Category Archives: Graphic Literature

Marv Wolfman and George Pérez’s Crisis on Infinite Earths

It may seem strange to begin a review by taking a look at the end of the book, but Dick Giordano begins his afterword of DC Comics’ Crisis on Infinite Earths with, “Whew, what a read, huh?” (This is the … Continue reading

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Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly, editors’ It Was a Dark and Silly Night

Nathan Brazil wrote this review. Across the hemisphere our heroes dash in a flying machine of their own design, when down below in the ravaged tulip fields they spot the herbicidal maniacs. It Was a Dark and Silly Night is … Continue reading

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Val McDermid & Kathryn Briggs’ Resistance: A Graphic Novel

I worked for more than 30 years in a state government agency that included the public health department before retiring in, coincidentally, 2021. And for nearly all of that time I heard public health doctors and communicators warning about a … Continue reading

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G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Perker’s Air: Letters from Lost Countries

Blythe is not your typical airline attendant. Sure, she’s blonde, pretty and personable, playing into every conceivable stereotype there is. But Blythe is much more than that. For starters, she’s acrophobic, surviving each flight only through the wonders of modern … Continue reading

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Joe Sacco’s Palestine: The Special Edition

This lovely edition of Joe Sacco’s classic graphic novel Palestine is being promoted as “celebrating fifteen years of . . . Joe Sacco’s groundbreaking work of comics journalism.” So, it’s not a graphic novel? It’s “comics journalism.” OK, I’ll buy … Continue reading

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Chester Brown’s Louis Riel: A Comic Strip Biography

In the USA, history has been used as a basis for all sorts of entertainment. Novels, films and television shows have long been built out of the legends of American history. And so American history might have been distorted in … Continue reading

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James Lee, Scott Williams, et al’s Divine Right: The Adventures of Max Faraday (Books 1 & 2)

Part of the problem with Divine Right: The Adventures of Max Faraday, is that we’ve seen it before, and better. We’ve seen it with the Beyonder, for one. Molecule Man, for another. Any comics junkie is going to be more … Continue reading

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Stephen Weiner, Jason Hall, Victoria Blake, and Mike Mignola’s Hellboy: The Companion

Stephen Weiner, Jason Hall, Victoria Blake, and Mike Mignola (writers) and Mike Mignola (illustrator) It’s really hard to do a companion to a long running series well. Roger Zelazny’s The Amber Chronicles was well served by Theodore Krulik’s The Complete … Continue reading

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Jeff Smith’s SHAZAM! The Monster Society of Evil

First, a few brief items from the Full Disclosure Department: as a kid, my favorite superhero was Captain Marvel. I read a lot of his comics, watched his Saturday morning TV show (coupled with “Isis”), and when I was in … Continue reading

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Paul Grushkin & Dennis King’s The Art of Modern Rock

A long time ago, more years than I’d like to count, I was the assistant editor of my high school yearbook. Okay, it was 1968 and we had an art editor who was deeply influenced by the posters coming from … Continue reading

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