MBDL My Badly Drawn Life by Gipi. Translator: Jamie Richards. Fantagraphics, 2022. 9781683965213. 144pp. Gipi’s autobiographical graphic novel is almost totally without panel borders, and most of it looks as if it was scribbled with a pen. He breaks this format to great effect when the book suddenly has fully watercolored panels that take place in a different place. He comes across as a man obsessed with his penis and sex, a man with problems. Inside the book there are unreal moments, strange creatures, pirates, and several medical professionals. At the end is a beautiful comics sequence, perhaps made beautiful by its contrast to the ink-filled pages in the rest of the book, in which the narrator learns to swim. I couldn’t say that I feel like I know Gipi incredibly well, but when I closed this book I had an awe for the art and page layouts and a desire to immediately read it again.

Passport: A Graphic Memoir by Sophia Glock. Little, Brown and Company, 2021. 9780316458986. Includes and author’s note at the end plus a blacked out version of Glock’s passport. This is Sophia Glock’s graphic memoir about growing up in various unnamed places, all of which I think are in or near Central America. This vagueness is because her parents were intelligence officers for the U.S. government, and she can’t disclose where she grew up or their real names. It’s about being a young person in a large family where everyone lived with that vagueness (though her parents do explain things to her when they think she’s old enough). Glock lived under a sense of heightened threat, with real security measures, but still as a teen managed to have a secret life partying with friends from school. But her friendships were tenuous. The place where she lived was clearly not home. And she was dealing with her changing relationship with her older sister, who had just left for her first year of college back in the states. Glock saw herself as the awkward one, a person who had trouble getting close to others, which was complicated by language barriers, family relationships, and the fact that she liked girls as well as boys. Her coming-of-age story feels both familiar and unique.

Junkwraith by Ellinor Richey. Top Shelf, 2021. 9781603095006. 280pp. Florence throws away her skates one night, and they become possessed by a junkwraith, a spirit out for revenge. It curses her, causing her to start to lose her memories. (Really she should have just donated her used goods and avoided the problem but…) With her juju, Frank (a little egg-shaped companion that’s there to help her) she runs away from home. (Sensibly, her first stop is the public library where she usually escapes into paranormal romances.) After getting some advice from a friendly, once-cursed librarian, she goes into the wastes beyond the city to find a way to deal with the unfriendly spirit. This graphic novel looks like it glows — I love Richey’s art, and the best part is the colors! This is a unique, self-contained fantasy story about haunted stuff, and if you love indy comics it’s worth picking up or buying for your teen collection.

Real Hero Shit by Kendra Wells. Iron Circus Comics, 2022. 9781945820830. 120pp. Publisher’s Rating: Adults Only. Eugene is the purple, horned prince of the Kingdom of Marble. Kids sing songs about him in school, as he finds out after discussing his origins post-coitus with the young man and the young elf in his bed. Outside the castle he sees help a wanted sign for a questing party in need of a fighter. He applies and then spars with Michel (a rogue) to prove his skills. Despite the way he irritates the short-statured magic user Ani, he joins the party and they head to a small church town where people have been disappearing. (The other member of the party is Hocus, a Zsegdan who uses a “gender wheel” to explain why E uses the pronouns E does.) Eugene’s constant horniness wears on everyone, especially Ani, though it does make the entire adventure fairly lighthearted despite what they discover happened to the missing folks. This inclusive, entertainingly swear-y and sexually explicit fantasy graphic novel was just what I needed in an otherwise serious week.

Your Pal Fred by Michael Rex. Viking Books for Young Readers, 2022. 9780593206331. 272pp. Michael Rex (Fangbone!) has created a kid-friendly post-apocalyptic world full of slime cannons and mostly ridiculous weapons. (It’s kind of You Can’t Do That On Television meets classic The Road Warrior, though I know that dates me.) Two brothers, Pug and Plug, stumble into the ruins of a toy store and accidentally activate Fred, a fresh-faced robotic friend from a bygone age that is intent on spreading kindness and friendship. In quick succession Fred is taken prisoner twice and told he’s a subject of first Lord Bonkers and then Papa Mayhem. Fred gets free, but decides to visit each ruler and ask them to stop fighting over resources. (Fred’s new friend Wormy thinks it’s a crazy plan.) The ruins, costumes, and even the weapons are all very cartoony, and there’s very little sense of danger despite the dirt and the wreckage of our civilization. And guess what? Kindness wins the day. My favorite part: when Fred meets Lord Bonkers and gives him a gift, a tiny rock with a face on it. (Fred does voices for the rock. Lord Bonkers is not amused.)

