Prior to becoming editor-in-chief of SOLRAD, I ran a comics criticism (among other things) site called Your Chicken Enemy. On that site, I did a capsule review column called Books in Bites which featured books that I was reading. Now this feature has a new home on SOLRAD. Here’s installment 26!

SKIN DEEP

by Flo Woolley

published by Silver Sprocket

What matters? Is it the recognition of one’s existence by the world at large? Is the gaze of one pair of eyes enough, or do we need the adoration of the masses for it to have meaning? 

If the latter, then how far will you go to garner those gazes? What would you sacrifice to be seen?

UK-based artist Flo Woolley’s Skin Deep combines queer noir romance and body horror to consider these questions. Assuming they are asking the right one of these questions, their answer is unnerving, abhorrent, and despondent. 

In 32 full-color pages cast in sickly greens and a livid blue-gray, Skin Deep tells a story of the intoxication of acknowledgment, connection, fame, and the lengths some will go in order to chase that high. With an incredible sense of page layout and pacing, Woolley allows the unpredictable turn at the end to hit hard, while maintaining the reader’s belief in the motivation of her character. 

Skin Deep is heartbreaking, brutal, and all too recognizable, which makes it one of the better examples of its genre.

SUNFLOWERS

by Keezy Young

published by Silver Sprocket

What matters? That thin sliver of sanity with which we wrap ourselves in order to function and accomplish the taks of our day-to-day? An unwavering definition of the self in which we can live wholly and understand why we do the things that we do and make the decisions we decide to make? Joy?

Washington-based artist Keezy Young’s Sunflowers is an exploration of living with bipolar 1 disorder – from the highs to the lows – and it acts as a viscerally visual DSM-5 that showcases the realities of the disease. Young incorporates their text into their pages to explain, describe, and convey; their lettering and composition allow the reader to feel the narrative, more so than what a plain reading of what Young is saying allows.

Throughout Sunflowers there is a yearning for stability, an unwavering desire to be “as much myself as I can be, when I can be.” And yet, even in this, there is an acceptance that who they are is as much a product of their bipolar as it is their ownership of themselves as an artist. It is in this complex definition of self that Young is empowered, strengthened by the limitations of their disease, embracing the uncertainty of self, and acknowledging the fragility of it all.

In 24 full-color pages intricately drawn and muted by soft, subdued earth tones garnering almost a low-fidelity aesthetic, Keezy Young brightly bares their reality and extends a hand of understanding and care to those similarly diagnosed.

CARTOONS AND ANTISEMITISM: VISUAL POLITICS OF INTERWAR POLAND

by Ewa Stańczyk

published by University Press of Mississippi

What matters? How much can we trust in our current sense of safety? How do we know that our nation, our state, our neighborhood values our contributions or existence? How does media shape our understanding of “the other” and our embracing of those to whom we express camaraderie?

In the 282 pages of Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland’s rich scholarship focused on the time period right before the outbreak of World War Two, “Stańczyk investigates how a visual culture that was essentially hostile to Jews penetrated deep and wide into Polish print media. In her sensitive analysis of these sources, the first of this kind in English, the author examines how major satirical magazines intervened in the ongoing events and contributed to the racialized political climate of the time.”

Sometimes a phrase like “the racialized political climate of the time” can also be read as the climate of OUR time. Time is an ouroboros, after all. Yesterday’s fad is today’s hot new thing. As Jews, we know that our sense of safety is but a thin veneer over the steaming malice that has stewed underneath for millennia. How this hatred has been foisted into the world has differed in its incarnations through the years, and yet, not surprisingly, it has always remained the same.

“Paying close attention to the antisemitic tropes that were both local and global, Stańczyk [in Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland] reflects on the role of pictorial humor in the transmission of visual antisemitism across historical and geographical borders. As she discusses the communities of artists, publishers, and political commentators who made up the visual culture of the day, Stańczyk tells a captivating story of people who served the antisemitic cause, and those who chose to oppose it.”

What matters? Sometimes it is a reminder that you need to stay on your toes. Sometimes it is a reminder that you need to start running.

LITCOMIX: LITERARY THEORY AND THE GRAPHIC NOVEL

by Adam Geczy and Jonathan McBurnie

published by Rutgers University Press

What matters? Does art have meaning outside of entertainment? Are larger truths available to us through the aesthetic experiences we devour? Do we need the critical eye of others to help us understand this?

Litcomix: Literary Theory and the Graphic Novel posits the notion that “perhaps the time has come to develop theories for interpreting and evaluating graphic novels that are drawn from classic models of literary theory and criticism.”  Does this matter?

In 270 pages, Geczy and McBurnie go academically deep to try to answer these questions. The press material provided by Rutgers University Press delves into what this book is trying to accomplish: “Using the methodology of Georg Lukács and his detailed defense of literary realism as a socially embedded practice, Litcomix tackles difficult questions about reading graphic novels as literature. What critical standards should we use to measure the quality of a graphic novel? How does the genre contribute to our understanding of ourselves and the world? What qualities distinguish it from other forms of literature?”

This is a dense work of scholarship and Geczy and McBurnie are up to the task of parsing the medium to try to bring that added layer of relevance to, in a way, justify its existence in a manner that, perhaps, nobody was asking for and yet, everyone could benefit from. It meanders at times in its need to be precise. It lays thick the springboard from which its conclusions leap. It “offers fresh perspectives on how we might appreciate graphic novels as literature.” And, by doing all this, it makes the case that comics do, in fact, matter. Art matters. An artist shares their ideas and interpretations and their sense of experience, and, through this act, maybe, just maybe, the vastness of the world shrinks just enough to help us realize that we are, in fact, not as alone as we feel.