Well, this was a long overdue read. My uncle gave this to me years ago; I read the first lesson (do not obey in advance) and got so bummed out (by all the people and institutions doing just that) that I set it aside for far too long until I couldn’t ignore the necessity of it any longer.
Timothy Snyder knows well that this is both a difficult read and a very important one, so he’s made it as accessible as possible. I have the graphic edition, illustrated by Nora Krug, who has previous written about reckoning with her German history. The graphic novel comes in at a tidy 120 pages, broken down even further into 20 clearly delineated lessons that run 2-4 pages each. I had assumed it was condensed from the original, but the original also turns out to be a well compressed little chapbook as well.
This book is a perfect example of the idea that it takes a real expert to write on a topic briefly and clearly. It is clear that decades of research have gone into this, and the reader gets the final fruit of all that labor, organized into these 20 practical lessons. This is not an academic or historical treatise; Snyder has done his best (which is better than most) to create a roadmap for readers to push back against the erosion of freedom and democracy.
Each lesson starts with a short explanatory paragraph, followed by more context. Snyder weaves in events and quotes throughout history, 1930s Germany of course, but also 1960s Soviet Union bloc and US slavery, among others; not in flagellation, but a push to really work to learn from the history available to us. Despite the temptation to just tear through it and get it read, I set myself the schedule of only one lesson a day, so that I had the time to really think through and internalize each one.
I almost skipped the Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival, held in the downtown branch of the Ann Arbor District Library, because I was tried and busy and distracted and when I went to double-check the time and location, the website was definitely geared towards families with young kids.
I’m really glad that I went though! There were probably about 50 artists’ booths and while the content was all family friendly (some of the artists had left some of their creations at home in order to keep the selection family friendly) there was still plenty of things that I found interesting. I forgot to come with a suitable amount of cash, but a number of the vendors did take credit cards, and I acquired a few more fascinating items.
100 Demons Dialogues by Lucy Bellwood This is a sweet little book that has some serious emotional impact, as Bellwood personifies her internal critic as a little demon that follows her around, and she refutes its arguments as she continues to work on her art. It’s remarkably inspiring.
to and fro by kat tuesday This is a short (24 pages) compilation of three of the author’s works, including Peek and Plover in Another Blasted Cave, and is just generally kind of adorable. In some ways it feels like the kind of sketch/doodle story that you might create when you’re bored in a meeting with only your note pad available, except that it’s both really well done and finished.
Click by Duncan Bryk This has some fascinating background world-building of some sort of magical-realism steampunk post-apocalyptic situation, except that it’s all through the point of view of a mouse that only explores within the one odd mansion and only interacts with the very strange caretaker of that mansion. The caretaker clearly knows more about the situation than the mouse, but the mouse is their only companion as well. The overall sense is a combination of intrigue and melancholy.
Resilience by Ari Coester This is a tiny zine (ie, an 8.5×11 paper folded to create an 8-page booklet) about the anti-bird spikes that corporations install in their signs and how the birds build their nests right on top of those spikes. Adorable!
What To Do by Jackalyn Fleming This is another tiny zine that consists of a flower wondering what it’s purpose in life is. Having bloomed, it wonders what’s next and asks the people around it. It turns out that the bee has opinions but the bird doesn’t care. It’s both hilarious and feels timely.
The Complete Works of Shakespeare in three panels each by Mya L. Gosling I’ve followed this artist’s work for years and was delighted to get a physical copy of some of her work. It’s hilarious, and also really well done. Just, taking each of Shakespeare’s plays and stripping them down to the bare minimum (and perhaps significantly beyond) of plot points. It feels a bit like poetry and a bit like a series of teasers.
Shubeik Lubeik written, illustrated, and translated by Deena Mohamed 2022
This graphic novel is amazing! I highly recommend it. It came to me as a second-hand recommendation with the suggestion to just go into it cold, with no expectations of what it is. Just know that it is brilliantly done and beautifully illustrated, award-winning, and anyone reading this should definitely give it a shot. That said, this is a book review blog, so I’m going to go into more (ie, some) detail, but am respecting the original recommendation enough to put those details under a cut.
