Review: The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (2008)
I don’t like picking favorites. But if you put me in a contrived situation of extreme duress (I’m stuck on a desert island! I can only have one comic!), I...
Reviews: Two cannabis comics
Legalization Nation, published earlier this year, collects Brian Box Brown's ongoing coverage of the chaotic, shifting legal terrain for cannabis. The book...
Review: Roaming (2023)
The “young people take a trip to NYC and learn something about themselves” story must be as old as the city itself. As an unabashed entry in the genre,...
Review: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
To try and write about The Left Hand of Darkness is a paralyzing experience: There are so many possible places to begin, so many meaningful threads you could...
Review: The Squad (2023)
I feel about this book the same way I feel about the endless tsunami of insidery books about Trump’s presidency: Mostly just confused about why it exists and...
Review: Blood, Sweat and Pixels (2017)
I picked up Blood, Sweat and Pixels after finishing Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and realizing my actual knowledge about the video game industry was...
Review: The Accommodation (2021)
The story surrounding The Accommodation is almost as interesting as the book itself. Originally published in the 1980s, it's a journalistic account of...
Review: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (2022)
It is Christmas and I am sick, but not so sick that I couldn’t finish this book. I don’t have the energy for anything like a full review but here's two...
Pure art, in this economy?
On trying to reconcile creativity and commerce
Review: Blankets (2003)
For my last comic of the month (I didn’t manage to review 30 but I’m telling myself that’s okay), I revisited a book I first read almost ten years ago....
Review: your heart is a muscle the size of your fist (2023)
30(ish) Comics in 30 Days - I’m reviewing a comic (almost) every day in November. I missed several days but there are no rules here, I can do what I want....
Review: That Distant Fire (2022)
30ish Comics in 30 Days - I’m reviewing a comic almost every day in November. I missed a few days but there are no rules here, I can do what I want. Day 19 -...
Review: Crash Landing
30 Comics in 30 Days - I’m reviewing a comic (almost) every day in November. But I missed yesterday. Whoops! There are no rules, I can do what I want. Day 15...
Review: The Shape of Comics to Come (2023)
30 Comics in 30 Days - I’m reviewing a comic every day in November! Day 13 - The Shape of Comics to Come by Derek M Ballard. (Follow and support his work...
Review: French Exit (2023)
30 Comics in 30 Days - I’m reviewing a comic every day in November! Day 12 - French Exit by Elle Shivers. (Follow and support their work @tamingservice) This...
Review: A Very Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships
30 Comics in 30 Days - I’m reviewing a comic every day in November! Day 11 - A Very Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships by Chelsea Akpan I picked up this...
Review: Are You My Mother? (2012)
30 Comics in 30 Days - I’m reviewing a comic every day in November! Day 10 - Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel Much like Bechdel herself, I have...
Review: Bunny Punch: Meal Replacement (2023)
30 Comics in 30 Days - I’m reviewing a comic every day in November! Day 9 - Bunny Punch: Meal Replacement by Michael Furler The titular protagonist of Bunny...
Review: Jonathan's Forest (2023)
30 Comics in 30 Days - I’m reviewing a comic every day in November! Day 8 - Jonathan's Forest by Alvin Fai This wordless, whimsical comic about a little guy...
Review: Internet Crusader (2019)
30 Comics in 30 Days Day 7 - Internet Crusader by George Wylesol When looking back on the early internet, it’s easy to slip into uncritical nostalgia. (AOL...
Review: I Thought You Loved Me (2023)
30 Comics in 30 Days - I’m reviewing a comic every day in November! Day 6 - I Thought You Loved Me by MariNaomi This is a memoir about the relationship...
Review: The Influence (2023)
30 Comics in 30 Days - I’m reviewing a comic every day in November! Day 5 - The Influence by Laura Knetzger (I’m not tagging Knetzger because I generally...
Review: Breaking News
30 Comics in 30 Days - I’m reviewing a comic every day in November! Day 4 - Breaking News by Daria Tessler The pages of this experimental, zany little comic...
