Fishtown
By Kevin Colden
IDW

When I first reviewed Fishtown, back in January, the artist was using Act-i-vate to publish a page a week of the book, which is based on a true story and follows four Philadelphia teens who brutally murder and rob their friend Jesse (the character’s name in the book). Now Fishtown is out in hardcover, courtesy of IDW, which means that readers can take in the rest of what began as an emotionally charged, upsetting, and incredibly well executed comic.

In the latter part of the book, Colden maintains the same narrative distance with which he starts. He reserves passing judgment on the kids, focusing instead on fleshing out the characters and approaching the tale as something of a question or a puzzle. This feat is particularly impressive given that this section of the book includes a reenactment of the murder. Colden’s drawings–whether they show the run-down Philly neighborhood of Fishtown all in inky yellow and blue and black or the horrifying scene of Jason’s slain body, stained in pink blood–are haunting. But the most affecting panels are the ones depicting the four teens—Adrian, Keith, Justin, and Angelica—committing the act of murder.

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Mammal Magazine Issue Two
By Various

Mammal magazine is silly—and that’s a compliment. It’s creative, funny, and sometimes creepy, managing to initiate a legitimate discussion around a given theme—in this second issue, machismo—without being stuffy or self-important. Mammal #2 looks polished, feels cohesive—which is impressive given that it’s a compilation, but less surprising when you learn that most of the Mammal men are old friends—and makes you feel like its creators really want you to enjoy reading it.

Fittingly for a magazine about machismo, the nine contributors are men—men with very distinct artistic styles. Everyone has a different take on masculinity: To name a few, Tom Forget offers two dramatic, retro vignettes inspired by 1920s ads and pin-ups and by film noir posters; Chris Hosmer contributes, among other things, a pseudo-“scientific” diorama breaking down the macho anatomy of Steve McQueen; and Benjamin Marra draws the trippy tales of a warrior named u-nonymous the unknowable, seemingly inspired by Norse mythology and video games.

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How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less #2: The Golan Heights
By Sarah Glidden
Self-Published

How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less follows Sarah Glidden’s trip to Israel on Birthright, with the recently published chapter two taking her into the Golan Heights, or, as the artist proclaims in the book, “disputed territory proper!” As thoughtful and enjoyable as chapter one, the second installment presents the comic Glidden again with a healthy blend of enthusiasm, reverence, and skepticism—a combination that makes the book properly political without being obnoxious and adequately fun without avoiding politics.

While in the small pages of the mini, extremely complex issues are sometimes boiled down to too small a size, Glidden keeps her character questioning and thinking, which in turn keeps us doing the same. And of course, if the story focused entirely on the politics and history, it wouldn’t be nearly as compelling.

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Papercutter #7
Edited by Greg Means and Galen Longstreth

Papercutter issue seven spotlights four emerging comic artists with three solid stories. Though none of the tales ranks among my new favorites, the artists prove their mettle and position themselves as ones to keep an eye on in the future.

The featured story, “Americus,” is the tale of two boys on the day of their middle school graduation. A collaborative effort by MK Reed and Jonathan Hill, “Americus” offers somewhat typical fare for plot: a smart, nerdy boy (Neil)has a tough time fitting in in middle school. His friend Danny is also a nerd, but somewhat less socially inept and less picked on, meaning he ends up with a slow dance at the end of the night while Neil ends up rummaging through a dumpster to fish out his book, which a couple of bullies grabbed and threw inside.

Not particularly new stuff, but Reed and Hill do a good job keeping the story moving with some unexpected moments: finding out Neil has no father in the picture and a brief, two-page escape into the fantasy world of the eighth book of one of the boys’ favorite series — the cleverly titled Chronicles of Apathea Ravenchilde, the Huntress Wytch. (Sort of a Harry Potter meets The Chronicles of Narnia.) The artwork, like the story, doesn’t take any big risks, but the bold, clean style suits the story, and at the end especially, frames of Neil digging alone through the dumpster with the shading of nighttime around him are particularly touching.

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Little Things
By Jeffrey Brown
Touchstone

Jeffrey Brown’s stories tend to defy convention. He’s a fantastic storyteller, and much of his strength lies in the way he foregoes the need for set ups and finite endings. In his world, life is constantly moving, making it all one big middle.

Brown achieved fast fame with his debut graphic novel, Clumsy, in 2003. That book and its follow up, Unlikely, garnered him a reputation for writing about women and relationships in extremely honest—some would say painfully so—detail. His latest release, Little Things, maintains a similar level of honesty but examines many different aspects of life—relationships and much more.

As the title suggests, the book is largely about life’s minutiae: music, coffee shops, stomach aches. But Brown throws in plenty of big stuff, too—death and surgery, for instance—and what’s remarkable is the democracy of the book. He approaches all of his subjects with equal energy, so that the story of visiting a friend follows that of a car accident his father was in, and the transition feels natural.

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Blurred Vision Vol. 4
By Various
Blurred Books

Blurred Vision 4 isn’t terrible, but it isn’t great, and with the amount of exciting new comics constantly being put out in various formats, there’s little need for a mediocre anthology—let alone time for it, if you want to try to stay on your indie comics A-game.

