Big Mushy Happy Lump: A Sarah’s Scribbles Collection
Sarah Andersen. Andrews McMeel, $14.99 trade paper (128p) ISBN 978-1-4494-7961-9
In this second collection of her popular Sarah’s Scribbles strips, Andersen treads familiar ground: the ravages of the menstrual cycle, the glee and comfort of love, the sting of social anxiety. But beneath the humor, there is heartfelt honesty about making one’s unsteady way through life. Succinct, easily disseminated odes to the quotidian struggles of millennial life are common in cartooning, but Andersen has perfected—and, in fact, elevated—this form. Andersen tempers her observations with silliness, but they are never less than astute; she is particularly sharp when skewering the absurd beauty standards modern women must navigate. Here is work that has been sharpened to a fine point: smart, warm, cutting, and clever. This volume is a witty comfort from beginning to end. (Mar.)
Surgeon X: The Path of Most Resistance
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Sara Kenney and John Watkiss. Image, $14.99 trade paper (208p) ISBN 978-1-5343-0154-2
Costumed crime-fighting goes medical in this thriller based on anxiety over epidemics. What’s really needed in 2036 London, where pandemics run wild and medical assistance has been abolished, is a masked maverick doctor. Choosing the Hippocratic Oath over the new anti-medicine laws, Rosa Scott operates an illegal surgery in her basement, using a vigilante identity to save those who have been abandoned by the government. It’s an innovative concept, but the initial setup and worldbuilding are clunky. The story raises valid, if exaggerated, questions about the future of healthcare and antibiotic resistance, and the science appears to be solid. (Kenney thanks a large number of surgeons and scientists for fact-checking her work.) The art by Watkiss (Sandman Mystery Theater), in his final work before his death, is a highlight; the story’s quick shifts from scenes of vibrant upper-class elite to shadowed, subdued grimy streets benefit from strong anatomy and understated expression and movement. Though this tries hard to be V for Vendetta for the national healthcare debate, it’s a fairly pedestrian origin story that just substitutes a medical kit for a utility belt. (May)
Delicious in Dungeon, Vol. 1
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Ryoko Kui, trans. from the Japanese by Taylor Engel. Yen, $15 trade paper (192p) ISBN 978-0-316-47185-5
Kui kicks off a surprisingly charming and tasty treat of a manga series in which any danger can be eaten. Deep in a dungeon within a cursed kingdom hidden underground, leader Laios and his intrepid troop escape from a dragon but leave his sister behind—in the dragon’s belly. Fortunately, video game tropes apply in this world, and there is time to rescue her before her “final” death. Short on coin and provisions, honorable and single-minded Laios, neurotic magic user Marcille, and cunning thief Chilchuck decide to survive by eating monsters on their way back and are joined by the dwarf Senshi, a veritable monster gourmand. Huge scorpion and walking mushroom hot pot, roast basilisk, and mandrake kakiage and big bat tempura are only some of the imaginative recipes in this combination of role-playing adventure, bestiary, and cookbook (complete with a nutritional chart for each meal). The characters and plot are lightweight and breezy, and the artwork is humorous, creative, and expressive, making for a tasty ongoing series. (May)
Moonshine, Vol. 1
Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso. Image, $9.99 trade paper (144p) ISBN 978-1-5343-0064-4
This Prohibition-era clash between New York mobsters and moonshiners from West Virginia is soaked in equal measures of hooch and blood. Long-time collaborators Azzarello and Risso (100 Bullets) reunite with panache for the story of a negotiation gone wrong and the violent consequences thereof. It is 1929 and “Handsome” Lou Pirlo has been given his first real assignment by his boss, Joe Masseria: go down to West Virginia and get the producer of some wonderful moonshine to supply Joe’s organization. Hiram Holt, the bootlegger in question, isn’t interested in a partnership, though, and he and his family try to send Lou on his way. Lou is enamored of the liquor and Hiram’s foster daughter, Tempest, and doesn’t want to suffer the consequences of failure, so he stays in the mountains. Joe sends reinforcements who turn the failed business deal into an extended gun battle. Lou also discovers that something savage lurks in the mountain woods, and the tale takes an unexpected turn. Risso’s superb art relies on shadow and silhouette for drama, recalling newspaper strips of old such as Little Orphan Annie. It’s a brilliantly told riff on the gangster tale. (May)
Hubert
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Ben Gijsemans, trans. from the Dutch by Julia Blackburn. Random House U.K., $29.95 (88p) ISBN 978-0-224-10146-2
