Damnation Diaries by Peter Rostovsky. Uncivilized, 2023. 9781941250549. 144pp. Hell is a miserable place. And the details are all in here, though some of the most horrific are not right on the page. (Perpetual castration is only hinted at. Frustrating installation art is shown but, thankfully, not in detail.) Part of the torture is how scheduled everything is, how predictable — it all feels like a job, and reminded me of the office-oriented parts of some of Philip K. Dick’s novels. PKRx354 has been in hell for almost 300 years. Despite the ongoing tortures, “things just didn’t seem the same anymore.” So he starts seeing Hell’s only therapist, Fred Greenberg, whose clients include staff and damned souls. Insurance may not cover the sessions, but there’s an option to pay by enduring additional tortures. These include trampling and adjuncting at the local art school. “I was escorted to the chasm where I had to watch reruns of Full House while sitting on a rusty spike.
” This book made me laugh so many times, and for once I realized I should not try to explain the jokes to my wife. My favorite parts include the ads for services in Hell, like the Hellworld Institute of the Arts (“Because you don’t know how creative you are, but you have all eternity to find out.”), and the story of what happens to PKRx354’s mother.

Listen, Beautiful Marcia by Marcello Quintanilha. Translated by Andrea Rosenberg. Fantagraphics, 2023. 9781683967774. 128pp. There’s something super slick about this book despite all the pain in its pages. A lot of it has to do with Quinanilha’s art; the way his unusual colors don’t all have inked outlines seemed to let the images go straight to my brain. The hand-drawn word balloons had a similar effect, thanks to the large format of the book, which made it readable and easy to appreciate its beauty. This is an adult graphic novel about a mother, Marcia, working as a nurse. She is in a long-term relationship with Aluisio, and both live with her adult daughter, Jaqueline, who is making bad choices and is mostly awful. Shortly after the book opens Marcia finds out Jaqueline has an STI, and gets some free drugs to treat it from the hospital where she works. Jacqueline is angry and says Aluisio gave her the STI (though Marcia doesn’t believe her daughter.) Aluisio’s support means something to Marcia, but it’s not enough; Marcia’s only real refuge is her part-time job, where she provides private, in-home care to Dona Cremilda. There are lots of intense scenes in the book, many of them having to do with local gangs and the violence they perpetrate. But at the heart of it all is Marcia’s love for her daughter and Aluisio’s love for Marcia. This is an intense, readable graphic novel by a Brazilian comics creator.

Paper Planes by Jennie Wood (writer) and Dozerdraws (artist). Maverick, 2023. 9781952303548. 216pp. Dozerdraws’ art in The Last Session turned me into a fan, and this graphic novel is amazing, too. At Camp Bloom, Leighton and Dylan are distant. There’s been some incident, and both have to stick to the rules and show growth or face life at a crappy high school. Leighton’s type-a parents have always thought Dylan was a kid their daughter should not hang out with. Dylan’s mom seems pretty cool and accepting of Dylan, though. Their differences, plus a nasty school bully, brought the two together five years ago, which we see in flashbacks. And along the way Dylan fell for Leighton. But Leighton isn’t into boys or girls. And at camp an out and outgoing queer student, Cricket, seems to want to be friends with Dylan, which is complicating Dylan’s friendship with Leighton. I love the way this book flows back and forth in time, and the fact that it doesn’t offer any easy resolution. I also want to offer compliments on the book’s design. I love the cover plus it’s compact but not-too-small-to-read (even for my eyes). And the paper is excellent — it’s thin but not see-through at all, and I assume it’s one of the reasons this book’s price is so reasonable.

Gotta Go! A Toon Book (Toon Level 2) by Frank Viva. TOON Books, 2023. 9781662665073. Owen and his mom are in the car when he realizes he’s got to pee. His grandpa’s Wee-Wee Walk, which he does when he needs to go, seems like a much better solution than Owen’s, which is thinking about water. And then Owen even invents a couple of dances of his own. This is entertaining fun, and a great book for older readers with a sense of humor to share with newer readers.     Moon by Alison Oliver. Clarion Books, 2018. 9781328781604. Moon has too much to do. She wants to be wild and free. And one night she goes outside and meets a wolf who offers her a ride and shows her how to be happy. Beautiful book.       The Wishing Machine by Jonathan Hillman, illustrations by Nadia Alam. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2023. 9781665922302. Sam and Mom spend Sunday at the laundromat. But it’s their last Sunday because they’re moving to live in Sam’s grandpa’s tiny trailer. Sam is a bit sad, but Mom turns the washing machine into a wishing machine. The result is a sense of community, generosity, and perseverance despite the unnamed difficulties they’re facing together. Alam’s illustrations make every moment feel magical.        

