PositiveThe Comics JournalFor nonfiction, Brown is refreshingly on the more cartoony end of the spectrum. He’s not afraid to draw motion lines or lightning bolts of shock or pain. It’s not his first rodeo—he knows to mix up his compositions to keep it interesting for the reader ... Brown deftly lays out marijuana’s historical contributions towards many contemporary societal ills, from mandatory minimums to the demonization of the \'inner city.\' The narrative can be a little too reductive at times ... The book is a welcome addition to the contemporary conversation about marijuana’s role in society. My one real complaint is where the book ends. After bringing the history up to California’s legalisation of medical marijuana in 1996, Brown quickly winds down with a five page closing argument that shies away from addressing contemporary laws and policies.
Lucy Knisley
RaveThe Comics JournalWhile it’s still accurate to describe Knisley as a memoirist, I now think that a different label makes much more sense, especially with Kid Gloves and her previous book, Something New: Tales From a Makeshift Bride. Knisley is an essayist. Like Joan Didion and Roxane Gay, Knisley often works towards a thesis and richly illustrates it with examples from her own life. And Knisley illustrates her essays in every sense. Knisley has always communicated directly with the reader through narration boxes, rarely telling the story through scenes and dialogue. The word bubbles spoken by Lucy the character serve as a second layer of commentary ... The rich emotional range she displays in her comics, as well as the realistic but simple clear-line cartooning, remind me of Kate Beaton and Carol Tyler. Knisley has always had a real aptitude for drawing people. In Kid Gloves, she reaches new heights of visual metaphor ... extremely personal, but Knisley has been preparing to be this vulnerable for nearly two decades ... a good read, full of pieces that work on their own while telling the story of Knisley’s pregnancy. It may be prone to tangents, but it’s very likely to have a real impact on readers.
Brian Fies
MixedThe Comics Journal... full of raw immediacy ... deft cartooning and vulnerable storytelling ... I found the contrast between the grays and the loud, striped accent colors to be distracting and somewhat ineffective. However, Fies’ experience as an artist is evident in the top-notch compositions and facial expressions throughout ... The book’s chronology bounces around a little, but its scenes, where continuous action tells the story, are its best moments. The sequence where Fies first returns to his burned-down neighborhood, feels as powerful as it does in the original webcomic. Similarly, the scene where his family, clad in protective gear, sifts through the charred remains of the house is emotionally potent and well-told. There are several parts that moved me to tears, as you might expect from a narrative about a family in extremis ... while the book is quite a document of Fies’ experience and a good read in the process, I wonder if it accomplishes its own goals ... The book is about 90% personal narrative with little outside context. Fies’ most straightforward effort to bring in outside perspectives is through the inclusion of five \'fire stories\' throughout: first-person prose accounts of other fire victims. These sections serve as chapter breaks and read like oral histories. Unfortunately, this is a half measure at best. The stories, without context, become simply anecdotal. The reader has no way to appreciate how relevant these stories are to the larger disaster ... It is also clear that Fies, quite understandably, was still processing his own trauma while writing the book...I wonder if the book may have benefited from another few months of contemplation. At several points, Fies hints at large, systemic problems, including with the insurance industry, climate change and the emergency alert systems. But the book is not equipped to investigate these issues with any depth, as it is primarily focused on the specifics of Fies’ experience ... good memoir and inadequate journalism.
