Evelyn Evelyn
Amanda Palmer, Jason Webley, and Cynthia von Buhler, afterword by Neil Gaiman. Dark Horse, $24.99 (160p) ISBN 978-1-59582-578-0
This debut graphic novel effort by musicians Palmer and Webley, tying in with their musical effort, is perhaps best described as the American McGee’s Alice action game of conjoined twin stories—finding an adequate comparison within the genre is difficult. It tells the tale of Eva and Lynn (shortly thereafter, Evelyn and Evelyn) Neville, whose mother’s death in childbirth is only the first in a series of bizarre tragedies that govern the existence of these two sisters who share between them “three legs, two arms, two hearts, three lungs, and one liver.” Their nightmarish journey takes them from a makeshift birthing clinic on the Kansas-Colorado border to a chicken farm outside of Claxton, Ga., to the depravity of Underwood Lodge on Lake Winnipeg and the bizarre world of Dillard and Fullerton’s Illusive and Illogical Traveling Show. This is a graphic novel that needs to be experienced, and with von Buhler’s stunning, dark but clever illustrations, this phantasmagorical journey is a memorable one. Indeed, the story serves as an insightful metaphor about the dark corners of human experience, and, perhaps more importantly, the small slivers of light that illuminate them. (Oct.)
The Death Ray
Daniel Clowes. Drawn & Quarterly, $19.95 (48p) ISBN 978-1-77046-051-5
With great power comes great ambivalence—if you’re a going-nowhere teen in a dusty suburb with one friend, two dead parents, a girlfriend who is little more than an idealized pen pal and all the other trappings of a dismal life. That’s Andy, a schlubby 17-year-old who spends time with his best pal, Louie, hanging around the edges of their high school’s social set. When the day comes, as it must for all misfits, when Andy smokes a cigarette for the first time, in superhero fashion he learns his scientist father injected him with experimental hormones, giving him superpowers—and a death ray that makes people disappear forever without a trace. Andy understands that his powers give him some kind of moral imperative (“I feel I have to do my part, however small, to help out humanity, or at least the good, decent members of society”), but his heroic ideals don’t prove up to overcoming his smalltime jealousies. Andy doesn’t do terrible things with his powers, just sad, petty things—until one dark day. Clowes’s cartooning ability has never been better than in this story, originally published in 2004 and presented in a hardcover edition—crosscutting past and present, using monologues and fractured action to tell the ultimate unsuperhero story. (Oct.)
Gandhi: A Manga Biography
Kazuki Ebine. Penguin, $15 trade paper (192p) ISBN 978-0-14-312024-7
Younger readers in particular will enjoy this lucid survey of Gandhi’s life and teachings. Beginning with the awkward boy who recognized the unfairness of India’s caste system but was too shy to speak against it in public, the book shows him seeking ways to correct injustice without resorting to violence. There’s plenty of conflict in the world around the young man as different social classes abuse each other; Muslims and Hindus use religion as an excuse to hate their neighbors; and the colonial authorities unscrupulously exploit these divisions. Rather than taking sides, Gandhi tries to teach universal principles of fairness, turning to civil disobedience only to remind adversaries of their common humanity—tactics later borrowed by the American civil rights movement. Ebine’s treatment of this story respects Gandhi’s consistent, stubborn belief that people could learn to live together peacefully. The resulting comic is sometimes bland, with stiff art and infelicitous wording, but the message survives. (Sept.)
Zahra’s Paradise
Amir and Khalil. Roaring Brook/First Second, $19.99 (272p) ISBN 978-1-59643-642-8
This collected web comic resembles Persepolis in its loathing for the current Iranian regime, but these creators (anonymous for political reasons) focus their story via an urgent crisis within one family, as young Mehdi’s mother and brother search for him after he vanishes during the government’s crackdown on protests against fraudulent national elections in 2009. Now no one in authority will admit knowing what happened to him. From the testimony of the angry but fearful people Medhi’s friends encounter, from cab drivers to former aristocrats, it’s clear that Mehdi is just one of a disaffected majority whose existence the people in power must deny, since they can maintain the official version of righteousness only by rape, torture, and murder. The authors successfully generalize from one case to the dreadful condition of all Iranians. Medhi’s mother is named Zahra, and “Zahra’s Paradise” is also a huge cemetery near Tehran; the woman’s graveside rant condemns everyone who won’t stand up for justice. Khalil’s art is a mix of confident caricature, clean cartoony panels, and montage that’s remarkably adept at capturing all kinds of action and emotion. The end effect is a powerful look at a people’s struggle that goes beyond politicized tropes. (Sept.)
