Charles Schulz’s Peanuts has long been available in book-length collections, the slim, often topical paperbacks a staple of children’s departments at libraries and old book stores.

Such collections pre-dated the normalization of the term “graphic novel,” though—the technical definition of which could be argued at great length, but the current popular definition of which within the publishing industry is simply comics bound with a spine—which allows Boom Studios to proclaim Happiness Is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown the first Peanuts graphic novel.

One could argue whether or not that is the case, I suppose, but not without first arguing about the semantics of the term, so let’s skip all that. This is definitely the first Peanuts-branded comics packaged and sold as a graphic novel, as opposed to a collection, its the first that reads like a graphic novel and, more noteworthy to fans of the characters and their creator, it’s also the first new Peanuts comics material produced since the death of Schulz.

“New” probably needs some qualification, though. The 85-page book is an adaptation of the recently-produced animated special of the same name, and that was based on Schulz’s strips. The result then is a pretty perfect balance between providing new Peanuts material without resorting to someone other than the late Schulz doing it—No, he didn’t draw these lines, but these are still his gags and his story. The book, like the special, is therefore more of a respectful cover song than a whole new band exploiting the name of another one.

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I like high concepts as much as the next guy, even if the next guy is a rabid otaku, and, let’s face it, when it comes to high-concept comics, Japan’s are higher and more numerous than anywhere else on earth.

But Yu Aikawa’s Butterfly features a really complicated one, which takes a majority of the first, 200-page volume to simply lay out.

High schooler Ginji Ishikawa hates the supernatural and angrily dismisses all aspects of it—from belief in ghosts and curses to horror scope reading. He also dismisses anyone who believes in it. This is kind of odd, since every single night Ginji is visited by the ghost of his dead brother, whom he shouts away with I can’t see yous and There’s no such thing as ghosts.

Ginji’s friend is constantly trying to set him up on dates with girls, although they usually end disastrously because of his ant-occult stance. On one double-date, they visit an amusement park, and when he’s reluctantly pulled into a haunted house, Ginji punches out an actor dressed as a ghost. He manages to avoid legal trouble, but only by committing to paying off the injured actor and park.

An opportunity to make the necessary money presents itself when a mysterious little girl approaches Ginji with a proposition: “Let’s go and kill all the ghosts in the world together!”
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It Came From the NYPL

Alan Moore’s Complete WildC.A.T.S
Written by Alan Moore

Penciled by Travis Charest, Kevin Maguire, Ryan Benjamin, Jason Johnson, Dave Johnson, Kevin Nowlan, Scott Clark, Aron Wiesenfeld, Jim Lee, Josh Wiesenfeld, Mat Broome, Pat Lee & Rob Stotz
Inked by Troy Hubbs, Randy Elliott, Sal Regla, Trevor Scott, Scott Williams, Art Thibert, Terry Austin, Hakjoon Kang, Andy Owens, Harry Thuran, Tom McWeeney, John Nyberg, JD, Bob Wiacek, Dexter Vines, Richard Friend, Mark Irwin, Luke Rizzo, Sandra Hope, John Tighe, Richard Bennett, Jason Gorder & Scott Taylor
Colored by Wildstorm FX, Bad@$$ & Alex Sinclair
Lettered by Bill O’Neil & Comicraft
Cover art by Charest
Published by DC/Wildstorm

A while back, I borrowed Wild Worlds, a collection of Alan Moore-written odds-n’-ends set in the Wildstorm universe, from the library, and it was a mostly terrible reading experience. Eventually, despite Wild Worlds, I decided to borrow the other major collection of Alan’s Wildstorm tenure – his slightly-over-a-year long turn on Jim Lee’s WildC.A.T.S series.

Reading the stories, I’m couldn’t help but think … — so y’all know I’m a big Neil Young fan, right? These books – Wild Worlds and Complete WildC.A.T.S – remind me of Neil’s early and mid-1980s output: amazing artist, really terrible work.

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Rip Kirby v. 3
Written by Alex Raymond, Ward Greene & Fred Dickenson
Illustrated by Raymond
Published by IDW/Library of American Comics

After leaving the Flash Gordon, the sci-fi adventure strip he’d created in 1934, for a stint in U.S. Marines during World War II, Alex Raymond was informed by his editors at King Features that Flash was doing quite well without him, thank you very much, and they would not reinstate him to his creation. Although he was almost certainly very disappointed, Raymond didn’t let it show – he simply created another engaging strip, this one thoroughly different in tone, content and style.

