This year’s Black Comic Book Festival held in Harlem drew swarms of fans obsessed with Luke Cage, Sherlock and Holmes, and other superhero faire. Whit Taylor‘s tiny booth of mostly autobio comics quickly caught my eye, and I left with a copy of her comic Ghost expecting it to be a light-hearted, philosophical look at society.
Boy, was I wrong.
Instead I was left with an unparalleled experience that shocked me with its raw honesty. And yes, it’s a “twist,” but it’s a good kind of twist. The kind that doesn’t cheapen itself or dumb itself down, but actually elevates itself into another realm. I could bore you with a quick summary, but Ghost is the type of comic that’s more powerful if you go in blind with no expectations. Equal parts funny, inspiring, and heartbreaking, Ghost is a comic that’s not easily forgotten.
Recommended by Tiffany White | Wednesday, January 20th, 2016 | No Comments » |
Although illustrator and cartoonist Lillie Carré has a breadth of comics and books in her roster, this animated comic created for The New York Times‘ “Private Lives” series is the first time she gets autobiographical. Asked to confront the theme of “memory and identity,” she tells a story about a time she and her friend shared an innocuous memory involving feet…and blood. The twist, however, is that both friends remember the incident differently, which opens up the intriguing notion of false memories and our identities within those memories.
In the gallery we only included images and excerpts from the comic, but you can read the whole thing here. Carré also has an entire Tumblr of animated illustrations if you want to see more.
Recommended by The Absolute Staff | Thursday, February 19th, 2015 | No Comments » |
Once again, the wonderful folks at Fantagraphics have been kind enough to send me a couple of their new titles to review, one of which is yet another beautiful and emotionally moving travelogue by one of my favorite cartoonists, Lucy Knisley.
After her elderly grandparents sign up for a cruise they can’t handle on their own, Lucy offers to shepherd them on their 10-day excursion to the Caribbean. Faced with the realities of her grandparents’ fading health, plus the physical and mental stresses of caring for two nonagenarians, Lucy finds herself pitched into a period of intense doubt and frustration, while also trying to summon the patience and grace so desperately needed in times of distress.
Recommended by Marie Anello | Monday, January 5th, 2015 | No Comments » |
Recently the wonderful folks at Fantagraphics Books asked if I’d be interested in reviewing a few of their titles, one of which was Lucy Knisley’s latest work, An Age of License. As a longtime fan of Knisley’s webcomics, self-published books, and her recent best-selling food memoir Relish, I naturally jumped at the opportunity.
Lucy Knisley is well known for her travelogues. Her first book, French Milk, published by Simon & Schuster, is in fact a travel journal kept while on a trip to Paris with her mother back in 2007. Since then, she’s illustrated several accounts, including trips to Florida, Tanzania, Florence, and even a return to Paris, which are available through her website. An Age of License, however, is her first travelogue published through Fantagraphics, and will be followed next summer by another work titled Displacement.
Recommended by Marie Anello | Friday, May 16th, 2014 | No Comments » |