This understated horror comic by Erman (Mariko Between Worlds) and artist Beck (Verse) finds terror in teenage suburban ennui. Sloane and her friends are high schoolers in what appears to be a typical Midwestern town. It gradually becomes clear, however, that the town of Loving is run by the Chorus, a new-agey cult whose beliefs range from past-life regression to the dangers of fluoride. The kids regard their parents’ fanaticism with adolescent skepticism: “All religions are cults. Ours is just a little dumber than the rest,” Sloane says. But after her boyfriend dies by suicide, she digs deeper. The Chorus, she finds, may be behind the disappearances of local teens—and the arrival of a twisty-limbed supernatural figure called “the man in the afternoon.” The trope of surrealistic nightmares lurking under the surface of a small town brings to mind the work of Charles Burns, but Beck verges from that template with crisp art, tinted in muted palettes, that emphasizes the mundane side of Loving, into which monstrosity unpredictably erupts. The story avoids tidy answers to its mysteries, allowing fear to lurk in unresolved questions. Fans of cerebral horror should take note. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

Growing up in Tampa, Fla., in the 1990s, artist Richter heard his Holocaust-survivor grandparents’ stories as “dispatches from an inverted world on fire.” Though he could “scarcely relate” to those accounts, the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting ignited an obsession with his Jewish identity and family history, the result of which is this provocative graphic memoir debut. Both of his German grandfathers wrote memoirs, sections of which Richer excerpts and illustrates with scribble-shadowed sketches and historical photos. After incarceration in Dachau, Richter’s maternal grandpa makes his way to the U.S. and joins the military, experiencing an eerie role reversal when he arrives at a newly liberated Dachau and encounters surrendered Nazis. On a visit to Auschwitz, Richter is unnerved by such touristy trappings as collectible postcards for sale at the gift shop. But on trips to Germany, he is both impressed and uncomfortable with the country’s efforts at remembrance and reconciliation. Reflecting on the injustices and hyperpartisanship of the Trump era, Richter considers “how my relatives in Germany were able to ignore the writing on the wall... until they couldn’t.” The art is a mixture of scratchy, urgent drawings and collage. By turns funny and horrifying, it adds up to a telling study of how the past informs the present. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

A thirteen-year-old scavenges for food among the ruins of a dying city on a distant planet, trying to keep herself and her pregnant mother alive, in this transcendent graphic novel from cartoonist Jock (the Batman series). When a planned heist on the fleet’s flagship spaceship goes awry thanks to saboteurs (“sabs”), Abi is trapped on board. Speeding away from her mother and her planet, she hides within the immense ship’s innards for months that stretch into years. Hunted by the ship’s security force, the sabs, and the captain, she also must evade a virus-like “Entity” gradually corroding the ship and zombifying the passengers. Jock’s trademark gritty, realistic art style humanizes the space opera elements, with inventive page layouts that energize kinetic action sequences and mimic the labyrinth of the ship’s interiors. Large panels and double-page spreads impart an epic, wide-screen feel as the narrative pits a young girl against the vast and endless emptiness of space. It’s a whip-smart adventure that barrels along at warp speed. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

Sifting through a kaleidoscope of memories and emotions, Leavitt (Tangles) presents a haunting comics diary of her grief following the death of her longtime partner, Donimo, in 2020. After suffering years of constant, severe pain due to many chronic conditions, Donimo chose to end her life with medical assistance at age 54. “After she died,” a bereft Leavitt writes, “I continued living, which surprised me.” The earliest pages feature inchoate thoughts and unfinished questions (“How did she”; “How did we”) and inky lines. Over the following months, Leavitt pours out her heartbreak and anger—with occasional glimmers of hope bubbling up (“I’ve been grateful for the quiet”). Two years on, she moves to contextualize Donimo’s death: “Both of us began our solitary journeys to lands neither of us knew about.” Leavitt’s drawings depict her emotional upheaval with poetic grace, in imagery ranging from abstract black-and-white to warm colors and recognizable figures during moments of serenity and acceptance. This unflinching chronicle offers readers who have experienced loss a sense of catharsis and solace. Agent: Samantha Haywood, Transatlantic. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

Painter and underground cartoonist Colwell (Inner City Romance) turns the commissioning of The Garden of Earthly Delights in late 15th-century Netherlands into an epochal struggle between faith and doubt, superstition and reason. Colwell’s surprisingly philosophical graphic narrative, which he describes as “mildly plausible and fact based,” follows the tumult that starts when “humble and pious” religious painter Jeroen van Aken, aka Hieronymus Bosch, is hired by royals to create a large-scale erotic painting. Jeroen resists, nervous about scandal and heresy. But the money is good—so like many artists before and since, he rationalizes. Jeroen’s concept for what becomes his masterpiece is that the fall of man never happened. “I can give them naked beautiful people enjoying life,” he reasons, if there was no original sin. Colwell details Jeroen’s attempts to “amuse my dukes without arousing the Inquisitors” by having the characters speak aloud their every thought. It’s an occasionally awkward conceit but one that fits well with the formally posed character drawings, which echo the stiff-limbed painting style of the time. Colwell’s artwork is to-the-point, except for one lavishly drawn sequence where Jeroen’s walk in the woods turns into a nightmarish cavalcade of Boschian creatures vocalizing his internal debate over artistic and religious integrity. The result is a thought-provoking venture into a time when art had life-or-death consequences. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