Rip Kirby, which debuted in early 1946, became Raymond’s longest run on a daily strip (Flash was a Sunday strip), the feature which he devoted himself to until he died in a car accident in late 1956. A break from earlier pulp-inspired detective strips, Kirby presaged more recent procedurals, with a debonair private detective who relied on wits and science. Though he could punch a crook out when he had to!

While it’s not the best adventure strip you’ll read – the plots are mostly good, though a few stretch credulity, such as The Mangler’s attempts to ruin Pagan Lee, a storyline predicated on a half-reasoned excuse to bring back a popular female character – Kirby always manages to entertain. Raymond and his co-authors (Greene, who scripted the early stories, leaves during this run, claiming that Raymond received too much credit for the writing – Dickenson replaced him) keep the pace up consistently, pepper the scripts with small bits of humanizing humor, and throw in enough wrinkles to keep readers off-balance if not entirely surprised.

The classic romantic aspect of adventure fiction remains strong here; nearly every case Kirby solves seems to bring together two conflicted lovers. Supporting players are well developed during the strip – onetime bad-girl Pagan Lee and Kirby’s reformed-safecracker-cum-valet Desmond each carry the strip for over a month of strips without any slack in the storylines, and Rip’s main squeeze Honey Dorian nearly matches them in a storyline of her own.

Raymond’s attention to detail – both in panel composition and in the styles of the time – pull readers into each continuity. Raymond was among the first comic artists to speak publicly about the possibilities of the comics medium – he found the glossy illustration work he thought he wanted less fulfilling than telling stories with pictures – and his attention to craft shines through on these pages. The Library of American Comics’ typically high standards of reproduction remain unimpeachable, with pristine linework, proper binding and a handy sewn-in bookmark.

Fast-moving, surprising, and beautifully drawn, Rip Kirby ages very well, and fans of Alex Raymond or comic strip history should love having the Library of American Comics’ superb collections on their bookshelves. These strips are among the most influential artistry in comics history – they deserve preservation and, even more, a passionate audience.

The Complete Calvin & Hobbes
Written & Illustrated by Bill Watterson
Published by Andrews McMeal

Not the timeliest review, I know, right? I’ve had my eye on this half-ton, three-book, slipcased Calvin & Hobbes set ever since it came out, but never quite convinced myself to splurge out the cash for it. My brother thankfully enabled me to sidestep ever paying for it when he gave it to me this past Christmas. And believe me, I had no idea what to think when I found a gaudily wrapped, immovable weight under my Christmas tree.

I probably don’t have to say much about Calvin & Hobbes. Although the last strip appeared nearly fifteen years ago, I’d guess that most of you have read it in some form. My local paper didn’t carry the strip during its entire run, and I was too distracted by being a teenager when it did show up those last four or five years to read it religiously, but even then, I knew Watterson was creating something special.

The years have done nothing to diminish that accomplishment. Calvin & Hobbes continues to stand out as one of the most important, funny and singular comic strips of all time. Celebrating imagination, mischief, ingenuity and basic human decency, Watterson spent twelve years giving voice to perhaps the best newspaper comic strip in American history. Yes, it’s that good.

To have this singular brilliance wrapped up (embalmed and boxed, as Watterson puts it in his introduction) in one package is priceless. The books feature sturdy, proper binding (comic book trade programs, pay attention!), and heavy pages that stand up to repeated turning. The linework is reproduced pristinely, and the colors dazzle. And even the box looks great, with a clean, simple look and good choices for the exterior artwork.

Calvin & Hobbes is, perhaps, the best comic strip ever, and it’s all here, a permanent keepsake, to revisit again and again and again. Everybody simply needs to have the Complete Calvin & Hobbes in their homes (even if, like me, you’re a little late in doing so!).

If getting a Superman comic just right is a hard feat to accomplish in the 21st century, it’s nothing compared to getting one featuring his pal just right.

While the Silver Age stalwart Jimmy Olsen has never, ever gone away from his supporting character gig in the Superman comics, he hasn’t been a successful star in his own right for decades now, and the various attempts to make him work as a leading man in the post-relevance, post-Crisis, post-“Comics aren’t just for kids anymore!’ era never seemed to work out quite right.