It is all too easy to buy a whole bunch of really cool graphic novels from either Small Press Expo or Toronto Comic Arts Festival, be absolutely delighted with them all, and then go home and get distracted from actually reading them, in part because there are so many and where do I even start? (It turns out collecting books and reading books can be two separate hobbies!) But I don’t want to forget about these in my ever-growing to-read pile, and so here are another three graphic novels that I acquired, read, and enjoyed.
She Walks With The Giant by John V. Slavino 2022
This is a beautifully illustrated book with gorgeous vistas set in a post-apocalyptic world in a fantasy ancient Asia. The girl is an orphan in a ghost town who first sees the giant robot appear, and decides (much to the giant robot’s dismay) to follow along. The first part of the book is an exploration of the world as it is, while the second part is an exploration of the history that brought it to this point, where the giant came from, and how there’s no real escape from being part of that history.
Skip to the Fun Parts: A Guide to Cartoons and Complains about, the Creative Process by Dana Jeri Maier 2023
Admittedly I bought this with the expectation that this would be something of a guide to the creative process written by a published graphic novel writer/artist despite the clear strike-through of those exact words, and it’s decidedly not that, but I still found it remarkably reassuring and comforting, and also extremely funny and with a few good ideas thrown in. It felt comforting to see someone successful face some of the same issues I am with energy vs inspiration, and still persevering with good humor.
The Pineapples of Wrath by Catherine Lamontagne-Drolet 2018
A friend who wasn’t particularly interested in graphic novels was curious to try one out and asked for a recommendation, so we asked her what genres she generally read, since graphic novels come in all genres. At which point she asked for a cozy mystery and Anna and I were both stumped. Graphic novels do come in all genres… but that was a rare one! However, we persevered and found a cozy mystery graphic novel: The Pineapples of Wrath, which is hilarious and adorable and has quite the body count as Marie-Plum, bartender and mystery-reader, determines that her elderly neighbor was murdered and if the police won’t investigate, then she will! The setting is a fictional little-Hawaii neighborhood in Québec, Canada, and it is just as ridiculously touristy as you can imagine and maybe a bit more.
The Incredible Story of Cooking: from prehistory to today, 500,000 years of adventure written by Stéphane Douay drawn by Benoist Simmat translated by Montana Kane 2021, 2024
This is such a fabulous premise, and at first glance it looked well done, with good art and nine chapters creating an interesting outline about a truly fascinating topic. I was extremely pleased to acquire it at the last Small Press Expo. After reading it, though, my conclusion is that it was… decent. But it didn’t live up to the premise and that was ultimately disappointing. As a 200-page graphic novel covering 500 thousand years of global history, it was obviously always going to be a quick skim over the topics, but it often felt more like disjointed trivia rather than even a summary. There was some general overview and where there wasn’t, the trivia was still fascinating.
What really struck me, though, was that the authors don’t seem to appreciate or enjoy food. Given that it was about how people throughout history had developed all sorts of wild cuisines, it was weird and off-putting how the authors’ distaste for those cuisines came through so much stronger than the historical figures’ enjoyment of them. There was more focus on the politics of food distribution than there was on the development of the dishes, and the text was often felt both judgemental and mocking.
There were a number of basic recipes that were referenced in the text, but of course were very generalized in such a way that you couldn’t actually follow them, which makes sense for being embedded in the story. However, there’s also a section at the end that contains 22 recipes from around the world and throughout time, and they just aren’t good recipes. It’s not that the dishes aren’t good, but that the instructions are poorly written, with ingredients and processes skipped or listed out of order, and written in ways that introduce a lot of ambiguity. An experienced cook or baker could probably fill in the blanks, but they are clearly written by someone who doesn’t cook or know how to write directions for others to follow a process.
I don’t want to just slam this book, because it was interesting and well-illustrated, but it was such a great concept. Why couldn’t it have been better?
