comics
Isolation Resonates in Tomine’s Ode to Loneliness
Adrian Tomine’s talent in communicating the intimate, minute details of his life serves to make them universal, even more in these times of COVID-19
Collaboration Is Fruitful in Graphic Novel ‘Old Growth’
In their collaborative graphic fiction, Old Growth, Olivo and Bavarksy drew in tandem, trading the panels back and forth, each adding new details, both and neither taking the role of primary artist-writer.
French Comic Artist Blutch Makes an Experiment of ‘Mitchum’
The images in Blutch's Mitchum are technically cartoons, but the style is idiosyncratic, sometimes warping into full abstraction.
Classic Shōjo Today: Moto Hagio’s ‘The Poe Clan’
Moto Hagio's The Poe Clan manga series a gender-fluid melodrama marked by deep psychological trauma.
John Pham’s J&K – It’s a Matter of Perspective
In J&K, John Pham explores perspectives in the psychological sense. Like Picasso, he views things from more than one angle.
You Become the Watcher in Eric Haven’s ‘Cryptoid’
In his latest work, Cryptoid, Eric Haven takes an idiosyncratically weird approach to the horror genre of the Weird to produce a hybrid graphic novella that belongs to no genre but his own.
Nazism Repackaged? A Closer Look at the “Fascist Subtext” of ‘Attack on Titan’
Many fantasy writers have incorporated the visual footprint of the Third Reich into their fictional worlds. Few, however, have done so as extensively as the creator of Attack on Titan, who revisited this terrible chapter of history not to find inspiration for a fearsome antagonist, but to excavate the divisive ideas that lay buried there.
The Two Worlds of Graphic Novel Umma’s Table
Where fiction typically emphasizes plot, Yeon-Sik Hong's Umma's Table emphasizes a rich layering of events that creates the artful impression of memoir-like fiction.
A Boy, a Dog, a Gang of Peanuts, and the Meaning of Life
For all the Charlie Browns in the world, Library of America has published The Peanuts Papers: Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life.
‘Horizontal Collaboration’ Tackles Sexist Judgements on Women’s Lives in War-Time
Horizontal Collaboration, the superb French comic by Navie and Carole Maurel, reassesses the sexist biases of history.