In the last few years, for example, we’ve seen James Robinson put Olsen at the center of a dark, deadly serious sci-fi espionage thriller plot as part of the “New Krypton” direction of the Superman books, and Paul Dini and a battalion of writers and artists do…whatever they were trying to do in Countdown.

The problem with the character seems to be that while he is so fantastical that he’s extremely difficult to fit into the more realistic DC Universe line of the last few decades. There was always an almost magical realist quality to the character—a teenage reporter for a big city newspaper who had all sorts of fantastical adventures based solely on his proximity to Superman (and the scores of mad scientists that apparently populate the Metropolis suburbs), and who was always able to triumph, or at least survive, based on his wits. Powerless, he was kind of like Clark Kent, only without the deception, the milquetoast act and the need to change clothes in order to act.

Also, he was a kid, like his readers.

Of course, once kids stopped reading and more and more adult logic started being applied, well, it’s hard to even get past “teenage reporter”—Is he an intern? Did he go to J school? Why doesn’t he live with his parents?

Writer Nick Spencer, like relatively few others—Abhay Khosla in his Superman 80-Page Giant 2011 #1 short story, Grant Morrison in All-Star Superman #4—doesn’t seem to have had many problems making Silver Age Jimmy Olsen work in the 21st century. Or, if he did labor mightily to perfect his take and to find the best way to communicate it, one can’t see it in the final scripting. His Jimmy Olsen seems effortless.

He seems to have accomplished this by accepting the ground rules of the DC Universe and not tried rationalizing them or make too much real world sense out of them—this Jimmy Olsen is still a Silver Age, magical realist type of character and his world is still utterly fantastic. The writing—its characterization, its world-building, its dialogue, its storytelling—didn’t get more realistic, it simply got more sophisticated.

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It Came From the NYPL

Grandville
Written & Illustrated by Bryan Talbot
Published by Dark Horse

Bryan Talbot’s one of my favorite cartoonists. Even if Alice in Sunderland wasn’t one of the five greatest comics of all time, the mind-bending Luther Arkwright books or the hippie-dippie fun of Chester Hackenbush would place Talbot high on my personal favorites list.  Grandville, his steampunk, “scientific-romance thriller” from 2009, didn’t really grab my attention, however. I wanted to read it; it’s Talbot after all, but the genre elements didn’t really appeal to me. That steampunk thing just isn’t my bag. So I kept checking the library and finally (and I mean finally, I’ve been checking regularly), the library got it in stock and I borrowed it.

It’s pretty much the perfect library book. Grandville‘s fun, a whole lot of it. Anthropomorphized animals, a stylized steampunk Europe setting, fast action, a few good plot twists and plenty of danger make it a worthwhile thriller. Talbot’s always been a terrific artist, and his expanding mastery of modern coloring only enhances the speed and tension of his line work during the book’s many chase sequences, fistfights and gun battles.

The plot’s not exactly wholly original – and it’s an entirely plot-driven book – but Talbot adds a few wrinkles to keep it interesting. In short, Grandville‘s the perfect library book – a rock-solid adventure by a favorite cartoonist, but one that I probably won’t want to revisit frequently. If steampunk-based, government-murder conspiracy thrillers are your thing, this book’s among the best of its ilk. And even if it’s not, Grandville‘s a really well crafted comic and recommended. If you’re lucky, you can find it in your local library and find out for yourself if it’s a keeper or a borrower – either way, it’s worth the time.

The Arctic Marauder
Written & Illustrated by Jacques Tardi
Translated by Kim Thompson
Published by Fantagraphics

Fantagraphics has been injecting a steady stream of Jacques Tardi into the American comic book market, and I, for one, am appreciating it. From the ugly World War I drama It Was the War of the Trenches to whimsical fantasy The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec, Tardi is proving a singular and unclassifiable cartoonist. Their latest translation, The Arctic Marauder, continues to showcase Tardi’s range.

Set in 1889, The Arctic Marauder tells of young Jérôme Plumier, a medical student, witness to the unlikely discovery of a sailing vessel lodged atop an iceberg. When his own ship is destroyed, Plumier is eventually rescued but begins a strange, surreal and twisted adventure, leading to the discovery of why so many ships have been sinking in the Arctic Sea and the origin of the iceberg-bound boat.

Whimsically dark, The Arctic Marauder doesn’t fit in with many other books. It’s steampunkish, with an innocent. humorous narration that contrasts the book’s cynically maniacal characters. I have to admire Tardi’s choice to end the book on the most unlikely note, where most writers would end the prologue.

