the loveliest print object with a spine to come across my desk this year. Nobrow has pulled out all the stops with this book; a lovely cover with smartly placed spot…
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Review: Sacred Heart by Liz Suburbia I’ve been mulling over Liz Suburbia’s recently released graphic novel published by Fantagraphics. A big softcover book, 312 pages of black and white comics, Sacred Heart is the kind of book you could hurt someone with if you had to. The root of the story is the tangled web…
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Thoughts on Virtual Candle and No Visitors #1, Two Works by HTML flowers
A lot of this Fall has been about slowly revisiting works published around TCAF this year. Top of the stack is Virtual Candle, a 132 page full color paperback book from Space Face Books. Published as the first major collected edition of Grant Gronewold’s comics and illustration work (under the nom de plume HTML flowers), Virtual…
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Review: Plain by Bailey Sharp
One of the subscriptions I got last year that I really enjoyed was the Minicomic of the Month Club. Like it says on the tin, you get a mini comic mailed to you every month. It’s a nice surprise letter in the mail when the new mini comes, and it’s an easy way to see…
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Quick Picks #4: Uncivilized
Happy Friday everyone! Quick Picks is a series of microreviews of books I’ve read in the past 2 weeks. These three quick reviews are of some recent minis from Uncivilized Press – an abbreviated set of these reviews was originally published in Selections #2, a comics review zine I publish. Uncivilized Books is a publisher…
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Review: Sea Urchin by Laura Knetzger
There are some comics you struggle with, not because you can’t find their strengths or their meaning, but because you can’t find the exact way to say what you want. Laura Knetzger’s Sea Urchin from Retrofit Comics is like that for me, and I’ve been working through my thoughts on this comic since I read…
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Review: mini kuš! #30 – Logbook, by Terhi Ekebom Finnish cartoonist Terhi Ekebom is one of the latest artists to work with Kuš komiksi’s mini kuš! project, each artist delivering a full color 4”x6” minicomic that clocks in at 24 pages. Ekebom’s comic is a somber and eerie vision of death and remembering. Within Logbook,…
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Review: Witches, Dragons, Magic, & Cats by Carey Pietsch
Witches, Dragons, Magic, & Cats is a collection of short stories by Carey Pietsch. This collection is a 32 page black and white comic with color cover pages. Pietsch has recently been working on the Adventure Time comic Marceline Gone Adrift, and while I have heard good things about the series (written by Meredith Gran), I’m…
