Review: The inevitable woe of ‘Birthmark’
Walking a thin line between depressing and uplifting — a line I hadn’t really thought about existing before — Nathan Jurevicius’ Birthmark brings a familiar tale of vengeance into a completely alien world.
Our unnamed walking...
Review: Missing the mark on magic realism, but doing well with realism itself
Looking at the effects of trauma as a long term property that you find visible bursts of in the short term, The Return Of The Honey Buzzard evokes Nabokov and magic realism in a...
Review: 5 comics that grabbed my attention this week
Our Mother by Luke Howard
Comics has become the territory of many examinations of mental health in regard to personal history, and each manifestation of this is going to be as varied as the individuals tackling...
Review: Evie Wyld’s transformative fear in Everything is Teeth
This mesmerizing and beautifully weird memoir has novelist Evie Wyld going over her childhood years through the lens of extreme, irrational fear, tracing its beginnings and following how it defined so much of her, only...
Review: Comics don’t come more gentle than ‘Mooncop’
Some dreams never turn out quite like you hope they will, and when they all come crashing down, things are going to change. Many humans are allergic to change, so they cling to their...
Review: Guy Colwell looks at the subtle side of control
Human beings have, historically, revealed a vigorous capacity for steering other human beings away from the way they are currently living into a more preferred lifestyle. This goes without saying as you look through...
Review: Uncivilized Books demands more of its readers
Houses Of The Holy by Caitlin Skaalrud
Caitlin Skaalrud’s Houses Of The Holy is, on its a surface, a psychedelic and psychological journey through the mind of a woman, with a heavy visual focus that...
Review: Two successful bios of very different men
It’s always a pleasure when a new graphic novel biography comes out about someone I know absolutely nothing about, and I certainly had no clue about the existence of Roger Casement. Fionnuala Doran's The...
Review: Baltic comics anthology S! #25 works its artful magic on Manga
This collection of gaijin mangaka — that is, Manga style comics made by non-Japanese creators — who graduated to the style of Gekiga — that is, serious dramatic Manga, as opposed to, say, Sailor...
Review: Leela Corman connects the emotional and intellectual dots
Leela Corman’s work is a lot of things in We All Wish For Deadly Force. Whether using vivid, thick colors or more simple black line work, or muddy comic chimeras made up of both...
Review: Sean Karemaker’s autobio comics are intense and poetic
It’s not a visibly large book, about average looking at a glance, but Sean Karemaker’s The Ghosts We Know is more dense than most autobiographical comics you will encounter — dense with ideas, dense...
Review: Daniel Johnston biography sets a whole new standard
As biographical graphic novels go, you’ve never read anything like The Incantations Of Daniel Johnston, a poetic, frenetic dive through the mind of the singer/songwriter, using it as a filter through which the larger...