Graphically, Tardi is a superb cartoonist, using strong layouts and strikingly iconic character designs that stay with the reader. His page designs add to the boldness of each composition, and the architecture and technology give the book a palpable sense of place and time.

In short, The Arctic Marauder is pure fun, silly and dark camp. It’s a beautiful book, with an appealing cover and a sturdy hardcover binding. Tardi’s narrative voice keeps the proceedings puckishly light and pleasant, while the plot itself explores oceanic depths and throws out characters rife with madness and egocentrism. There aren’t many books quite like it; comics readers are better off for having Tardi available here in the States.

Wow, whatever happened to sugar, spice and everything nice? That panel is from Peyo and Yvan Delporte’s story La Schtroumpfette , recently translated and published by Papercutz in their fourth Smurfs collection, The Smurfette.

Now, as a reader and as a critic, I think it’s always important to consider the context a work was originally created in, and, at least as a critic, not to judge by the standards of the days. The Smurfette comic was made in 1966,  in Belgium (a country whose mid-20th century culture I know exactly nothing about), so I’m reading it from 55 years in the future.

Additionally, the Smurfs comics aren’t terribly complex in their characterization. The majority of the characters introduced into the series so far all have exactly one character trait a piece, which they are named after—Grumpy is grumpy, Lazy is lazy, etc–and the most complex seem to be the ironically named Harmony and Brainy, who are named for traits they think they possess but are actually the opposite.

Even still, it’s hard to read The Smurfette and not wonder if Peyo and Delporte were coming out of terrible relationships when they made this comic or what. The above panel, in which the wicked sorcerer Gargamel follows a spell to create a female Smurf, is part of his plan to wreak a terrible vengeance on the Smurfs. Apparently, the existence of a female in their all-male world is all he thinks it will take to make them all completely miserable.

And he’s right!

The spell ends with a footnote, which appears along the bottom of the page as a disclaimer, “This text is the sole responsibility of the author of the spell-book ‘Magicae Formulae,’ Beelzebub Editions”, so readers won’t blame Papercutz for the portrayal of females.

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It Came From the NYPL

King: King of Comics
Written by Mark Evanier
Published by Abrams

Jack Kirby is, of course, the most important and influential artist in comic book history. He, along with a few contemporaries, created the visual language of the comic book page; the sheer volume of his pages boggles any imagination; and he’s created, co-created, or radically reimagined about two-thirds of the commercially viable characters (even Superman’s carried the influence of those Jimmy Olsen stories for a long, long while) to appear in superhero comics over the past forty years.

So clearly, the world really needs a proper biography of the life of a man who did more for comic books than anybody else. Fortunately, Mark Evanier is available for the job. Kirby: King of Comics, which I recently borrowed from the New York Public Library, does a wonderful job introducing readers to Jack Kirby, the man. We’ve known his work, but most of us have never had the opportunity to meet the person.

Evanier’s biography is a loving effort, with the author’s affection for Jack apparent on every single page. Insight into Kirby’s work ethic, motivated by his need to provide for his family, comes through clearly, as does Kirby’s enthusiasm for telling stories and the comic book medium. When it comes to Kirby’s battles for recognition – monetary and public – Evanier takes the high road, avoiding most blame. Martin Goodman, Jack Schiff and the money people are the clear villains of Kirby’s life. Many of the industry-based anecdotes have been heard before, but the book is largely about Jack as a man, how he struggles on, always bringing home that paycheck for his family.

An oversized hardcover, King: King of Comics provides readers with hundreds of pages of artwork and illustrations. The book’s dimensions showcase the drawings beautifully, allowing the detail and power to really come across. It’s a very attractive book, complementing Evanier’s affectionate tribute.

Kirby: King of Comics isn’t quite essential – it’s too reverent, but it’s a loving tribute to the most important creator in comics history. Mark Evanier’s done a fine job illuminating the man behind the creations, providing readers with a book well worth owning, or at least worth a visit to your local library.

Freeway
Written & Illustrated by Mark Kalensniko
Published by Fantagraphics

Mark Kalesniko’s Mail Order Bride was among the best comics of 2003, so his latest – Freeway – came with considerable expectations. Freeway is a return to Kalesniko’s alter-ego, Alex Kalienka; while trapped in a southern California traffic jam, Alex recalls starting out in the animation field, his childhood dream, while contrasting the reality of office politics, back-stabbing favoritism and compromise against his dreams of creative freedom and loving comraderie.

