Here are two crime graphic novellas worth reading, each about creators in tough spots at the end of their lives, both by longtime collaborators Brubaker and Phillips (with noteworthy colors by Jacob Phillips). Every page is a treat to look at, and I love how lean the books are — there’s no wasted space. Pulp by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, colors by Jacob Phillips. Image, 2020. 9781534316447. 78pp. Publisher’s Rating: M / Mature Back in the late 1800s, Max was a wanted cowboy involved in real-life adventures like the ones he writes about. In New York City, 1939, he’s meeting with an editor about a story he wrote for Six Gun Western. Max wants to take his stories in new, subtler directions. The editor only wants shoot-em-ups, and the pay per word has just gone down. Pissed about getting swindled, Max gets into a fight and has a heart attack. He wakes up in a hospital and walks home where he doesn’t tell Rosa about the heart attack. He fears he’ll die soon and leave her with nothing. Later, when he sees a guard carrying a bag of money outside a movie theater, he starts thinking about robbing an armored truck. Max is about to put his plan into action when a stranger intercedes. The man is one of the Pinkertons who hunted Max forty years earlier. And he wants Max’s help pulling a robbery.   Bad Weekend by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, colors by Jacob Phillips. Image, 2019. 9781534314405. Originally published as Criminal #2-#3. 72pp. Publisher’s Rating: M / Mature Comic creator Hal Crane is supposed to get a lifetime achievement award at a comic convention. He’s an arrogant, unpleasant prick, but an amazing artist. Jacob, his one-time assistant, agrees to help him through the con despite how things ended between them. Hal is not the ideal guest at the con — he’s being paid to help sell forged animation cells, he offers a cosplayer money for sex, and he’s continually pissed off. Then Hal pulls a gun on another comic creator. Someone stole pages of valuable, original art from Hal, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to get them back.    

Uncomfortably Happy by Yeon-Sik Hong. Translated by Helen Jo. Drawn & Quarterly, 2017. 9781770462601. 572pp plus an afterword by Jo. This graphic memoir chronicles Hong and his new wife’s move to a home in the South Korean countryside. Facing constant money problems and deadlines for comics work that he’s not very invested in, at the beginning he seems to not enjoy much at all (other than his relationship). His wife, who is also an artist, seems much sunnier and consistent by comparison. As the year progresses they pull themselves out of debt and begin enjoying life on the mountain together (despite the rude tourists). Most impressive of all Hong changes, learning to let go, be present, enjoy his wife’s success, and roll with the punches as they face moving again at the end of the book. An amazing memoir with really fun, loose drawings that shows a maturing, loving marriage along with the slow pace of daily rural life in South Korea.

One Story by Gipi. Translated by Jamie Richards. Fantagraphics, 2020. 9781683963196. 128pp. Writer Silvano Landi is in a hospital, remembering. He’s thinking of a young man suddenly seeing himself as an old man of his own age, and how that would drive him crazy. Landi might have been found by the sea where he was talking to himself. Or was he wandering the streets of a city naked maybe? Those trying to treat him discuss his drawings of a service station, and a bare tree. He’s heavily medicated. His dosage is increased, but that doesn’t bring him back to reality. A man in a trench, about to go over onto the battlefield beyond, writes a letter to the love of his life. As he and his companion cross no man’s land, other soldiers think they’re dead already. They head for the bare tree in the distance and face a machine gun. Is it the tree in Landi’s head? Who was the soldier to him? How did the story destroy Landi’s life? Gipi (Notes from A War Story, Land of the Sons) uses watercolors and plain, black and white drawings to create a landscape of times and places, real and imagined, that allow us to experience Landi’s break with reality. This is a very compelling story, and a beautiful, literary graphic novel.

