Lunch Quest by Chris Kuzma. Koyama, 2019. 9781927668658. 82pp. A hungry rabbit arrives home in his carrotmobile and starts looking for lettuce. He sticks his head in the lettuce cubby (and another world?) where he sees two young skaters, Greta and Sully, whose amazing kickflips produce hot dogs and black holes. They meet a gremlin that’s even more amazing, and whom they follow to the forest. They have quite an adventure. A deer farts on Greta. There’s a dragon, and a giant skate ramp. The rabbit just watches this. Then he heads to the basement because he hears music. There are rainbow bricks and his giant friend named Ethel, who has a piano. He asks her about his lettuce, and then looks into her piano (and another world again) and watches as students from Buena Vista Elementary have a dance battle with students from the nearby boys academy. Weird? Yeah! And it’s sweet with moments of silliness and joy.

Reckless by Ed Brubaker (writer), Sean Phillips (artist), and Jacob Phillips (color). Image, 2020. 9781534318519. 144pp. Publisher’s Rating: M / Mature. Ethan Reckless helps people who need it. And he operates out of a classic movie theater — how cool is that? He solves problems big and small, and sometimes he even makes money doing it. Years ago Reckless was a student informant for the FBI, undercover in a radical group. He almost died in an explosion that ended his “career,” and he can’t remember the events of that day. Back then he was in love with Rainy, who is still on the run, and who just made contact with him. She needs his help to get some money she’s owed; it will allow her to get out of the country and start over. Reckless remembers how he felt for her, but since the explosion his emotions, even in his memories, are flat. The only emotion he can feel anymore is anger. And there’s lots of that as he looks into getting Rainy’s money back and bad things happen. It all leads him to a drug smuggling operations, an armed compound, and a showdown with a guy wielding a machete. Brubaker and Phillips have been making the best crime graphic novels out there for decades. If you know a Jack Reacher fan who thinks they don’t like comics, get them this one (and then the rest of the books in the series — I think there are supposed to be at least three published by the end of 2021).

The Seeds by Ann Nocenti and David Aja. Dark Horse / Berger Books, 2020. 9781506705897. Collects The Seeds # 1 – 4. 128pp. This graphic novel takes place in a toxic future where it’s safer than not to wear a gas mask everywhere. The planet is dying but who cares because it’s a crappy place. There’s a walled zone where neo luddites have gone to start an anti-tech revolution: no internet, no phones, anarchy. A few aliens live there (and cross to the other side of the wall, too), lurking about, sampling seeds from our world (that’s genetic material, I think). Things are not better inside the zone. Maybe, somehow, mankind is not quite doomed, in which case seeds the aliens have collected will be worthless. Hope exists in the form of a love story between one of the aliens, Race, and his human lover, Lola, who may be pregnant. A reporter, Astra, is on their trail, trying to write the kind of clickbait her newspaper needs. Or maybe it’s the kind of huge story she longs to write? In moments it’s not quite apocalyptic, and it’s my favorite graphic novel from Dark Horse’s Berger Books imprint so far. Aja’s cinematic art, with its stark blacks and old school screentones, keeps it compelling throughout.

Stepping Stones by Lucy Knisley. Random House Graphic, 2020. 9781984896841. 224pp. Jen loves comics, dislikes chores, and hates snakes. She’s in charge of the farm’s chicken coop, but prefers drawing (which is especially awesome in her hideout in the barn, with the cats that live there). She’s kinda getting used to life in the country with her mom and her mom’s boyfriend Walter, including working their booth at the farmers market. Then Walter’s daughters come for a visit. The older of the pair, Andy, is a bit of a know-it-all who takes charge of everything. She starts naming the chicks Jen cares for, and things get worse from there. Jen’s mom and Walter see the value of what Andy does, but it’s totally irritating to Jen. (They do finally bond as part-time sisters, in part due to Jen’s comics, and in part because none of the girls loves life in the country.) Knisley’s graphic novel for kids is based on her own life: after her parents split up, she and her mother moved from New York to a small farm. This is a great book about moving on after divorce and trying to become part of a new family unit, with a bit of math trouble thrown in. (Knisley discusses her dyscalculia at the end of the book.)  

