RaveThe Austin ChronicleYou want to read a story that will put your heart through a wringer? You want characters of all kinds – among both the oppressors and the oppressed, as well as history’s wannabe disinterested bystanders – who are encountered in fully human, alive-and-breathing detail? Then you want to read this book. You want to read this book and maybe also do what you can to support your local chapter of the ACLU. At least ... And, since The Hard Tomorrow is a work of sequential art, you’ll want to know about the visuals that are part of what communicates this rich and often tense, sometimes (gently or darkly) funny, narrative. If you’re unfamiliar with Davis’ stuff, you might wonder: Can this woman draw? But you can see the book’s cover right here. Or you can click a few times on your screen and catch other glimpses of what Eleanor Davis can do in black-and-white, with pen and ink – glimpses of the sort of work gorgeously reproduced in this new hardcover from Drawn & Quarterly.
Jason Lutes
RaveThe Austin ChronicleThe story Lutes reveals is of impressive and engaging depth, following the lives of a diverse cast of characters who must struggle to survive the coming horrors, yes, but who also, like all of us, must weather the quotidian troubles of human existence no matter what orchestrated violence threatens to rend the world. The writing’s so damned good ... But Berlin is a graphic novel, and so there’s visuals to be considered, too. And don’t those visuals require, for most effective communication, a commensurate level of skill? Rest assured, reader.