Tough Films For The Rough Crowd

    We live not just in turbulent times, but significant ones — the ground has shifted beneath our feet, and if you’re American, it’s fair to say that, in many respects, the facade of the country we thought we knew has slipped, and in its place stands revealed a nation that…

      I think it’s fair to say that 2017 was a “break-out year” for New York-based cartoonist Katie Skelly, what with her OGN My Pretty Vampire ranking among the year’s best-reviewed books and proving to be an out-of-left-field success for its publisher, Fantagraphics, so it doesn’t come as any surprise…

    I’ll be the first to admit it: I’m way less familiar with the current state of affairs vis-a-vis all-ages comics than a person in my position probably should be. It’s not that I have anything against all-ages books, quite the contrary: I think there needs to be a…

  By now you’re well-familiar (or should be) with the laundry-list of societal problems that have “trickled down” into all forms of media, including comics, and also know that right near the top of said list is misogyny, which many of us fooled ourselves into thinking was on the way out…

      The work of cartoonist Laura Lannes is as raw as it gets. Rendered in tightly-framed watercolors that leave plenty of negative space for readers to fill in the “blanks” (both physical and metaphorical) for themselves, her 2dcloud-published graphic memoir By Monday I’ll Be Floating In The Hudson With…

      Don’t look now, but Aline Kominsky-Crumb is having what the media has, in recent years, come to call “a moment” — and those of us who have been following her extraordinary cartooning career over the decades can only say: “It’s about fucking time.” Through no fault of…

      I don’t know what kind of music Ben Passmore listens to, but his work definitely has an admirably DIY punk “vibe” to it, not just aesthetically, but narratively — which may come as something of a surprise to readers only familiar with his best-known book, last year’s…

    Italian cartoonist Manuele Fior now calls Paris home, but his publishing home is clearly Fantagraphics, who released his breakthrough graphic novels 5,000 KM Per Second and its equally stunning follow-up, The Interview, in 2016 and 2017, respectively, and are now making it three books in three years with their collection…

    If 2017 was the “year of the woman” in comics — and I would contend that, thanks to the exemplary efforts of Emil Ferris, Eleanor Davis, Mimi Pond, Gabrielle Bell, Jillian Tamaki, Sophia Foster-Dimino, November Garcia, Annie Koyama, and numerous others, it most certainly was — then 2018 may…

        It’s all been leading up to this: four years in the making, the sixth and final installment of Johnny Ryan’s formerly-annual (or thereabouts) paean to thoughtless juvenalia, Prison Pit, is upon us courtesy of Fantagraphics Books, and while it’s frankly impossible to conceive of anyone feeling in…

          Seattle-based cartoonist D.R.T. is a figure cloaked in a certain amount of intrigue — in a recent TCJ interview he revealed that his name is Daniel, that he has a background in film and animation, and that he suffered a debilitating stroke at age 27…

      It’s been awhile — 15 years, to be precise — since seminal underground id-baring cartoonist Dave Cooper released a wholly original graphic novel, and while the length of his latest, Fantagraphics-published book, Mudbite, may make it more of a “novella” than anything else, the main thing is that…

    Debut graphic novels are a tricky thing: publishers are going out on a limb by backing untested — and in most cases still-developing — talent, while said “talent” is often eager, perhaps even feels pressured, to make some kind of “statement” with their work in order to elevate it…

      In most fields of entertainment and/or artistic expression (the two only seem mutually exclusive, they needn’t necessarily be), there is usually at least one generally-acknowledged “Master of Horror,” if not several : literature has Stephen King; cinema has John Carpenter remaining out of the one-time Carpenter/Craven/Romero “trinity,” with…

  The day that I write this review, March 20th, 2018, marks the 90th anniversary of the birth of one of the kindest, most sincere, most genuinely good people this country — perhaps even this world — has ever produced. A man for whom the words “legend” and “icon” are, somehow,…

  When no less an authority than legendary indie cartoonist John Porcellino says that a particular book is “as good as comics get,” then said book is clearly worth paying attention to — but also has some very big praise to live up to. Whether that means such a glowing endorsement is…

    Cartoonist Tommi Parrish comes to us from Montreal by way of an Australian upbringing, but their (as a gender non-binary individual, Parrish’s pronouns of choice are “they” and “their”) perspective seems to be a heady blend of the highly singular and the undeniably universal — and if that…

      You’ve gotta say this much for Eric Haven — he may wear his influences clearly, obviously, perhaps even proudly on his sleeve (Jack Kirby, Winsor McCay, Charles Burns, Fletcher Hanks especially), but he filters them all through a singular lens that first blends, then morphs and metastasizes them…

      Here’s the thing — there are a million and one perfectly valid reasons for walking away from the first issue of writer David Barnett and artist Martin Simmonds’ Punks Not Dead, the latest offering from former Vertigo editor Shelly Bond’s new (-ish) Black Crown line at IDW, fairly…

    Don’t look now, but it appears as though Box Brown is making a concerted play for the title of “Best Biographer In Comics” — and he’s doing it by telling the life story of a guy who held a title of his own, that of “World Intergender Wresting…

    It’s a difficult thing to process, Nathan Cowdry’s Shiner — on the one hand it’s not a terribly complex narrative, despite the fact that’s it’s ridden with flashbacks, fever dreams, and less-than-reliable Ps OV. Really, I’m not kidding, the whole thing fits together in near-meticulous fashion even though by…

    Anyone who knows me in “real life” knows that if there’s one thing I absolutely despise, it’s so-called “foodie culture.” Sure, I can appreciate the fact that there is a fair amount of artistry involved in good cooking and that a lot of chefs are doing their level…

      One could advance a pretty strong argument that Tom Van Deusen is the funniest cartoonist in America today — but, as with anyone whose humor hits a bit too close to home, his stuff is certain to offend disparate constituencies. On the one hand, anyone whose hyper-sensitivity…

      It’s something, isn’t it? Sometimes a mere 28 pages can make you feel all kinds of ways. Such is the case with Pascal Girard’s Apartment Number Three, an unassuming-on-its-surface little number that took a long and circuitous route to getting where it is today (which, “spoiler” alert as…