Thanks to the author and Pow Wow Press for the early look at this November 4, 2025 publication.
A series of one-page, four panel comics on Girard's relThanks to the author and Pow Wow Press for the early look at this November 4, 2025 publication.
A series of one-page, four panel comics on Girard's relatable life in the context of his day job as a social worker and his struggle to draw at every possible opportunity. But maybe the central focus is his relationship to his daughter, and maybe secondarily his wife. Played for smiles, if not exactly laughs, self-deprecating humor, sometimes cringingly so. I'm a long time fan so was happy to read it, and recommend it.
I was also asked to take an early look at Fruit Salad, by Cathon, also from PowWow Press, and it is tempting to review them together, as both are going for smiles, slice-of-life, a little off-kilter. Both to me 3.75 books, well worth checking out....more
I read every Tom Gauld book I can get my hands on, as I always appreciate his light touch, his color and joy. This is a book that helps the greater world appreciate that he has joined Gary Larson in the important task of making fun of scientists and science. Or: Satire is the sincerest form of flattery.
Gauld is not as funny or absurd as Larson, but he is still pretty funny and insightful and makes me smile. As a literature guy, I like the way he weaves literature in with science, at times, helping us reflect on the relationship between both. Thanks for the early look online at this to-be-released October 9, 2025 book to the author, Drawn & Quarterly for their beautiful production (I am only reading it online, but I know what they will do!) and Net Galley.
PS: I gave this three stars initially, because I thought, having read all sorts of Gauld books, that this was good, tyical Gauld, but my own son saw it on the table and said, "Dad! This is such a great book, so hilarious!" and shamed me into bumping this up t omy usual Gauld-level, four stars. Normally, I don't have that great a stake in the ratings, so rarely change thm under peer pressure, but here we are. My son....more
A very small hardbook book, German edition, originally published in 1942, though this printing is 1959. A collection of Saul Steinberg drawings, wordlA very small hardbook book, German edition, originally published in 1942, though this printing is 1959. A collection of Saul Steinberg drawings, wordless. A friend gave me her copy, seeing I had reviewed one of his books. Jealous? See the recently released All in a LIne (1945) reprinted 2025 by NYRB.
Eisner 20215 Best Archival Collection/Project – Strips Nomination.
Amazing reprint of Saul Steinberg's 1945 publication of his first book. NYRB productEisner 20215 Best Archival Collection/Project – Strips Nomination.
Amazing reprint of Saul Steinberg's 1945 publication of his first book. NYRB production, so of course it is terrific, with-besides the gorgeous, whimsical, so smart art, two essays, one by Liana Finck and the other by Ian Topliss. Some cartoons, with punchlines, and some art that teaches us how to see the world. A master.
If you have or had kids, these are relatable, in company with other funny parenting books such as those suchNominated for the Eisner 2025 Humor Award.
If you have or had kids, these are relatable, in company with other funny parenting books such as those such as Guy DeLisle's The Owner's anual To Terrible Parenting, any of Keiler Roberts's books about her and her daughter. I go way back to the TV show and books by Art Linklater, Kids Say the Darndest Things from the sixties. So it's never-ending, the cuteness and goofiness of kids. These are all cartoons of his two little sons, so are of course probably true. I smiled quite a bit but went through them quickly....more
Robert Sikoryak creates 46 mock superhero comics issue covers focused on Trump as villain, framing direct quotations from The Don-Old in The UnquotablRobert Sikoryak creates 46 mock superhero comics issue covers focused on Trump as villain, framing direct quotations from The Don-Old in The Unquotable Trump, which I saw in 2017 when it first came out, but I was too depressed to read it, too soon to laugh. But now with Harris and Walz we are laughing again, hopeful, so when I saw it at the library just now, I picked it up. Its an oversized paperback with appropriately garish colors and over-the-top depictions, because how could they not be? Thanks to Drawn and Quarterly for publishing this, but its 2024; we are now missing 7 years of outrageousness; volume two, Robert? Or maybe we can just stop listening?!
25% of the proceeds from the sale of the book goes to the American Civil Liberties Union!
Congrats for the Eisner 2024 Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia: My Picture Diary, by Fujiwara Maki, translation by Ryan Holmberg (DrawnCongrats for the Eisner 2024 Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia: My Picture Diary, by Fujiwara Maki, translation by Ryan Holmberg (Drawn & Quarterly)
Fujiwara Maki, a sixties avant-garde actress in Japan, was the wife of manga-ka Yoshiharu Tsuge whose The Man Without Talent was based on the same period Maki covers in her Picture Diary, the early eighties, when Tsuge’s mental health severely deteriorated as they both raised their daughter. Maki’s diary came about at the suggestion of her husband, and it is basically a “mom” journal, with her taking care of her daughter and husband, cooking and cleaning, as the money dwindled.