One man escapes from the mundane into a museum in this sumptuous volume. Hubert lives a simple, solitary life: he eats alone, he travels alone, and he paints alone. His joy and obsession is visiting an art museum, where he is free to lose himself in the glory and sensuality of its many female nudes. Such feminine beauty eludes him elsewhere, however, as personified by his distant, beautiful neighbor, whom he sees when she leans out her window to water her plants. Gijsemans is an artist of towering talent, and he captures Hubert’s life in all its loneliness with a delicacy of line and a mastery of pacing that is nearly unseen in debut comics. But the well-worn clichés that prop up the story (a lonely, middle-aged man drawn to a luminous young woman whose every appearance symbolizes vibrancy and happiness) weigh down the book. One hopes that Gijsemans will apply his considerable talents to more innovative stories in the future. (June)
Romulus, Vol. 1
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ryan Hill and Nelson Blake II. mage, $16.99 trade paper (128p) ISBN 978-1-5343-0101-6
This middling series opener by Hill (Postal) and Blake (Magdalena) pits Ash, a young woman raised as a weapon, against the organization Romulus, her former employers and secret masters of the world. Although Ash is one of a number of women trained to fight and kill for Romulus, the organization suddenly turns on them. When the pharmaceutically amped hunters kill Axis, Ash’s mother, Ash is left to fight Romulus alone, attempting to thwart the hunters by rescuing their targets. After she saves the life of brainy sidekick Nicholas Franklin, Ash is psychically contacted by a representative of the foes of Romulus, the Illuminati. Unfortunately, the Illuminati remain offstage, leaving the readers guessing as to why Ash should choose to ally herself with them. Ash consistently fails to control her anger while fighting and Nicholas has little backbone, rendering them minimally effective. Blake uses an appropriately subdued palette but his figures and action are a bit stiff. This series needs fleshing out in future volumes to make the story more gripping. (July)
The Ladies-in-Waiting
Santiago Garcia and Javier Olivares, trans. from the Spanish by Erica Mena. Fantagraphics, $24.99 (192p) ISBN 978-1-68396-012-6
Art is a pathway, a passion, and perdition in this inventive work (originally published in Spain), which examines Diego Velázquez’s famed painting Las Meninas. This is a kaleidoscope of a book that leaps back and forth through time, embracing multiple points of view and playing cheekily with comics history itself—numerous chapters flirt with pulp fiction–style iconography. Velazquez himself appears, naturally, and so do Michel Foucault, Pablo Picasso, Raphael, and more—drawn together, across time and space, by the pursuit of art. In this, the book mirrors Las Meninas itself, famous for its interplay between viewer and subject, reality and unreality. The result is a fascinating jigsaw puzzle of a narrative. The book’s rough, woodcutesque shadows slash through muted shades of mustard, cerulean, and sage; its wordplay jumps from frivolous to somber within a single page. It’s a joyful investigation of art and all that it means—and, simultaneously, a luminous work of art in its own right. (Aug.)
The Story of Sex
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Philippe Brenot and Laetitia Coryn, trans. from the French by Will McMorran. Black Dog & Leventhal, $27.99 (208p) ISBN 978-0-316-47222-7
Sexologist and psychiatrist Brenot partners with comics artist Coryn for a literally graphic history of sexuality, love, and gender politics that plays far too loosely with the truth. Coryn’s simple and evocative cartooning recalls Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History series, and her lively style invites the reader to more readily absorb Brenot’s academic yet passionate verbosity. Brenot’s narrative framework, in which fictionalized events are introduced alongside real history to explain the evolution of human cultures, is hindered by a number of missteps; not least of these is the lack of a bibliography and the spreading of suspect apocrypha, and his insertion of original characters into historical events is baffling as well. Brenot spares time to mention the myth of Hermaphroditus, he ignores the presence of transgender people in history, offering only a brief definition of gender identity (and one shockingly inaccurate statistic about it) at the very end. Although Coryn’s work is undeniably entertaining, Brenot’s strange fumbles considerably reduce the merit of the book. (Sept.)
At War with War: 5,000 Years of Conquests, Invasions, and Terrorist Attacks; An Illustrated Timeline
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Seymour Chwast. Seven Stories, $19.95 paperback (88p) ISBN 978-1-60980-779-5
Legendary designer Chwast takes a break from graphic adaptations of classics (The Canterbury Tales, Dante’s Divine Comedy) for this a sweeping chronology of the history of war. This volume’s antiwar message gets lost as its content amounts to a crib sheet of historical events and their dates of occurrence, with no explanation of the cited conflicts. Bolstered by an occasional historical essay or bits of commentary from the likes of Sun Tsu, Desiderius Erasmus, and Randolph Bourne, this effort renders a juggernaut of a subject into a bare-bones list, accented by Chwast’s starkly expressionist illustrations of soldiers and scenes of war. As a numbing statement on humanity’s obsession with conflict, the book succeeds, but it’s not for history buffs. (Sept.)
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