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At a Crossroads: Between a Rock and My Parents’ Place

By Kate T. Williamson
144 pages, color
Published by Princeton Architectural Press

One of the biggest potential stumbling blocks for an autobiographical work is the fact that most of us don’t necessarily live the most exciting of lives. I’ve often heard the genre referred to as "naval-gazing works" and it’s hard to deny that I haven’t read my share of those over the years. With all that in mind, though, I think what really grabbed me about Kate T. Williamson’s At a Crossroads: Between a Rock and My Parents’ Place was that she lives an absolutely ordinary (and in other hands, even dull) life, but the way she tells it made me enthralled from start to finish.

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Showcase Presents: Metamorpho

Written by Bob Haney, with Gardner Fox
Penciled by Ramona Fradon, Joe Orlando, Sal Tripani, Jack Sparling, and Mike Sekowsky
Inked by Charles Paris, Jack Sparling, Mike Esposito, and Bernard Sachs
560 pages, black and white
Published by DC Comics

One of the great things about the Showcase Presents line is that it brings back into print comics that many of us almost certainly would have never encountered. For me, that would have definitely been the case with Showcase Presents: Metamorpho, collecting all 17 issues of the titular character’s comic from the mid-60s, as well as a handful of other appearances. And reading the book, it’s easy to see both why he was chosen to be plucked out of obscurity years later, and also perhaps why the book was cancelled in the first place.

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Hikaru no Go Vol. 12

Written by Yumi Hotta
Art by Takeshi Obata
200 pages, black and white
Published by Viz

There are some series that, over time, I’ve grown bored with. It’s the same thing over and over again, and I’ve just hit that point where I don’t care. Twelve volumes in, though, I find myself a little amazed (and quite pleased) that this is anything but the case for Hikaru no Go. Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata have just crossed the halfway point for their saga to master a board-game, and I’m dying to see just what happens next.

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Little Vampire Vol. 1

By Joann Sfar
96 pages, color
Published by First Second Books

Five years ago, two of Joann Sfar’s all-ages Little Vampire books were translated into English… and then, nothing. Now, finally, First Second has brought Little Vampire back from the dead, if you’ll pardon the bad pun. Little Vampire Volume 1 collects the first three stories by Sfar, and they’re just as much fun as I’d remembered.

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What It Is

By Lynda Barry
208 pages, color
Published by Drawn & Quarterly

One of my favorite books published in 2002 was Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons, as Barry told stories of her past in an attempt to exorcise those demons. In doing so, her observations on a lot of parts of life had really resonated with me, bringing up those emotions and ideas that I’d been carrying around for years as well. In her first original graphic novel, What It Is, Barry plumbs her early life again as she tries to understand imagination and creativity and how it works. The end result is perhaps one of the most necessary books of 2008.

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How to Love

By Mira Friedmann, Batia Kolton, Rutu Modan, Yirmi Pinkus, David Polonsky, and Itzik Rennert
144 pages, color
Published by Actus Independent Comics; distributed by Top Shelf Productions

There are some books that are really worth waiting for, and high among them is a new release from the Actus Independent Comics collective. A collective of Israeli comic artists, you never know what you’re going to find from them. It could be a box of miniature comics, maybe an anthology of stories all written by Etgar Keret, or comics where everyone’s protagonist is named Victor. I think they’re at their best, though, when they all work off a theme; their Happy End book really showed a wealth of ways to tackle that idea, and their new book How to Love shows a really varied group of attacks on just that.

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Biff Bam Pow! #1

Written by Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer
Art by Evan Dorkin
24 pages, black and white
Published by SLG Publishing

There are some creators whom I think it’s easy to take for granted. When they release a comic, you just assume that it’s going to be great, buy a copy, and don’t think twice about it. The problem with taking it for granted, though, is that if you don’t get excited about the book’s release then people might not talk it up to others and let them know just how good it is. I can’t help but think that’s a problem with Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer’s Biff Bam Pow!, which was thoroughly entertaining, but seemed to generate no real buzz at all. And that’s a real shame.

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Chiaroscuro Vol. 1

By Troy Little
240 pages, black and white
Published by IDW Publishing

Back in 2000, I picked up a new comic called Chiaroscuro, self-published by its creator Troy Little. It showed a lot of potential, and for seven issues I read along faithfully. In mid-2003, like so many self-published books, it stopped appearing and I thought that was the end of Chiaroscuro. Now, it’s back as a beautiful hardcover collection from IDW, with promises of more to come. Reading through those comics again, I can’t help but think that Chiaroscuro is a prime example of an artist learning his craft while already on stage.

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99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style

By Matt Madden
224 pages, black and white, one color insert
Published by Chamberlain Bros.

One of my favorite “how-to” books in comics is, in many ways, less a “how-to” book and more like a piece of performance art. Matt Madden’s 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style is a book that should be used in any sort of comic class, showing over and over again that there really is more than one way to tell a story, even something as simple as wandering across the apartment.

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Kaput & Zosky

Written by Lewis Trondheim
Art by Eric Cartier and Lewis Trondheim
80 pages, color
Published by First Second Books

There are times where I almost feel like a broken record, but I feel that it bears repeating over and over again—Lewis Trondheim is one talented creator. What always surprises me is how he’s able to switch genres and styles at the drop of a hat, going from serious slice-of-life to slapstick comedy with the greatest of ease. One of his latest efforts translated into English, Kaput & Zosky, falls into the latter category. That said, if there’s one thing Trondheim is especially good at here, it’s being able to skewer modern-day society even when he’s writing about incompetent conquest-loving aliens.

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