The diary itself is fairly simple drawn, with a simple text on each facing page, opening each entry with the weather for the day. And it’s not every day for the year or two it covers. But if you slow down you see the “creative solutions” to food prep they had to take as money was tight, and social challenges. It’s not all that interesting as an artifact except in that it broadens our sense of that time, two struggling artists, raising a toddler, facing mental health issues of Tsuge seen from her perspective, with very little art getting done.
And Tsuge is occasionally abusive, discouraging her theater work, and they both seem sometimes helpless, needing extra care, obviously. I’d say three stars for the actual diary itself, if you just picked it up and didn’t know anything about this artist or her husband.
But this is yet another amazing contribution to our understanding of Japanese manga with yet another fine essay by translator and comics historian Ryan Holmberg, curated by Drawn & Quarterly. This is the first English translation of a book that has never been out of print since it was first published in Japan in 1982. So with the framing essay it could well be a 4 star book....more
Thanks to Net Galley, Fantagraphics and Charles Burns for the early look at a July 2024 release.
To rate this collection of imagined book or comics coThanks to Net Galley, Fantagraphics and Charles Burns for the early look at a July 2024 release.
To rate this collection of imagined book or comics covers with three stars is not to say that each and every one of them isn't technically amazing, bizarre and entertaining, but just to situate it in the career, the oeuvre (!), of alt-comix great Charles Burns. This is a book of cover art for imagined works, spanning Burn's long time interests in sci-fi, horror and romance, principally associated with the pulpy comics of the fifties and sixties. The cover of this cover book reveals a woman watching floating octopi out of her kitchen window. Some of the cover titles are throwbacks to comics titles and some seem to be in some invented languages. Who today creates so surreally and joyfully in so many genres? And why? Just for fun, I'd guess, for the sheer joy of celebrating acts of imagination. Burns fans will want a copy for sure.
I see the covers as something like the funny titles of Onion articles: You read the title and you don't need to actually read the article. You already know the joke from the title. In these covers you don't actually need to read the presumed comics within. The cover is enough....more
I loved this book and wrote a review Net Galley wants to hang on to till closer to the pub date, March 2024, but I did the review and recommend you fiI loved this book and wrote a review Net Galley wants to hang on to till closer to the pub date, March 2024, but I did the review and recommend you find it on Net Galley and review iChicago attorney Larry Wood is the Ken Jennings of the New Yorker Cartoon caption contest. Thousands eneter each week and he has won it seven times (!) and been a finalist several more times. Really fun and insightful. ...more
Charles Johnson was awarded the National Book Award for his 1990 novel about slavery, The Middle Passage. This is the first time I had heard of him; hCharles Johnson was awarded the National Book Award for his 1990 novel about slavery, The Middle Passage. This is the first time I had heard of him; he wrote fiction. It was not until I had moved to Chicago and was collecting Chicago coming-of-age stories for the book I and my co-editors published, Growing up Chicago (Northwestern UP, 2022) that he submitted a story he had written about growing up in Chicago, or Evanston, technically.
The story, "My Father's Pillow Talk," was about the nightly talks Johnson had with his father before going to bed. The heart of the story was a time in which the teenaged Charles told his father that what he wanted to do when he grew up was to become a cartoonist, a notion that his father discouraged. But become a cartoonist was exactly what he did, beginning with his high school newspaper, moving to his college newspaper and on to community writing, beginning in the Chicago area. He went on to publish book collections of his cartoons.
This book collects his 1965-75 cartoons, including the work from his books, most of them political humor work focused on racism, raising issues as people did in the sixties about the possibility of a (black) revolution in the light of the years of civil unrest regarding racial inequities. I lived two hours from Chicago, and I am white, so I would not have read much if any of black political cartooning out of the radical left, because I didn't have access to the south side black newspapers, so it is great to have this beautiful hard cover collection of his work, with his commentary and an afterword. It's a kind of revelation, a gift, to black Chicago, but to Chicago and black history....more
I decided to read and review this because I thought the title was funny/intriguing, pointing to potentially clever. and funny content. And so it was. I decided to read and review this because I thought the title was funny/intriguing, pointing to potentially clever. and funny content. And so it was. Simple, colorful drawings. The publisher's description takes this angle: Are these drawings of earplugs placed in particular configurations "dirty" or is that your "dirty" mind in the gutter? It's a bunch of colored earplugs, for cripe's sakes! So, look at the cover and answer the question for yourself. And if it made you smile, this may be the book for you. And if you are offended, well, it's not. I just thought it was clever and imaginative.
