A budding comic artist undergoes trial by bully in Eisner Award winner Van Sciver’s deeply vulnerable and darkly comic graphic novella, which marks a return to the intimate style of his memoir One Dirty Tree. One of nine kids in an impoverished Mormon family in “New Jersey 1992ish,” young Noah is a panicky, dorky eight-year-old whose only respite from the chaos of his filthy home and nearly friendless life is comics. He’s delighted to find a stash of them abandoned by a neighborhood kid who was buying copies as investments (the 1990s’ collector issue bubble is thinly satirized throughout the narrative), until he realizes his discovery could lead to a beatdown from the bullies who torment him. Van Sciver’s rendering of Noah flop-sweating through crises under the guilt-inducing gaze of the family’s Joseph Smith portrait is largely comedic, due to the comix-y drawing (toothy mouths, bugged-out eyes) and the author’s sardonic humor (Noah’s brother Ethan, who also grew up to become a comic artist, is depicted as a kind of demigod with glowing eyes). Still, Noah’s tribulations are earnestly real. This affecting snapshot will resonate with readers who can relate to the agonies and ecstasies of the young comics enthusiast. (May)

Reviewed on 04/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Vignettes from the unsupervised fringes of a 1970s Ontario suburb comprise this wistful graphic memoir from Lapp (Drop-In). Over a languid summer off from elementary school, David explores the abandoned fields near his family home. Tagging along behind Edward, his slightly older next-door neighbor, David combs the grassy landscape for mice, frogs, and insects. Evading their parents’ notice, the duo smuggle boxes of matches out of David’s house and baby rabbits in. Nostalgia permeates many of the episodes—dandelion wishes, the sear of hot asphalt on bare feet—but the days are far from idyllic. In the company of older boys, Edward can be casually cruel, as when he drops a hammer on David and another boy from his perch on an unfinished tree fort. “You know I don’t like you being around that boy,” David’s mother scowls. She hesitates to intervene, though, as she’s preoccupied by marital strain and her own sense of isolation. Lapp’s ear for dialogue and his spare, economical cartooning (reminiscent of Chester Brown, with the slightest shades of Edward Gorey) distill a persuasive kid’s-eye view of the world eroding around David. Residential development razes the untended fields; his parents’ marriage dissolves. Lapp’s sensitive yet unsentimental portrait of fading innocence is an exceptional achievement. (May)

Reviewed on 04/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Colombian cartoonist Powerpaola (Virus Tropical) delivers an evocative coming-of-age memoir in which various bicycles from her past represent touchpoints in her maturation from tweenhood to adulthood. In the opening vignette, she describes a brief fling that ended with her paramour’s bike getting stolen under her watch, after which he dumped her, claiming, “I can’t be with a Gemini.” Other anecdotes recall a fleeting friendship with a girl named Violetta, with whom she biked “all around Cali,” and a terrible accident in which she ran into an open manhole while drunk, which she relates over drawings of an alligator. In another episode, she wanders the city of Medellín after a breakup, interacting with various seedy characters and eventually acquiring a bicycle she loved so much that she “forgot about my broken heart.” By stringing these disparate events together, Powerpaola attempts to reconcile her past and present, understanding that pain and experience bring wisdom: “Through drawing and writing, you come to understand events as they occur in life.... You stop seeing them as surprises.” The charmingly naive drawings perfectly match her alter ego’s adventurous spirit. It’s a lovely ride. (June)

