A couple of weeks ago, writing about the previous Gilbert Hernandez Love and Rockets book Human Diastrophism , I said that those stories came from a ten-year span, because Hernandez was busy with other things as well during that time. Well, Beyond Palomar collects two of those things between one set of covers: two full-length graphic novels…
There are two ways of discovering beginnings. If you were there at the time, you see it as it happens, and watch as it becomes itself and turns into middle. But most of us aren’t there at the time, particularly for creative works — the point of beginnings is that creators come out of a…
I’m here because I’m looking backwards. Why else would any of us be reading the first collection of a nearly thirty-year-old comics series? [1] I recently read the first collection of the current Shade the Changing Girl series, which reminded me of this Peter Milligan/Chris Bachalo/Mark Pennington version, which began in 1990 and ran through…
Any self-respecting family story needs a flashback. Whether it’s a Ross Macdonald novel finally explaining just what horrible thing happened twenty years ago in Canada or a family saga that stops in the middle of Chapter Two to explain just how Sadie McGuffins first came to the Maritimes from Scotland as a teen domestic servant…
I’ve already done my song-and-dance about explorers in my post four years ago about Bertozzi’s book Shackleton, so it’s best to take that as read here. [1] But Shackleton lived in an age when most of the world had been mapped and organized; he was trying to fill in one of the last few open…
We all regret our twenties. Some of us regret how quickly we settled down and got boring, and some of us regret that we didn’t settle down and get boring, at all or quickly enough. I’m one of the former; I think Julia Wertz is one of the latter. Museum of Mistakes is the big…
Is Tom Gauld our most erudite cartoonist? From the evidence of his work, he well could be — there’s a parade of authors both classic (Shakespeare, Austen) and genre (Ballard, Gaiman) and modern literary (Franzen, Mantel), and a dazzling awareness of tropes and ideas and genre furniture in his work, and it’s hard to think…
There’s a peculiar mix of older graphic novels and new graphic novels in our home right now. The new stuff is all part of a top-secret project I’m working on with my daughter, Tess. We can’t let the cat out of the bag yet, but you can check out her showcase of street art for…
The lovely Joan Lee, StanâÂÂs wife for over 60 years, died recently and this morning Marifran learned that Leroy A. Martin, with whom we used to double date in teen years, has not been with us for a while now. Teen years and innocent years fraught with nostalgia and maybe apt to prompt somber thought….
You know that person at your high school reunion, the one who complains loudly about how hard she has to work to maintain her city place, her country house, and her condo in Bermuda? And how she can’t find good help anymore? I’m about to be the comics industry version of that person. When I…
Our pal and ComicMix columnist Ed Catto (also the nicest guy in the Atlantic Northeast) is up to something. Check out this press release! Explore the life and work of Will Eisner with Auburn, N.Y.’s Seymour Library on Monday March 6th with a panel presentation/film screening and on Tuesday, March 7th with a documentary at…
Hallelujah! Over the weekend, I had a revelation. March, by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, is the answer to every question, the solution to every problem. Let me explain how I came to see the light. I was at a conference for American Jews interested in increasing the opportunities for a shared society among…