Review: Ivy Allie's Hourly Comics Day collections
30 Comics in 30 Days - I’m reviewing a comic every day in November! Day 3: Ivy Allie’s Hourly Comics Day collections I picked up this little set of self-...
Review: Flip Turn
30 Comics in 30 Days. - I’m reviewing a comic every day in November! Day 2: Flip Turn by @bread_comix Flip Turn is a vulnerable comic. It's autobiographical...
Review: Fungirl (2022)
30 Comics in 30 Days [Because I’m dumb and set unrealistic goals, I’m trying to review a new comic every day in November. This isn’t quite as ridiculous as...
A few thoughts about Joe Sacco's Footnotes in Gaza
I've been thinking a lot about Joe Sacco's Footnotes in Gaza, which I've been slowly re-reading since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. I'm not naive...
Review: Funny Things: A Comic Strip Biography of Charles M. Schulz (2023)
I went on an emotional journey with this book. (And a literal one: It was one of the heavier things I brought back from SPX earlier this month.) Peanuts, the...
Review: 10-10 to the Wind (2023)
I have no quarrel with comics that are drawn digitally; I don’t demand that every cartoonist use physical paper and ink. I recognize that’s just not a...
Review: Eight Million Ways to Die (1982)
I don’t read many mystery novels. But when I do, it’s almost always twentieth-century noir or hardboiled crime fiction. Frankly, classic Agatha...
Review: Tinderella (2020)
I went in expecting a comic that would skim across the surface of what romance looks like in the modern era. I thought it might, perhaps, dip a languid toe...
Review: We Told You So: Comics As Art (2016)
The only reasonable place to begin a review of We Told You So – a self-described “oral history" of Fantagraphics, the influential publisher of alternative...
Review: Hellbound Lifestyle (2016)
The premise: Cartoonist Alabaster Pizzo takes her friend Kaeleigh Forsyth’s notes app entries and illustrates them. The result: Deadpan chaos. To all the...
Review: Self Made (2023)
“The story of self-creation, at its core, is not only a story about capitalism or secularism or the rise of the middle class or industrialization or...
Review: The Island (2023)
There are no straight lines in nature, and there are almost no straight lines in Allison Conway’s beautiful, wordless little comic The Island. Everything...
Review: Wendy (2014)
At first I didn’t know whether Wendy (the book) and I were going to get along. The comic is about a certified hot mess of a main character whose artistic...
You should absolutely critique memoirs!
but for the love of god don't give them a star rating
Writing update (8.13.23)
596 communist book co-ops would be great
Review: Ghost World (1997)
Dan Clowes’s graphic novel Ghost World is like the negative space that lurks behind every coming-of-age story. It dispenses with the normal conventions of...
Declarations of literature's impending demise, ranked
the novel is 100 percent for sure dead this time
Review: The People's Hospital (2023)
“[This book] is a love letter to the hospital, my hospital, where people find healthcare and revere it like treasure. It is also a letter to those sitting in...
Writing update (7.30.23)
A taut and tightly conceived newsletter.
Review: This is How You Lose the Time War (2019)
This is How You Lose the Time War gets praised for its use of language. “Poetic” and “lyrical” are thrown around a lot. But this is a book that unironically...
This is how you squander the multiverse
A critical review of This is How You Lose the Time War.
Review: Abolish the Family (2022)
“Abolish the family? You might as well abolish gravity or abolish god. So! The left is trying to take grandma away, now, and confiscate kids, and this is...
Review: Ducks (2022)
You know that cliched shit about how having a job is a source of dignity and working to support yourself and your family is virtuous? Well, this comic says...
Review: Down to the Bone (2022)
Of all the comics I’ve reviewed this week, Down to the Bone is the hardest to talk about. It’s a memoir about Pioli’s own experience with leukemia, and she...
Review: So Much For Love (2022)
French cartoonist Sophie Lambda’s memoir about an emotionally abusive relationship opens with a clever subversion of a typical cute rom-com. A reader...
Writing update (7.16.23)
Welcome, ye blighted souls.
Review: The Twittering Machine (2020)
“If we’ve found ourselves addicted to social media, in spite or because of its frequent nastiness, as I have, then there is something in us that is waiting...