The life of an exhibitionistic, modernist fraud, told through graphic art that will keep the reader up at night.
A fraud among the famous.
Maria Lani (1895-1954) was an enigmatic bit player on the stage of modern art. She appeared out of nowhere in the 1920s, claiming to be a great silent film star. She befriended such artists as Jean Cocteau and Henri Matisse. Everybody painted her portrait. With her husband, Max Abramowicz, they scammed the art world, keeping the valuable portraits and breezing through Paris until they disappeared in the 1930s. They were, of course, not who they said they were. Maria was born Maria Geleniewicz in the Jewish quarter of Czestochowa, Poland. She never was the film star that she claimed to be. She and her husband remained in Europe until 1940, when they managed to make it to Lisbon and sail for America. There was supposed to be a film based on her life, but it never materialized. She made it back to Paris, where she died. Writer Lackman and artist Pinson have transformed Lani’s life into a graphic biography. Vivid black-and-white images illustrate the hardships of the Polish Jewry of her birth. They boldly limn the world of 1920s Paris. They give us nightmarish and unforgettable faces. The whole book has the feel of the musical Cabaret, as if illustrated by R. Crumb, or as if Art Spiegelman’s Maus were told by Mr. Natural. There is a trippy terror to the book: Mouths distort, noses grow, eyes bulge out. Its bizarre genius is to take a woman known for her face on Modernist canvases and transform her into a visage fit for 21st-century comics. Lani was an artist of impersonations, a true charlatan worthy of this book’s outré imagination.
The life of an exhibitionistic, modernist fraud, told through graphic art that will keep the reader up at night.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9798875001116
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
A cartoonist’s gentle and charming epistolary memoir.
A cartoonist uses fans’ questions to trace his personal history.
Tomine began self-publishing his work at the age of 16. Since then, he’s developed a devoted fandom that, he says, has stuck by him for almost three decades. Although cartooning is a solitary profession, Tomine says his relationship with his readers has helped him stave off the loneliness that is, so often, a hazard of the job. He writes, “It’s never felt that way. In fact, I often think of my career as a decades-long conversation between myself and an amorphous, mostly anonymous group of people who are for some reason drawn to my work.” In Q&A, Tomine continues this conversation by responding to some of the most common queries, which include how to correctly pronounce his name (which, it turns out, Tomine didn’t know until a trip to Japan), his favorite brands of art supplies, his ability to balance the inspirations and frustrations of parents, and his thoughts about adapting his comics into films. He also offers career advice, describing how he got his start at theNew Yorker, spelling out his opinions on self-publishing and marketing, and providing ideas for connecting with comic artists who could serve as role models or mentors. Although this memoir doesn’t necessarily contain a clear character arc, it does provide a fascinating insight into a beloved artist’s personal history. Tomine’s writing is compassionate, empathetic, and tongue-in-cheek, and his narratorial voice has the intimate, confessional frankness of a good friend. The book’s visuals—which include Tomine’s illustrations—are a welcome addition to the text.
A cartoonist’s gentle and charming epistolary memoir.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781770467309
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A problematic but powerful Holocaust survival memoir.
Mother and daughter go on the run in Nazi-occupied Hungary, then endure the Russian occupation.
It would be difficult to conceive of Katin’s debut as anything but a graphic novel, given the strength of its visuals, but a straight-text approach might have been wiser. Her story is obviously dramatic. In Budapest circa 1944, when Miriam is a young girl, her mother, Esther, decides to avoid the impending Nazi roundup of Jews by faking their deaths and escaping to the countryside with forged papers. But things hardly improve outside the city, where villagers treat them no better in their new identities, taking their dark features to mean they’re gypsies. To make matters worse, a Nazi officer quickly figures out the Katins’ secret and uses it as a means of prying sexual favors from Esther. Hard circumstances turn desperate once the Red Army sweeps through, exhibiting the morals of drunken Vikings; Esther joins the starving, freezing villagers as they take clothes off soldiers’ corpses. She does her best to conceal all these horrific events from little Miriam, though the best she can manage is to induce a sort of baffled confusion. Katin’s episodic approach conveys events with an admirable economy at times, but often just hurries the reader through situations that could have used more explanation or context. The artwork’s smeared, sketchy quality contributes to this sense of undue haste. It may be that Katin chose the graphic form because of her background (she was a graphic artist in Israel and a background designer for Disney and MTV) rather than because it was the best vehicle for her story. However, the author’s pain is difficult to ignore, regardless of the limitations of her approach and her sometimes melodramatic tone.
A problematic but powerful Holocaust survival memoir.Pub Date: May 30, 2006
ISBN: 1-896597-20-3
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2006
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