French Milk By Lucy Knisley Touchstone, October 2008, $15.00 The first thing to know – and to keep in your head – is that Lucy Knisley is twenty-two years old. That’s fantastically young to be planning and executing a nearly two-hundred-page-long drawn book, and the mere fact that she did it is impressive. And so…
Where I live – darkest New Jersey – it’s been cold and snowy and cold (did I mention the cold?) for the past week, causing us all to huddle closer for warmth. Add to that the season of closeness and love towards all…and the minds of some of us turn towards more earthy pursuits, such…
Scott Morse – and I say this with a laugh as well as wonderment – has had an awfully long, varied, and successful comics career for a guy who is essentially unknown to the vast majority of the comics-shop crowd. He’s done a long series of fantasy graphic novels ([[[Soulwind]]]), a number of books for…
Manga are temporarily in short supply around here, so the usual “Manga Friday” slot is being taken by a close cousin. (Think of this as just another wacky hijink, Patty Duke Show-style.) Instead of manga, I have two books for younger readers that came out earlier in 2008, one very clearly for girls, and the…
DC has long been the home of a certain kind of story – at least moderately hip, and equally popular, usually with some elements derived from the superhero mainstream but with its own high-concept premise ripped from the Zeitgeist. First there was [[[Sandman]]], then [[[Preacher]]] and [[[Transmetropolitan]]] and so on – but, these days, since…
An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons and True Stories, Vol. 2 Edited by Ivan Brunetti Yale University Press, October 2008, $28.00 Two years ago, we saw one of the biggest signs yet that comics had “made it” and were being taken seriously by the academic/literary community: the publication of a big, magisterial teaching anthology of…
It’s getting harder and harder to find books for this column that go together in any meaningful way. And how do I deal with that problem? Why, by utterly ignoring the problem and throwing together whatever books happen to be lying around. Here, I’ll show you how that works… Spiral: The Bonds of Reasoning, Vol….
ACME Novelty Library, No. 19 By Chris Ware Drawn & Quarterly, October 2008, $15.95 First of all, it’s just struck me how odd it is that the cartoonist universally referred to as “Chris Ware” is only credited as “F.C. Ware” – and that in tiny indicia and similar eye-straining matter – in his own stories…
Speak of the Devil By Gilbert Hernandez Dark Horse, November 2008, $19.95 Most of Gilbert Hernandez’s comics have been set in the same world, featuring a huge cast of characters with many obvious and obscure links, reaching from the small Latin American town of Palomar to Southern California and covering the second half of the…
This week, in a desperate attempt to disguise the fact that he doesn’t have any coherent way to tie the reviewed books together, Andrew Wheeler will adopt a “countdown” format to write about three brand-new Manga volumes. Adding to the difficulty level: he will also write about himself in the third person, for no good…
The Best American Comics: 2008 Series editors: Jessica Abel and Matt Madden; edited by Lynda Barry Houghton Mifflin, October 2008, $22.00 The “Best American” series has been around for decades, starting with the acclaimed annual collection of short stories and expanding in recent years to such newer emanations as [[[Best American Nonrequired Reading]]], [[[Best American…
It’s always a bit sad when someone quits a job, especially a well-loved and -trusted colleague who did a huge amount of the work. Sure, you’ll all take him out to lunch on his last day (or as close to it as you can manage), but that’s for his benefit. The next Monday, you all…
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