Category: Other Publishers

By Lucy Knisley
208 pages, black and white
Published by Touchstone

The idea of journeying to another country for a month or so and just enjoying the new locale is an enticing one. No going to a job, no tight schedule, just renting an apartment and enjoying the culture and food. For that reason alone, when I first heard about French Milk by Lucy Knisley I thought that I needed to take a look at it. After I’d seen some of her online comics, though, French Milk moved from the "should take a look" list over to, "you need this book." As it turned out? I was right.

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By Koren Shadmi
160 pages, black and white
Published by Villard Books

I’ll freely admit that I started reading Koren Shadmi’s collection In the Flesh because of the pull quote from Rutu Modan. (I’ve just heard an entire publicity department jumping for joy, screaming, "They work! They work!") I’ve loved Modan’s comics for years, and while Exit Wounds pushed her into the well-deserved spotlight, her short stories for the Actus Group have shown that she really understands the medium. So if she was pushing Shadmi’s short stories, well, the book certainly deserved a look at my end.

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By Dave Sim
24 pages, black and white
Published by Aardvark-Vanaheim

I couldn’t help but find it a little apt to finally run a review of Glamourpuss right before April Fool’s Day, since I can’t help but suspect that most people think that Dave Sim is playing an elaborate joke on the rest of the comics industry with this being his follow-up to Cerebus. Once I finally sat down with an issue of the comic, though, I found myself really surprised by this strange, hodgepodge comic, which isn’t really quite like anything else on the market right now. I’m not entirely sure the world is ready for a combination of art appreciation, history lesson, and pop culture spoof, but then again was anyone really ready for Cerebus?

Continue reading “Glamourpuss #5”

By Jim Davis, with Dan Walsh
128 pages, color
Published by Ballantine Books

When I was in elementary school, my mother made me and my younger sister take piano lessons every week. We’d both be dropped off at our piano teacher’s house, and for the half-hour that my sister had her lessons, I would read the books that our teacher had in the waiting area. Most of those books were the original Garfield collections from the late ’70s, and I remember liking those early, sarcastic strips. Over the years, as Garfield has become its own media empire, the comic strip lost its edge and I figured it would be completely off my radar. That is, until Dan Walsh came up with his Garfield Minus Garfield website.

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Edited by Julia Wertz
192 pages, black and white
Published by Three Rivers Press

I freely admit, I love reading the "missed connections" listings on Craigslist. I used to read them religiously in my local alternative papers, but these days it seems to be the internet where you hit the missed connections pay dirt. Clearly I’m not the only person who finds these snippets of other people’s lives fascinating, because with I Saw You…: Comics Inspired By Real-Life Missed Connections, Julia Wertz has assembled an all-start collection of indy and alternative cartoonists to illustrate various missed connections postings. Just like the missed connections themselves, the results are variable but overall entertaining.

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By Carol Lay
200 pages, color
Published by Villard Books

As soon as I saw Carol Lay’s The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude, I knew I had to read it. After all, in early 2004 I’d looked at a photo of myself and decided, "Enough is enough." Ten months later, I’d dropped 60 pounds of fat and have since kept them off. So if there was ever a graphic novel memoir that I had a chance of completely and utter relating to, this was it.

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Edited by Robert Kirby and David Kelly
108 pages, color
Published by Green Candy Press

What can I say? I was a fan of the old Boy Trouble comic book anthologies in the day, and now that they’ve moved to big, handsome graphic novels? I’m still all in favor of Boy Trouble. There’s something about editors Robert Kirby and David Kelly’s sensibilities when it comes to choosing stories that always makes these books fun; there’s a wide range of styles and approaches here, from innocent and chaste to naughty and sexual, and all combinations in-between. The only common theme? Strong storytelling involving gay characters. Beyond that, the sky’s the limit.

Continue reading “Book of Boy Trouble Vol. 2”

By Corinne Mucha
96 pages, black and white
Published by Maidenhousefly Comics

There are times when, while reading comics, I feel like I’ve hit the jackpot. When reviewing Papercutter #8 last month, I’d commented on how much I enjoyed Corinne Mucha’s story "Growing Up Haunted," and I remember thinking that I wanted to see some more comics from Mucha. Well, in what could only be termed perfect timing, I have in front of me Mucha’s Xeric Grant funded My Alaskan Summer, and I for one and more thankful than ever for the Xeric Grant’s helping comic creators get their creations out there.

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Adapted by Kyle Baker
Based on the novel by Lewis Carroll
64 pages, color
Published by Papercutz

I have a strange confession to make; when it comes to Lewis Carroll’s two books about Alice, my favorite isn’t Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Rather, it’s the second book, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, that always intrigued me more, with Alice’s journey across a chessboard in an attempt to become a Queen instead of a Pawn. When Papercutz had Kyle Baker’s adaptation of Through the Looking Glass (originally published by First Comics in 1990) on their schedule, I was excited. Kyle Baker? Through the Looking Glass? How could this possibly go wrong?

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By Corinne Mucha, Elijah Brubaker, and Jeremy Tinder
32 pages, black and white
Published by Tugboat Press

One of the best things about going to a show like the Small Press Expo (SPX) is that so often, creators time their new releases to be right around the time of the show. So by way of example, if it’s late September/early October, there’s a good chance that Greg Means will have assembled a new issue of Papercutter. And once again, I must say, if you aren’t reading Papercutter then you’re missing out on one of the best alternative-comics anthologies being published.

Continue reading “Papercutter #8”