Shadow Captain (The Revenger Series Book 2) by Alastair Reynolds. Orbit, 2019. 9780316555708. 423pp. Think the age of exploration and pirates in space, in an original setting, a designed solar system created over the course of many past human civilizations (which is clarified more in this book than in any of the others by Reynolds that I’ve read). The ships in question mostly get from place to place via solar sails, and many of thse “baubles” they visit are rich with treasure from the past. Human habitats vary wildly in design and state of repair, and a bit of alien tech is around, too. It’s a lot of fun with great characters, including a truly tyrannical pirate and two sisters who run afowl of her in the first book. That book is Revenger. You should start with it. I can barely start to explain the second without ruining it. And, holy crap! The third book in the trilogy is already out. Got to get a copy.   Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries Book 5) by Martha Wells. Tor, 2020. 9781250229861. 352pp. If you’ve read all four Murderbot novellas, I can report that the first novel in the series is just as entertaining. But it’s got a lot to do with a character we met in on of those books, so the less said the better. If you haven’t heard of the series, the Murderbot in question was a killing machine for hire (part meat, part tech) that hacked its own governor module, and then used its freedom to secretly watch entertainment videos (it is obsessed) and then to make decisions that went against its programming to help/save the humans it liked. Great character. Start with All Systems Red.   The Last Emperox (The Interdependency Book 3) by John Scalzi. Tor, 2020. 320pp. 9780765389169. The third book in this series by Scalzi, which is a fun read on part with the Old Man’s War books. A civilization that uses a network of interconnected wormholes to journey between its outposts faces a crisis when the network starts to collapse. Lots of swearing and political intrigue plus more than a little violence — this is one of the smoothest, fastest reads I’ve had in a long time, and utterly enjoyable. Start with The Collapsing Empire.   Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb Trilogy Book 2) by Tamsyn Muir. Tor, 2020. 9781250313225. 512pp. This book isn’t as totally batshit and swear-y as the first book in the series, Gideon the Ninth, but it’s amazing nonetheless. A group of overpowered necromancers hide from a giant monster at the edge of the universe with their god king. Two of them are newbies. More than one of them is completely crazy. Requires utter trust that the author has not gone crazy, too, and that this is truly a sequel to the last book, which if you’re like me you loved so much. Tamsyn Muir, I trusted you, and I’m not sorry I did at all!  I loved this one, too. Can’t wait for the third book! Start with Gideon the Ninth, which I highly recommend for smart asses and anyone who loves smart-assery with swords.  

Snail Finds a Home by Mary Peterson. Aladdin Pix, 2020. 9781534431850. 64pp. Ladybug tries to convince strawberry-loving Snail to leave his bucket of strawberries. After he turns green and vomits he agrees, and she becomes his real estate agent, taking him to places he could live while trying to keep him from being eaten by a chicken. Yeah, it’s weird. The drawings are fun, it flows really well, and little kids are going to love it. (I can’t wait for a librarian somewhere to email me about a group of stoned older readers pulling it off a library shelf and reading it to each other.) Wolf in Underpants Freezes His Buns Off by Wilfrid Lupano, Maya Itoïz, and Paul Cauuet. Translation by Nathan Sacks. Graphic Universe, 2020. 9781541528192. 40pp. It’s winter in the woods, which is great if you’re prepared. But the Wolf isn’t happy because maybe he isn’t ready — he keeps saying, “They’re freezing!” — and it’s freaking the other animals out. They try to figure out what Wolf is talking about, and how to take care of it so that the cold doesn’t turn him evil or wild or the like. There’s a knitting owl, a lot of fondue, and a lot of overly paranoid animals. Very entertaining. Charles Darwin and the Theory of Evolution (Graphic Science Biographies) by Jordi Bayarri. Translation by Dr. Tayra M.C. Lanuza-Navarro and Carin Berkowitz. Graphic Universe, 2020. 9781541578227. 40pp. including a timeline, glossary, index, and list of further resources. This short, simple graphic biography of Darwin starts with him being interested in science as a kid and ends with the publication of his famous theory. Along the way he fails to become a doctor (as his father wanted) and a priest. See him get sickened by an autopsy! Witness him make the mistake of trying to store a beetle in his mouth! There’s at least one more bout of nausea in here. I read two books in this series, and this is clearly the more inspired and readable of the two. Highly recommended if you’re trying to get young comics readers interested in science.

Snapdragon by Kat Leyh. First Second, 2020. 9781250171115. 224pp plus sketches, original covers, and process pages in the back. When Snap goes looking for her dog, Good Boy, she finds him at Jacks’ place. She’s supposed to be the town witch and she scares Snap a bit, but Snap knows there’s no such thing as witches, and anyway the old woman helped Good Boy when he was hurt. So after she finds some possums who need help, Snap takes them to Jacks, who makes a deal with her: she’ll show Snap how to care for the possums if Snap works for her (collecting roadkill, but Snap doesn’t know that for a few pages). She’s soon helping Jacks articulate dead animal skeletons, and also hanging out with her new friend Louis, who loves the same movies she does. Everyone sees them all as weird. There are stories within the story, one in particular that connects Snap and Jacks (who has a very interesting past), plus the monstrous One-Eyed Tom that stalks Snap’s family. There’s a bit of real magic, too, though friendship, love, and family are at the center of this graphic novel. (Leyh is co-writer and cover artist for the Lumberjanes series if you need more to recommend this. Plus it has one of the best library scenes ever (see below).)