I love going to the Small Press Expo every year and seeing what new and unusual things are available and buying a whole stack of comics/graphic novels, and hanging out with a really fun crowd of creators. This was the first year that I attended some of the workshops in addition to the panels and vendor market, and they were so much fun and extremely inspiring. I bought a stack of new comics and have already read a number of them:
Garibaldiology: Japan Travelogue 1 by Garibaldi, 2014 This is an extremely cute little travelogue/drawn journal about the artist going on a trip to Japan, and is quite funny in a day-in-the-life manner about exploring a new place and meeting new people being a little gremlin. What particularly struck me is how non-judgemental, good or bad, it is in narration even as the person is judging the things around them. Their opinions are their personal opinions and not to be taken as anything greater than that. The over-all effect is just: wow, this is a thing that happened. And it’s just very cute.
Myths of Making: True Tales and Legends of Great Artists by Julien-G, 2024 The art is really striking restricted pallet of only three colors, that works to excellent effect, with retelling 25 stories and legends from pre-64,000 BCE, up to 2022. I really enjoyed both the art and the stories, but what really caught my eye was the book binding, which is beautifully done sewn pages onto a fabric spine with heavy board covers, such that a quite thick volume can be opened to lay flat without any concern for the gutters. I do have an appreciation for the artistry in bookbinding.
No Pants Revolution #8: Acceptance by Andrea Pearson, 2024 This is the eighth issue in a series for which I haven’t ready any of the preceding issues, but it’s okay because each one is a stand-alone auto-biographical collection of thoughts and experiences. In this particular issue, the author is contemplating acceptance as in a stage in grief, a prayer for serenity, and part of self-care.
I Got a Tattoo Every Month of 2023 and Now I’m Broke, by Clau, 2024 I got this at the same stall as No Pants Revolution, because it is very small accordion format zine and I liked the way the artist used a cartoon kewpie figure to show where the tattoos were located. It also seemed like a representation of how many people are struggling to get through the year, finding their own methods for motivation.
Body Issues: Comics About Body Image, art by Babs New, 2022 One of the workshops I went to at this small press expo was a life drawing (ie, nude model) class hosted by the artist/author of The Cadaver Diaries, which I’d bought and enjoyed last year, and modeled by Babs New, the non-binary artist for this book. This book is composed of short accounts by people talking about their struggles with feeling comfortable with their own body and societal perception, and illustrated by this artist. Each speaker has a little cartoon animal representative and then concludes with a simple line drawing of them in the nude, revealing the body they’ve been struggling with.
The Cycle by Jerel Dye, 2023 This is gorgeous little accordion book that is so beautifully crafted that I bought it without even really considering the story, but the art is lovely and the story is both simple and increasingly deep as I continue to think on it. I do love the use of gold foil on the cover. It’s drawn as a single scene in both the front and the back but it’s also a timelapse of events, scanning over a scene. The author makes excellent use of the different ways the book can be read.
Far Distant by A Liang Chan, 2023 This is a beautifully illustrated stand-alone short story graphic novel about a researcher stationed alone on a distant outpost in charge of managing some transmissions, but receives a series of transmissions that at first seem to simply be corrupted, but instead are a communication from something else entirely. This is a really excellent example of stories that require thought to tease out the implications rather than having everything be explicitly told, and I really enjoyed it. It also felt like a good companion piece with The Cycle, although they are completely unrelated.
Devil in the Pines by Natasha Tara Petrović This is a beautifully illustrated “short comic about the tragedy of the Jersey Devil“, which I hadn’t particularly known about before, but this is beautiful and tragic, and makes me sad for a little devil who’s own mother cursed it. It’s just 16 pages long, and feels like it sits in the middle ground between a comic book and a picture book. It’s just a little devil who was born that way, does no harm, and is lonely being it’s own unique self.
Coextinct by Edea Giang, 2024 This is just 12 pages in black and white, a short but direct manifesto about how extinction events are happening across all species, not just the cute and beautiful ones, and how important it is to not ignore the small and unsightly. It looks specifically at the louse that lived exclusively among the feathers of a single species of bird that was also going extinct. The rescue workers who successfully managed to pull the bird species back from the brink of extinction, were also the ones who killed the the last examples of the louse. There was no evidence it actually hurt the bird at all, merely that it lived among the feathers. And no one knows what the relationship was between the louse and the bird.
