Video game designer Mechner uses alternating color palettes to distinguish between his, his father’s, and his grandfather’s timelines in this illuminating debut. Scenes from his Jewish grandfather Adolf’s unfinished memoir about living through WWI and WWII unfold in parallel to Mechner’s more quotidian struggles to keep his marriage together after he moves his family to France in 2015. Interwoven with this present-day migration story are vignettes recounting how Adolf’s life in Austria is upended by the Nazis. He’s forced to join the military and ultimately leave his son Franz behind as he migrates to Cuba in search of safety in 1938. Franz and his caretaker flee first to France and then to Havana, where they’re reunited with Adolf. Drawn in loose line art, the narrative jumps between time periods freely and rapidly to reveal the intertwining of generations. The alternating story lines can be hard to follow, but what emerges is an affecting ensemble portrait of one family’s experience with war and dislocation. Fans of Maus will want to take a look. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

Dhaliwal (Cyclopedia Exotica) conjures a sly and cutesy fantasy world in this tale of finding the strength to face the past. In Chamomile Valley, an amnesiac young service witch named Singe is rescued after being burned at the stake and left for dead when her magic dried up. With Yew-Veda, a witch doctor, and Bufo Wonder, a witch who’s accidentally turned himself into a toad, Singe sets out to recover her magic and her memory. The trio is pursued by the demons Disgust, Doubt, and Despair, and aided by the Smoke Witch, the collective spirit of burned witches past. The format blends blocks of text with comics and illustration, and in a gimmicky design quirk, certain repeated words appear to burn, glow, wiggle, and drift away. Recipe spells are scattered throughout, ranging from chamomile tea to a self-love potion (actually chocolate-covered strawberries). Touches of whimsy lend to the middle grade fantasy vibe, though the pacing is uneven. It adds up to a charming albeit jumbled potion. (May)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

The sprawling trade debut from Pidge collects their ongoing Ignatz-nominated comics series about the trippy adventures of an expanding universe of tangentially connected characters. The cast includes Addy, who’s left to cope when her omnipotent superhero friend Jeff self-destructs; Addy’s girlfriend Lilah, a witch investigating monsters in Arizona (“Magic’s so... complicated out west,” she complains); Soe, around whom water and ice keep materializing; Casimir, an alien renegade who winds up working at a truck stop “on the outer rim of the Perseus arm”; and Otis, a robot exploring Buddhism after the death of his human husband. Their linked stories are populated with humans, aliens, animal people, and uncategorizable beings. Pidge’s chunky line art, drenched in neon colors, recalls early webcomics, 1960s psychedelic cartoonists like Vaughn Bodē, and such underground animators as Sally Cruikshank. Though rough and rambling, this cockeyed series will hook readers nostalgic for classic underground comics. (May)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

Indie cartoonist Mejias’s energetic trade debut, an Angoulême award winner, depicts 20th-century Puerto Rican history in striking woodcut panels. The bulk of the account takes place in 1950, as members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist movement launch an uprising against U.S. control of the island. After Griselio Torresola meets with revolutionary leader Pedro Albizu Campos, he travels to Washington, D.C., to assassinate President Truman but bungles the job. Back on Puerto Rico, several deadly conflicts occur, including a successful raid against a police station in the village of Utuado and a counterattack by the police. Mejias finds surreal moments of beauty amid the carnage. In one such scene, Griselio experiences a ghostly visitation from the unlikely duo of Gandhi and Irish revolutionary Michael Collins, who speak to him “in words he could understand.” In another, a young boy picks mangoes in a grove. Mejias’s painstakingly hand-carved woodblock art results in vibrant, detailed scenes that lend a poetic touch throughout. This impressive work of art brings history to full and fascinating life. (May)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

A businessman’s past comes back to haunt him in this stunning psycho-horror manga by Norikazu, which was originally published in 1986. Plagued by visions of a shadowy, faceless woman, Tetsuo recalls suppressed memories of his brief and tumultuous friendship with Kimiko—an infirm teenage girl whose obsessions with old movies and violence prove to be a deadly combination when she manipulates Testuo into donning the guise of a vindictive Frankenstein monster and lashing out against those who have wronged them. When their role-play crosses the line from mean-spirited pranks to mayhem, the results shatter both of their lives. Kawashima’s suspenseful thriller is cinematic and beautiful, full of the indelible imagery—an eerily calm seascape, a discarded mask, a featureless face—that established him as one of the leading names in Japanese horror comics. It’s a must-read for fans of Junji Ito and Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. (May)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

