Mini Kuš! #69: Maud By Marlene Krause Kuš Komiksi This recent entry in the long series of wildly inventive and artistically-experimental little booklets from Latvia takes on the life of tattooed woman Maud Wagner, who became a sideshow attraction around the turn of the century. Wagner was originally a trapeze artist until she met tattooed […]
Review: Looking past Mormon stereotypes in Noah Van Sciver’s ‘One Dirty Tree’
The Mormon ascent into wider cultural awareness has not been under the best circumstances. It’s involved revelations about the fringe of it with the abduction of Elizabeth Smart and reality television shows that mostly focused on polygamy. In 2012 former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney ran for president as a Republican, but what might have been […]
Review: ‘Algeria Is Beautiful Like America’ and the complications of family lore
I’m going to admit to being embarrassingly ignorant on the subject of Algeria before reading Algeria Is Beautiful Like America, at best understanding the basic colonial relationship it had with France, and the continued tension because of that. While the book doesn’t offer a detailed history of the situation, it does hold the reader’s hand […]
Review: ‘Flocks’ is an inspirational autobiography
In my experience, once people get older and their teenage experience settles into a hazy myth in their brains that supplants the actual memories, almost everyone thinks they were the weird-one-out in high school. Even the most privileged types see themselves in outcast terms. I don’t know that this is human-nature, but it is American […]
Review: Liana Finck’s ‘Passing For Human’ gets to the core of all of us
One of the things I like best about Liana Finck is her ability to not only be the only thing like her in comics but to communicate that fact clearly and with charm. Seldom are her cartoons transcriptions of actions — this happened then this happened then this happened — but rather the live unpacking […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 to eventually add philosophical depth to her universal view. Wyld’s fear? Sharks. Big ones. Big ones that will kill you and […]
Review: Rebecca Roher’s tender family memories are a pleasing meditation on loss
For many people, the earliest experience of human loss that pierces their emotions and affects their everyday existence is the death of a grandparent, and that of a grandmother, I have found, anyway, seems to pack a particular wallop. Some grandmothers participate in a kid’s life as a kind of back-up parent, others as a […]
Review: Julia Wertz’s thoughtful and healing style of self-deprecation
Julia Wertz’s Eisner-nominated Drinking At The Movies, originally from 2010 but here with a handsome reissue from Koyama Press, is renowned for its humorous self-deprecating pile-on. At its root is the suggestion that beating yourself up is probably just part of personal growth. And that’s not just meant to make you feel better, but an […]