Black Box by Carlos Chua and Regina Chua, 2024 This is the first issue in a proposed comic book series, so it’s just setting the premise but the premise is both a delight and a horror: it’s a fantasy world based on magic, but it’s also a modern world with capitalism and stock exchange, and our main character is an oracle who’s feeling burnt out after years of running prophesies about how stocks will fluctuate, and finally quits after she prophesies a major disaster and her boss reams her out for not suppressing that in her report. It felt remarkably realistic.
2020 was HELL but the KPOP was good! by Kori Michele The first workshop I attended at small press expo was held by this author, about making extremely small zines, with simple folding techniques: teaching us how to make them and showing us examples of artists who had used them to good effect. This isn’t an example of those folding techniques, but is an example of her philosophical approach, which was to just make a zine as a way to give information to her friends and families: such as a playlist of the songs she was enjoying. The workshop was both fun and inspiring, and I got one of the authors larger books as well, but I haven’t read it yet. I also got this little zine, because it was a fun introduction to a music genre I’m not particularly into. I have since watched/listened to all the music videos, and it was a fun intro, even though it’s still not my music genre of choice. But it remains an inspiration of a fun way to create a modern mix-tape, leaving it to the reader to actually acquire the songs.
And, of course, these are just the relatively short comics that I’ve already read in the week since I got them. I have another stack of five larger and more extensive graphic novels that I need to read. But just, I do love the Small Press Expo and the whole range of people and creations that I see there.
I’ve been listening to the Jordan, Jesse, Go! podcast on MaximumFun lately (Jordan and Jesse are very funny and a little spicy), and Jordan Morris has just released his new graphic novel Youth Group. Set among a Christian church youth group, I wasn’t at all sure this was my sort of thing, but figured it couldn’t hurt to check it out from the library.
However, Morris treats everything with astonishing nuance and empathy, particularly for a story that revolves around said youth group exorcising the demons that are haunting the world. He truly captures the teenage spirit in a way that is incredibly rare, and had me laughing out loud multiple times. McCurdy’s art is also gorgeous, which goes a long way for me in a graphic novel.
There’s been lots of comparisons to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, understandably, and while it isn’t as similar as one would think with the topic, it captures a lot of the same feeling I had when I first watched Buffy way back when: utter delight! (It was really, really nice to revisit that feeling after the subsequent stories about Joss Whedon tainted it.) Youth Group takes the usually overly grimdark genre of religious horror and makes it light and funny and caring and surprisingly inclusive. And the art matches it perfectly, bright and colorful and just fun!
This is a new(ish) program on Netflix, which looks both intriguing and confusing. The graphic novel it is based on turns out to also be intriguing and confusing. It is set in London but over four different years: 1890, 1940, 2014, and 2050. Investigators of each time period are faced with the mysterious appearance a brutally murdered corpse with no identification. The thing is that it is the same corpse for all of them.
I don’t have great facial recognition in general, so was impressed that I was vaguely able to recognize the reoccurring corpse, even across the different art styles. Each year has its own artist, all significantly distinct and all quite good. The art complements the writing in capturing the cultural changes of each time period as well. All that to say, it is a beautifully done graphic novel, and I still have only the vaguest sense of what it is all about.
I think it is probably very British? It reminded me a bit of Watchmen and V For Vendetta in overall style, though Bodies is generally more optimistic. Each year is a time of upheaval for England, highlighting different threats, both internal and external, that England has faced. It ends in a very English-centric declaration that I assume might resonate more if I were English.
… I decided I should probably at least watch the first episode of the show so that I can give my two cents on that, fully expecting to be unenthusiastic, but the show is actually really good! It takes significant divergences from the source, but they mostly improve the suspense and pacing to my mind, as well as making the characters a little more nuanced, though I’m still only halfway through the series. Rebecca pointed out that the cinematography is so good that it surpassed the illustration for her.