Kairos by Ulysse Malassagne. English translation by Anne and Owen Smith. First Second, 2020. 9781250209610. 190pp. http://www.powells.com/book/-9781250209610?partnerid=34778&p_bt Nils and Anaelle are spending a few days at a remote cabin. On the first night, everything is peaceful until the fireplace erupts in a blue explosion. Armored and sword-wielding dragons appear from another world, and it quickly becomes clear they’re there for Anaelle. In the fight that soon follows, she’s much more of a badass than she seemed. But the dragons capture her and take her through the portal. Nils isn’t going to just let that happen, so he leaps through in pursuit. What follows is a fresh take on the rescue-the-princess fantasy subgenre. Anaelle’s parents want her to marry, to keep their power intact. (She’s to marry her father, which no one is excited about.) Nils has little but his recklessness and his anger to help him save the woman he loves. Turns out that, along with a few new friends, may be probably enough. His quest will change him, though, and things won’t turn out like he expects. Malassagne’s drawings are as kinetic as any manga action sequences I’ve seen, and the book has a mix of things I hadn’t expected — bloody violence, social justice themes, and kawaii characters. If you’re a librarian in a school, give this a read before putting it on your shelf. It’s not that I think it’s inappropriate, but it’s more adult than you might think, with little hint of that in the initial pages.  

Familiar Face by Michael Deforge. Drawn & Quarterly, 2020. 9781770463875. 176pp. The people and the city in Deforge’s latest graphic novel are continually optimized and updated, without warning and seemingly at random. It’s all supposed to be an improvement (but it’s clearly not); the new body you wake up in may not be intuitive, and the street you’re driving on may suddenly have no exit. The narrator is struggling because of her job in the complaints department. (The complaints are shown in triangular panels, in black and white, and some information is redacted.) She can’t discuss the complaints with the woman she’s in a relationship with, Jessica, who also can’t tell her about her own work in the city’s maps department. And then one day Jessica is gone from the apartment they share. This is a very lonely book. The anthropomorphic search engine is the friendliest thing about it, and the complaints are the most amusing. But they’re not amusing the narrator, who longs for the love of her life. Deforge’s weird, semi- and completely abstract art really works here with a viewpoint character trying to make sense of such a shifting, confusing cityscape in which people are hard to distinguish from furnishings and whatever is on the street.

Arlo & Pips: King of the Birds by Elise Gravel. HarperAlley, 2020. 9780062982223. 64pp. Arlo (a crow) and Pips (a small, yellow bird) look for food and shiny things. As they chat, Arlo reveals (as he brags about and shows off) facts about crows. Basically Arlo thinks he’s the greatest, cleverest, most beautiful kind of bird in the world. Even though Pip tries to set him straight, Arlo won’t even admit that any aspect of being a crow is anything less than great. This includes his harsh singing voice (caw!), though it is amazing how Arlo and other crows can imitate sounds though, including voices and even car horns. This is different in format from Gravel’s nonfiction Disgusting Critters series, but equally enjoyable and a little more silly. In 2020 she also produced four new books in that series: The Bat, The Toad, The Cockroach, and The Mosquito. If I’d read these books as a kid, I’d probably have become a biologist.

Deadbomb Bingo Ray by Jeff Johnson. Turner, 2017. 9781683367246. 277pp. Deadbomb Bingo Ray is part of Philadelphia’s criminal underworld, a man with a reputation for creative problem solving and getting revenge on those who try to cross him. And yet someone is trying to take him out. There are folks on his tail, a woman who says she’s trying to hire him (he knows she has other motives), and a hit squad or two. Ray is clearly going to survive the adventure — he over prepares and over thinks every aspect of his safety as if it’s his superpower — but the question is will everyone else in his life make it through unscathed? Specifically the physicist he unexpectedly finds himself falling in love with, and his sweet little dog? Ray also has a hilarious secretary, and his buddy / partner Skuggy, a sometimes dapper dude who demands his favorite meal before he’ll get to work with Ray. This is dark, violent entertainment with a bit of a love story. It’s worth reading for the moment Ray kills someone with a sharpened bicycle spoke. And yes, you do find out how he got the nickname.

Aspara Engine by Bishakh Som. The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2020. 9781936932818. 250pp. Oversized, full color. The eight stories in Bishakh Som’s oversized graphic novel have such subtle colors that, in some case, I wondered if I was imagining the tint of the ink wash. It’s a marvelous effect, and it goes hand in hand with conversations that feel both real and unreal, and with story elements both fantastic and futuristic. I can’t recommend this book enough, but it’s hard to talk about without spoiling things. Issues of gender, identity and queerness are addressed in many of the stories. There’s a mermaid, a “pet” that freaked me out, a humiliated “stalker” who I somehow felt a little bad for, and an unexpected, elegant bit of time travel It’s worth noting that I started reading Aspara Engine a few times before my brain clicked with its pace, and then I couldn’t put it down. I’m currently enjoying Som’s graphic memoir, Spellbound, and I plan to read her graphic history of prefab bathrooms at some point soon, too.