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Review: The Scar: Graphic Reportage From The U.S.-Mexico Border by Andrea Ferraris and Renato Chiocca
Andrea Ferraris’ recent collection of graphic reportage, The Scar: Graphic Reportage From The U.S.-Mexico Border, starts with an image of a wave, luxuriously illustrated with graphite. Throughout the book, that wave crashes into the dry sandy earth of the region, a metaphor for the current humanitarian crisis at the border (a crisis seemingly manufactured for…
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Review: Saint Young Men #1 by Hikaru Nakamura
It’s not often that I review digital-only comics, but I’ll make a concession for Saint Young Men #1, a long-running slice of life comic from Kodansha Comics. This book is officially available to purchase in English as of yesterday, but has been running in Kodansha’s anthology Morning 2 since 2006. This is the works’ first…
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Review: Gleipnir vol. 1, by Sun Takeda
Let’s be blunt and call it like it is; a lot of the manga published in the United States is really horny. And a lot of comics, especially shonen and seinen manga, are pretty violent. The combination can be particularly egregious at times; such is the case with Gleipnir, a furiously horny comic about a…
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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…
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Review: Piero by Edmond Baudoin
New York Review Comics has quietly become one of my favorite comics publishers over the last two years. At the end of 2018, they published a slim volume of comics by Edmond Baudoin titled Piero. Baudoin is celebrated as a master cartoonist in Europe, but this book is one of the first of his comics…
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Review: Hobo Mom by Charles Forsman & Max de Radigués
There’s a whole story to write about the publication of Hobo Mom, a recent release from Fantagraphics. Charles Forsman and Max de Radiguès are recently published authors from the press, and Forsman specifically has had some recent popular success with the adaptation of his comic The End of the Fucking World for a Netflix series.…
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Review: Meal by Blue Delliquanti & Soleil Ho
If recent studies are to be believed, the world is consuming way more meat than it can handle long-term; the production of meat for food is the source of at least 8% of the total greenhouse gas emissions across the world, and the production of meat, especially beef, is inefficient at best. A discussion that’s…
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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…
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Review: An Invitation from a Crab by panpanya
An Invitation from a Crab is a recent release from Denpa, a new manga publisher helmed by Ed Chavez. Chavez is well respected in the English-language manga market and has a reputation as a tastemaker from his time at Vertical Inc, another small manga publisher. Denpa has already made a name for itself through its…
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Review: Red Winter by Anneli Furmark
Some books demand to be reviewed. This is certainly the case with Anneli Furmark’s period drama Red Winter, set in 1970s Sweden, where a secret affair between a young man named Ulrik and an older woman named Siv ricochets around a small northern community. Red Winter is Furmark’s first comic to be published in English,…
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Review: Girl Town by Carolyn Nowak
It is about time that Carolyn Nowak has a collection of her work. Having won two Ignatz awards and plenty of critical acclaim (including from this critic), Nowak now has her first collection, titled Girl Town out from Top Shelf at the end of 2018. Girl Town is a collection of short stories, starting from…
