Tough Films For The Rough Crowd

    Like love itself, there is a poetry and beauty to Swedish cartoonist Anneli Furmark’s 2018 graphic novel Red Winter (the first of her works to be translated into English, courtesy of its North American publisher, Drawn+Quarterly) — but it’s often understated, unobtrusive, a “part of the scenery,” if you…

  Some comics really make you work. Not as hard as the cartoonist who made them, of course — and Austin English busted his tail (and his hands, and probably even his brain) on his latest solo book, The Enemy From Within, published in late 2017 by Sonatina Comics. The sheer effort that…

  Chances are that it would be almost unbearably pretentious, not to mention way less clever than it sounds, if I were to refer to Alex Degen’s latest Koyama Press-published graphic novel, Soft X-Ray/Mindhunters — which originally began “life” as a 44-page comic and now stands, expanded and extrapolated upon, at a…

  Namelessness. Anonymity. Invisibility. For the protagonist in Jerome Ruillier’s new Drawn+Quarterly-published graphic novel, The Strange, these three things are inextricably linked — and while all of them are, to one degree or another, imposed upon him by society and circumstance, the first two are undeniably de-humanizing (even if, fair enough,…

  There’s no doubt about it: “funny animal” comics aren’t what they used to be. Then again, they never really were, at least not the good ones — one way or another, they were always at least a little bit subversive, and whether we’re talking about Walt Kelly’s open socio-political commentary in Pogo…

    Okay, here’s the deal: I had this whole thing done — and probably done better — and I scrapped it. This now-meager memorial to the inimitable, irreplaceable Steve Ditko — artist, creator, visionary, iconoclast — initially had a soaring, elegiac title, was loaded with florid and heartfelt prose, and…

    Here’s the thing: Jim Woodring’s been at it so long, and done it so well, that it’s almost easy to — dare I say it — take him for granted. There’s really no reason that you (or I, or we) should, though — after all, the guy is…

    Powerful roles in diverse exploitation projects helped ensure the luminous Sybil Danning (BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, HERCULES, HOWLING II, REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS) a place as the cinematic prototype of a woman who could kick ass…and look good while doing it. Danning has even mentioned in interviews that Ericka,…

        There’s no doubt about it: The post-apocalyptic world isn’t what it used to be. Somewhere, somehow, we swapped out THE ROAD WARRIOR for THE ROAD, and the whole idea of living in an irradiated wasteland, well — it started looking like a lot less fun. Which,…

The Chicago-based Cinepocalypse Film Festival has hit its stride this year, hosting a great number of world and midwest premieres rivaling those of Fantasia or Fantastic Fest.  In addition to the premieres, however, the festival has also been the home of several revival screenings, featuring rare theatrical showings of such…

    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…