Archive • Postcards From Komiksoj • Buttondown

I don’t know if it’s quite reached the level of a trope, but the idea of just what effect superpowers and super-powered individuals would have on global...

Adaptations With Added Dread: David Small's “The Werewolf at Dusk”

May 17, 2024

Somehow it’s been 15 years since the publication of David Small’s graphic memoir Stitches. To call it a debut would be inaccurate; at that point, Small had...

The Deadpan Pulp Surrealism of “Masters of the Nefarious”

April 30, 2024

When it aired thirty-odd years ago, the television series Fishing With John was like nothing that had come before it. Each episode nominally followed John...

Great Comics About Great Music: On Giles Crawford’s “Dear You”

March 25, 2024

I spent a decent chunk of February on the road at AWP and doing some events for my new novel In the Sight. Part of that trip included spending a few days in...

So Many New Tricks: On “Old Dog: Redact One”

February 2, 2024

Most of us are products of our age, and that can shape our impressions to art in ways we don’t entirely understand from the outset. I’m of an age when my...

Subterranean Nightmare Blues: “The Berg”’s Weird Urban Horror

January 16, 2024

Spend enough time in cities and you’re bound to start wondering about what makes them function. Natural disasters can do an unsettling job of making it clear...

Nasty, Brutish, and Floral: “The Wilds” Depicts a Strange Apocalypse

January 1, 2024

I read a lot of fiction, and I read a lot of political theory. That’s not to say that everything I read in the former column has to be suffused by the latter...

Gateway Drugs: How I Caught “Night Fever”

December 24, 2023

Can a graphic novel get you to watch the better part of 13 hours of television? In my case, yes. Those two things are not as disparate as they might seem;...

Time Travel Is Bloody: On “Earthdivers: Kill Columbus”

December 18, 2023

The first comic book I wrote about in this space was the first volume of Department of Truth. Since then, I’ve largely stuck to self-contained volumes -...

Jazz Comics: The Uncanny Melodies of “Blue In Green”

December 3, 2023

I spend more time than is healthy thinking about the way types of art can be translated into other types of art. One of my favorite novels is Robertson...

Space Mysteries Meet Class War: The Thrills of “Know Your Station”

November 26, 2023

I’ve been reading comic books for a significant chunk of my life now. Given that I’m in my forties, that’s a lot of years - and there are times when I have...

Magic and Loss: Reading “Damn Them All”

November 12, 2023

Right from the start, Damn Them All lets you know its creators are up to interesting things, formally speaking. The first five pages detail protagonist Ellie...

A Lost Dystopia Is Found: On “Social Fiction”

November 5, 2023

The best thing about dystopian narratives is the same thing as the worst thing about dystopian narratives, which is to say: they tend to stay relevant for...

In “Destroyer,” Victor LaValle Revisits Frankenstein’s Monster

October 25, 2023

I’ve had Frankenstein retellings on the brain lately, apparently. It might be the looming release of the film adaptation of the novel Poor Things, which...

Revisiting Alex de Campi and Erica Henderson's Haunting Take on Dracula

October 5, 2023

Is there any classic horror monster that’s spawned quite as many innovative stories as Count Dracula? Recent years have seen the release of Saladin Ahmed and...

Solaris-on-Omelas: Reading Joshua W. Cotter’s “Nod Away Vol. 1”

September 26, 2023

It’s to my chagrin that I hadn’t heard of Joshua W. Cotter’s graphic novel Nod Away Vol. 1 before this year. What brought it to my attention? A post on...

A Politically-Charged Horror Trifecta: On “Maw”

September 13, 2023

I've been meaning to write about Maw for a few months now; it recently clicked for me as to how I might do that. And here we go... * Horror is relatively...

Magical Crimes, Miami Style: On "Sins of the Black Flamingo"

August 27, 2023

And we're back. I'm a fan of crime comics and tales of the uncanny; this time around, here's a look at a book that encompasses both. * It’s a weird time to...

On Jeremy Haun's uniquely-paced horror comics

June 6, 2023

Hello! I'm newslettering again. And this time, I have some thoughts on a project that appeals to my fondness for both compelling comics and smart horror —...

A Haunted, Mythic Landscape: On “The Low, Low Woods”

August 23, 2022

Apologies for the missed week last week; things got much more hectic than I'd expected. (And here's the obligatory plug for my novel.) This newsletter will...

The Colo(u)r Out of Mind: On "A Trick of the Light"

August 2, 2022

And here we are, with newsletter number three. This one's about a short graphic novel I first learned about when I backed it on Kickstarter. Folk horror, a...

A Hometown, an Investigation, a Horror: On "Friday"

July 19, 2022

Thoughts on comics. So many comics.

Hallucination, Art, and Memory: On “The Department of Truth: The End of the World”

June 7, 2021

Welcome. After a couple of false starts and a move from Substack to Buttowndown, this newsletter is finally up and running. What's it about? Comics. What...