Orlando (Scarlet Witch) teams up with Italian cartoonist Giopota for a giddy mashup of sci-fi adventure and queer romance. The story opens in 1907 on heroes Malcolm, who has just invented a time machine he calls the “Chrono Corridor,” and his lover John, a hunky professional boxer. When a homophobic detective attempts to arrest them for “public safety” violations (“You smell like sex, and not a woman in sight”), they flee in the time machine, landing in Hollywood circa 1954—only to find they’re being pursued, across time, by an organization called The Pilgrims that has been persecuting gay people throughout history (”You grow like weeds in every age, but weeds can be plucked,” one member taunts, before John punches him in the face). When the pair journey back to the year 307, they befriend fabled Roman lovers Sergius and Bacchus for more adventures and erotic exploits. While Orlando earnestly addresses the victimization of gay people throughout the ages, he also offers up plenty of fight scenes and several tasteful and semi-explicit sexual encounters, ably depicted in bouncy art by Giopota. This is slick comics storytelling and lots of fun. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

A teen held hostage in the trunk of a pot-smoking investigator’s car kicks off the latest haunting noir from Brubaker and Phillips (the Reckless series). Natalie Burns’s job entails removing indoctrinated kids from cults and returning them to their parents. She knows all too well how easy it is to believe lies—when she was a kid in the 1980s, she got caught up in the satanic panic and testified against her summer camp counselors. Having spent her life wrestling with vague memories of a predatory cult that she now believes to be false, Natalie is approached by a rogue FBI agent, who offers to get the criminal charges against her droppped (she kidnapped that last teen while using a fake ID) if she helps him dig into a series of murders involving her fellow accusers, known as the “Satanic Six.” But when trauma rears its ugly head and an old friend turns up dead, even the people closest to Natalie may prove to be devils in disguise. Speckled with vibrant color, bold sequencing, and carefully crafted splash pages, this dive into the underbelly of the satanic panic moves at a rapid-fire pace while sticking to the atmospheric formula Brubaker and Phillips are known for. It’s a spine-tingling addition to their oeuvre. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

Tsuge (Nejishiki) is at the top of his game in this dazzling collection from the 1970s, which finds the underground manga legend moving from nightmare surrealism to semi-autobiographical pieces that draw horror from unflinching realism. The title story is a highlight, set at a decaying factory where employees waste away from lung poisoning while processing shrapnel for American bombs. Tsuge mocks his own penchant for grimness in “Realism Inn,” in which he visits a run-down rural hotel for inspiration (“People will love it! I’ll ride this domestic tourism boom yet!”) but is upset to find it isn’t gritty in a picturesque way. “Yoshio’s Youth” follows a young artist as he finds work in the disreputable end of the manga industry and is taken under the wing of a fast-talking manga creator. By this point in his career, Tsuge had refined his off-kilter indie art into a clear and evocatively detailed style. His depictions of poor and working-class life have the force of lived experience, and his stories about the early manga industry evoke an intriguingly seedy world of con artists and fly-by-night operations. By turns bluntly honest and slyly self-referential, this is an essential work of alternative manga and 20th-century Japanese literature. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

Drawing on the mythology and oral storytelling traditions of her Guyanese childhood, Douglas (the Titan series) teams up with cartoonist Gan for a potent yet tangled supernatural tale. Young Peter gets bitten at bedtime by a spider, setting off a chain of events that leads to his mother sacrificing her life to save him from Ol’ Higue, a malevolent force hell-bent on killing Peter to fulfill a mysterious prophecy. He then falls into a dreamlike space where he’s given a magic wood staff—and cryptic advice—from the trickster god Anansi. Peter sets out to find Grace “Silk Cotton,” the Churlie Queen—a demigoddess and matriarch of those who die in childbirth, who sports a crop top that says “A** Kicker” and may be the only one who can save Peter from his fate. The artwork brims with rich colors and expressive linework, but the pacing stumbles, as the story races and then slows unexpectedly. At each odd turn, a confused Peter is told he’ll learn more with time. Unfortunately, readers are likely to lose focus before they can unpick this knotty narrative. (July)

Reviewed on 07/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Batman series regular Murphy delivers a fun, flamboyant update to the legend of Zorro. In modern-day La Vega, drug cartel kingpin El Rojo publicly murders Antonio de la Vega—who happens to be cosplaying as Zorro at a Day of the Dead festival—despite having forbidden such a killing for fear it might inspire locals to stop growing heroin for him. The murder is witnessed by Antonio’s young son, Diego, who is named after Zorro’s civilian identity. Flash forward 20 years, and a traumatized Diego has come to believe he is, in fact, the original Zorro, much to the annoyance of his wisecracking sister, Rosa. Charming and fearless, this nuevo Zorro gets confused by modern machine guns and cars, but the townspeople rally around him to form a “Fighting Legion.” The whip-fast, action-packed narrative leads to a climatic duel between El Rojo and Zorro (aka Diego), with the latter’s old-fashioned creed resounding: one man can inspire many to stand up against injustice. Murphy draws his dashing tale with cinematic flair and bold splash pages. This is swashbuckling adventure at its sharpest. (July)

Reviewed on 07/26/2024 | Details & Permalink