Posted on March 15, 2020 at 12:07 pm by Gene Ambaum
The Complete Curvy by Sylvan Migdal. Iron Circus Comics, 2019. 9781945820403. 520pp. Publisher’s rating: ADULTS ONLY.
Fauna, a liar (magic user) from Candy World, is fleeing an awful arranged marriage. On Boring World (our world), she meets and quickly falls for (and into bed with) Anaïs. This starts a fun, sex-filled adventure that includes lots of magic, a hot candy octopus lady, pirates, superheroes, a plan to conquer Boring World and a plot to democratize magic. Anaïs and Fauna’s love for each other is at the heart of the book, though they clearly need to talk about their relationship. The story is kinda structured like a video game, and sex is everywhere, friendly, and involves every combination of folks and beings you might imagine (and some you might not). It’s a bit like a good-natured, pornographic version of Adventure Time.
I just recommended this to a friend who once complained to me that she couldn’t find anything else as fun and sex positive as Colleen Coover’s Small Favors.
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Posted on March 10, 2020 at 10:24 am by Gene Ambaum
Manga (The Citi Exhibition) edited by Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere and Matsuba Ryoko. Thames & Hudson, 2019. 9780500480496. 351pp including notes, a checklist of works in the
Citi exhibition at the British Museum in 2019, a glossary, a Japanese language bibliography, an index, and more.
This is simply the most attractive, best designed reference book on manga I’ve ever seen. From the dust jacket art (it’s from Golden Kamuy by Noda Saturo) to the cover art (“Edo As It Was!!” by Akatsuka Fujio) to all of the manga reproduce within, this book is one that belongs in every public library. It’s as fun to flip through as it is informative to read. Many extracts of manga drawn in different styles are reproduced, with translations in the gutters alongside the pages. The book can function as an introduction to manga and graphic novels, or a resource for those who want to know much more than they already do. There are interviews with many involved in the field including creators (my favorites are with Akatsuka Fujio and Inoue Takehiko) as well as essays on everything from manga’s symbols to Tezuka Osamu to the history of manga and its future. It will probably take me years to read every page because it keeps leading me on side trips to other books and authors. I’m sad I missed the exhibit but this is the next best thing (and maybe better since I tend to race through museums).
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Posted on March 5, 2020 at 9:30 am by Gene Ambaum
The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline. Dancing Cat Books, 2017. 9781770864863. 234pp.
In this post-apocalyptic future, the Earth is pretty messed up, and so is a lot of humanity. Most people can no longer dream, but the indigenous people of North America are the exception, so they’re being rounded up and sent to “schools” where their ancestors’ dreams are harvested from their bone marrow. The process is as awful as it sounds and kills those subjected to it, reducing them to the material the non-indigenous want.
Frenchie has lost his family, but becomes part of a group of mostly children trying to evade agents of the Canadian government’s Department of Oneirology. Guided by two adults — Miigwans, a man still struggling with the loss of his husband, and Minerva, a quiet old woman who does a lot of watching and a little laughing — they head north. Along the way they tell stories and try to help the kids heal, or at least keep going. They’re all in for more pain and loss along the way, but there’s also a bit of joy, too.
This book was so harrowing in places that I had to put it down a few times even though I wanted to tear right through it. It’s easily the best YA novel I’ve read in the last few years.
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Posted on March 3, 2020 at 10:45 am by Gene Ambaum
are you listening? by tillie walden. First Second, 2019. 9781626727731. 306pp plus some process drawings in the back.
Any new graphic novel by Tillie Walden is a reason to celebrate, and I’m hurrying to finish my review of this one so that my daughter can read it next.
Bea seems to have run away from home (she’s eighteen, though, so she can leave if she wants to). In a mini-mart she runs into Lou, her mother’s friend, who is on a road trip of her own. Lou offers to drop her off in McKinney as long as she doesn’t try to steal her car again. (Apparently Bea thought about it years ago.) As they start to talk, it becomes clear that Bea doesn’t really have anywhere to go.
