This graphic novel says it’s based on a folktale, and I have no reason to doubt that. Whether it’s an ancient, well-known folktale or one made up by creator Nancy Peña to fit the story she wants to tell…there I do wonder a bit. It’s such a wonderfully visual story, one perfectly aligned with Peña’s…
The Mythmakers By John HendrixAbrams Fanfare/224 pages/$24.99 In 1976, SUNY-Binghamton offered a comparative literature course focusing on C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Unfortunately, I was a freshman, and it was a senior seminar, so I ignored it (my clever wife ignored that prerequisite and took it as a freshman anyway). Thanks to this graphic novel,…
Young Hag and the Witches QuestBy Isabel Greenberg 272 pages/Amulet Books/$24.99 The Arthurian legends wax and wane through the years and 2024 is shaping up to be a year of revival. Specifically, on Tuesday, Lev Grossman’s new novel The Bright Sword, will tell of the days after Camelot fell. It follows the May release of…
I should have realized they were commercial illustrators – their work has all of the hallmarks. The polish, the construction, the architecture of the comics panels. It all shows a deep insight into design and a deep concern for design, for telling stories precisely and sharply. I didn’t quite realize that the first few times…
My skills as a reviewer don’t line up well with this book’s strengths, so this may be a mess. I apologize up front. Hedra is an Eisner Award-winning short wordless graphic novel by Jesse Lonergan from 2020, and I’m mostly a words person. It uses grids in a really interesting way, breaking up pages –…
This book is already dancing about architecture. So I worry that anything I might say would compound that – painting a picture of dancing about architecture. But here I am, and here I go. Fall Through is Nate Powell’s new graphic novel this year: it has what I think of as his trademark atmospheric, black-background,…
How do any of us choose the next book to read? Looking at a big list of possibilities – all things you don’t know well, all things new and different – what sparks the thought “that one”? This time, it was hair. On the cover of Time Under Tension , her major 2023 graphic memoir,…
Babies are hard. I think everyone knows that intellectually, but maybe not emotionally. My own first child was a needy, demanding, unhappy baby – I don’t want to claim too much; this was a quarter-century ago, and I wasn’t the main caregiver, either – so I have some insight but nothing like expertise. The mother…
There are times when I don’t have much to say here. I read a book, I mostly liked it, I’ve already read a number of things by the same creator, I don’t have anything particularly new or specific to say this time. And that sounds so horribly minimizing, doesn’t it? But “this is good stuff,…
It can be easy to lose track of just how much work and time goes into a single comics panel – to think of a graphic novel like prose, where you can strike out a line and rewrite it at any time. But comics are much more architected than that, built up in stages, and…
First up, this is not non-fiction; there’s a disclaimer on the copyright page: “This book is a work of fiction inspired by actual events.” It does use the real names of all of the people involved, was written or co-written by the main character, and roughly follows the real history as far as I can…
The publisher says this is an adult book, but it’s about young people (nineteen; at my age nineteen is very young) figuring out what they want out of life and how to live in the world, so it’s at least thematically appropriate for not-quite-adult readers. I’m tagging it thus; complain in comments if you think…
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