The New York Five
Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly. DC/Vertigo, $14.99 trade paper (144p) ISBN 978-1-4012-3291-7
Four female college freshmen endure travails in love, family, and school in this sequel to 2008’s The New York Four. The book stands well on its own. The four leads fall into fairly stereotypical categories: Lona is the Asian high school overachiever; Merissa is the Latina man-magnet from Queens; Ren is the dreadlocked free spirit from the San Francisco Bay Area; and Riley is the privileged girl from Park Slope. Once the book begins, though, Wood (DMZ; Northlanders) gets under the young women’s surfaces to give them compelling individual stories. The fifth member of the New York five is, ostensibly, Olive, a homeless girl who hangs out on the stoop of the four’s East Village apartment building. However, her role within the group amounts to not much more than something to disrupt them from their focus on their own problems in finding grounding. Kelly (Demo; American Virgin) draws beautiful people beautifully and renders New York City with a level of detail that matches Wood’s obvious affection for the city, making The New York Four as much an idealization of Big Apple life as it is a skillful study of young women on the cusp of adulthood. (Sept.)
The G.N.B. Double C: The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists
Seth. Drawn and Quarterly, $24.95 (136p) ISBN 978-1-77046-053-9
Although published after Seth’s wondrously satirical look at the ossified nostalgia of the world of comics’ collectors in Wimbledon Green, this similarly styled work was mostly created earlier. It’s an initially chirpy but eventually downbeat narrative by a member of the Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists, an august if imaginary guild and tradesmen’s club that has fallen on the same hard times as most other fraternal organizations. Seth uses this superbly drawn narrative tour of one of the G.N.B. Double C’s meeting halls as an excuse for some grand mythmaking and wish fulfillment. In this alternate universe, Canadian cartoonists were once the toast of the land, billboards advertising their work, and posh meeting halls in city after city offering plush armchairs and work cubicles for their diligent and productive members. The book’s haunting nostalgia for something that never existed—a curiously effective way of damning the present reality—includes lengthy and engrossing exegesis of many imaginary Canadian cartoons. By the time Seth threatens to pull the rug out from under you, he has you convinced that such a golden era of popular success and imagination could have existed; more important, he convinces you that it should have. (Oct.)
Bubbles & Gondola
Renaud Dillies. NBM/ComicsLit, $16.99 (80p) ISBN 978-1-56163-611-2
A certain magic is demonstrated when an artist, unfettered by perceptions of comics being for kids, uses the full paint box of tools available to him. Few American artists, tainted by memories of Mickey or Maus, would cast a mouse as their hero these days, but for Dillies’s protagonist, the lonely Charlie, it’s a marvelous choice for his personality and journey. Author Charlie deludes himself that he’s loving his solitude as a way of ignoring his writer’s block. The town where he lives, preparing for Carnival, is full of wonders, but Charlie focuses on his pain, even when given the chance to escape through riding a Ferris wheel. Then his gondola flies him to a wonderland reminiscent of the classic strips Little Nemo in Slumberland and Krazy Kat in a palette of reds and browns. Through encounters with his family and other city inhabitants, Charlie rediscovers imagination in a story that has the crazy patchwork feel of a hallucinatory trip. Dillies’s gorgeous art is more than up to the task. The wild imagery, wandering through parties and dreamland alike, transports the reader in an emotional way that propels the practical mind into the escape of art. (Oct.)
Rascal Raccoon’s Raging Revenge
Brendan Hay and Justin Wagner. Oni, $24.99 (144p) ISBN 978-1-934964-71-2
An angry cartoon villain finally defeats his arch enemy only to discover victory isn’t all he wanted it to be, in this madcap exploration of the metafictional world of cartoons, a territory previously explored by Roger Rabbit. Rascal Raccoon, a “meanie,” has spent a lifetime trying and failing to outwit Jumpin’ Jackalope, a “merrie.” One day Rascal accidentally shoves Jumpin’ in front of two oncoming trucks, making him the first Toonie Terrace inhabitant to ever be permanently killed. But Rascal’s life loses all meaning with his rival no longer around to battle. So he forms an uneasy alliance with Jumpin’s widow, Janey, to travel to the land of the Pen Man, who created them all, telling Janey he wants to bring Jumpin’ back to life, but actually seeking to kill his maker. Their journey into reality takes them to a theme park, an overseas animation studio, and finally to Burbank, Calif. Rascal must face the fact that his violent, miserable life was a story created to entertain children. The story steps around the deeper philosophical implications of a fictional character confronting its creator and sticks to a zany, high-energy cartoon. Wagner’s art capably evokes that feeling of a Saturday morning cartoon gone wrong. (Dec.)
