“I never wanted to be someone just working for attention or praise, I’m just trying to put it all in order. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s serious, but it’s always me.” In a market saturated with graphic memoirs about early adulthood and finding oneself, it’s unusual to find one that feels genuinely original. Rarer still…
VIZ Pubwatch: Lost June 2023 Edition
Ed Note: This piece was supposed to run in June, but your erstwhile editor missed it. So here it is a little late, my apologies. Happy Pride Month, VIZ fans! To celebrate, I bring you… the heterosexual Goodbye, Eri, a memoir manga by a nonbinary artist, and a manga about Spider-Man. That’s just the way it…
Maia Kobabe’s Memoir Helps Gender Queer People Find Their Identity: Why Is E Being Sued for It?
In Maia Kobabe’s powerful memoir, Gender Queer, Kobabe shares eir journey to discovering eir gender queer identity and how e helped family and friends come to accept eir new pronouns. At times painfully raw, this personal story is relatable and necessary — which is why I’m incensed that Gender Queer is being banned across the…
INTERVIEW: Glenn Head’s Cathartic Return to Chartwell Manor
Content warning: Discussions of sexual and psychological abuse and trauma.
Inspired Personal Stories in Graphic Novels at ComicCon@Home
Content warning: sexual abuse, eating disorders, gun violence, suicide. Creating a memoir isn’t an easy task—the writer is expected to bare their soul about a troubled or anxious time in their lives. But these personal stories can transform the reader and give them the kinship or answers they’ve been looking for—especially if they’re created by…
The Great Outdoors is an Overly Biological Ode to Nature
In The Great Outdoors, author Catherine Meurisse recounts her childhood growing up in a countryside home. Her parents decided to leave their city life for the country, and they never looked back, fostering in Catherine and her sister Fanny the same fondness for the outdoors.
Girl on Film: Cecil Castellucci’s Journey Through Memory and Her Filmmaker Dreams
Girl on Film Jon Berg (artist), Cecil Castellucci (writer), Melissa Duffy (artist), V. Gagnon (artist), Kieran Quigley (colourist), Joanna Lafuente (colourist), Vicky Leta (artist), Mike Fiorentino (letterer) Archaia (Boom Studios) November 27, 2019 When Cecil Castellucci first saw Star Wars: A New Hope, her future was sealed. She would become a filmmaker. Girl on Film is her…
The American Dream? Review: A Road Trip for the Migrant Soul
The American Dream?: A Journey on Route 66 Shing Yin Khor (Writer, Artist, and Colours) Zest Books August 6, 2019 In 2016, Shing Yin Khor took a road trip down Route 66, stopping at the most iconic tourist spots. The trip was to find themselves, and also to mull over the meaning of being…
Handling Parenthood with Lucy Knisley’s Kid Gloves
Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos Lucy Knisley (artist/writer) First Second March 2019 Lucy Knisley’s latest memoir, Kid Gloves, narrates her experiences with pregnancy, and highlights historical and medical information about pregnancy and how we treat it in the western world.
Minding the Store: Love in the Time of Entrepreneurship
Minding the Store: A Big Story About a Small Business Julie Gaines (writer), Ben Lenovitz (illustrator) Algonquin Books October 30, 2018 Minding the Store: A Big Story About a Small Business tells the charming tale of New York City staple Fishs Eddy, an odd little shop that began life selling vintage bits and bobs before…
Colour in Thi Bui’s “The Best We Could Do”
The endpapers of Thi Buy’s The Best We Could Do are coloured in a wash of a sky blue hue, and depict a beach scene: shells of several sizes are scattered about, along with a pair of sandals. The effect of the opening endpapers, to which the reader turns from the cover image of a…
Nicole Georges’ “Calling Dr. Laura,” Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home,” Graphic Memoir, and Something Strange About Time
Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (published by Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007) and Nicole Georges’ Calling Dr. Laura: A Graphic Memoir (published by Houghton Mifflin Company, 2013) share some important similarities: they’re both graphic memoir texts that feature family dramas, and they both use the comics form to do interesting things with time. The similarities…