Welcome back to WWACommendations! We took a little January break, so this edition contains many of our beginning of the year reads. The segue from 2023 into 2024 has felt very seamless to me, not necessarily in a good way, but comics are here to bolster us as we forge forward. Here are your first, fresh recommendations for 2024; hopefully they give you a way to escape briefly and take a breath.
Alenka Figa: I’m not typically a science fiction fan, nor am I usually interested in heavy world-building, but I recently read the first three volumes of Correspondence from the End of the Universe and I love it. The story follows Marko, a young Russian man who has just graduated from college and is excited to propose to his partner. However, while getting ready to meet them for the big date, Marko is whisked away to another planet! Earth, it turns out, is a closed planet — one of several that don’t have contact with the rest of the universe. Many many other planets do, and the universe’s overall functioning is supported by a bureaucracy that plucks employees from literally all over, then assigns them a 10 year mission during which they will make and maintain planets. Marko is trapped for 10 years, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to get back to his partner, resulting in potentially tragic consequences.
Menota employs a hyper detailed illustration style that includes diagrams and expository text to help populate the world of Correspondence. The alien character designs are wildly creative, and Menota clearly thinks through the function and even history of each small detail. Despite not wanting to be in his position, Marko is rightfully fascinated by this universe and all its intricacies — aliens that look human but are really closer to crabs, societies in which day to day life has been drastically altered due to strange and destructive pandemics, planets with little sentient life that serve limited and specific functions, and on and on. With his own precious relationship forever on his mind, Marko also pursues friendships and working relationships with the creatures around him, and he is learning that while the universe is relatively well organized and contains many empathetic creatures it can also be quite brutal. Menota’s world-building and character design are truly second to none, and I cannot wait to continue to explore the universe alongside Marko.
Carrie McClain: Alenka! I’m so excited to see more folks reading Correspondence from the End of the Universe! I fell in love with the first volume and mailed it to Paulina! From what I remember of the beginning, I really felt my heartstrings being tugged by Marko’s encounter with different species and being confronted with his own feelings of mortality and who gets a chance at life when he meets some younger representatives of a certain alien race. Glad to hear that the manga developed into a series that I should definitely return to and keep reading!
My recommendation this month is courtesy of the WEBTOON app: Sung-wan Jung’s With Tony webcomic, for the slice of life lovers in the chat. Rated Young Adult, the narrative of this comic revolves around the depression and deteriorating mental health of a young university student named Jinho Kim as he is traveling on his own. Set in a world where some mysterious diseases have wiped out most of the population, this young man is quietly scavenging and on a mission to get back to the flat where he lived with his family. He stumbles upon a dog in an abandoned pet shop, all alone as well, and who has miraculously survived? This little dog, whom Jinho ends up naming Tony, becomes his companion in a world where they see more corpses than live people. With Tony is mostly a dark comic, atmospheric and color scheme-wise: dark gray, black, and white dominate the panels and spreads but with small pops of color here and there.
Most of the world is full of abandoned buildings, broken glass, overgrown grass and littered roads and highways (and some corpses) yet Jinho and Tony keep each other company as they get closer and closer to Jinho’s home. There are wholesome moments tied to harrowing moments where fear, impatience and overwhelming isolation make themselves known. With Tony is as much a hard hitting yet subtle comic about confronting death, failure and the need for companionship, as it is a love letter to how much we love dogs.
I loved reading along to see Tony: a whip smart and adorable dog with so much personality and a guiding light for the quiet and subdued Jinho. The young man was struggling so much with survivor’s guilt, depression and extreme fretfulness to try to pace himself to just get up and keep moving. Overall, I can see how enough readers found solace in reading this comic (regardless if it is in daily pass hell) and wanted to see someone with anxieties not just survive but find something worth living for — a highly resonating feeling for today’s time.
Kathryn Hemmann: In honor of the long nights and constant rain of February, I’d like to recommend Gou Tanabe’s remarkable 2021 manga adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s 1931 novella The Shadow over Innsmouth. If you’re curious about Lovecraft’s work but put off by his prose, Dark Horse’s release of Gou Tanabe’s adaptation is an artistic marvel presented in a handsome single volume with an excellent translation by the American folklorist and heralded horror veteran Zack Davisson.
The Shadow over Innsmouth is a gothic horror story about an isolated Massachusetts port town inhabited by fishpeople. Tanabe’s manga adaptation brings the story to life with an attractive contemporary art style while preserving the plot and uncanniness of the original. Like the story’s ill-fated protagonist, Tanabe is fascinated by the rotting architecture of Innsmouth, and the immaculately detailed cityscapes that sprawl across the pages facilitate full immersion into the creeping horror of social and moral decay. Whereas Lovecraft only hints at what lies underwater, Tanabe is gleefully explicit in his depictions of ravenous fishpeople who would make Guillermo del Toro cheer with appreciation.
Emily Lauer: I recently enjoyed Zodiac, an innovative graphic memoir by Ai Weiwei with Elettra Stamboulis, illustrated by Gianluca Costantini. In Zodiac, the twelve year Chinese Zodiac cycle is used as an organizing feature for Ai Weiwei to recount memories of his life, drawing lessons from parallels with classic stories and traits associated with each zodiac sign. The glimpses into the lives of Ai Weiwei as an artist and activist; and his father, renowned poet Ai Qing, were fascinating, and Costantini’s detailed linework is engrossing. I feel like Zodiac could be an object of study for years. I felt a bit of trepidation because I don’t know much about the Chinese Zodiac (or, in fact, any Zodiac), but my knowledgeable reviewer pal Doreen assures me that I was not missing anything. I learned a lot about the Chinese Zodiac as well as about the Ai family! Zodiac came out from Ten Speed Press on January 30. I recommend it for when you’re feeling contemplative and philosophical.
Masha Zhdanova: I finally started reading Rigsby, WI and ended up catching up in one sitting. It’s a slice of life comic about a group of teenagers set in rural Wisconsin in 2002 by someone who clearly lived through that time and place, and it handles a lot of different issues with nuance and complexity: class, mental illness, sexuality, and race. While I wouldn’t say it’s a light read (these teenagers have a lot of different kinds of terrible home lives) it is pretty funny, and difficult to put down. I found myself very invested in the core cast in less than a hundred pages. Also, the art style shifts intentionally every chapter to reveal the viewpoint characters’ mental state, with the second chapter being mostly monochrome with one spot color for Anna’s hair and the third chapter being very bright and saturated. It’s really really good!!
