It’s not always safe to say that a series is definitively over – writers, like life, find a way to come back – but when a third book came out five years ago and the creator has moved on to other projects, it’s clear that what we have is a trilogy and we can treat…
If you knew nothing else, and heard that Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud had made a graphic novel together under the title The Cartoonists Club , what would you think? Most of us would say something flippant like “Oh, it must be Understanding Comics, but for pre-teens, and in Telgemeier’s art style!” And…that’s pretty much…
First of all: I checked multiple times, because I keep expecting that title to have an exclamation point. But it does not, and that slightly disappoints me. That might be the only criticism I have of this book, so I’m putting it up front. Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy: Spidermania is the fifth and most…
I am no expert on Euro Disney comics. Fantagraphics has been reprinting what they say are the best of that large universe – and I have no reason to doubt them; publishing programs always try to get the best of whatever – for a decade or more, and I’ve dipped into that sequence here and…
I’m still not sure if Ben Sears intends his comics to be all-ages (or, more specifically, most-ages, for tweens and up), or if it’s a by-product of the stories that he tells. Either way, I’d say his books are OK for tweens, mostly, if that’s something you care about. Young Shadow & the Watchdogs is…
First up: I know I missed one. In between the original Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy and this book, there was Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy: Disco Fever, which is unavailable from any library near me, digitally or physically. (In fact, none of the nearby libraries seem to have any of the Laser Moose books…
Art Baltazar and Franco have been making a very particular kind of comics for twenty years or so – kid-friendly versions of popular superhero and superhero-adjacent properties, bright and happy and light-hearted, colorful and zippy, full of rubber-hose cartooning and vibrant colors, with usually a cluster of short related stories with minimal plots but a…
This one was a professional transition – it collects the first six issues (plus stories from issues seven and eight) of the second series of Usagi Yojimbo , from Mirage – but, within the story, there’s no indication of that. Creator Stan Sakai didn’t reboot the series, drop into long explanatory flashback stories for the…
I never want to discourage creators from stretching, from trying new things and talking to new audiences. But, sometimes, it just doesn’t really click. In the late ’90s, Peter Bagge had been making sarcastic comics about grumpy twenty-something slackers in Hate for more than a decade; his work was really closely associated with not just…
When a creator you like turns to creating works for younger readers, you have two choices: follow him along, and check out the new stuff, trying to have an open mind, or to avoid the new stuff and grump about how creators should keep doing the things you discovered them for, grumble grumble. OR –…
If this were a TV show, it would be a pilot that didn’t get picked up: it obviously aimed to start a series, and, a decade later, it didn’t. There are a lot of plot points, themes, and ideas that aren’t completely explained or fleshed out here – but of course there would be, if…
This one collects seven more issues of the early Usagi Yojimbo comic, plus a story from Critters, though the dates in the book are a little confusing. The book itself claims a first edition in September 1991, but says the stories included are copyright no earlier than 1992. Now, Stan Sakai is a fantastic creator,…
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