Author: Greg McElhatton

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Bake Sale

By Sara Varon
160 pages, color
Published by First Second

Sara Varon’s first graphic novel Sweaterweather shifted her from "she’s a good creator" to "I must read everything she works on." She’s had books since then like the adorable Robot Dreams, or her Cat and Chicken titles for much younger readers, but there’s something about her new book Bake Sale that particularly grabs my attention. Maybe it’s having the lead character running a bakery, or the underlying theme involving friendship, but there was something in it grabbed me in a way that even her previous works hadn’t already done so.

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Batwing #1

Writen by Judd Winick
Art by Ben Oliver
32 pages, color
Published by DC Comics

There’s something odd and initially off-putting about a book that is pitched as, "The Batman of Africa." Why Africa seems to get repeatedly lumped into a single region while similarly diverse continents don’t is beyond me (there’s much more respect for the different areas of Europe or Asia, for instance), but at the same time there’s so little in American comics set on this continent that my curiosity got the better of me. As it turned out, I’m glad it did; it’s a book that I suspect won’t be long for this world, but was definitely worthy of some attention.

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Static Shock #1

Written by Scott McDaniel and John Rozum
Penciled by Scott McDaniel
Inked by Jonathan Glapion and Le Beau Underwood
32 pages, color
Published by DC Comics

I was a fan of Static ever since I read Static #1 back in the early ’90s. Dwayne McDuffie was a regular poster on the GEnie computer network’s Comics RoundTable, and he’d been telling us all about the Milestone Media books for months leading up to their release. And while I enjoyed all four of the launch titles, it was Static that felt like the breakout hit. So with that in mind, reading the new Static Shock #1, I feel like it’s safe to say that Scott McDaniel and John Rozum are showing us that Static is in good hands.

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Troop 142

By Mike Dawson
272 pages, black and white
Published by Secret Acres

Troop 142 is a prime example of how reading an online comic versus a collected edition can be quite a different experience. I originally read Mike Dawson’s latest book in a serialized fashion, checking out the latest uploads to his website every time they trickled out. And read in that fashion, I enjoyed the book a great deal. It was fun, that sort of story about young men at camp that instantly feels real. But reading again a year later, all in one sitting? There’s a much stronger emotional heft to the story that I think is slightly lost in serialized format. Now that I’ve read it in both formats, I feel like the collected edition is the way to go.

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Wandering Son Vol. 1

By Shimura Takako
208 pages, black and white
Published by Fantagraphics

If you’d told me a decade ago that Fantagraphics would be hand selecting manga to publish in North America, I’d have laughed at you. But as more publishers dip into the wide spectrum of comics published in Japan, it’s a delight to see Fantagraphics bringing over books like Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream and Other Stories, and now Shimura Takako’s series Wandering Son. Because as much as I enjoyed A Drunken Dream, it’s this gentle, inviting series about two transgendered elementary school students that has truly captured my attention.

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Americus

Written by MK Reed
Art by Jonathan Hill
224 pages, black and white
Published by First Second Books

Americus is the kind of graphic novel that I wish wasn’t so timely. Centered around a teenager whose town is trying to ban his favorite fantasy book series, it’s the sort of story that plays out in the real world far too often. MK Reed and Jonathan Hill’s story is painful to read in that respect, but its lead in the form of Neil Barton is the kind of character who’s compelling enough that you’ll read all the way through just to see if he succeeds, not only in stopping the banning but also trying to get a better life for himself.

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1

Story and layouts by Kevin Eastman
Story and script by Tom Waltz
Art by Dan Duncan
32 pages, color
Published by IDW

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one of those comics where a surprisingly high number of people in the world know who the characters are, but few actually know the original incarnation. That’s the one created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird in 1984 through a self-published comic, and which might startle people only familiar with their mid-’80s animated series, or the live-action movies from the ’90s, or even the Archie Comics version based off of the cartoon. Unlike all of the spin-offs, the original was a dark, brooding, and somewhat violent story; now, over a quarter of a century later, they’ve been rebooted again, and this new incarnation lends itself quite strongly to that original vision of the characters.

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Real-World Delays

Just a quick update; the next few weeks are going to be slightly erratic in terms of updates, due to being the process of moving across town… Especially since everything is being packed up, of course.

Hopefully the site will be back on a regular update schedule sooner rather than later, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from moving in the past, it’s that moving never happens as you expect.

Thanks for your patience!

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Malinky Robot: Collected Stories and Other Bits

By Sonny Liew
128 pages, color

Many years ago, I first encountered Sonny Liew’s comics thanks to a Xeric Grant funded comic called Malinky Robot: Stinky Fish Blues. It was inventive and entertaining, and instantly made Liew a creator that I would plan on watching out for in the future. He’s gone onto a lot of great comics since then (like My Faith in Frankie, Re-Gifters, and an adaptation of Sense & Sensibility) but I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Malinky Robot. With the release of Malinky Robot: Collected Stories and Other Bits, now you can get a chance to see just why he’s a creator whose work I’ll always keep an eye out for.

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Torpedo Vol. 3

Written by Enrique Sánchez Abulí
Art by Jordi Bernet
144 pages, black and white
Published by IDW

Jordi Bernet is one of those artists whose work I admire every time I see, but whom I rarely encounter. With IDW publishing a series of reprints of Torpedo, a European comic about an Italian killer-for-hire, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to give it a whirl and see a lot more of Bernet’s art in one fell swoop. What I wasn’t expecting, though, was just how brutal Enrique Sánchez Abulí’s scripts would be.

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