Why Don’t You Love Me? by Paul B. Rainey. Drawn & Quarterly, 2023. 9781770466319. Claire, a depressed, alcoholic mother of two, can barely get out of bed in the morning. Her husband, Mark, can’t remember their son’s name. In fact, the pair are as disconnected from their kids as they are from life and each other. Mark sleeps on the couch. The pair forget to send their kids to school. The children have are no limits on screen time or anything else. But as Mark tries to muddle through and handle things Claire seems to embrace the idea that their life might be just a dream, or that something is wrong with the world. This graphic novel is presented as a set of what felt like landscape-oriented, black-and-white Sunday newspaper comics. Each has the title and author’s name in the first panel, and they are episodic, showing the family’s life one comic strip at a time. I loved it from the first pages when it seemed to be about two selfish adults mostly not struggling at all to be parents, much less good parents, and I had little idea where it was going (though on rereading it I can see how what happens builds from the first pages). I took months to read it because I couldn’t bear to read more than a page at a time. By the end, after the affair and the workplace drama and the far stranger moments, I loved this book more than ever. Everyone in my family is getting a copy in 2023. And if, after finishing it, you also want to read more of Paul B. Rainey’s work, you can find that at https://pbrainey.bigcartel.com/

The Dancing Plague by Gareth Brookes. SelfMadeHero, 2021. 9781910593981. This medieval tale concerns an incident in 1518 in Strasbourg when there was an outbreak of uncontrollable dancing in the city. This is a minor spoiler but the narrator of the tale, Mary, can see the invisible demons causing these poor souls to dance. The Dancing Plague is her tale — she was once her father’s favorites though he later tried to silence her because of her religious visions. She escaped him to become a bride of Christ only to have to escape again to become a bride. Her tale is strange and her visions, as she worries for her own daughter, infected with the dancing plague, drive the book’s narrative. I picked up this graphic novel because I haven’t read a comic created using embroidery since one of the Flight anthologies. Brookes used pyrography to create the rest of the drawings, making medieval life look drab, as opposed to the colorful demons Mary sees, which were embroidered. Such a beautiful book, and the story really pulled me through, too, which I hadn’t expectd. You can see more of Brookes’ work at https://www.gbrookes.com. I highly recommend checking out the Original Art Shop and Gallery to see examples of images from The Dancing Plague and other books.

Golden Boy: Beethoven’s Youth by Mikael Ross. Translated by Nika Knight. Fantagraphics, 2022. 9781683965510. 194pp. This entertaining, fictionalized story of Beethoven’s youth and young adulthood is the story of a frustrated, impoverished genius struggling for recognition. Ross’s illustrations are spectacular when Beethoven plays his music — colors swirl in the air to represent its components and its power. Given that this is about a famous composer, there is an unexpected number of hilarious shit jokes. Ross’s first graphic novel transalted into English, Thud, was great, too. After enjoying Golden Boy this much I plan to read his work whenever I can.      

Constantine: Distorted Illusions written by Kami Garcia and drawn by Isaac Goodhart. DC Graphic Novels for Young Adults, 2022. 9781779507730. 192pp. This graphic novel reinvents Constantine as a hot, eighteen-year-old, bisexual British musician/song writer who dresses in black and favors punk music. He’s also a talented magician like both his father and stepfather, Roderick. Constantine’s relationship with his father is not good, and when Roderick tries to set up an apprenticeship for Constantine, he rejects that, too. But his friend Veronica gets him to reconsider — if he does the apprenticeship to learn about magic he can be the lead singer for her band. The story is a mix of drama involving the band, its gigs, and demonic magic gone awry. The way creative teams weave in LGBTQ+ content into so many of these DC graphic novels for young people is great, and this is no exception. The weirdest thing about it is seeing Constantine without his cigarettes (read an adult Hellblazer graphic novel if you don’t know what I mean), but seeing him cast as a teenage bad boy who mostly does the right thing is fun. I enjoyed this book, and would have absolutely loved it when I was about fourteen.

Our Encounters With Evil & Other Stories Library Edition by Mike Mignola and Warwick Johnson-Cadwell. Dark Horse, 2022. 9781506734149. This collection contains the short graphic novels originally published as Mr. Higgins Comes Home, Our Encounters With Evil, and Falconspeare, plus preliminary sketches for each book and a few other illustrations. All three stories feature Professor Meinhardt and his assistant Mr. Knox as they pursue the undead. Johnson-Cadwell seems like a perfect creative partner for Mignola; his art adds to the deadpan humor of both the stories and dialogue. His style has a little bit of the silliness of Richard Sala’s work but it really is altogether its own thing, and it turns what would otherwise be horrifying violence into giggle-inducing moments. It’s worth checking out for the sketches at the end of the book alone.

Other Ever After: New Queer Fairy Tales by Melanie Gillman. RH Graphic, 2022. 9780593303184. Many stories in this collection of short works by Gillman started out as 24-hour comics, though they say they broke many of the rules McCloud set out for those. In the first, a young forest ranger confronts a girl eating the King’s magic flowers and then confronts the real beast from the forest. In “The Goose Girl,” a poor young woman refuses the Princess’ proposal because their marriage wouldn’t bring her happiness. (It all works out in the end in a way that’s unexpected and wonderful.) In fact all of these stories are great. The less I tell you about them the better. Gillman’s beautiful colored pencils add to the sense of innocence and wonder in all of these tales, and make them feel timeless and true. If you’re looking for something else to give a kid who loved Chad Sell’s Cardboard Kingdom series, this is it. It’s also perfect if you’re just looking for a good book of stories to read together, no matter how old you are.