A Mythical Memoir that Draws the Undrawable: ‘Passing for Human’
Liana Finck dazzles with her minimalist lines, which include the simple grids of her panels and gutters. Her plot is an artist's plot, a kind of mystery or vision quest.
Chris Gavaler
Chris Gavaler is an associate professor of English at Washington and Lee University. His books include On the Origin of Superheroes (Iowa 2015), Superhero Comics (Bloomsbury 2017), Superhero Thought Experiments co-authored with Nathaniel Goldberg (Iowa 2019), and Creating Comics co-authored with Leigh Ann Beavers (Bloomsbury forthcoming 2020). He is the comics editor at Shenandoah magazine, and he blogs weekly at thepatronsaintofsuperheroes.wordpress.com.
‘Art Comic’ Is a Comedic Comic of Artful Artlessness
Matthew Thurber's Art Comic lampoons the art world by wallowing in its shallowest waters.
The Future Is Female in Aminder Dhaliwal’s ‘Woman World’
Aminder Dhaliwal draws a world without men in her pleasantly post-apocalyptic, not-so-dystopic story of a future, Woman World
‘Coyote Doggirl’ Reveals Unexpected Life Under Familiar Western Terrain
Lisa Hanawalt's work is proof that even a genre as seemingly played-out as the western can reveal a rich landscape if the right hands are holding the reins.
‘The Instinct for Cooperation’ Breaks Through the Boundaries of the Graphic Novel
Jeffrey Wilson breaks new ground, adding "graphic interview" to the expanding categories of nonfiction comics and introducing Chomsky and his political thoughts to a new audience of readers.
‘Red Winter’ Weathers the Heartbreaks of Communism
Swedish graphic novelist Anneli Furmar paints a bright window into a gray corner of political history.
On Marguerite Dabaie’s Graphic Memoir of Growing Up Palestinian in the US
In The Hookah Girl, Dabaie' portrays herself and her family in an evolving array of styles that creates an underlying instability to her micro-narratives.
Stage to Comics Page: George O’Connor’s Adaptation of Adam Rapp’s Dystopic Play, ‘Ball Peen Hammer’
Adam Rapp's characters have to kill and bag children to earn their keep. How does one depict that on stage and on page?
Michael Comeau’s Winter’s Cosmos Explores the Fringes of the Comics Universe
If Winter's Cosmos is Comeau's Alpha Centauri, I look forward to what fruits his new planets will bear next.
Renée French’s ‘H Day’ Is a Surreal Exploration of Narrative Ambiguity—or Maybe Not
While migraines are known for their staggering (if temporary) disabling of the sufferer, some artists, like French, fearlessly explore the fantastical element of the migraine experience.