Reviewed on 04/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Burwash’s confident debut aches with joy and pain. Drew, a tough and suspicious “bushwacker,” is determined to build a cabin in the woods on their own. Flanked by their dog Pony, Drew cuts down trees, salvages wood from an abandoned house, swims and fishes in the nearby lake, and accepts coffee, chats, and chain saw lessons from a local lumberjack. The experience of sheer physical power—revving the chain saw, straddling a motorcycle, gunning a truck—inspires fantasies that break free of common sense and panel borders. In one, Drew transforms into “Vera Bushwack” and rides rodeo in nothing but fringed backless chaps, wielding power tools over their head. Drew’s phone conversations with their close friend Ronnie and flashbacks to traumatic moments in their pre-wilderness life hint at the motivations behind their pursuit of total freedom—“It can feel impossible to feel safe,” Drew confesses to their lumberjack neighbor at one point—but the book doesn’t push for dramatic disclosures. Instead, Burwash observes Drew’s quest with keen curiosity, detailing each skill learned and portraying each day as a step closer to a goal. Burwash’s fine, clean lines sketch out vibrant characters and loose natural vistas, capturing the texture of dark, buggy nights and mud-streaked afternoons. Readers will relish this fresh and unforced celebration of a wild and precious life. (June)

Reviewed on 04/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Pinko cartoonist Brager’s eye-opening graphic memoir debut recounts their wealthy Jewish family’s escape from Nazi Germany. The heavyweight of the title refers to Brager’s great-grandfather, boxing champion Erich Levi, as well as the collective weight of history. Brager grows up with a standardized narrative of the Holocaust, but comes to understand that Germany’s genocidal colonial exploits in Africa benefited their family and served as a training ground for German violence. Throughout the narrative, Erich remains a cypher; much of the detail comes from his wife Ilse’s Shoah Foundation testimony. A combination of money, strategy, luck, and a few kind soldiers enabled their respective families to make their way through Europe and eventually reach the U.S. Quoting Primo Levi and such radical Black scholars as Ralph Bunche, Brager notes that a tenet of fascism is to rob victims of their innocence. “A lot of people are scared of the Holocaust losing its special, sacred, incomparable status,” Brager writes, “as though we need to diminish or obscure other historical crimes to properly remember.” By contrast, Brager compels readers to look at atrocities in the world around them. Brager is trans and queer; some of the more lighthearted scenes show their partner supporting their research and at times trying to pull them back from the depths of obsession. Stylized portraits of Brager’s relatives are interspersed with more realistic, moody replications of photographs. This brilliant and incisive work takes stock of the intermingled horror, humor, and pathos of history. Agent: Aemilia Philips, Stuart Krichevsky Literary. (June)

Reviewed on 04/12/2024 | Details & Permalink

Furnas skewers the mental healthcare system in her sharp-edged graphic novel debut, which interweaves candid autobiographical moments into the story of aspiring artist Fox Foxerson and a bevy of other anthropomorphic critters. Desperate for friendship after moving to the big city—“It’s not Oz, but at least it’s not Kansas”—Fox crashes a house party hosted by the lovable Teddy (a bear). Dissuaded from dancing with partygoer Dodo (“I just think it’s a bad idea,” Teddy cautions), Fox befriends Goth Fairy and Snake, igniting a bustling social life in between time spent drawing on café napkins and working a “dead end job.” Then Fox moves into an apartment with Dodo, who becomes abusive (“I would hate to break the hand you draw with”). Emotional turmoil surfaces in the ample white space around simple black-and-white doodled art—in one paranoid episode, the clawed hands of a spectral figure grasp for Fox’s spiraling mind. Following multiple suicide attempts, Fox receives a schizophrenia diagnosis that sets in motion a frenetic journey through a morass of hospitals and psychiatric facilities where unsympathetic physicians are cleverly illustrated as interchangeable sock puppets with creepy button eyes. Chapters tend to end abruptly, as does the book, absent of resolution. This surreal work reflects the disorientation of mental breakdown. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/12/2024 | Details & Permalink

