Prior to becoming editor-in-chief of SOLRAD, I used to run a comics criticism (among other things) site called Your Chicken Enemy. On that site, I did a capsule review column called Books in Bites that featured books that I had been reading. I brought it back and gave it a new home on SOLRAD.
By Julian Voloj and Andreas Gefe
Published by FairSquare Comics
Grief is a source of profound meditation. It can open doors to enormous insights. It can pummel an individual, threaten connection to the world at large, cause a turning inward, and grind everything raw.
Not a New York Love Story, written by Julian Voloj and beautifully illustrated by Andreas Gefe, is such a meditation, an unraveling, and an exploration. It might have been undermined by its almost too clever by half shyamalanien ending, and yet, it’s held together by the power of its pathos. There is a gnawing to Voloj’s writing, an immediacy to the visceral miasma of loss that powers this narrative. It stumbles in places, but what is grief except an endless unbalancing anyway?
At the forefront of the book, though, is Gefe’s art, especially his color work. Everything is muted and gauzed, which only adds to the emotional beats of this work. Dreams, reality, surreality – everything is seemingly behind a filter, placing a distance between the viewer and the art, tempering the vividness of Gefe’s palette.
By Gregory Panaccione
Published by Magnetic Press
An easy way to further the divisions already existent in the world is to ask people if they like dogs. Me? I like dogs. And I like to think that dogs like me. I have often said that if dogs could speak, all they would say is “YES”. There’s a purity to dogs, an understanding that we all need each other for support and that the best times in life are when you are snuggled next to someone you love.
My Friend Toby is an entirely wordless 144-page graphic novel, both written and drawn by French cartoonist Gregory Panaccione. It places the reader inside the canine brain, illuminating dog-mind nuances as it flitters between the immediacy of need and interest, vague memories of when the world was not kind, and the true drive to connect, to love and be loved. It’s a kind book about struggle and possibility, a celebration of tenacity and positivity. It gives space for the vicissitudes that encompass life, both human and canine, but even as it veers darkly, there is always a new smell to be sniffed, a cat to be chased, and a skritch to be skritched.
Panaccione’s art really puts the “all” in “all ages” – there is enough depth therein for the erudite and enough simple joy for the child and the child at heart. Dog stories are good. We need more dog stories in comics.
By Debbie Fong
Published by RH Graphic
As a long-time fan of Debbie Fong’s work, I’ve been fascinated by her continued evolution as a cartoonist and storyteller. Her latest work, the 272-page graphic novel Next Stop, is a leveling up in her development as an artist. It’s brilliant, nuanced, inspiring – in short, a triumph.
The YA market is a unique space for any work to be. It seems to require an artist who understands how to speak to (not “at”) the intended audience without talking down – opening worlds and exploring complex themes – but who also knows when too much is, indeed, too much. Fong apparently understands this well, as Next Stop is, on the surface, a tale of exploration and connection, with some magical realism thrown in to keep things spicy. But the not-too-subtle subtext that Fong imbues this work with, the impetus and purpose of the protagonist’s journey, is emotionally complex. It requires a maturity of understanding. It is this aspect of the story that lends this work weight and pushes Next Stop and Debbie Fong to the … next step.
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