The book is a series of cartoons, not really connected in any kind of narrative way. A series of gags!
Thanks to Mike McCoy. Santa Monica Press, and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review....more
A collection of 24 illustrations by Nicole Goux (Fuck Off Squad) of women of various shapes, sizes, and colors, engaging in the "rituals" of getting rA collection of 24 illustrations by Nicole Goux (Fuck Off Squad) of women of various shapes, sizes, and colors, engaging in the "rituals" of getting ready to go "out"--on a date, to a bar, wherever, and with whom is not known. Terrific colorful drawings of women doing makeup, hair, eyelashes, choosing clothes, as the Silver Sprocket description says, engaged in "the creation of self in the safe space of your inner sanctuary." As a brother to three very different sisters, partners, and a daughter, I have some familiarity with these rituals, but it's still fascinating to see the various depictions. Like: what does it mean to be some girls or women in that moment of "preparation"? Free to see on Hoopla!...more
Every day for two years acclaimed cartoonist Steve Brodner memorialized victims of the pandemic, castigated bad actors--denialists, conspiracy theorisEvery day for two years acclaimed cartoonist Steve Brodner memorialized victims of the pandemic, castigated bad actors--denialists, conspiracy theorists, those who exacerbated the worst of the times, and honored the heroes. Brodner is a master caricaturist, and so each day there's a portrait and a very short statement/bio. It's a pretty awesome chronicle of a time we are in some ways very much still in.
The 446-page book concludes with a statement by Anthony Fauci; a powerful anti-fascist statement by Christopher Hitchens from 1995, warning us of extremist madness in 1995, and an artist statement explaining how it all came about, how various media outlets picked up what had initially for him been a pandemic social media project.
Don't have the time or energy or heart yet to read a pandemic history? Read and view this, or even just sample it.
Here you can see a few images from it in an article:
Women Holding Things by the--dare I say quirky--Maira Kalman is yet another book I have loved from her, and is a piece with Girls Standing on Lawns, tWomen Holding Things by the--dare I say quirky--Maira Kalman is yet another book I have loved from her, and is a piece with Girls Standing on Lawns, though that last one was a combination of drawings and photographs of. . . . you guessed it! Girls standing on lawns! So let’s see if you can build on this expertise and predict what Women Holding Things is about?
Yes, correct, but the verb holding gets multiple definitions here, so yes, it’s about the act of actual holding stuff but also things such as “holding on to past regrets,” and holding hands, holding your breath, holding opinions, and so on.
Maira Kalman lovingly shows you some of Women Holding Things, a kind of love letter to women who hold so many things:
Gertrude Stein holding true to herself writing things very few people liked or even read. Woman holding a book. Woman in my dreams walking through almond blossoms holding a giant boulder. Holding a granddaughter. Hortense Cezanne holding her own. Woman holding and consoling a child. Woman holding a man. Women holding grudges.
You can’t hold time.
Maira lost a lot of family to the Holocaust. She paints some of them from photographs, one of many women holding things before many of them died in Auschwitz.
There are also girls and men holding things in the book. And digressions, hurray; as in, Let me tell you about my father, and so on.
The book emerged, she said, out of a smaller project she did during the pandemic, and then it just grew.
I am a big fan of Tom Gauld's precise and colorful artwork. I have not always loved the content of his cartoons/strips in these collections, but they I am a big fan of Tom Gauld's precise and colorful artwork. I have not always loved the content of his cartoons/strips in these collections, but they are always at the very least good, and this is one of the best, for sure, a gift to authors and readers. Some of it is pandemic-oriented, too. But it's all books all the time.
Some faves:
* "Waiting for Godot to Join the Zoom Meeting" * New Year's Resolution scratch-off exercise moving from high-minded commitments to Great Literature to This Year I Will Read For Fun * JK Rowling Presents The Pottermore Business Collection--Fantastic Beasts and How to Monetize Them * Classics Reissued with Lower Standards--Reasonable Expectation (by Dickens); The OK Gatsby * Fan Petitions: Less Whale focus in Moby Dick! * Woman reading: "This is either a quiet masterpiece, subtly and meticulously detailing the gentle rhythms of daily life, or just really boring."