Kaneko (Bambi and Her Pink Gun) outdoes himself with this gonzo sci-fi reimagining of Osamu Tezuka’s classic manga series Dororo. In Kaneko’s hands, the feudal Japanese setting of Tezuka’s original becomes a futuristic dystopia with a Soviet brutalist aesthetic. In the aftermath of a war between humans and androids known as Kreachers, Doro, a snarky child thief, runs afoul of the gang lords who rule a snowbound city. He falls in with Hyaku, a young woman dressed in animal hides who’s out to retrieve body parts she believes were stolen from her by Kreachers. The story is packed with wall-to-wall action, stunningly and gruesomely rendered: explosions, bloody assassinations, wild animal attacks, underground cyborg surgery, a fight on top of a speeding semitruck. But beneath the bloodshed is a deceptively well-structured story about injustice, revenge, and the blurred lines between organic life and technology. Kaneko is heavily influenced by American artists like Coop, Frank Kozik, and Charles Burns, as Frederico Anzalone notes in his introduction, and there are even elements of Will Eisner in the book’s rambling cityscapes. It’s a blast of pure cyberpunk energy. (July)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Bilyeu’s eclectic debut graphic memoir proves full of thoughtful and introspective vignettes. Raised in Cleveland, Bilyeu came to Amsterdam in 2009 for the weed but stayed for the city’s “palpable” history. He touches on many subjects in Harvey Pekar–inspired asides, each of which is given its own look by a different artist. Styles range from French cartoonist Boyane’s grungy Peter Bagge look to fellow American expat Eryc Why’s crisp precision. Though Amsterdam’s reputation for depravity isn’t central to the narrative, it’s still vividly depicted. Bilyeu alludes to his slides into “escapism” in a city where “your weekends can begin on Wednesday and end on Tuesday,” and in one chapter he interviews an exotic dancer from a strip club front row seat. Dislocation is a theme, from his struggles with the language to his refusal to accept Dutch “propaganda” that their “Black Pete” folk figure isn’t “blatantly racist.” While he satirizes the hedonistic culture, he also pokes fun at himself (in a mock autobiography, he confesses to having “eschewed pursuing girls and playing sports for... the consumption of comic books and Hip-Hop music”). It’s a witty and surprisingly intimate portrait of an artist trying not to be a stranger in a strange land. Agent: Inge Koks, Stichting Publieke Werken. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Remender (the Uncanny X-Force series) and Fiumara (the Amazing Spider-Man series) unite for a thrilling fantasy set in a kingdom whose prosperity relies on its terrible secret: every year, one child from each common family is taken from their parents and sacrificed. This ritual follows a religious law rigorously enforced by flame-headed King Rokos, though there’s something even more sinister at the heart of the tradition. Remender skillfully divides the narrative between those chosen to be sacrificed (including the blue-feathered bird-being Pigeon and pious, placid Noom) and the high court, including Rokos’s rebellious daughter Soluna. Moments of profound sadness are mixed with weird beauty thanks to Fiumara’s phantasmagorical characters, who are both frightening and whimsical. The conceit will put readers in mind of The Hunger Games, Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” and The Wizard of Oz, but Remender’s keen attention to pacing and worldbuilding polishes it into a shining example of a familiar trope. Genre fans will eagerly anticipate future installments. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Part graphic memoir, part self-help manual, Gallagher’s accessible debut draws on examples from her own life to explore how women are taught to see themselves. “To be a girl is to go from being an observer to being observed,” she writes, recalling the negative body image she developed at a young age (“If I were a Pokémon, I bet I’d be one of the ugly ones... like Psyduck”), her fear of being the “fat friend” in her social group, the sexual harassment she experienced in one workplace after another, and her struggles with depression, bulimia, and cutting. Though she doesn’t shy away from dark confessions, she finds humor in her efforts to get comfortable in her body. With cheery art and wry humor, she draws her changing fashion choices over the decades (the ’90s features “my most provocative scrunchie: red silk in black mesh”) and depicts her first serious relationship as a TV rom-com. Throughout, her friendly cartoon avatar offers advice on unlearning harmful cultural messages and developing a healthy body image. Young adults in particular will appreciate Gallagher’s agility at connecting her individual experiences to universal feminist issues. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

“Miss, you have a jellyfish in your eye,” an optometrist tells 20-something Odette in the opening pages of this quietly courageous slice-of-life graphic novella from Boumeries cartoonist Boum. The jellyfish, a distracting floater in her left eye, appears hovering around Odette’s head as she goes about her daily routine in an artsy French Canadian neighborhood: working at a bookstore, hanging out with friends, tending to her pet rabbit, and pursuing a romance with her manga-loving crush, Naina. She tries to ignore the darkness encroaching on her sunny existence—an approach that Naina, who struggles to cut ties with her abusive father, has trouble understanding—but another jellyfish appears in her field of vision, and then another. “I feel like my eyeballs are grinding in their sockets,” she remarks to herself as they multiply, as do other problems for her and Naina. Boum’s sinuous artwork makes Odette’s world pulse with life. The settings feel lived-in, and her charmingly designed characters are constantly moving, changing, and emoting. The result is a graceful and empathetic story about learning to see what’s important. (May)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink