Graphic Novel Review: Totem by Laura Pérez

Posted on January 23, 2024 at 7:28 am by Gene Ambaum

Totem by Laura Pérez. Translated by Andrea Rosenberg. Fantagraphics, 2023. 9781683968979. 140pp.

At the center of Totem are ghosts, death, and crows. There’s also a road trip, a romance, a disappearance, strange lights in the sky, and stories about a woman who could see the dead. It’s all interconnected and mysterious and a bit spooky, and it feels like something I need to read again in a few weeks to try to work it out. It’s beautiful, though, so I think it will be worth it. It reminds me of nothing as much as the graphic novels of another Spanish creator, Borja González, which also read like graphic poems I want to read over and over.