2008’s edition of Blurred Vision is the fourth in the yearly series, and actually my least favorite. Featuring many of the same contributors from previous editions—and a number of continuing strips—it culls together miscellaneous black-and-white works from a variety of artists as a sort of short story comics collection. Between each piece, there is a title page listing the name of the next comic and the artist, plus a brief artist’s bio and/or description of the work.

The interstitial pages are a new feature of this year’s edition, and quite an annoying one. Whereas the previous incarnations of the anthology read smoothly, the stark pages in between the contributions are disruptive in what is already a fairly choppy book. They might work better if they simply listed names and titles, like chapter openers, but the biographies and artists’ descriptions of their work belong together at the beginning or the end of the book, where a reader can refer to them as needed. Set in between the comics, they serve as all-too-constant reminders of reality in the midst of an otherwise otherworldly book, and they interrupt the visual flow that comes with reading narrative art.

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What It Is
By Lynda Barry
Drawn and Quarterly

What It Is is many things. Part autobiographical comic, part watercolor and collage, part instructional manual, and part workbook, the book is that rare breed that tries to be many thing at once and succeeds in its own grand ambitions, transitioning from one section to the next rather gracefully. Author Lynda Barry successfully arranges the different parts of the book so that they compliment each other nicely, giving each other value and depth that they wouldn’t necessarily have on their own.

What It Is would be far less interesting as a straight autobiography. Or just collage. Or a book about how to write. Barry’s collage pages, which reveal some of the inner workings of her mind with their clever and thoughtful essay questions—“When images come to us, where do they come from?”—resonate with her autobiographical comics because of the thematic links she creates. The comics depicting Barry’s personal struggle to find her own creativity and maintain it make the writing instruction section much less pedantic and much more exciting, because we know that she’s struggled as we have. The existence of the book itself gives the how-to section credibility as well, because knowing that Barry has created such a fantastic work using the methods she teaches means there’s gotta be something to it.

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Trial and Error: The Aviated Efforts of Jean Babtiste de Bomberaque
By Øivind Hovland
Self-Published

We’ve all heard it before: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Øivind Hovland, who lives and works in Bristol, England, gives readers his own eccentric, expressive take on the classic theme in Trial and Error: The Aviated Efforts of Jean Babtiste de Bomberaque. The book has almost no words, instead relying on the power of its art to hold our attention and tell us its story.

The fictional tale follows Jean Babtiste de Bomberaque, an Aix-en-Provence resident and nobleman who is absolutely determined to invent a flying machine. We learn very quickly that his attempts often fail, but he refuses to give up: Pictures of him in various flying contraptions—from hot air balloons to planes that rapidly fall apart—are interspersed with portraits of Bomberaque, at work furiously on plans at his desk or posing proudly with his family. Hovland also shows us Bomberaque’s friends and family and neighbors, whose faces range from awed or concerned to absolutely bored. It’s hard not to like the crazily determined man who pursues his life’s passion with boundless energy, and it’s hard not to be amused when he takes out his neighbor’s fence when he crashes (he snags another neighbor’s laundry line even when he succeeds). Hovland keeps the story fast-paced and fun.

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Funeral of the Heart
By Leah Hayes
Fantagraphics

Leah Hayes’s debut graphic novel, is a dark, strange, mesmerizing book. It tells five sad stories in black and white, with handwritten text and scratchboard illustrations that strike a balance between dramatic poignance and eeriness.

The collection is aptly titled, as it is a book in which three people die tragic deaths, one man is transformed from a loving person into a cold-hearted one, two women find their lives reduced to sleeplessness and general horror, and another woman turns out to be schizophrenic. Each of the book’s five stories effects a small death of the heart, be it that of a character or the reader. And yet somehow Hayes manages to keep her book from plunging the reader into complete and utter depression.

Partly this is because the stories have an otherworldly quality, a fairy tale simplicity to the way they are told, which, though it makes for abnormally melancholy fairy tales, keeps them in the realm of the fantastic. Hayes is as skilled with words as she is with her scratchboard, narrating with direct language and a decisive tone of near-childlike simplicity: as if she is saying, ‘you may think these things I’m telling you are strange, but this is just how it is.’ The structure of each story is akin to that of a morality tale, and this, combined with eccentric plot lines based on largely unreal circumstances—like the birth of twin girls who are connected by their hair—ensures that the stories do not feel real.

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Visiting New York Comic Con can be a fairly overwhelming experience, especially if it’s your first time. The place is huge, and if you don’t watch your step, chances are you’ll walk straight into a scantily clad faerie chick posing for a picture with a Blackhole Stormtrooper. You never what you’ll see next–case in point: On my way in, I ran into HETFET, Humans for the Ethical Treatment of Fairies, Elves, and Trolls, “picketing” (until they went in, too) outside the Javits. “Hi ho, hi ho! Troll persecution has got to go!” they yelled.

“What am I getting myself into?” I quietly mused.

Once safely inside, after someone in a giant Uglydoll suit (accidentally) touched my ass, I made my way over to the Small Press and Artist Alley areas. Taken aback by all of the energy, noise, commercialism, and excitement of the place, I figured those smaller sections off in the back right corner of the center were where I belonged.

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