Author: Greg McElhatton

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Silly Lilly in What Will I Be Today?

By Agnès Rosenstiehl
32 pages, color
Published by Toon Books

Agnès Rosenstiehl’s Silly Lilly in What Will I Be Today? is a short and sweet book for first-time readers, but one that is surprisingly charming. Rosenstiehl tells a series of eight-panel adventures about her title character Lilly, as she decides each day of the week what her new profession will be. As she exclaims on the cover, "I can be anything!" that’s exactly what Rosenstiehl is telling her readers, shifting from cook or city planner to acrobat or vampire. It’s a strong message, but one that’s still disguised in fun. Rosenstiehl’s voice for Lilly is wonderfully accurate for a little kid; you can "hear" her as she plays by herself, coming up with a method to best act out her new job.

The art is awfully cute, too; Lilly as acrobat is a big jumble of limbs as she tries to push herself through gymnastics routine, and the stern look she gives her doll and teddy bear for not singing along to Lilly’s xylophone symphony is bretty darn funny. (Even better is how on the previous panel, the pair of toys wince she she hits a particularly loud note.) Rosenstiehl’s watercolors give the book an overall lush look, and I can’t think of a parent who wouldn’t be delighted with being given a copy of Silly Lilly in What Will I Be Today?. Like so many of Toon Books’ publications, this is a good way to start teaching little kids how to read comics, and to have fun at the same time.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

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The Lives of Sacco and Vanzetti

By Rick Geary
80 pages, black and white
Published by NBM

There’s no mistaking Rick Geary’s comics from anyone else’s. Not only does he have a distinct art style, but his work on his series A Treasury of Victorian Murder and now A Treasury of XXth Century Murder tackles non-fiction material that few other cartoonists would brave, let alone do so with such skill. Last year’s The Lives of Sacco and Vanzetti details a robbery/murder from the 1920s that sent two Italian immigrants to death row… but in learning about the holes in the case, it’s quite easy to imagine a version of this story taking place in the present day.

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Thief of Thieves #1

Written by Robert Kirkman and Nick Spencer
Art by Shawn Martinbrough
32 pages, color
Published by Image Comics

With several wildly successful ongoing series currently being published (The Walking Dead, Invincible, Super Dinosaur), the debut of a new series helmed by Robert Kirkman is bound to grab some attention. Thief of Thieves is using a writing team style that’s normally seen in television rather than comics; four different writers will be co-writing the series with Kirkman, with Nick Spencer being the first out of the gate. And so far, I’m liking what I see.

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Rainy Day Recess: The Complete Steven’s Comics

By David Kelly
120 pages, black and white
Published by Northwest Press

It was in the ’90s when I first encountered David Kelly’s Steven’s Comics. The Xeric Foundation had given Kelly a grant to publish a collection of some of his comic strips, and I fell in love with Kelly’s stories of a young gay boy growing up in the ’70s and struggling with the world around him. This past year, Northwest Press published a compilation of all of the Steven’s Comics strips into a single book, and going back and re-reading them made me realize two things. First, Kelly was way ahead of his time. And second, these strips are just as good now as they were then.

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Blabber Blabber Blabber: Vol. 1 of Everything

By Lynda Barry
176 pages, black and white, with some color
Published by Drawn & Quarterly

Lynda Barry is one of those creators for whom I didn’t immediately gain an appreciation. The first couple of times I tried to read her syndicated strip Ernie Pook’s Comeek, it just didn’t click, and I shrugged and moved on. But then her books One! Hundred! Demons! and What It Is were published, and the two made me a huge convert. So when Drawn & Quarterly announced their multi-volume collection of Barry’s comics, I was both intrigued and a little scared. Would these old comics of Barry’s finally connect with me, or would it just reinforce my earlier opinion of her work? As it turned out? The answer was both.

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Friends With Boys

By Faith Erin Hicks
224 pages, black and white
Published by First Second Books

I think most comic book readers have at least one creator whose works they’ve kept meaning to try out, but never gotten around to. Some of us even have lists; one of the people on mine for a while now has been Faith Erin Hicks. I’ve heard good things about her past books (writing and drawing Zombies Calling and The War at Ellsmere, and illustrating Brain Camp), and so with Friends With Boys due to be released just around the corner, now seemed a good a time as any to finally give Hicks a whirl. Fortunately, this is one of those situations where it was worth the wait.

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Winter Soldier #1

Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Butch Guice
32 pages, color
Published by Marvel

Call it heresy, but I think I enjoyed Ed Brubaker’s issues of Captain America that starred Cap-replacement Bucky Barnes in the outfit more than when Steve Rogers was in the suit. And with Rogers helming Captain America once more an inevitability, I’m glad that us Bucky Barnes fans are getting our fix in the new series Winter Soldier. And so far, it’s exactly what I want from such a series: a mixture of black ops and crazy Marvel mayhem.

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Prince Valiant Vol. 4: 1943-1944

By Hal Foster
112 pages, color
Published by Fantagraphics

With the current wealth of classic reprint series, it’s easy to fall behind on your reading. (I don’t even want to admit how far behind I am on the Complete Peanuts books.) With the fifth volume of the Prince Valiant reprints scheduled for this spring, though, it seemed like a good a time as any to catch up on Hal Foster’s legendary newspaper strip. With a slight shift in the format of the strip in this volume, it turned out this was the perfect time to take another look at the series.

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Usagi Yojimbo #143

By Stan Sakai
24 pages, black and white
Published by Dark Horse

In the world of monthly comics, there are a handful of creators who really should reign supreme. At the top of the list? Stan Sakai and his long-running title Usagi Yojimbo. Usagi Yojimbo chronicles the adventures of Usagi, a ronin (masterless samurai) who wanders Japan during the early 17th century. In the latest Usagi Yojimbo, we’ve got everything you can want in an issue; action, intrigue, bad guys, and soy sauce recipes. No, really.

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