There’s a cat that they try to return to its home, a lot of conversations about their families, and some creepy dudes from the Office of Road Inquiry who seem to be following them (and the cat). There’s also a quiet bit of magic and maybe a monster. It feels like a low-key Miyazaki film about that road trip we all should have taken right on the edge of becoming an adult, or the one we should take when we’re having a mid-life moment.
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Posted on February 27, 2020 at 8:30 am by Gene Ambaum
Mimi and the Wolves Volume 1 by Alabaster Pizzo. Avery Hill, 2019. 9781910395486.
I need to rave about Alabaster Pizzo’s art. The anthropomorphic animals she draws are (mostly) wonderfully cute (the wolves can look a bit sinister.) Her writing plays against the cuteness in the most perfect way. It’s like a deep, PG-13 version of Animal Crossing that looks better because it’s drawn in black and white.
Mimi is a garland-making mouse who lives with her mate, Bobo. Ever since she was little she’s had a recurring nightmare full of weird creatures and violence (it doesn’t scare her). After taking a concoction to help her have a lucid dream, she speaks to the Holy Venus in her dream. Mimi paints the symbol Holy Venus shows her onto leaves and soon makes a friend who knows about Venus, too — Egort, a wolf. He tells her about Venus, talismans, and spirit guides. Bobo is alarmed — he tells Mimi its the symbol for a cult. After he finds out she’s been hanging out with wolves, he’s alarmed. (She didn’t even tell him about the drugs she’s been doing with them.) He forbids her from seeing them again, but she has to find out about the symbol and the meaning of her dreams.
Strange place for a cute anthropomorphic animal comic to go, but it’s compelling. I’m waiting for the next volume.
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Posted on February 25, 2020 at 8:30 am by Gene Ambaum
Edison Beaker Creature Seeker: The Lost City by Frank Cammuso. Viking, 2019. 9780425291962. 176pp.
Edison Beaker survived the Darkness, brought back the keystone, and fought Baron Umbra, but his uncle still won’t let him help with Creature Seeker business. His Grandma reveals that she knows about their adventure, and tells them about the Lost City of Pharos (which she needs them to find) — Edison is the Torch Bearer, and needs to bring the Spark there. Soon they’re being chased by underlings, reunited with their friends Knox and Alexander (a giant cat), and on their way to face Baron Umbra again. (He’s a one-eyed, flaming skull with shadow tentacles? Very cool.)
Cammuso’s graphic novels have everything I need in a kids book — great plot, fun dialogue, wonderful drawings. I read everything he publishes, and recommend his books for libraries everywhere.
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Posted on February 20, 2020 at 11:30 am by Gene Ambaum
Invisible Kingdom Volume One: Walking the Path by G. Willow Wilson and Christian Ward. Berger Books / Dark Horse, 2019. 9781506712277. Contains issues #1 – #5.
The book opens with Grix, captain of a cargo vessel, making a crash landing on a remote moon. She’s behind on deliveries for Lux (an interstellar Amazon). As she and her crew try to repair their ship and get back on schedule, they discover evidence that they’re being used as part of an illegal payoff. Soon they’re on the run from the economic giant and who knows what else. There’s a space battle.
On planet Duni, in the capital city, Vess is blindfolded as she walks the Unseen Path, trying to get to the Unseen Gate, so that she can dedicate herself to the Renunciation and become a red-hooded none. (That’s not a spelling error.) She makes it, but as she begins her duties away from the world, she finds evidence of a conspiracy, and that all is not right with the Renunciation.
It’s not much of a surprise when Grix and crew cross paths with Vess. This is a great start to a series I’m going to continue to read. I’m a huge fan of Wilson’s writing (Ms. Marvel, Cairo), and it’s really enjoyable here, plus Ward’s art is stunning, especially the otherworldly way he uses colors. I can’t stop flipping through this book, the whole thing wows me.
