Graphic Literature
1. Sabrina by Nick Drnaso
11 Rave • 4 Positive • 2 Mixed
“Drnaso is an ace boundary technician… With his fluid framing — fitting anywhere from two to 24 panels to a page — he dictates information delivery, allowing the mind to breathe. His drawing style is at once poetically attuned to details of neighborhoods and interiors (the lit canopy of a gas station at night, the banquette at an antiseptic diner) and deceptively plain when it comes to the people who inhabit them. Figures are airtight yet textureless, with eyes like pinholes … Drnaso subtly suggests that the current climate of constant horror, weaponized by hashtags and spread by autofill, has its seeds in the fall of the Twin Towers and our response to the tragedy. It’s a shattering work of art.”
–Ed Park (The New York Times Book Review)
*
2. Berlin by Jason Lutes
10 Rave • 3 Positive
“Though Berlin is technically a compilation of previously-released material, the ability to approach the entire story at once completely transforms the reading experience. It allows us for the first time to see Lutes’ achievement for what it is: one of the most ambitious, important and fully-realized works of graphic literature yet created, a real masterpiece of both story and art. Lutes combines a keen eye for character and setting with a cartoonist’s skill for storytelling and pictorial composition. Berlin is drawn in crisp, clean black and white: European in its pacing, austere in its linework, and architectural in its simplicity, but full of brilliant details … Such tight control of his craft allows Lutes to layer a complex story full of subtle moments, tonal shifts and poignant emotion, bringing different characters to the foreground like featured players in a symphony.”
–Rob Salkowitz (Forbes)
*
3. All the Answers by Michael Kupperman
7 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed
“…a complex and deeply moving graphic memoir … Kupperman is using the language of comics to tell a very different kind of story … All the Answers is told in nine chapters with a pacing that nearly insists on the book being read in one sitting … in its refusal to quit the search, All the Answers achieves a devastatingly beautiful portrait of a family and offers ample evidence that a child’s quest for understanding is anything but a trivial pursuit.”
–Michael Tisserand (The Chicago Tribune)
*
4. Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures by Yvan Alagbé, Trans. by Donald Nicholson-Smith
8 Rave • 1 Positive
“The stories in this graphic novel are about the truths—subtle, sad and surreal—that statistics can never capture … This story, like the others in the book, is drawn in thick strokes of uncompromising black on white. Alagbé’s ink feels more like paste—dense and chunky—and though his characters are sometimes poised in webs of painstaking lines, more often his scenes seem to burst onto the white page in a discordant frenzy that disturbs the eye … Alagbé uses his sparse palette to deliver a potent message about how race is portrayed in Western comics.”
–Etelka Lehoczky (NPR)
*
5. Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World by Péneélope Bagieu
6 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed
“These drawings can act. They are alive with gestural attitude. They move, dance, struggle, fight back, fall in love, resist and wonder at the world. Some ham it up. Some suffer terrible abuse. To her credit, Bagieu doesn’t back away from drawing the marks of violence on their faces and their bodies, which may come as a surprise to those who are expecting a rah-rah young adult girl-power sort of read … All of her stories follow a similar pattern … that can feel a bit formulaic, but this seems to have more to do with the fact that the English translation is typeset rather than in Bagieu’s handwriting … It’s painful to see this crucial part of her work replaced with type. It changes everything about how the stories are received … Bagieu’s pen transforms these true stories into something that has the tone of a personalized fairy tale. And in the end, this turns out to be just perfect.”
–Lynda Barry (The New York Times Book Review)
*
6. On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden
6 Rave • 4 Positive
“With On a Sunbeam, Walden has created a science-fiction universe that is about women, queer love, old buildings, and big trees. It may piss off science-fiction purists… The most endearing aspect of On a Sunbeam is the confidence the narrative has in the world it exists within. The fish-shaped spaceship becomes a silent character, its face seemingly straining as it flies. Walden doesn’t create fake scientific-sounding explanations for why the ship is shaped this way—it just is … Walden creates the intoxicating effect of a universe as mysterious as our real one.”
–Rowan Hisayo Buchanan (The Atlantic)
*
7. Belonging by Nora Krug
5 Rave • 6 Positive
“Pick up Nora Krug’s reverberant graphic memoir, Belonging, and be prepared to lose yourself for hours … In its searching honesty and multi-layered, visual and verbal storytelling, it packs the power of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and David Small’s Stitches … Belonging is both emotionally and graphically complex. It is richly illustrated with cartoons, family photographs and letters, handwritten text, and archival German documents annotated in English by Krug … Krug balances this terrible history with bucolic scenes of the German countryside, and a running feature titled ‘From the notebook of a homesick émigré,’ which flags iconic practical and comforting German items that she misses, but can only go so far to salve wounds … Krug writes about mending and reparations, but she doesn’t let herself—or readers—lapse into complacence.”
–Heller McAlpin (NPR)
*
8. Passing for Human by Liana Finck
5 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed
“…[a] tender, complicated narrative … If reading it makes you think long and hard about neurological difference and the isolation it may involve, it also reminds you that we all feel weird at times – as if we are, as she puts it, only passing for human … This book comes with a lot of whimsy: shadows that walk and talk; a god that is a queen on a cloud … Her biblical-mythological interludes don’t always work. Somehow, though, this doesn’t matter – and not only because it’s impossible not to admire both her ambition and the beautiful economy of her line drawings … There is a resonant truth at the heart of this book, and it soars above everything else.”
–Rachel Cooke (The Guardian)
*
9. Rock Steady by Ellen Forney
7 Rave
“Forney’s artwork is the perfect delivery vehicle for this message. Her lines are so soft and clean and inviting that readers are drawn to them. You can’t see a Forney figure from afar without craning your head to inspect it more closely. These inky curves, emotive figures, and dynamic actions are so easily relatable that audiences can’t help but be receptive. Even a topic as fraught with stigma as the relationship between mood disorders and art feels approachable when Forney discusses it in ink on paper … Rock Steady should appeal to any creative person. Forney’s appeal to routine and stability is a whiff of fresh air in the fetid self-pitying swamp of creativity self-help books. Anyone who follows her advice about containing drama and learning how to cultivate a sturdy support network will be better off in the long run. But the audiences at which Forney is taking direct aim – bipolar readers, and those suffering from other mood disorders – stand to learn the most from Rock Steady. Simply put, this is a book that can save lives.”
–Paul Constant (The Seattle Review of Books)
*
10. Carnet de Voyage by Craig Thompson
5 Rave • 3 Positive
“Ornate sketches of buildings blend with beautiful portraits throughout this book. In the mix are humorous caricatures of Thompson as he struggles through book signings, illness, and homesickness. Despite Thompson’s many anxieties about being too introverted, the comic feels fully immersive. Rather than a recitation of facts, Carnet de Voyage lets readers see the world through a tourist’s eyes, fully capturing the many overwhelming details. Thompson assumes a degree of familiarity with his readers, foregoing any personal backstory with the assumption that you, like him, are here for the journey at hand. Indeed,Carnet de Voyage’s strength comes in the balance—between images and text, and between Thompson’s internal and external worlds … Carnet de Voyage demonstrates that the idea of love and the realities are not always the same … Thompson’s sincerity shines through and he sweetly goes on loving the world even when frozen with anxiety and sadness. In these moments, Thompson and his work are the most human and poignant.”
–Molly Barnewitz (Comicsverse)
***
Our System: RAVE = 5 points, POSITIVE = 3 points, MIXED = 1 point, PAN = -5 points