Malle’s latest (after This Is How I Disappear) stands out for its fresh dialogue, unique character design, and realistic exploration of sexual harassment in a tight-knit community of Montreal artists. Cléo, who has blonde hair with a center strip of dark roots that grows out over the course of the story, meets Farah, a “powerhouse” artist and editor, through mutual friends at a comics convention in France. Farah compliments Cléo’s art and offers to publish her. But when she learns that Cléo’s boyfriend is Charles, a more successful artist (and heavy drinker), Farah gets a strange look on her face. Cléo asks around and confirms the two knew each other in grad school, but from there stories diverge: Charles claims a crush ended when he began dating another woman, and Farah was a “crazy bitch.” Farah, on the other hand, remembers Charles stalking her and having to bring in school authorities to put an end to it. This is a story where women believe women, even when the revelation shakes Cléo to her core. The fallout with Charles spurs an adventure in getting to know herself, including a budding queer romance. With oversize hands and features that move around faces like subtle Picassos, Malle’s illustrations are as distinctive as the storytelling. It’s a savvy update on the classic notion that breaking up is hard to do. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/12/2024 | Details & Permalink

Fans of the Locked Tomb series will dig this sleek print collection of Vuong’s popular action Webtoon with a boys’ love angle. Ezra, an exorcist with the Church of Providence, struggles to harness his full powers—because he does not actually believe in God. Complicating matters, his church is under suspicion of demon sympathizing. Something is indeed attracting more and more demons to their precinct, all of them searching for “the fallen who never fell.” Then Ezra receives a special assignment to protect his classmate, a brooding goth cutie ironically named Sunny, who is being targeted by demons. As the pair grow closer, mysteries deepen, setting the stage for the second volume. The art is crisp and detailed, with desaturated colors and high-contrast action sequences featuring lean-muscled men in tight black garb, and the often-tricky transition from Webtoon to print is nearly seamless. Unfortunately, the dialogue doesn’t have the same punch as the art, and the breakneck plot leaves little breathing room for the characters to interact outside of life-threatening situations. Still, what does develop between Ezra and Sunny will leave readers wanting more. This is catnip for fans of sexy fight scenes. (May)

Reviewed on 04/12/2024 | Details & Permalink

Anderson (Weeds) whisks readers to the liminal space between daily life and fantasy in this tender collection of comics stories. By toying with color, panel boundaries, and layered narration, she explores themes including loss, anxiety, and connection with nature. Often gender-ambiguous characters lend the volume a queer undertone. In “The Basement,” a young child copes with a parent’s death by following their cat into a hidden realm of memories. A queer person’s depression manifests as red flowers blooming on their light blue skin in “Weeds.” The protagonist of “At the Seaside” finds solace from a mundane existence in the meditative world of a sleep app, only feeling truly alive as they slumber. Nestled between each chapter are interludes following a quirky wizard’s efforts to protect a forest, overlaid with a skeptical narrator’s commentary (“I just think he ain’t right”). Collectively, the stories leave readers feeling safe in Anderson’s hands, despite the heavy subject matter. Her soft drawing style, calming color palette, and willingness to step outside the boundaries of the comics form are inviting. Anderson proves a savvy guide to what it means to live and be seen in the world. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

With this quartet of meditative and painterly stories, Koch (After Nothing Comes) juxtaposes humankind’s general instability and search for permanence against the organic, regular flow of nature’s rhythms. The title piece follows a nameless female protagonist’s travels, which include a stopover with some old friends. Koch intercuts scenes of the woman pondering the unknowable outcomes of her destination, illustrated by sequences of two rivers that ultimately meet: “The water never thought about what would happen... it was just moving.” In the fable-like “A New Year,” a village’s denizens decorate the surrounding forest, hanging “messages and gifts” across all the trees to both honor and keep secret from authorities the specific location of a tree thought to be where “all the souls went.” Koch returns to water imagery in the tone poem “The Forest” as well as in “Man Made Lake,” where a patient describes to a therapist their former life as a sea creature: “My cells were part of everything and everything was connected.“ Koch’s lovely, softly colored minimalism zeroes in on small, specific details, such as the blue polka dots of a woman’s socks as she climbs a staircase—resulting in an innovative image that looks like drops of water floating up the steps. This and other abstractions suffuse the work with a beguilingly ambient quality. Koch’s artful interludes offer much to ponder. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/05/2024 | Details & Permalink