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Posted on February 18, 2020 at 11:30 am by Gene Ambaum
Archipelago: An Atlas of Imagined Islands edited + with an essay titled “Islomania” by Huw Lewis-Jones, prologue by Chris Riddell, 90+ illustrations by almost as many artists. Thames & Hudson, 2019. 9780500022566. 192pp. including notes about each of the contributors.
Each of the island maps in the book is accompanied by a few paragraphs about it. The landscapes are usually beautiful and often bewildering or amusing, and each has its own style. My favorite maps are Xlibris by comics creator Kevin Cannon, who filled his island with stacks of books and locations like Rare Signed First Edition Mountain and Free Coffee Coast. It is, of course, full of happy readers and cats. Graphic novelist Isabel Greenberg’s island includes Angria and Gondal, which were invented by the Brontë kids (and I believe are the subject of Greenberg’s next book). Illustrator James Gulliver Hancock’s Laputa-Nova: Gulliver’s Island Of Perpetual Self Realisation & Connection is full of beautiful colors and simple shapes, and seems like a great place to get lost. Yeji Yun’s Tipple imagines a far north filled with animals in search of the perfect cocktail.
This is a lovely book to flip through, and the notes on each island are amusing, too. It could serve as a great introduction to different styles of illustration and to the artists’ work.
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Posted on February 13, 2020 at 11:59 am by Gene Ambaum
Lorna by Benji Nate. Silver Sprocket, 2019. 9781945509346. 56pp.
Lorna is a young woman with a bad attitude, green hair, a knife, and a cat she loves (because it’s a cold-blooded killer with no remorse). She’s cruel, mean, and kinda adorable. The second half of the book is a flashback to her terrible first date in high school. The fact that she’s talking to her date’s skull at the beginning of the sequence is a bit of foreshadowing.
This is all much more fun than it sounds, and library censor-bait in the best way. Benji Nate also wrote and drew the happily strange graphic novel Catboy, about Olive and her best friend Henry, a humanoid black cat. It looks parent friendly but is creepier than it sounds.
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Posted on February 11, 2020 at 11:23 am by Gene Ambaum
Charlotte Brontë before Jane Eyre by Glynnis Fawkes. Introduction by Alison Bechdel. Disney Hyperion, 2019. 9781368023290. 92pp plus a postscript, discussions of source material for pages, and a bibliography.
This graphic novel opens in 1837 with Charlotte Brontë receiving a letter from Robert Southey warning her against writing for celebrity. The story then flashes back to her family life at Haworth Parsonage where, as a child, she lost not only her mother but her two older sisters in the space of a few years. Her father sent her to school, hoping to make her into a teacher and prepare her for her future. She and her remaining sisters and brother have vivid imaginations and make up stories together. Charlotte has ambitions of writing and publish, and this seems to carry her sisters along later in life as they struggle to work as teachers and governesses.
My favorite moment in Brontë’s life story is when, as a student, she gets in trouble for scaring another girl with a story late at night in a school dormitory, when they’re all supposed to be asleep. (Fawkes says in her notes that this was the only time the serious and reserved Brontë was ever in trouble at school, and explains how she made up that tale Brontë tells in the book.)
This is one of the times my love of comics leads me to learn about something I wouldn’t otherwise be interested in. I’ve read Jane Eyre and other books by Charlotte Brontë’s sisters, but had no idea about their lives. Glynnis Fawkes’ pencil drawings really brought them all to life for me, and led me to read a bit more about the Brontës after I finished this book. Next time I need a “comics do in fact lead to other reading” anecdote for a concerned parent in a library, I’ll honestly be able to use myself as an example.
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The Complete Curvy by Sylvan Migdal. Iron Circus Comics, 2019. 9781945820403. 520pp. Publisher’s rating: ADULTS ONLY.
