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Review: mini kus! #40 – 1944 by Hanneriina Moisseinen A few times each year, Kus, the Latvian comics publisher, puts out a collection of mini comics. These mini-kus are by creators from around the world, and I’ve reviewed a few of them over the past two years. And while many of those comics were good,…
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Thoughts on My Hero Academia and Transcending Genre
I just finished reading Nell Zink’s Mislaid, a family drama set in the 1960-1980s South. Long-listed for the National Book Award last year, it’s a novel so confident in its voice that it is at times, utterly transcendent. Zink’s Mislaid has an unmistakable clarity and strength, and it captured me as a reader. It is…
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Thoughts on Josh Cotter’s Skyscrapers of the Midwest Cotter’s most recent project is Nod Away, the first of what is expected to be a many-volume series. I picked up Skyscrapers of the Midwest and Driven by Lemons as an introduction to his work, prior to reading Nod Away. The collection is a dense hardcover with…
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Review: Leaf by Daishu Ma Sentence transitions and paragraph structure are feeling extremely difficult right now. I’ve been kicking around some thoughts about the Fantagraphics book Leaf, which was published last year at the tail end of the publishing season. So, I guess, a review in bullets: There’s something to be said about the range…
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Review: To The Abandoned Sacred Beasts, vol. 1, by Maybe There’s something intoxicating about dark fantasy. The most popular manga in the USA is Attack on Titan, a dark fantasy giant zombie title I haven’t kept up with (I did review the first volume a long time ago in another life, review forthcoming?). To The…
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Review: Handbook by Kevin Budnik Kevin Budnik’s Handbook is a mixed narrative, one of anxiety and disordered eating, and another of relationships in a post-recovery world. In a 2×2 grid that I’ve come to associate with Budnik’s autobiographical work, we see him navigate the present as he contends with a past that is part ghost,…
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Sequential Statement #10 – Back in Orbit
Episode #10: Back in Orbit Alex and Nick talk about Alex’s recent trip to the Toronto Comics Arts Festival in Toronto, ON. We chat about the last month’s lost episode, Captain America: Civil War, and the recent Captain America/Hydra comic and the resulting fallout. Reviews of: Dimension W #1 by Yuji Iwahara Hilda and the…
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Thoughts On The Nostalgia in Mag Hsu & Nao Emoto’s Forget Me Not
Kodansha USA has been publishing some titles that seem like a hybrid between shonen and shojo romance; Your Lie in April, which I reviewed last year, is up to seven volumes now, and a new release, Forget Me Not, is now up to its second volume with a third scheduled to be released in July.…
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Review: Twin Bed by Robyn Chapman
I’ve been reviewing comics about dysfunctional relationships this week (Lulu Anew, Megg & Mogg in Amsterdam and Other Stories), so I think it’s best to finish the week off with Robyn Chapman’s latest comic, recently published through a small Kickstarter project this winter. Chapman has slowly been plugging away as the publisher of the micropress…
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Darkening Sameness: Thoughts on Megg & Mogg In Amsterdam and Other Stories by Simon Hanselmann
Megg & Mogg In Amsterdam and Other Stories (Amsterdam from this point forward) is Simon Hanselmann’s latest Megg, Mogg, and Owl release from Fantagraphics. It collects 160 pages of Hanselmann’s comics which have originally appeared on the internet and in other forms, including the collaborative zine Werewolf Jones & Sons with Melbourne-based artist HTMLflowers. One…
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Thoughts on The Greek Chorus and Circular Storytelling of Lulu Anew by Étienne Davodeau
I recently finished up reading a stack of newish NBM books. I was surprised by Lulu Anew, a 2008-2010 French comic by Étienne Davodeau that NBM translated and published under their ComicsLit line in 2015. In Lulu Anew, the main character Lulu walks away from an unsuccessful interview and an unhappy marriage and into the…