It’s hard to find “graphic novels” full of short stories to recommend to adults, but here are two I loved. Haruki Murakami Manga Stories 1 by Haruki Murakami, adapted by Jean-Christophe Deveney, illustrations by PMGL. Tuttle, 2023. 9784805317648. 144pp. Contains adaptations of “Super Frog Saves Tokyo,””Where I’m Likely to Find It,” “Birthday Girl,” and “The Seventh Man.” Though I once read every one of Murakami’s short story collections, it’s been a while since I’ve read one, and I don’t specifically remember any of these. But the adaptations capture the strangeness of some I remember and the drifty, specific vibe I associate with others. I admired PMGL’s art and particuarly the way the coloring and style varied from story to story, plus Deveney’s adaptations are solid. I’ll be picking up the forthcoming second collection of Murakami’s stories from Tuttle because I loved this on, and also because it contains one of my favorite short stories, “The Second Bakery Attack.” Werewolf at Dusk and other stories by David Small. Liveright, 2024. 9781324092827. 192pp. Contains adaptations of “Werewolf at Dusk” story Lincoln Michel and “The Tiger in Vogue” story by Jean Ferry, as well as a story by David Small, “A Walk in the Old City.” Small’s art is exact and beautiful, and somehow he manages to make it feel immediate, as if the pages are full of wonderous, quick sketches. My favorite thing about this collection is the way Small balances words and images to tell the stories, plus I also love how he draws objects and people in the distance. When you pick up this book, I think you’ll be wowed by the way he uses red in the first and last stories.      

If you didn’t get any books that wowed you for the holidays, these three volumes of The Illustrators series would be a great end of December gift to yourself. Each has a mix of text (biography and bits about the artist’s work), finished illustrations, and sketches. Tove Jansson (The Illustrators) by Paul Gravett. Series consultant Quentin Blake. Series Editor Claudia Zeff. Thames & Hudson, 2022. 9780500094334. 112pp. This volume has a few bits of non-Moomin work, including a self-portrait in oils, though most of the illustrations are of Jansson’s most famous characters. There are, unfortunately, only a few early versions of her illustrations for The Hobbit inside.         Posy Simmonds (The Illustrators) by Paul Gravett. Series consultant Quentin Blake. Series Editor Claudia Zeff. Thames & Hudson, 2019. 9780500022139. 112pp. Simmonds started making comics when she was very young, and there are examples from when she was nine or ten. The book places more emphasis on her editorial illustrations and comics for adults (Cassandra Darke, Gemma Bovary, Tamara Drewe, and Mrs. Weber’s Diary) than her picture book illustrations, though I probably wouldn’t give this book to a child. My favorite drawing in the book is of her workspace.       Ludwig Bemelmans (The Illustrators) by Quentin Blake and Laurie Britton Newell. Series consultant Quentin Blake. Series Editor Claudia Zeff. Thames & Hudson, 2019. 9780500519950. 112pp. The fantastic thing about many of Bemelmans’ art is that they’re so simple that it’s easy to see how they were drawn, yet so elegant that it’s also easy to see his genius. I loved Madeline before I picked this up, but this book made me a fan, and now I’m out to track down a few of his other books that I first saw here.        

Mall Goth by Kate Leth. Simon & Schuster, 2023. 9781534476950. 250pp. Liv and her family just moved, and she’s starting at a new high school in Harbour City. She opts to wear a button on her backpack that identifies her as queer (she’s bi). As she meets other students, including Jake, his friend Aaron, and his girlfriend Layla, she worries their friendliness just indicates they’re going to be extra mean to her at some point. But Layla has a safe space: the mall. Her mom works in an office there, and she eventually gets a job there, too, but it’s one of those miserable jobs that requires her to wear a mascot uniform. Friendships develop. So does her crush on Jake, who has a girlfriend. And then things get creepy with Mr. Trent, her English teacher, as her friendships and her parents’ marriage start to change. I loved the ordinary, everyday sense this book had, and it took me right back to high school in a way that most YA fiction fails to do, at least for me. (I was much more a bookstore guy than a mall dude back then, though in the 80s there were still bookstores in the mall.) Highly recommend for YA collections.

Brooms written by Jasmine Walls, art by Teo DuVall. Levine Querido, 2023. 9781646142682. 248pp. 1930s, Mississippi. Luella is teaching Emma and Mattie how to use their magic, but they live in fear of being discovered by government agents. If they’re caught, they’ll be sent to one of the approved magic academies. Though if they have enough money, they can buy an exemption that will allow them to learn their culture’s (Chocktaw) type of magic. To make the money they need they enter the dangerous world of illegal backwoods broom racing. Luella’s friends, The Night Storms — Billie Mae, Loretta, and Cheng Kwan — agree to train the girls and let them join their team. Magic is illegal for black folks there, and if they’re caught using it they’ll be stripped of their powers. If they can enter the biggest race around, the Witch’s Cackle, they can earn enough money to move to where things are different. I can’t think of another alternate history graphic novel I liked as much as this one. There’s a real sense of joy throughout, and the story is naturally inclusive. And if you haven’t read Walls’ The Last Session, a graphic novel about a group of friends finishing a long-running D&D campaign before some go their separate ways, it’s also wonderful.