This time I’ll be reviewing the second volumes of three series that I covered the first time around – so I should know what’s going on. But, with manga, that can be a dangerous assumption… Kieli, Vol. 2 Story By Yukako Kabei; art by Shiori Teshirogi Yen Press, October 2008, $10.99 I reviewed the first…
The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics Edited by Paul Gravett Running Press, August 2008, $17.95 Every genre or medium has a great schism – the thing that practitioners and fans argue about when they can’t think of anything more substantive. For “speculative fiction,” it’s the battle between science fiction and fantasy. For “crime fiction,”…
Burma Chronicles By Guy Delisle Drawn & Quarterly, September 2008, $19.95Delisle has a quirky history for a newish graphic novelist: he’s in his early forties, a Canadian long resident in France who spent ten years working in animation (both in France and overseeing animation production various places in Asia) before quitting that to concentrate on…
This week: three books with very little in common. Oh, they’re all recently published – on paper, and in English, even! – but that’s about it. So you won’t be bothered by my heavy-handed attempts to link everything together this time…. B.Ichi, Vol. 1 By Atsushi Ohkubo Yen Press, October 2008, $10.99 In the nation…
My brother was a huge Garfield fan when he was young, and my own two sons (currently ages ten and seven) have followed in his footsteps. They’re certainly not alone: as Dan Walsh writes in his foreword to [[[Garfield Minus Garfield]]], “I wanted to be just like [[[Garfield]]] – lazy, sarcastic, lasagna loving, Monday hating,…
Jamilti & Other Stories By Rutu Modan Drawn & Quarterly, August 2008, $19.95 Rutu Modan came to the attention of most American comics readers last year, when her graphic novel [[[Exit Wounds]]] was published to great acclaim. Exit Wounds went on to hit a number of top ten lists, and won the Eisner for Best…
A lot of manga take place in high schools – and that’s natural, since the original audience for most of the popular manga series were Japanese teenagers, and it’s hard to find someone more self-obsessed than a teenager. So ignoring high school would almost mean ignoring manga all together, and I wouldn’t want to do…
The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle Written by Jim Butcher; Pencils by Adrian Syaf Del Rey, October 2008, $19.95 Jim Butcher’s [[[Dresden Files]]] series is something of an anomaly in the world of contemporary fantasy – a hugely successful, bestselling series of novels set in the modern world, featuring vampires, werewolves, elves, and other…
The world of webcomics has gotten to be nearly as large and encompassing as traditional newspaper strips – if there aren’t as many people making a living from webcomics yet, give it a year or two and the one number going up will soon meet the other number coming down. It’s so big, actually, that…
This week, I have two fat books about the unlikely adventures of (on one hand) a scarred, secretive, arrogant doctor and (on the other) a self-doubting lawyer who defends the innocent. And since I couldn’t see throwing anyone else in between Black Jack and Phoenix Wright, those two will get the whole column to themselves,…
Love & Rockets: New Stories #1 By The Hernandez Brothers Fantagraphics, July 2008, $14.99 It’s hard to believe [[[Love & Rockets]]] has been around for twenty-seven years now – longer than any of its peers in the “indy” comics world, and longer than a lot of “mainstream” comics characters as well – but dates don’t…
Gus and His Gang By Chris Blain First Second, October 2008, $16.95 There must be some reason why the good Western comics – hell, pretty much all of the Western comics – of the past three decades have all come from France, but I don’t know it myself. France never had a West of its…
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