Here at WWAC, we have your winter holiday reading in mind, and can offer all kinds of suggestions for finishing off 2022 with food for thought, starting tense conversations with your family, and/or dialing up the escapism. No pressure, no judgement, but it’s clear that we have excellent taste. Here’s what we’ve been thrilled by…
WWACommendations: Robo Sapiens, Pyramid Game, Maison Ikkoku and More
Welcome back to WWACommendations! Did you miss us? I always miss us. Never fear — we’re here with hot, fresh recommendations, a hilarious number of which come indirectly from WWAC Manga Editor Masha Zhdanova. It’s probably no surprise that we frequently swap recommendations, but I love seeing evidence of that behind-the-scenes chit chat. It gives…
REVIEW: Legends and Lattes Is a Cozy Nice Time
Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree is a fun and cozy found family story about a retired adventurer opening up a coffee shop in a D&D-style city.
REVIEW: Ocean’s Echo by Everina Maxwell Delivers Cozy Romance and Adventure
Ocean’s Echo, the second novel by Everina Maxwell, takes place in the same universe as Winter’s Orbit and has the same appeal: likable characters in a cozy romance arc have a rollicking adventure full of intergalactic peril and intrigue.
Roundtable: Happy Anniversary Carmilla
2022 marks the 150th anniversary of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic vampire story Carmilla, which was originally serialized in The Dark Blue magazine between 1871 and 1872. As well as ranking alongside John Polidori’s “The Vampyre” and Bram Stoker’s Dracula as a foundational text for the vampire genre, Carmilla is remembered as a pioneering work…
Roundtable: Kate Beaton’s Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands
Here at WWAC, we’ve been fans of Kate Beaton for a long time, so we were especially excited for the publication of Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, Beaton’s highly anticipated memoir of her time working in the isolated Alberta oil-mining camps. At over 400 pages of Beaton’s distinctive intimate and emotional style, Ducks…
INTERVIEW: Melanie Gillman Chats About Craving Queer Community in Other Ever Afters
Other Ever Afters: New Queer Fairy Tales collects Melanie Gillman’s fairy tale comics in their distinctive lush colored pencil art. The stories are diverse, poignant, and progressive, and I was thrilled to sit down with Melanie Gillman over Zoom recently and ask all kinds of questions about fairy tales, queerness, and their intersections.
INTERVIEW: Filipa Estrela Explores Meandering Realms
Filipa Estrela is currently crowdfunding the book Meandering Realms: An Anthology of Unconventional Materials Comics, which features short comics by a number of creators in a dizzying array of materials: everything from needlefelting to black and white photographs of facepaint. The stories told are similarly diverse, with some quiet slice of life and some alien…
REVIEW: Nona the Ninth Nestles You Nicely in a Nightmare
In Nona the Ninth, the third book in The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir, readers get a ton of backstory about how this necromantic space empire came to be. We also get to spend a lot more time with some of the characters who had been secondary in earlier books. Like Gideon and Harrow,…
REVIEW: A Prayer for the Crown-Shy Is a Satisfying Chapter in the Monk and Robot Series
Like A Psalm for the Wild-Built before it, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy is a meandering and gentle novella, exploring what it means to have purpose and be satisfied with yourself and your role in your community. It’s beautifully written and philosophically engaging. A Prayer for the Crown Shy picks up where A Psalm for…
Twelve Percent Dread will Resonate and Satisfy: An Interview with 100% of Emily McGovern
Emily McGovern’s latest graphic novel, Twelve Percent Dread, might increase your personal dread percentage, even as it entertains. It’s about roommates and former couple Katie and Nas, scrambling to get Nas’s visa approved and to survive in the gig economy. It’s also about a tech giant making terrible ethical decisions, and how their employees become…
The Grief of Stones Deepens Katherine Addison’s World: Spoiler-free review
The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison is her latest mystery in the world of The Goblin Emperor. It follows The Witness for the Dead, presenting the Witness again solving murder mysteries and engaging in more derring-do than he, personally, wishes for. Slow-paced until a sudden action scene, the build has great pay off and…