The Great Zapfino by Mac Barnett and Marla Frazee. Beach Lane Books, 2022. 9781534411548. Circus performer The Great Zapfino climbs a 10-story ladder to jump into a tiny trampoline, but then decides not to make the leap. He runs for the airport and heads for a place that might be Florida instead. There he works as an elevator operator, but his circus skills do eventually come in handy. This is the most beautiful and stupendous black and white comic I’ve read in a while. Best part: the crowded elevator scenes. Take A Breath by Sujean Rim. Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2022. 9781534492530 . Bob can’t quite fly like all the other red birds, despite practicing a lot. He kind of loses it, but then he meets the helpful Crow who teaches him to BREATHE. (This all helps Bob relax, and he feels great, and then guess what?) A beautiful little book abou slowing down that can even teach you how to relax when you’re nervous. (I’m giving this one to my wife to show her I am present sometimes.) Froodle by Antoinette Portis. Roaring Brook Press, 2014. 9781596439221. All the animals in the neighborhood make the sounds you’d expect until one day a little brown bird doesn’t peep. Crow isn’t happy, but can’t make the little bird stop. And then the silliness gets contagious. My favorite part was when I mis-read “Dove” as “Dave.” I laughed really hard. Oops. (My life is full of Daves.)      

I Eat Poop. A Dung Beetle Story by Mark Pett. Roaring Brook Press, 2021. 9781250785633. Dougie is the only dung beetle at his school, and he’s terrified the other bug kids will find out that he eats poop. So he ignores his former best friend Herman Housefly and pretends to be a regular beetle until one day the popular bugs want him to humiliate Herman because of his dining habits. (Don’t worry, it all ends well. It turns out each of the bugs has a secret.) Best part: all the poop-flavored products in the dung beetle household.       May I Have A Word? by Caron Levis with pictures by Andy Rash. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2017. 9780374348809. When refrigerator magnets gather to tell a story using words and pictures, K confronts C about stealing K’s sound. At the end of their argument, the two don’t want to stand next to each other anymore, which means all of the words containing “ck” can’t be spelled. Spoiler: K goes silent (and then gets together with N to form some words) before apologizing to C. Best part: All of the refrigerator drawings that look like they were drawn by kids with crayons.         A History of Underwear With Professor Chicken by Hannah Holt and Korwin Briggs. Roaring Brook Press, 2022. 9781250766496. After a lesson on invertebrates, Professor Chicken lectures about underwear from 3300 BCE to the present. The lesson includes examples from the Alps, ancient Egypt, early North America, Siberia, Europe, and China along with many from the U.S. There are questions for extra credit that give more information and ask readers to do a bit of thinking / reasoning / inferring, a selected bibliography, and a two-page grid-format underwear timeline that builds on the rest of the book. It’s as silly as it is educational.      

Yasmeen by Saif A. Ahmed (creator, writer) and Fabiana Mascolo (artist). Scout Comics, 2021. 9781949514698. This graphic novel opens with a few pages set south of Mosul, Iraq, where two young women are fleeing across the desert. Yasmeen was one of them and survived that journey and arrives in Iowa, in 2016, where she’s reunited with her family. Then there’s a flashback to June of 2014 where hear family was in the process of purchasing their dream home in Mosul. The book is the story of what happened to Yasmeen after ISIS forced her Shiite family to flee Mosul without her, of how she was to be the bride of an ISIS fighter before being forced into sexual slavery (from which she was escaping in the opening pages). It shows how she survived and it’s also about her trying to make a new home in the U.S., of finding new friends and trying to reconnect with her family. (Her parents and brother really seem to have no idea what happened to her, and her father especially seems to want to avoid the topic.) This was a tough read but I’m really glad I picked it up. There is quite a bit of violence but it’s less graphic than most R-rated films. There’s also trouble when Yasmeen helps a new friend, deals with a boy who calls her an ISIS bitch at school, and tells everyone the truth about what she went through. Worth noting: the cover, with its pale blue “cloud” of memories above Yasmeen’s head, made me suspect that she had superpowers of some kind. I’m glad that was wrong. I hope, if you add this to your library, you have some way to indicate (especially to readers like me who don’t like to read the back of a book first) that it’s a realistic story, whether by where it’s shelved or with a genre label of some kind.

Mister Miracle: The Great Escape by Varian Johnson and Daniel Isles. DC Graphic Novels for Young Adults, 2022. 9781779501257. 198pp. plus a short preview of the House of El graphic novel. Scott Free and his friends are students at Granny Goddess’s Goodness Academy on Apokolips, where they’re training to become foot soldiers in Darkseid’s army. Scott is a bit of an escape artist, and the only person to have ever escaped the X-Pit, a place near the planet’s core full of monsters and traps. Now he’s trying to help his friend and “family” and unlikely new girlfriend (the head of Granny’s Female Furies) escape to Earth, where he might take up superheroing and learn who his parents are. Standing in the way are Granny, Darkseid’s son Prince Kalibak, and all of the school’s security features. Even if you didn’t grow up reading Jack Kirby’s Fourth World / New Gods comics, you may have heard of a few of the relevant DC comics universe details about Darkseid and all in that Justice League movie. But I have to say this book probably works well enough for those who haven’t grown up reading about super heroes — it’s enough to know that Scott Free is a kid trying to escape a miserable military boarding school to save his friends and go to Earth where he hopes he can enjoy life a bit. It’s a fun reboot of a classic character, well written and illustrated. And there’s even a little Kirby krackle in these pages if you’re a fan and look for it.