The show also made a theme more explicit that I’d initially missed from the comic: that all four investigators from the various time periods are various degrees of acab, exerting their power over vulnerable characters, but they are also each from a discriminated population themselves, possibly using their borrowed authority to balance.
A friend asked me for a recommendation for a graphic novel to introduce her to the medium, which is always a fun challenge. She stumped me, though, when I asked her preferred genre, and she said ‘cozy mystery’! I would have previously thought that graphic novels covered pretty much all genres, but I couldn’t think of a single cozy mystery. I sent her Jason Little’s Shutterbug Follies, which I would classify as more of a quirky mystery than cozy (a fine distinction), while I did a deeper dive through my library stacks.
The Good Asian by Pornsak Pichetshote and Alexandre Tefenkgi
This is very much noir, and not cozy, but is also super interesting! Starting with him stuck in an immigration detainment camp, Edison Hark is a Chinese police officer working in San Francisco in 1936. Tracking down the missing Chinese maid of a millionaire family takes him through all levels of society. The author and artists capture classic noir perfectly in both narrative and style, and weave in an impressive amount of historical detail. My only complaint is a common one with graphic novels, that is was just too abridged. The characterizations and plot felt rushed to the point that I had some trouble keeping track of the investigation, which certainly blunts the suspense and reveals a bit. Even with the compression, volume 1 ends on a cliffhanger with no solution yet in sight.
I’ve been going to the Small Press Expo (SPX) for years, but last weekend was the first time I’ve managed to go to the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) and it was so much fun! We came in to Toronto on Friday and left on Monday so that we could attend the entirety of the event on Saturday and Sunday. I attended five presentations, browsed hundreds of vendor stalls, and bought 14 graphic novels. (And was tempted by a whole lot more!) I haven’t read all my new acquisitions yet, but most of the ones I have are also online so I can link out to them as well as brag about them:
Godslave by Meaghan Carter A nineteen-year-old college drop-out accidentally wakes up an ancient Egyptian god who looks a bit like a fennec fox (so cute!) and then gets drawn into the deadly family drama of the Egyptian pantheon. Who the good guys are is deeply in question. I bought the first two volumes, which comprise the first five chapters, but the online version has started the sixth chapter!
Baggage by Violet Kitchen This is an absolutely beautiful poem of a graphic novel, about packing for a trip, unpacking in a hotel room, and then repacking to depart again. It’s gorgeous in the way it uses both artwork and words to evoke emotions and communicate a sense memory. The imagery is very clean and crisp while the concept is very ethereal and dreamlike, and it works together perfectly.
The Closest Thing to Living by Ky K They only had the prologue of this story in hardcopy, but it drew me in and included a link to the online version for me to continue following and see what happened to the woman who wakes up from her murder, discovers she’s a vampire, and decides that this is the freedom she needed to be more true to herself. She’s very nihilistic and isn’t much interested in her own past, but it looks like despite being dead, she won’t be able to actually walk away.
Autumn Wing and the Crown of Fire, Volume 1: The Sword of Red Leaves by Brandon Hankins Gorgeous inkbrush artwork with a limited color palate that I really love. This first chapter is about a young nephilim, who’s trying to earn the right to go on a quest to forge a crown of fire, aka a halo, and come into his full power. It did a really good job of addressing what it means to be strong, especially when other people are yelling at you for both not giving in to them and for not being strong. I just bought the first volume, but five chapters are online!
Tales from the Sixth Sun by Dennis Moran Absolutely gorgeous artwork and a magical world that reminds me a bit of Wakanda, with mysticism and technology integrated, set in a fantasy world heavily influenced by Afrofuturism and Inca-futurism. The first half of the book is nearly word-less, and the art carries the storytelling so beautifully but also very tightly focused. The later part has more dialogue and introduces a much more complex society and history and plot. This book contains the first three chapters of the story, but the first six chapters are online!
I am extremely picky about the graphic novels I buy: I they need to have both beautiful artwork and interesting storylines, and all of these were wonderful finds. I’m really looking forward to making this festival an annual event.
Biblio-therapy 