Review by Matthew Nielsen Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! by Art Spiegelman is a big book. It’s about 36x26cm (roughly 10×14 inches), so when you open it, it’s going to be twice the width. However, the book’s comics make full use of the pages. This book […]
Review by Matthew Nielsen Mom’s Cancer by Brian Fies is a very moving story of a mother in her sixties being diagnosed with cancer and how her three children do their best to help her. It is an autobiography told by Brian, the eldest of the mother’s children. Events start […]
Review by Matthew Nielsen Based on the Joseph Conrad novella of the same name, the graphic novel Heart of Darkness (adapted by David Zane Mairowitz and illustrated by Catherine Anyango) is about a man’s journey up the Congo River during the late 19th-century Belgian colonial period. The protagonist, Marlow, works for […]
Review by Matthew Nielsen Black Hole by Charles Burns is a story of teenagers, drugs, and an STD called the “Bug,” which gives whoever has it a random physical mutation, anything from small growths on the back to antennae coming out of the forehead. Not your X-Men sort of deal; […]
Review by Matthew Nielsen Scott McCloud’s trilogy of Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, and Making Comics are all excellent works. They are a great collection of essays entirely in the comics format, entirely about comics. The first book, Understanding Comics, published in 1994, focuses on the history, perception, and communication of […]
Review by Matthew Nielsen Tamara Drewe by Posy Simmonds is a story centred around a writer’s retreat in the English countryside. It starts off from the point of view of university professor Glen, and then moves on to the retreat’s de facto manager Beth. We also see things from other […]
Review by Matthew Nielsen The Quest for the Big Woof, written by Lenny Henry and illustrated by Steve Parkhouse, is a British comedic graphic novel from 1991 about the life and mind of Lenny Henry. The story is pretty straightforward: Henry is in the process of writing gags for his […]
Review by Matthew Nielsen How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less is an autobiographical graphic novel by Sarah Glidden that explores how she, an American with Jewish heritage, went on a birthright trip to Israel in March, 2007. The birthright trip is a charity-funded service that allows any […]
Review by Matthew Nielsen True Loves by Jason Turner and Manien Batoma is a romance comic set in Vancouver, Canada, that tells the story of True, the owner of a used clothes store, and Zander, a grocery clerk with a positive attitude. The story starts with True in a relationship […]