Underwire
Jennifer Hayden. Top Shelf, $9.95 trade paper (80p) ISBN 978-1-60309-076-6
Dysfunction needn’t always be the attendant of memoir, as Hayden shows in this slim collection of vignettes about middle-aged womanhood, some originally published as an ACT-I-VATE web comic. Hayden has two well-adjusted adolescent children and a husband still smitten with her. She dances, shops, and has chummy conversations with her daughter, Charlotte, who surprises her mother with her insight and maturity; her son, Kip, has overcome ADHD and attends a prestigious boarding school (and so plays much less of a role in Hayden’s stories)—the vignette in which Hayden laments the departure of her “little boy” of 14 shows much about the emotions of motherhood. Hayden’s cheerful profanity and scratchy lines give the work a homey, intimate feel. And with Hayden’s references to her “ancient self” and reminiscences about pot-fueled fantasies, there’s more than a dash of hippy sensibility. (“Mom, seriously,” her daughter admonishes her on a shopping trip, “the seventies are OVER.”) Even a story about a recurring dream of having murdered someone and being investigated by her children speaks of their affectionate relationship. Hayden’s stories are like comfortable, lived-in jeans—not the most stylish or flattering, but the ones you want to spend time wearing. (Sept.)
The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini, Tommaso Valsecchi, Fabio Celoni, and Mirka Andolfo. Riverhead, $19 trade paper (132p) ISBN 978-1-59448-547-3
Seven years after the novel’s publication and four years after the release of a motion picture, a faithful though streamlined graphic novel adaptation of Hosseini’s bestseller appears. Amir was raised in privilege in Afghanistan, with Hassan, a member of the Hazara minority whose father is a servant in Amir’s house, as his constant companion. Amir’s jealousy over his father’s affection for Hassan leads to a betrayal that breaks up the friendship. Hassan and his father move away, Amir and his father escape from Afghanistan during the Soviet war, and the tie seems broken forever. But 15 years later, Amir, now living in San Francisco, receives a call that sends him back to Afghanistan and straight into the heart of the darkest part of his history. The characters are strong-featured (though Hassan’s cleft pallet, significant in the story, is all but invisible) and expressive, though murky coloring sometimes threatens to obscure linework. The art during Amir’s recounting of his Afghan childhood is bathed in warm colors, contrasting well with the gray, muted colors of Afghanistan during Taliban rule. In a conflict that we now know has no easy solutions, a happy ending, while welcome, feels like nothing more than wishful thinking. (Sept.)
Echoes
Joshua Hale Fialkov and Rashsan Ekedal. Image/Top Cow, $19.99 trade paper (144p) ISBN 978-1-60706-215-8
Rather than going for gross-out revulsion, this collected miniseries effectively evokes horror as its protagonist’s comfortable life unravels. Brian Cohn’s schizophrenia is safely under control as long as he takes his meds, until something his father murmurs on his deathbed leads the young man to discover a chest full of lovingly stitched dolls made from the bodies of murdered little girls. If his father was a serial killer, does it mean that Brian has inherited that compulsion genetically along with his mental disorder? Is he responsible for the disappearance of the little girl who caught his eye after he found the dolls? Why is the friendly but quietly insinuating policeman hanging around? As Brian tries to hold himself together, his mind recoils, flails about, and stumbles forward; Ekedal’s art communicates this distress with pages of panels that sometimes flow together but sometimes look like non sequitur crazy quilts. The book’s extensive afterward combines rough pencil layouts, along with script excerpts and Fialkov’s commentary, to explain how Echoes successfully creates its mood of gathering dread. (Sept.)
The Cabbie, Vol. 1
Marti. Fantagraphics, $19.99 (80p) ISBN 978-1-60699-450-4
Wearing its stylistic debt to Chester Gould’s classic Dick Tracy strips on its sleeve, this Spanish-produced series (which was originally printed in the ’80s) revels in a stark and sleazy noir aesthetic that drags the reader on a vicious trip through the scabrous underbelly of “the Big City.” After thwarting a would-be robber, the titular character brings him to the police and subsequently finds himself the focus of a revenge plot involving the criminal’s ultra-vile family, a scheme that also finds him robbed of his hidden inheritance. As the cabbie pursues his money, he’s caught up in a web of inbred shanty-dwellers, child prostitution, direct communiqués from disembodied Catholic saints, glue huffing, and even a reunion with his estranged prostitute sister. There’s a lot going on, too much to be fully resolved in a single volume, so the subsequent installments bear watching. An intriguing throwback to the days of heroes with worldviews defined in terms as rigidly black and white as the panels they battled their way through, this visual and thematic love letter to (and simultaneous critique of) Gould’s tropes is highly recommended for grownups with a taste for refreshingly lurid pulp fiction. (Sept.)
R
PS Magazine: The Best of Preventive Maintenance Monthly
Will Eisner, preface by Ann Eisner, selected by Eddie Campbell, intro by Peter J. Schoomaker. Abrams ComicArts, $21.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-8109-9748-6
For the first time, Will Eisner’s superlative work for the U.S. Army has been assembled into a single collection. The result shows the artist’s keen understanding of the educative power of graphic storytelling. From 1951 to 1971, between The Spirit and A Contract with God, Eisner produced PS Magazine for the army in order to teach the common soldier how best to use, maintain, repair, and requisition their equipment. From explaining how to load a truck correctly to why it won’t start, Eisner used a combination of humor, sound technical writing, and graphic storytelling to educate the soldiers. His magazines could be found at the front lines, in the officer’s mess, and in the quarters of senior military officials. It featured a cast of recurring characters like the loveable Joe Dope and the voluptuous Connie Rodd, who headlined featured segments like “Joe’s Dope Sheet” and the provocatively named “Connie Rodd’s Briefs.” With Eisner’s wonderful artwork and clarity of style making sometimes difficult concepts easy to understand, it’s no wonder PS Magazine was so popular with military personnel. A fascinating document for both fans of Eisner and military history buffs. (Sept.)
The Hidden
Richard Sala. Fantagraphics, $19.99 (134p) ISBN 978-1-60699-386-6
An unnamed man dreams of a monster. Moments later, the world ends in nightmarish fashion, and the man flees the remains of civilization to hide in a cave, all the while saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Thus begins this new book by cartoonist and illustrator Sala. When a couple named Colleen and Tom, survivors of the recent apocalypse, find him a week later, they wonder who this man is. Even as he leads them to shelter, it is clear the key to their future lies in his past. Sala structures the story of the world’s end as a series of gruesome anecdotes told by Colleen, Tom, and other human and inhuman survivors. The story is rarely surprising in its turns, but the fun of reading it comes less through the plot than through Sala’s imaginative illustrations. Sala’s work is like a fusion of Hergé and Charles Addams, yielding a simple, cartoon-like style that makes his moments of gothic horror all the more disturbing. At times, the simplicity of the illustrations creates stiffness where a scene requires motion, and can produce clunky progression between panels. Taken as a whole, however, this is a beautifully pulpy and incredibly imaginative book that gives a fresh spin on a well-used set-up. (Sept.)
Marzi: A Memoir
Marzena Sowa and Sylvain Savoia. DC/Vertigo, $17.99 (248p) ISBN 978-1-4012-2959-7
A collection of episodes from Sowa’s childhood form an engrossing picture of growing up in Communist Poland on the cusp of revolution. With the wide-eyed and skinny characterization of her child self (drawn by Belgian cartoonist Savoia), Sowa tells stories that evoke classic images of the Iron Curtain—long lines into sparsely stocked grocery stores, concrete apartment buildings, and factory smoke stacks—with a personal perspective. A sensitive and observant girl, Marzi is the perfect guide to her world as she tries to understand the workings of the Soviet-controlled state as well as the interactions of adults around her. Many of the panels are drawn from a child’s eye-level, fully pulling the reader into Marzi’s point of view. Marzi’s relationships with her father, an affable man whom she adores, and her mother, with whom she frequently clashes, are particularly well-developed and complex. Although each page has the same six-panel layout, the attractive cartooning, dialogue, and the quality of the narrative capture not only Marzi’s childhood but the story of Poland itself. Without being heavy-handed or sacrificing any of its singular charm, the book subtly invokes a comparison between the place of the children in society and that of the oppressed under authoritarian regimes. (Sept.)
Super Pro K.O.! Volume 2: Chaos in the Cage!
Jarrett Williams. Oni, $11.99 trade paper (152p) ISBN 978-1-934964-51-4
Wrestler Joe Somiano is having a hard time being patient; he wants the big career and the fan recognition now! He had a taste of success, but he didn’t break through overnight, and he’s uncertain what to do next. The advice he’s given, to forge his own path “and make an impact,” is sensible for both this field and that of making art (to which the reader can’t help drawing parallels), but following it is much more difficult than agreeing with it. Meanwhile, the bigger name wrestlers are battling in a steel cage match, and a new rival, Romeo Colossus, is astounding in his ego. Williams energetically captures the larger-than-life antics of wrestlers—modern superheroes with outsized images and exaggerated reactions. The subject matter and format make for a great combination, as the character’s signature moves are called out in huge special-effect lettering. The overstuffed panels are reminiscent of the glory days of Mad magazine, with gags and details in the dense backgrounds, while the simplified, cartoony style keeps the battles light and entertaining. Readers will finally get to see Joe get his chance in the promised Volume 3. (Nov.)