I loved Will McPhail's first book, In, one of my faves of that year, finding it very moving, and like very much this, his second book, a collection ofI loved Will McPhail's first book, In, one of my faves of that year, finding it very moving, and like very much this, his second book, a collection of his New Yorker cartoons (and some more stuff), where he has been published since 2014. He kind of has a perfect New Yorker cartoon sensibility, which is good for me, a subscriber. The book is divided into sections, one with vermin (pigeons and rats--he has a degree in zoology!), one on love, and so on. I laughed aloud a few times, and smiled a lot. He is often very funny.
Here he is being interviewed and talking about some of his cartoons:
I waited many weeks to get this book from my library system and three or four people in my house devoured it--almost 200 cartoons in the book--in one sitting! So read it! I haven't read many out-of-the-park graphic novels or comic series this year, so this--even at 4 stars--has emerged as a fave of 2023....more
Abby Jame is super smart in her loving and funny satirical send-up of new century life, principally seen through the eyes of “bad” and bored teen girlAbby Jame is super smart in her loving and funny satirical send-up of new century life, principally seen through the eyes of “bad” and bored teen girls, pink hearts everywhere. Here’s a key to the humor: Abby Jame, it says on her website, “is heavily inspired by the crushing weight of existence, dying alone, and flavored chapsticks.”
Also, this image: A girl holds a heart-shaped pillow to her chest; on it reads “an asshole’s approval.”
So it’s all girly friendship at Apocalypse High (referencing Buffy), a blend of humor and pathos that could not exactly have been made any time but now.
So what, exactly, like, is it? Some short comics but mostly cartoons of bored girls saying things like this: *Boys suck, it's so boring. * I feel so many things that I feel nothing at all *I am my only God *I live to upset him *I’m sorry what I did with your brother. I’m a Gemini rising and it makes me really slutty sometimes.
Reminds me a bit of Buffy, though more cynical, though Jame does love these girls, it’s end-of-the world, yeah, but let’d do our nails first stuff. With some aliens thrown in. And almost never do we actually see boys! But they text and talk about them quite a bit.
Read this now on Hoopla and I dare you to say it is not complex and interesting and fun. It’s a wonderfully funny and insightful set of cameos of Now. Free on Hoopla, via Silver Sprocket, yay. ...more
Bless Fantagraphics for doing such a beautiful job with this hardcover production of forty years of women wrestling drawings/illustrations from 1980-2Bless Fantagraphics for doing such a beautiful job with this hardcover production of forty years of women wrestling drawings/illustrations from 1980-2020 by one Los Bros, Jaime Hernández, who for all that time also has written and created the Love & Rockets comics depicting a women-centic punk sub-culture of LA, beginning in 1982. But this isn't Love & Rockets, exactly, though women's wrestling is part of that world. This is the world of lucha libre in the ring and in the magazines of the 1960s and beyond.
Queen of the Ring is the documentation, in almost ethnographic fashion of a world I never knew growing up, a world Jaime became obsessed with, just as any young man might be into monsters or superheroes. Hernandez also discusses the work in an interview with fellow cartoonist Katie Skelly. There's an exuberance in this work that is amazing and so fun, in the hands of one of the greatest cartoonists in history....more
As a Keiler Roberts completist I had to get this, as I heard (from her! on zoom!) (namedropper! braggart!) that it is the only book of hers that is fuAs a Keiler Roberts completist I had to get this, as I heard (from her! on zoom!) (namedropper! braggart!) that it is the only book of hers that is fully colored. And I had never heard of it. A revision of a 38-page edition of #6 from her series Powdered Milk (hey, it's now 40 pages!), this has all the familiar cartoons we expect from Roberts about parenting. My copy that came in the mail today features a perfect cover of her carrying her daughter and the familiar seventeen bags of diapers and toys and whatever Mom Roberts carries as her daughter rakes her tired face while just trying to freaking get it in the house without screaming in despair. Parenthood! I love this stuff....more
I like this, don't get me wrong, but I just didn't love it as much as most reviewers, I see at a glance. Features a little cute but negative demon whoI like this, don't get me wrong, but I just didn't love it as much as most reviewers, I see at a glance. Features a little cute but negative demon who actually speaks all the things to Lucy Bellwood that undermine her self-esteem and confidence, but instead instills in her self-douby, inhibition, distraction, anxiety. In each cartoon (and there are 100! Surprise!) she speaks back to the demon, and thus we understand the Dialogues of the title.
Reminded me of lots of also useful self-help comics, and maybe especially Lynda Barry’s similar One Hundred Demons. ...more