In the end, Freeway’s concept is stronger than its reality. Which isn’t to say it’s a bad book – Freeway’s a perfectly okay book, but just an okay one. The characters are well crafted, and Kalesniko does a fine job contrasting the reality of his circumstances against his dream scenario – particularly in the case of his own insecurity compared to his dream-vision’s easy-going confidence. The office politics are well played and all too real, and the pages are laid out well, the illustrations suitably charming.

Yet the narrative pulls in too many directions, as Alex dreams of not just his past and his ideal, but images of his childhood encamped on a stool in front of a television recur; a dark, sputtering car lurks behind him on the L.A. freeway; and a young Alex frets fearfully over his job interview and ever feeling at home in bustling Los Angeles. And then there are the morbid daydreams of his own demise – each tangent works on its own, but taken together, they pull the story in too many directions.

While the layouts are effective, Kalesniko’s transition panels between dream visions – a three-panel exchange with both past and dream overlaid in the middle panel – becomes heavy-handed and distracted after the first few usages. Some sequences are drawn out too long, although others, such as the multi-panel images of gridlock and Alex’s stream of curses, enforce the insistent inescapability of the freeway’s congestion.

Freeway is a good book, but it’s not quite a great book. A clearer focus would keep Kalesniko’s intent at the book’s fore, that dreams are wonderful, but the world isn’t what you dream. Kalesniko provides no answers for his protagonist – the animation business doesn’t suddenly become everything he hoped. The world is full of compromises, but with a little more care, Freeway could’ve been free of them.

While there have been plenty of negative trends to emerge in mainstream serial super-comics over the last few years, one of the trends I’ve been quite happy to see the Big Two try out and stick with is weekly (and weekly-ish) comics series. You know, 52, Countdown, Trinity, Wednesday Comics, Amazing Spider-Man, Brightest Day, Justice League: Generation Lost, DC Universe Online Legends and so on.

They haven’t all been great comics, of course, and some of them have been downright lousy, but for someone with an every-Wednesday, weekly comics hobby/habit, there’s something quite refreshing about the dependability and regularity of the schedule—especially given that so many “monthly” comics have become “whenever-the-creators-get-‘em-done-ly.”

Outside of the thrice-monthly turned twice-monthly Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel’s weekly-ish comics have been trying out five-issue miniseries in five-week months, like last year’s weird, confused but still kind of fun Heralds series and, this month, 5 Ronin.

I like weekly-ish comics so much that the schedule was actually what sold me on trying it out this series…well that and the attachment of writer Peter Milligan, whose best comics are great and his worst comics are better than those of most writers.

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Prince Valiant v. 3: 1941-1942
Written & Illustrated by Hal Foster
Published by Fantagraphics

Common consensus is that Hal Foster’s famed adventure strip Prince Valiant reaches the early days of its (long) golden era during the years collected in this book. Considering how much I enjoyed the first four years, when Foster was still finding the strip’s voice, I wasn’t sure how much better Valiant could get. Turns out, Prince Valiant achieves sheer radiance.

Now, for my money, Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates remains the class of the newspaper adventure strip – frankly, it remains the class of all adventure comics, strip, book or otherwise. Hal Foster, however, is pushing hard for the second slot on this list.

In 1941 and 1942, Valiant spends over a year voyaging through Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa, seeking the return of his fabled “Singing Sword” and pursuing the visionary beauty of Queen Aleta. Along the way, there are many fights won by Val’s determination, many romances enabled by Val’s kindness, and many tables turned by Val’s cunning. He travels with pirates in search of gold, battles against slave traders, and inevitably enriches the lives of good people everywhere, while demolishing those less worthy.

In short, Prince Valiant is noble romantic adventure fiction at its finest. The plots are classical, yet surprising, with chivalry and fair play constantly at the forefront. Poetic and strikingly descriptive, the narrations could nearly stand alone, but fortunately are accompanied by some of the finest comics’ art ever produced. Foster’s nuanced artwork captures the most subtle intentions of his immense cast, while the details and carefully crafted color work fill out Val’s world with rich textures from clothing to stonework, from animals to forests. Even the climates Val visits, sweltering Africa, frigid Britain – pounding rains and dehydrating days at sea – ground the reader in a palpable world.

