A graphic novelist consumed by climate anxiety confronts a series of personal and professional setbacks in this inventive if uneven autofiction from Healy (The Con Artists). Luke is gobsmacked when his twin brother Teddy asks someone else to be best man in his wedding. (“Luke is a bit of a mess right now,” Teddy says, explaining his decision to their mother.) The slight, combined with Luke’s creative burnout (he hasn’t published a book in two years) and overwhelming fears of ecological catastrophe, sends him into a tailspin. The story then skips ahead five, 10, and finally 15 years into a speculative future plagued by floods. Having abandoned cartooning to sell life insurance, Luke is perplexed when one of his early comics is optioned for the screen. On a visit to the set, he toys with the idea of sabotaging the big-budget production. Healy balances self-effacing humor with evenhanded introspection over pages of neat, efficient cartooning. His satire of the wellness industry—Luke relies on an app called Head for affirmations voiced (not coincidentally) by his brother—is sharp and touching, and Luke’s bantering relationship with his forthright mother is another highlight. The decades-jumping narrative sprawls, however, and some fanciful conceits (such as the pair of mice playing Greek chorus to Luke’s crisis) fall flat. The result is a playful but unwieldy portrait of a man struggling for self-improvement while despairing over the future. (May)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

A lineage of Louisiana women imprison the African spider god Anansi in this unnerving if overwrought horror-folkore debut from Joyner and Pugh. The opening pages retell how Anansi long ago dispensed wisdom to jungle animals from a “large clay pot,” but when his advice that “the harder the chase, the better the catch” resulted in a leopard’s death, her cub vowed revenge. That fable looms over the present-day story of teenager Patsy Turner, her father Marcus, and her two brothers, all of whom move in with their dementia-stricken grandmother, Vassie. When Anansi stalks Patsy’s dreams, Vassie reveals that the Turner women are rootworkers who’ve bound the trickster god to their land. Vassie trains Patsy in hoodoo (folk magic and medicine) after school, unleashing the girl’s “magick,” which was originally taught to an enslaved Turner ancestor by Anansi and has been passed down from mother to daughter through the generations. The overuse of flashbacks and layered-on exposition bloats an intricate—if at times predictable—plot. Pugh’s artwork, however, is a highlight—his rendering of Anansi elicits gut-churning dread. After many twists and turns in the family’s story, including details of how the leopard cub “tricked the trickster,” Joyner teases the next installment in the series. But readers may not have the patience to stick around for more. Agent: (for Joyner) Anjali Singh, Ayesha Pande Literary. (May)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

Balius and Pellejer’s raw and revealing graphic memoir debut depicts Balius’s mental illness as a shaggy monster shadowing his day-to-day life. Looking back at his life from age 35, he describes the urgency he feels to share his story now: “It tugs at me violently, from within, in my guts.” Raised in Castile, he began having psychotic episodes at age nine, during which he heard voices. In his late teens, he felt “my sense of self begin to crumble.” He includes the perspectives of others who experience psychosis, covering how social and financial status affects the disorder, the ways in which mental illness adversely impacts the physical body, the challenge of getting a proper diagnosis, and effective medications. Friendships and humor provide vital lifelines throughout the memoir. Above all, Balius insists upon claiming an identity apart from one’s illness: “I didn’t know any ‘psychotics’ or ‘schizophrenics’ (I later realized there are no such things—there are only people).” Pellejer’s expressive art is dominated by blues and grays, with the shaggy monster appearing in yellow. It’s a searingly honest account and a valuable addition to the graphic medicine category. (May)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

Lindsay and Kivelä (the Everfrost series) deliver a taut, gritty noir studded with tough guys, suspicious dames, and hard-boiled dialogue delivered by a humanoid deer. “Sometimes you break a story, and well... sometimes the story breaks you,” says Bucky, a world-weary journalist who’s not afraid to put his body and soul on the line in service of The Truth—aka the big-city newspaper that signs his paycheck. A hot tip about a John Doe who died under mysterious circumstances brings Bucky to the city morgue. One thing leads to another as he and his faithful sub-editor, Dan, uncover a political conspiracy that goes all the way to the mayor’s office. Despite the unique physical characteristics and abilities that Bucky boasts—such as powerful antlers and the speed and strength to chase down and batter a car—none of the friends or foes he encounters comment on the fact that he’s the only animal who talks. That oddity, along with the shadowy, atmospheric artwork, makes for an entertaining hook—though the mystery that Bucky ultimately uncovers is fairly paint-by-numbers. But whatever the plot lacks in originality is made up for by the inventiveness of the dialogue (“Investigative journalism is getting out there and pounding sap from the trees,” says Bucky). This one’s for those who want to keep comics weird. (May)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this rambunctious murder mystery set in 1990s Turkey, Samancı (Dare to Disappoint) contrasts a playful and vibrant visual style with deadly serious themes. For university students Ece and Meltem, the only escape from the cramped dorm room they share with six other women is diving into the nearby Bosphorus Strait. But after the two see a car driven by a university acquaintance splash into the water, they become entangled in a murder plot involving corrupt nationalist politician Aslan Adam, the car’s owner. The two meet with Adam, who offers them a generous reward to retrieve a safe full of American cash from the bottom of the Strait. Convinced they have a magical ability to make things happen with the power of their combined stares, the two women try to use their “Medusa’s gaze” to find the treasure and thwart Adam’s plans for political takeover. Whether or not they double cross the politician becomes a life-threatening decision. The bright colors, cartoonish art, and silly internal dialogue lend a whimsical tone to the high-stakes action. It’s a winning escapade. (May)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