These Savage Shores by Ram V, illustrated by Sumit Kumar, colored by Vittorio Astone, lettered by Aditya Bidikar. Vault, 2019. 9781939424402. Contains issues #1 – #5. Alain Pierrefont, an injured vampire on the run, arrives in Calicut, on the Malabar Coast, in 1766. Young Prince Vikram of the Zamorin hosts Alain, and the East India Company wants him to help exert influence over the young ruler to open a land trade route. Alain is warned by the Prince that “Savage things roam the nights in these parts.” He doesn’t take that warning at all seriously. He should have. Other creatures roam the land, or maybe protect it. Soon the hunter on Alain’s trail is there, too, as are some of the other vampires who knew him in Europe. There’s a bit of romance, an ancient immortal, and quite a bit of violence. Kumar’s art and Astone’s colors work together to create the perfect atmosphere for Ram V’s story. This book is right up there with Gideon Falls as one of the best horror graphic novels of last year. It has a lot of brooding shelf appeal, especially for anyone who reads the great marketing copy on the back.  

dancing at the pity party: a dead mom graphic novel by Tyler Feder. Dial, 2020. 9780525553021. 202pp, including a bunch of family photographs at the end. Tyler’s mother Rhonda was diagnosed with cancer when Tyler was a college freshman, and died not too long afterwards following intensive chemotherapy. Tyler convinced me (as she will convince you) that her mom was the coolest. Dealing with her death has been tough on Tyler, her dad, her sisters, and everyone who knew her. Reading about her mom’s final moment (and the days of waiting for it) brought back similar experiences for me — I had to put this book down a few times and take some deep breaths. Her lists of dos and don’ts for dealing with a grieving person are spot on. And I learned a lot about shivas, which I’d heard of but never really understood. The photos at end are devastating and wonderful — don’t jump ahead unless you absolutely can’t help it. This is going on my shelf next to Doug Stanhope’s Digging Up Mother, which has the greatest sendoff I think anyone could ever hope for (opinions will vary), and It’s OK that you’re NOT OKAY by Megan Divine, a book that helped me a few years ago after a friend died.

Women of Substance by Revilo. Hallmark Books, 2005. No ISBN. 80pp.

This is a collection of silly cartoons by Oliver Christianson, better known as Revilo, a well-known cartoonist who writes and draws for Hallmark. His books and cards have made me giggle, chuckle, and snort loudly. He simply doesn’t give a crap. Women of Substance depicts snarky, self-deprecating women who know how to laugh at themselves and others. Between all my own issues and the opportunities my library’s patrons give me, Revilo is my hero — he’s actually drawn and exposed my innermost thoughts! Below are a few that made me laugh the hardest.

Kiwi Cannot Reach (Ready to Read Level One) by Jason Tharp. Simon Spotlight, 2019. 9781534425125. Kiwi can’t reach a rope above its head, so it enlists the help of the reader to shake the book and push buttons and do other stuff to help it. The best thing about this early reader is that it’s a very short and simple (and wonderfully drawn) comic book in disguise. (In fact most of the books in this review are.)   Barry’s Best Buddy (Easy-To-Read Comics Level One) by Renée French. TOON Books, 2012. 9781935179214. This is about a small bird named Barry. His friend Polarhog wakes him up because he has a surprise. He buys Barry a hat (but Barry doesn’t like hats). He buys Barry an ice cream (Barry doesn’t like ice cream, either). (The ants at the bottom of the pages offer a clue to Polarhog’s final surprise, which Barry does like.) My family loved French’s Tinka, about a tiny sheep. They’ll love Barry, too. Mr. Monkey Bakes a Cake by Jeff Mack. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2018. 9781534404311. Mr. Monkey puts a lot of bananas into his cake and his stomach. Since he’s not hungry for the cake, he decides to enter it in a show. Now he’s got to get it there. A lot of things make that difficult, including weird vehicles, ravenous birds, and a hungry but ultimately friendly gorilla. My favorite two-page spread has a lot of those birds on it. Have a look at it, it’s spectacular.     Knight Owls (Ready to Read Level One) by Eric Seltzer, illustrated by Tom Disbury. Simon Spotlight, 2019. 9781534448810. My favorite of the Ready to Read books by Seltzer and Disbury in my to-review pile, this features medieval owls in armor, a pizza-making dragon, and a fair bit of reading. It’s friendly, funny, and well drawn, but not as slapstick as Mr. Monkey.