I was initially drawn to the Japanese edition of Hirohiko Araki’s Manga in Theory and Practice because of the two dudes looking like they were about to kiss, on the cover. They looked like sophomore versions of the Joestar family Araki is best known for creating, and I thought this was a pretty major coup… Read more »
The My Pretty Vampire creator speaks on Kyoko Okazak, Dave Cooper, and Nabokov.
Feels bad, man.
Award-winning diary comics focusing on artist Glynnis Fawkes’ summer working on an excavation in Greece and then vacationing with her husband and two children.
Kabi Nagata’s My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness follows the painfully shy, socially anxious narrator Kabi through her first sexual encounter at age 28, for which she hires a female sex worker to meet her in a love (or short-stay) hotel. The book traces themes of emotional distancing in Kabi’s life, primarily her abstinence from most social interaction… Read more »
I should know what a Secret Acres book is by now.
Hopefully people who are too busy to even bother going on social media are completely unaware of my meltdown!
People talk about “perfect marriages between form and content” as an artistic ideal, but in non-art contexts, perfect marriages are rare. Most romantic relationships should not even aspire to marriage as their endgame. Two people can relate to each other in a way that is invigorating in the short term but unsustainable over time. Works… Read more »
Don’t lose your head: it’s just international comics.
The title page of Ghosts, Etc., the first comics collection from Philadelphia artist George Wylesol, presents readers with not an illustration but a photograph. We see what looks like a deserted office space, largely gray, with barren desks and empty drawers. The image resembles a cheap color copy or a printout from an early home… Read more »
Mimi Pond’s previous book, Over Easy, shows her fictionalized autobiographical self, Margaret, coming into her womanhood in the crude but charming Imperial diner. Her new book, The Customer is Always Wrong, picks up midstream in the Imperial’s day-to-day life where a now competent Margaret easily slides through the diner’s usual routine: sex, drugs, and coffee-slinging.… Read more »
The Black Hood: An Anthology of Depression and Anxiety is a frequently brutal but ultimately illuminating take on mental illness, something experienced by a number of artists. Editors Josh Bayer (who published the book) and Mike Freiheit (who designed it) did a remarkable job of finding a number of veteran cartoonists and younger talent willing… Read more »
Politics, crime, and jazz with the master cartoonist.
