Fog Over Tolbiac Bridge (A Nestor Burma Mystery) by Léo Malet and Jacques Tardi. Translator: Kim Thompson. Fantagraphics, 2017. 9781606997055. – Detective Nestor Burma receives a letter from Abel Benoit, a man in a hospital who claims to know him. On the way to see him, he’s met by a striking woman, Bélita Morales, who tells him not to bother, that Benoit is dead. At the hospital, Burma is interrogated by a police inspector about his connection to the deceased man — it turns they were anarchist together decades earlier, when Benoit used another name. – Burma sets out to figure out why Benoit was killed, and by whom. He spends a bit more time with Bélita, and a lot wandering the shadowy streets of the XIIIth arrondissement. By the end he’ll have figured out who the man is with madness in his eyes, who was pacing on Tolbiac Bridge (an image that haunts the early pages of the story, and figures in its conclusion). – Tardi’s adaptation of this hardboiled detective story by Leo Malet, set in Paris’ XIIIth arrondissement, is a great mystery and gives a great sense of the locale. I’ve enjoyed Tardi’s adaptations of noir mysteries by Jean-Patrick Manchette, and this pulled me in in the same way as my favorite of those, Like A Sniper Lining Up His Shot. Or maybe this was just easy to identify with since it’s been wet and cold in Seattle, and it always seemed to be raining in Tardi and Malet’s XIIIth.

Land of the Sons by Gipi. Fantagraphics, 2018. 9781683960775. 288pp. – Two boys eek out a living in a post-apocalyptic landscape under the tutelage of their father. Their father shows them no love, and at the beginning of the book, as they skin the dog they managed to kill in a fly-infested swamp, one of them considers skinning their father, too. They trade for food, they fish with dynamite, and are told not to touch the corpses they occasionally find. After the boys leave home, they encounter men much worse than their father. – Gipi’s black and white graphic novel is amazing in ways that snuck up on me. He draws the characters and their world in what at first glance looked like a bunch of black scribbles, but is in fact an expressive, brutal masterpiece. The boys harsh father clearly loves them, but is raising them to be uncaring and amoral because that’s the only way they’ll survive. He hasn’t taught them to read but keeps a journal. At one point Gipi even gives us a look at its pages, through the boys’ eyes, at text we can’t also read — an experience that reminded me of looking at art like Cy Twombly’s Untitled (NYC) (1968).)

Girl Town by Carolyn Nowak. Top Shelf, 2018. 9781603094382. 156pp. – Not a graphic novel per se, but a collection of five excellent and entertaining comic stories of varied length that, together, are one of my favorite “graphic novels” of 2018.  Not many books have a first line this good (atop the first panel of the title story): “I have lived with Ashley and Jolene since we all got kicked out of astronaut school for being too good looking to be sent to space.” Three women make zines and clean houses while having a low-level conflict and friendship with the three women next door. The “I” of that sentence also harbors a serious crush on one of her neighbors that is oh-so-poorly expressed. It’s a great story, and like Vera Brosgol’s Anya’s Ghost, it’s drawn in purple.  “Radishes” is an emotional tale of friendship and shopping with tigers and a magical food stall. In “Diana’s Electric Tongue” the broken-hearted title character orders a sex robot (it also stores her secrets) and refuses to be embarrassed about/by it. – I left the library’s copy around the house and I hope that my teenage daughter secretly picked it up when I wasn’t looking. Now I’m off to track down some of the issues of Lumberjanes that Nowak illustrated, plus her comics/prose combo Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New School Nightmare, which was just published.

Out in the Open by Javi Rey, based on the novel by Jesús Carrasco. Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel.  SelfMadehero, 2018. 9781910593479. – A young boy flees his village in an attempt to escape the abuse and violence he suffers at the hands of his father and the local sheriff. Men pursue him across a dry wasteland, but luckily he meets a kind, old man who offers help. When the sheriff’s men catch up with them, the old man suffers. – The boy’s nightmares are terrifying. At their center is the demonic, red-faced sheriff, and the boy naked or helpless before him. (In the worst of his dreams, his father leaves him for the sheriff.) – The colors Rey uses for the desert scenes made me feel the heat and dryness, and perfectly set up the hope-filled final scene.

Mami by Diigii Daguna. Peow Studio, 2018. 9789187325403. 64pp. – Detective Haiyan Nieto catches the thief, Goyong, who he’s been after for years. Goyong soon disappears, but only after making it clear that he wants to be found by his favorite detective. – Daguna’s short graphic novel has on old school manga style, bright colors, a touch of romance, and enough pages about Pinoy food to send me out in search of a restaurant. (I still haven’t found a place in Seattle that serves Taho, but I will.) – Be sure to check out the other fantastic looking books by Peowstudio. http://www.peowstudio.com/

Dementia 21 by Shintaro Kago. Translator Rachel Matt Thorne. Fantagraphics, 2018.  9781683961062. 294pp. Includes an interview with Kago by Gary Groth, and a few piece of surreal, full-color art. – Seventeen strange and humorous tales about home health aide Yukie Sakai. She tries her best to earn good feedback scores while helping her elderly patients, but that’s not easy when they’re cursed, when the number of her patients multiplies endlessly, and when one old woman’s dementia and super powers combine to explode everyone she forgets. The tale of AI powered dentures was totally creepy, and it was followed by a purely funny story in which Yukie tries to care for an elderly giant hero, Redman, who once defended Earth from evil aliens. Recommended if you like manga in-jokes, and if you laugh at the same time you cringe.

Gideon Falls Volume 1: The Black Barn by Jeff Lemire, Andrea Sorrentino, and Dave Stewart. Image, 2018. 9781534308527. Collects #1 – #6. Publisher’s Rating: M / Mature. – Gideon Falls is a quiet little town, but something is seriously wrong there. The new pastor seems to sense it even before he’s under suspicion for murder. Norton knows it’s evil incarnate, and he’s trying to figure it out by combing through the city’s garbage and cataloging his finds. But he’s just been released from the hospital, and his therapist is about ready to have him committed again. Some think a holy war is underway. At the center of everything is the terrifying image of a black barn. – Lemire has been one of my favorite comics creators since the publication of Essex County. Kudos to his writing, Andrea Sorrentino’s shadowy art, and Dave Stewart’s colors in this volume. I filled my teenage years with supernatural horror, and maybe that’s why graphic novels in this genre don’t usually hold much appeal for me — they rarely freak me out. This one did.