'Magritte: This Is Not a Biography' Is Playful in Its Visual Riffs
This tribute to surrealist painter Rene Magritte reveals more about the comics form than the artist.
16 Mar 2018
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'Yellow Negroes' Draws the Plight of Undocumented Lives
The liminal state between immigrant and citizen becomes the permanent experience of undocumented people.
23 Feb 2018
'Blue Is the Warmest Color' Is Better As a Comic
Julie Mahor's hand is deft in so many ways, producing a visually and emotionally complex tale of coming-of-age love uniquely grounded in the comics form.
19 Jan 2018
Graphic Novel 'I, Parrot' Presents a Children's World Inhabited by Grown-ups
Although Unferth's family-oriented plot and Haidle's style sometimes evoke children's illustrated books, this is for grown-ups—and the intentionally simplistic rendering is more than surface details.
22 Dec 2017
'Black Dog: the Dreams of Paul Nash' Gives Chaotic Reality to the Dreamscapes of a War-haunted Painter
While no imitator, Dave McKean shares kindred tastes with Nash and creates a fictionalized memoir and dream journal of Nash's WWI experiences.
04 Dec 2017
Paul Madonna's 'On to the Next Dream' Sketches out a Rapidly Changing San Francisco
Progress -- that is, gentrification -- marches on in San Francisco, for better and for worse, in this fantastical narrative from the creator of All Over Coffee.
06 Apr 2017
A Kick Ass/Kick Arse Depiction of the Stylish Mods in '60s England
Jim McCarthy and Kevin Cross, writers and graphics artists from either side of the Atlantic, join forces to create a candid tale of the Mod scene.
04 Oct 2016
Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie
The new Agatha Christie biography is a graphic novel in form but a mere flipbook in narrative.
28 Jul 2016
Back to the Drawing Board With 'Flash Gordon Volume 4: The Storm Queen of Valkir'
At first, Austin Briggs’ work feels like a simplified version of Alex Raymond’s, the boldness of the characters’ figures and poses replaced by understated charm.
22 Dec 2015
The Dark Knight Is Finally Defeated by 'Batman: Night of the Owls'
“Night of the Owls” is bad in almost every conceivable way. It’s derivative, thoughtless, and boring, a by-the-numbers crossover in which the same story is told over and over again until the last page.
15 Apr 2013
Menace and Meh: Patrick McEown's 'Hair Shirt'
Patrick McEown excels at creating the rich imagery of nightmares and memory, but the waking relationships between the characters is tedious.
02 Apr 2013
Brian Fies Gives Us a Vision of the Future Past In 'Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?'
Spanning a timeline between the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City and the final Apollo mission in 1975, Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? is a baffling, puzzling story that plays fast and loose with temporality.
03 Sep 2012
Demented, Hilarious, Disturbing: 'Ed the Happy Clown'
Almost nothing is wasted here, as ideas and characters from the earliest strips find their way into Ed’s tangled world.
20 Aug 2012
Alison Bechdel's 'Are You My Mother?' Reveals a Graphic, Independent Mind
Like her previous memoir about her father -- the acclaimed and prismatic Fun Home -- Are You My Mother? blends textbook academia, beautifully emotive drawings, and generous confessions to find some familial recovery after years of discord.
07 May 2012
'Dante's Divine Comedy', from a Left-Handed Designer
Noted graphic designer Seymour Chwast takes Dante seriously, but not solemnly.
10 Nov 2010
'Howl: A Graphic Novel' Wails Brilliantly Into the 21st Century
Eric Drooker expands his artistic interpretation of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl", as featured in Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's feature film of the same name, resulting in an inspired graphic interpretation of the influential poem
14 Oct 2010
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