Working from full-color syndicate printer’s proofs, Fantagraphics’ current Valiant reprints are the most pristine incarnations of Foster’s strip … well, ever. Surely the original newspaper versions didn’t showcase the full depth of his artwork, and the care put into the binding and the book design displays the publisher’s commitment to presenting Foster’s work in the best light possible. Prince Valiant v. 3: 1941-1942 finds a legendary strip reaching yet greater heights of creative accomplishment, presenting the strips with the full majesty of size, color and detail that its author always hoped for. After Foster, comics were never the same; this series is, simply, a must-have for any serious comics library.

iZombie v. 1: Dead to the World
Written by Chris Roberson
Illustrated by Mike Allred
Colored by Laura Allred
Lettered by Todd Klein
Published by DC/Vertigo

It’s probably not Roberson and Allred’s fault, but I found this particular trade paperback less than satisfying. It just never provided any sense of resolution to the reader – and I understand, this being an ongoing serial, some storylines will remain open for perhaps years. Yet I still prefer that each book in a series gives some closure to some piece of the narrative. I quit monthly comics ten years ago because trades were a more satisfying reading experience. With longer stories becoming the norm, but publishers opting for low-cost collections of only five, maybe six, issues, even trades are often unsatisfying these days. Putting more pages in these collections is strongly encourged, by me anyway. Price resistance kicks in when I know I have to pay many times for what I could have in fewer installments.

Of course, even if Dead to the World provided a clearer resolution, I’m not sure I’d be back for more. iZombie‘s a cute series, about Gwen, a zombie lady who must eat brains once a month or become a mindless, shambling monstrosity, and what occurs when her latest brain comes with memories of its own murder. But it’s still a zombie book, with vampires, monster hunters, ghosts and a were-terrier. It’s building its own particular take on these creature mythologies, but it’s all still monster mythology.  The monster subgenre of horror isn’t really my thing, so I can appreciate a solid twist and some nice art, but there’s no deeper hook here to bring me into it.

Roberson’s stiff dialogue carries the story, but doesn’t get deeper into the characters. The plot swerves effectively in a few key places, such as Amon’s back story, but it’s all plot – there’s no deeper significance to any of it. Mike Allred’s long been a favorite comic artist of mine, with a clean pop-art, cute-girl style that doesn’t seem obviously suited to a monster comic. Yet he acquits himself very well in iZombie, with strong character designs and clear page layouts, bringing a brightness and clarity to Gwen’s sullen lot in life.

In short, iZombie‘s an interesting series, but not necessarily a compelling one. I’m sure many readers will dig it – those with more interest in monster movie riffs than I, for example – but Dead to the World doesn’t set the series up to be anything more than a middling (if pretty-looking) genre exercise.

X-9: Secret Agent Corrigan v.1: 1967-1969
Written by Archie Goodwin
Illustrated by Al Williamson
Published by IDW/Library of American Comics

The daily newspaper Secret Agent X-9 debuted in 1934 with an impressive creative pedigree. Dashiell Hammett, following his successes with The Maltese Falcon and Red Harvest,  scripted the sleuth’s adventures, and Flash Gordon/Rip Kirby creator (and perhaps the most influential comics illustrator ever) Alex Raymond handled the artwork.

Both men soon abandoned their nameless detective, who travelled with a variety of creators for three decades until 1967 when Al Williamson, a longtime disciple of Raymond’s style, was hired to take over drawing the strip. Williamson recruited colleague and friend Archie Goodwin to write adventures for X-9, which was retitled Secret Agent Corrigan.

This book collects the earliest stories from Goodwin and Williamson’s twelve-year Corrigan run.

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Brecht Evens’ late 2010 graphic novel The Wrong Place was a great one, but it was also a revelatory one. Evens used words and pictures to tell the story, but he also used color, page space and implied, invisible panels co-created by the reader’s act of reading to tell that story in a unusual, perhaps even unique way.

I haven’t read all the comics yet (although I’m working on it!), but I’ve read a lot of them, and I can honestly say I’ve never read anything quite like The Wrong Place.

This week Top Shelf released Evens’ Night Animals, and while it’s rather different than The Wrong Place, it is a new Evens comic and thus the most like Wrong Place of anything I’ve seen so far.

The title page of the slim, 48-page volume bears the sub-title, “A Diptych about What Rushes through the Bushes,” and the contents that follow are two short, wordless stories that indeed share a nighttime setting and a massive menagerie of beautifully, bizarre creature.

