An excellent encapsulation of what makes sequential art such a compelling, singular art form.
Editor Gloeckner (The Diary of a Teenage Girl, 2002, etc.) and series editor Kartalopoulos curate the 13th annual collection of North American sequential art.
As Gloeckner states in her wonderful introduction, these are auteur comics—works birthed from a single creator (with the exception of one father-son team)—rather than the ensemble approach (writer, artist, inker, letterer) often seen in commercial comics, not to mention the by-committee production employed in TV and movies. While independent comics stalwarts such as Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly published many of these stories, self-published books make up a good chunk of the collection. The low-to-no budget required to produce comics allows for the indulgence of outsider visions, like the compellingly bizarre “Untitled” from Michael Ridge (guy and girl cruising in an old car, thick black lines inexplicably spilling from their eyes and mouths, closing with the repeated refrain “Buy Fuckin Pickels”) or Max Clotfelter’s “The Warlock Story,” an autobiographical tale of the artist’s shy, unpopular early days in school drawing outrageously violent and sexually explicit comics on notebook pages, which simultaneously earned him interest from cool kids and deep concern from school officials and his mother. Many of the works tackle contemporary issues such as gender identity, global terrorism, and class warfare. Others explore timeless concepts like artists struggling against the strictures of art school. The most effective have a sense of humor (Aaron Lange’s “Selections from Art School” or Keiler Roberts’ “Sunburning”). Sometimes the more refined and impressive the art, the less resonant the stories (Ted Stearn’s “The Moolah Tree”). But each story excels on some level, from intimate confessions to surreal mythologies.
An excellent encapsulation of what makes sequential art such a compelling, singular art form.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-328-46460-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
The second volume in Giardinos poignant graphic narrative of growing up under Communist rule in postwar Prague lives up to the clean elegance of its first (rev. 5/1/97). Giardino's beautiful background art of Prague architecture contrasts with the sad tale in the foreground: a young man's tortured adolescence made worse by having his father imprisoned as an enemy of the state. The rush of events, both personal and political, flash by in near-wordless frames: Jonas, kicked out of school, gets a job in construction; Stalin dies; Jonas finds better work in a bookstore; the Czech ministry renews its campaign against counter-revolutionaries. The humanity of everyday Czechs is apparent in the sympathetic faces drawn with perfection by Giardino, from the beery plumber, Slavek, to the kindly bookstore owner, Pinkel. Jonas's self-pity reveals itself when he falls for a pretty girl, herself part of a group of young people who read forbidden books for sheer ``mental survival.'' Visually compelling and historically resonant, Giardino's full- color narrative is evolving into a masterwork of its kind.
Pub Date: March 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-56163-197-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: NBM
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The first volume in a longer graphic novel, Giardino's tale of Communist oppression in Prague after the war recalls the best fictional and nonfictional accounts of life under Stalinism in Eastern Europe—the Kafkaesque bureaucracies, the betrayal of friendships, the constant presence of Big Brother, the unofficial anti-Semitism. Giardino captures all this in a style American readers will recognize from the pages of Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal), in which such draftsmanship usually serves soft-core porn and tales of the fantastic. Giardino's realism features some lovely evocations of Prague, but the story never develops a style uniquely suited to its subject (which was the marvel of Spiegelman's Maus). Some of his silent panels best capture the terror of one family as it struggles to survive while the father is lost in the labyrinthine penal system. Still, this is a project worth watching if yet another fine comic artist proves that a medium long associated with kids can handle the most serious of topics.
Pub Date: July 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-56163-180-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: NBM
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