This uneven coming-of-age graphic autofiction from Good (The Way Around) and artist FLuX entices with its “inspired by true events” premise but varies in its execution of the story’s emotional beats. David is a half-Yanomami, half-American boy whose Indigenous mother met his anthropologist father in the Amazon. For the first five years of David’s life, the family moves back and forth between countries. David struggles with his “double life” in the New Jersey suburbs, where he’s bullied for his biracial appearance (“You look like one of those Indians from that movie... The Last Mohican,” jokes a “token jerk”). His mother, Yarima, ultimately abandons the family, in order to return to live with her tribe in the rainforest. David’s father, Kenneth, rarely acknowledges Yarima’s absence, while David descends into a years-long identity crisis that spirals into self-harm and alcohol abuse before he turns his life around following a drunk-driving accident. Chapters alternate between David’s story and a mostly dialogue-free retelling of Yarima’s life in a paradisal landscape drawn in eye-popping colors by FLuX. In David’s sections, black-and-white art—where characters outlined in white appear as flat cutouts—magnifies the bleakness of his adolescence but can drag in its replay of trauma. A fleeting family reunion in the book’s final pages seems anticlimactic. Though this has its moments, it never quite soars. (May)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Dahm (The Harrowing of Hell) spins a dark fable featuring a meek deliveryman toting an enormous box. When he shows up at the door of a looming mansion, the deliveryman finds a riotous party underway and becomes hopelessly lost while searching for “the resident,” who needs to sign for the package. Grotesque, violent performances unfold in circus rings as the party organizers call out sinister-sounding events like “the Snapping Hour.” As in a bad dream, the deliveryman is forever breaking unwritten rules, stumbling into rituals he doesn’t understand, and getting roped into cryptic conversations as he remains irrationally devoted to making his delivery. With thick, flowing lines and a palette of sunset colors, Dahm creates an impossibly vast interior space filled with glittering ballrooms, dank cellars, back rooms where the staff labors to keep the party going, and even an underground lake with a fleet of ships. This confirms Dahm’s reputation as a craftsman of wholly original, deeply felt fantasy. (June)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Cartoonist Sweeney debuts with a candid portrait of life with a disability, drawn in delicate brushstrokes and natural colors. Born in Moldova in 1994, Sweeney showed early signs of Bruck syndrome, which causes fragile bones and joint contractures. After her birth parents placed her in an orphanage, she was adopted by an American family and grew up in New Jersey, where she was wracked with searing joint pain and frequent bone breaks. Through a series of short chapters illustrating various stages of her life, Sweeney shines a critical light on the ableism she was forced to contend with, including a lack of affordable transportation, an expensive and out-of-touch healthcare system, and even the high hospital counters she couldn’t see over when sitting in her wheelchair. Yet despite these challenges and her constant physical pain, Sweeney finds peace among her friends, with her boyfriend (“It feels good to lean on someone”), smoking marijuana, and in nature. It’s a revealing visualization of a rare, “depersonalizing” condition and how Sweeney finds “drops of disabled joy whenever I can.” Sweeney’s subtle and elegant art reflects the nuance of her moment-to-moment struggle to ground her self apart from chronic pain. Fans of Ellen Forney’s Marbles will want to add this to their list. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Video game designer Mechner uses alternating color palettes to distinguish between his, his father’s, and his grandfather’s timelines in this illuminating debut. Scenes from his Jewish grandfather Adolf’s unfinished memoir about living through WWI and WWII unfold in parallel to Mechner’s more quotidian struggles to keep his marriage together after he moves his family to France in 2015. Interwoven with this present-day migration story are vignettes recounting how Adolf’s life in Austria is upended by the Nazis. He’s forced to join the military and ultimately leave his son Franz behind as he migrates to Cuba in search of safety in 1938. Franz and his caretaker flee first to France and then to Havana, where they’re reunited with Adolf. Drawn in loose line art, the narrative jumps between time periods freely and rapidly to reveal the intertwining of generations. The alternating story lines can be hard to follow, but what emerges is an affecting ensemble portrait of one family’s experience with war and dislocation. Fans of Maus will want to take a look. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

Dhaliwal (Cyclopedia Exotica) conjures a sly and cutesy fantasy world in this tale of finding the strength to face the past. In Chamomile Valley, an amnesiac young service witch named Singe is rescued after being burned at the stake and left for dead when her magic dried up. With Yew-Veda, a witch doctor, and Bufo Wonder, a witch who’s accidentally turned himself into a toad, Singe sets out to recover her magic and her memory. The trio is pursued by the demons Disgust, Doubt, and Despair, and aided by the Smoke Witch, the collective spirit of burned witches past. The format blends blocks of text with comics and illustration, and in a gimmicky design quirk, certain repeated words appear to burn, glow, wiggle, and drift away. Recipe spells are scattered throughout, ranging from chamomile tea to a self-love potion (actually chocolate-covered strawberries). Touches of whimsy lend to the middle grade fantasy vibe, though the pacing is uneven. It adds up to a charming albeit jumbled potion. (May)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink