This rollicking dark comedy from Lees (the Mountainhead series) and Cahoon brings Britain’s 1980s “video nasty” moral panic into the spotlight in a delightfully updated way. Shy Scottish teen Graeme “Thumper” Connell loves B-movie horror films so much that he seemingly conjures his favorite star, a masked slasher called Red Ennis, to be his imaginary friend. As Red follows Graeme through his young adult life, the narrative also tracks the rise of conservative activist Cynthia Crudgill, who sets out to destroy the media she believes is corrupting England’s youth. Graeme, along with his best-friend-in-scares Meera and a cast of fellow teenage “murder club” enthusiasts, sets out to save his favorite video store from closure by making their own “video nasty” to bring in crowds. But after a rare, cursed tape breaks in the video player, Red starts to become gradually more real—and Graeme must reckon with greater threats than losing his favorite hobby. With wry art that alternate betweens goofy and gory, the narrative dips slyly into the politics of censorship, and celebrates the passionate community that comes from rebelling against it. The result is a perfect blend of history, heart, and kitsch. (May)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this gentle and accessible portrayal of a mental health crisis, Adriansen (Nina Simone in Comics) and Mathou draw on their experiences as mothers to tell the fictionalized story of Marietta, who becomes clinically depressed during the final trimester of her pregnancy. Though she’s eager to have a baby with her partner Chuck, Marietta finds pregnancy a cycle of “patience and pain.” After giving birth, she struggles to bond with baby Zoe, has trouble breastfeeding, and descends into despondency, anxiety, and loneliness. “I can’t be present for both her and me,” she thinks. “That’s asking too much.” Chuck, who has two children from a previous relationship, is a skilled and supportive parent, leading Marietta to reflect that he has more maternal instinct than she does. She fantasizes about having a cheerful, flawless “proxy mom” to take over for her. Gradually, she develops a connection with her daughter and begins to feel more confident in her parenting. The brightly colored, gently rounded cartoon artwork, full of well-observed drawings of infant care, provides an upbeat counterbalance to Marietta’s dark nights of the soul. New parents who need to hear that they aren’t alone will find reassurance in this candid tale. (June)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

Sturges (Girl Haven) and Garing deliver juicy pulp thrills in this queer paranormal murder mystery. “To me, ghosts are evidence,” forensic psychologist Joy Ravenna explains as she searches crime scenes for spectral witnesses. She butts heads with her ex-wife, a police officer who left when Joy came out as trans, but finds support from her girlfriend, Cat. Then Joy gets tangled up in the haunted history of Haskell House, a mansion built with a firearms fortune that contains decades of dark family secrets. When one of her friends is arrested for a murder that may have been committed by a ghost, Joy communes with the house’s spirits to unearth the truth. Garing’s no-nonsense art, reminiscent of old newspaper soap-opera strips, starts out stiff but finds its rhythm as the story unfolds. The queer community Joy inhabits provides a vivid, authentic-feeling backdrop, and her trans identity adds an extra dimension to her determination to probe the wrongs of the past for the sake of those living in the present. Sturges hits all the standard pleasures of crime fiction: mystery, action, steamy sex scenes, and showdowns with scheming villains. Though the story wraps up in one volume, readers may wish for a sequel. This soars. Dara Hyde, Hill Nadel Literary. (June)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this potent graphic novel, cartoonist Sciacchitano (The Army of Dr. Moreau) unpacks his father’s war stories. After signing up for the Air Force in 1965, college dropout David Sciacchitano was sent to Vietnam, where he witnessed enough horrors—Viet Cong prisoners left to die in the sun, U.S. advisers tortured and executed—to cause nightmares that he half-jokes are so constant “you almost miss them when they don’t show up.” Sciacchitano takes an open, curious approach to digging into the origins of his father’s rage, which his dad insists is not PTSD (“Enough of this Oliver Stone shit,” David snaps at Carl’s mother). Unlike many children of Vietnam veterans, Sciacchitano heard plenty (“It’s hard to remember a weekend with my dad that didn’t revolve around bowls of pho and war stories,” he writes), but the narrative is still structured as an investigation, with Sciacchitano interviewing David, conducting research, and reconstructing his father’s memories. Subtly sketched, with pops of emotive rawness in dialogue and evocative drawings, the book elegantly braids David’s professional arc (military, Foreign Service, war victims’ NGO work) with his psychological journey. The result is a complex and empathetic portrait of war and its consequences. Agent: Anjali Singh, Anjali Singh Agency. (June)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

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