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It Came From the NYPL

Cross Game v. 2
Written & Illustrated by Mitsuru Adachi
Translated by Lillian Olsen
Lettering and touch-up by Jim Keefe & Mark McMurray
Published by Viz

In Cross Game v. 2, Mitsuru Adachi spends 280 of 350 pages chronicling a single baseball game. If you’re a baseball geek like me, it’s pure heaven.

The series’ overall arc, continuing from the first book, continues to revolve around high schooler Ko Kitamura developing into a baseball phenom, while his adversarial-cum-burgeoning-respect relationship with Aoba Tsukishima slowly evolves from childhood tensions into something more mature.

And, yeah, the emotional core of the series, Ko and Aoba’s relationship, is present in this book, but ultimately, v. 2 of Cross Game is devoted to Adachi’s astonishing ability to capture the magical moments of a baseball game on a comic book page. Using motion lines, severe angles, close-ups, quiet open panels of baseballs suspended in space, and angular poses that capture the contortions of charging fielders and off-balance throws, Adachi visually described the poetry of sports in static imagery.

Cross Game is, for this baseball fan anyway, a beautiful comic series; one I’ll probably begin buying before vol. 3 arrives in the U.S. But it’s great to know that I can continue to discover great series like this at my library; hopefully you’re all discovering similarly wonderful series at your branch.

Popeye v. 5: Wha’s a Jeep?
Written & Illustrated by E.C. Segar
Published by Fantagraphics

We’re closing on the end of Elzie Segar’s monumental comic strip accomplishment with the fifth volume of Fantagraphics’ recent Popeye reprint series. The next book will be the end, as Segar passed away and the strip passed into the hands of other – often still talented, but simply not as original – cartoonists.

This fifth volume introduces Eugene the Jeep, the yellow-furred, future-predicting pet and Popeye’s long-lost father Poopdeck Pappy into the mythology, effectively completing Popeye’s peculiar family unit. Popeye, Olive Oyl and Swea’pea form the semifunctional nuclear unit, with Wimpy, Castor, Eugene and Pappy rounding out the extended family.

While the daily strips focus on extended sequences, including Popeye’s kingdom Spinachovia feuding with Olive’s island nation and then facing invasion from neighboring Brutia. Then Eugene arrives and instigates the search for Pappy; Segar’s Sunday pages are couched in the strip’s unlikely family dynamic.

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Scenes from an Impending Marriage: A Prenuptial Memoir
Written & Illustrated by Adrian Tomine
Published by Drawn & Quarterly

Adrian Tomine’s Scenes from an Impending Marriage was born as a wedding gift, a token given to the guests at he and his wife’s nuptials. As such, it’s fairly innocuous. And you can’t really blame Tomine for that – that’s the inherent problem with a gift for a hundred or so people with a thousand different interests. It’s hard to find something for everyone, so you keep it basic. Innocuous.

Which isn’t to say Scenes from an Impending Marriage is bad. It’s not. It’s decently funny, with scenes that anybody who’s been married (went through it myself last April, so it’s quite fresh) – or known someone who’s been married – can easily relate to. Tomine provides a few good lines, grits his teeth in frustration and rolls with the punches in the same way my wife and I did, and the same way every other couple in ceremonial marriage history has done. It’s effective and cute, and certainly very well drawn – the loose quality of the art makes for a much livelier book than any of Tomine’s others – but it’s not an essential piece of a strong cartoonist’s canon.

“Realism,” quotation marks and all, can be a strange thing to demand from any form of fiction, and it can be a strange thing to decry the lack of.

This seems especially true when the fiction under discussion comes in the form of comics, probably because the form has been dominated by genre works for so long that straight comics literature divorced from easy genre classifications (horror, romance, superhero, crime, etc) are still (relatively) new.

Of course that fiction’s not real—it’s fiction. Someone is making it up. How realistic do you want it to be? The easy answer is that it should be realistic enough that you can forget that people are behind the scenes inventing it long enough to lose yourself in the story and the drama enough to enjoy it, or be affected by it.

I think comics struggles with this a bit more than other media like, say, prose or film, simply because it is easier for them to achieve different types of verisimilitude. A film looks like the real world, the written word is the way we communicate a lot of information—a novel might look or read the same way a letter or email or news article might.

But comics? Someone had to draw all those little lines making up those people, and the little bubbles surrounding all the words, whether they hand-lettered those words or had a computer program do it for them.
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