I’ve been known to bemoan the fact that the caption was basically wiped out of mainstream US comics in an extinction event roughly congruent with the big ’90s crash. I’ll admit that captions may have made a comeback since, like tiny mammals after the Chicxulub impact, but I read mainstream comics only rarely these days,…
Avatar Legends: City of EchoesBy Judy L. Lin320 pages/Amulet Books/$21.99 I know this much about The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, so I approached this first novel in what is being billed as the Avatar: Legends series. Is the title intended to be about stories set in and around the Avatar series, or…
Books that are obvious metaphors can be tricky. Especially if you’re not quite sure exactly what they’re a metaphor for. I think Anna is Mia Oberländer’s first major graphic novel – it says it was created as part of her thesis in illustration at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences – so I don’t have…
I didn’t think Grant Snider made comics quickly enough to put out a book every year – he’s a working orthodontist, as I always find a way to fit in when I write about his work, since it’s such a highly-skilled, well-paid, and useful career and yet anti-glamorous and low profile at the same time…
Everyone has story elements that annoy them unreasonably. For me, it’s often small factual things that undermine core themes of a book – the ones that make me think, “wait, well if she can do X, then Y can’t be true.” So I spent a lot of time while reading Eric Drooker’s 2024 graphic novel…
Phenomena Book Three: The SecretBy Brian Michael Bendis and André Lima AraújoAbrams ComicArts/144 pages/$25.99 I have to hand it to Brian Michael Bendis. The writer is far from a one-trick pony, and no two series have the same feeling. Here, partnered again with André Lima Araújo, he has come up with a light family-oriented science…
All the Hulk FeelsBy Dan SantatAbrams Fanfare/40 pages/$19.99 This Mighty Marvel Comics Picture Book, aimed at 4-8-year-olds, conveys a wonderful message about managing anger. This is a particularly challenging age for kids who act out when they lack the vocabulary to express their feelings. Visually, Dan Santat, known for his work on The Adventures of…
The Night Eaters: Book 3 – Their Kingdom ComeBy Marjorie Liu and Sana TakedaAbrams ComicArts/314 pages/$34.99 The dynamic duo of Marjorie Liu and San Takeda produce gorgeous stories like clockwork, be it the sprawling horror fantasy Monstress or the recently completed The Night Eaters. Begun in 2023, the first two installments – The Night Eaters…
Three years ago, when I saw the first collection of John McNamee’s Pie Comics – it’s called Goldilocks and the Infinite Bears ; it’s funny; you should read it – I thought the strip might have ended, and was mildly sad that only the first of the strip’s three collections were available in my library’s…
Daisy Ashford was real. She was born in 1881, and wrote a cluster of stories in her youth: weird, oddball things with eccentric spelling and an often-shaky grasp on how people actually lived and talked to each other, all bathed in the sunny happiness of a coddled girl of the Victorian age. After she grew…
Frank Herbert didn’t necessarily intend to create a large, enduring legacy like Dune became. But once the novel finally arrived in the mid-1960s, it was immediately embraced and spawned several sequels until Herbert’s death. His son Brian, in concert with Kevin J. Anderson, has been keeping the flames burning bright with a series of prequels…
Iron Man: Something Strange!By Dean Hale and Douglas HolgateAbrams Fanfare/96 pages/12.99 After three team-up books featuring Spider-Man, the young reader line shines the spotlight on Iron Man and Doctor Strange, and it’s a fun time. Aimed at 5-9-year-old readers, the book ostensibly is about an alien infestation that comes to shellhead’s attention when the Avengers’…
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