John Seven talks D. Boyd, author of ‘Chicken Rising’
Review: Unpacking your demons in ‘The Vagabond Valise’
You can go find all the horror comics currently being published and line them up with The Vagabond Valise and probably not find one that is anywhere equal in the level of disturbance lobbed at the reader by Quebecois cartoonist Siris. Not that this book is a horror comic at all. Instead, it’s an autobiography […]
Review: A life unfolds through cassette tapes in ‘All the Sad Songs’
Cassette tapes are one of those things. I don’t know if people who didn’t live decades of their life with cassette tapes as part of them can really gather what they mean to people over 40. I don’t even know an equivalent for those in their 20s now. They were physical media that you could […]
Review: ‘Feast of Fields’ unleashes all the dimensions of emotion and memory at the same time
Sean Karemaker created one of my favorite books of 2016, The Ghosts We Know, a dark autobiographical work that achieves a symbolic height as the psychological crashes into the recollections to create some otherworldly memoir universe. In many ways, Feast Of Fields is a follow-up to that work. Karemaker’s mother and her three brothers spent […]
Review: Michael Kupperman’s haunting quest for ‘All The Answers’
Often in our history, but especially right now, popular culture is an obstructive thing, and one of the main things it keeps us from seeing is what happened before whatever is happening now. It’s difficult when you’re wrapped in its haze to see that much of what you are experiencing, appreciating, even being defined by, […]
Shannon Wheeler returns with MEMOIRS OF A VERY STABLE GENIUS
New Yorker cartoonist and multiple Eisner Award-winner Shannon Wheeler has a book of autobiography and humor coming out in July.
Review: Kristen Radtke’s autobiography captures the big picture in the small frame
I am often torn about autobiographical comics. Not whether they should exist or not — of course people should create the comics they are moved to create — and not about the level of the work, which obviously depends on the creator doing the work, but within an area that has some strong practitioners. What […]
A Year of Free Comics: Powdered Milk by Keiler Roberts, a painfully honest look at family life
Man oh man how have I not linked to this before? Keiler Roberts’ Powdered Milk is an ongoing autobiographical comic about a woman, her husband, their daughter, Xia, and their dog, Crooky…but it’s not like the other family autobio comics. The word unflinching is often tossed around, but these comics are truly honest and unsparing, […]
Review: Two tiny books with big differences between them
Nicolas by Pascal Girard This is a deceptively simple book that takes slices from the life of creator Pascal Girard’s life that all revolve around his younger brother, who died as a child. Girard’s cartooning takes form in simple scrawls, but the childlike renderings hint at the young man who lives inside Girard and has since […]
Review: Kelly Froh & Dan Mazur’s two non-fiction delights
The Weekend Casserole Collection by Kelly Froh Froh brings together a number of short pieces from various sources — anthologies she’s contributed to, some of her own minis, as well as some previously unseen work. Covering incidents from all parts of her life — childhood sleepovers, high school crushes, strangers on buses, work acquaintances — […]