Moms by Yeong-shin Ma - REVIEW

in

By Bruno Savill De Jong — Moms opens on a street fight between two middle-aged women. The graphic novel is rarely this dramatic, but after Soyeon and Myeonghui began arguing over text messages, it quickly spills over from the virtual to the physical. Soyeon wonders “How did my life turn out this way?”, and Moms next proceeds to show the build-up to this undignified brawl, the daily struggles that chipped away at these average women until they exploded. It shows Soyeon’s early arranged marriage, their financial strain and her husband’s gambling, up until her current divorced status. In Korean society she has extended her ‘usefulness’, and is seen as toiling away as a cleaner, while her adult son still lives at home.

Read More

Familiar Face HC - GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW

in

By Zack Quaintance — All of us living right now are undergoing something extraordinary. It’s easy to miss in the moment, but technology has begun to accelerate at an unprecedented, exponential rate. It’s unlike anything we’ve seen in human history, and you can tether it to whatever theory you like, with Moore’s Law perhaps being the easiest touchpoint for wrapping your head around this. Another easy touchpoint is to consider that the iPhone was a new product as recently as 2007, and now we walk around tethered to it, our abilities to navigate the world influenced by the debut of new apps, processing systems, and even small tweaks. This, in its simplest form, is what writer/artist Michael Deforge’s Familiar Face HC (published in March by Drawn & Quarterly) is about.

Read More

Year of the Rabbit by Tian Veasna - REVIEW

in

By Zack Quaintance — Year of the Rabbit is a new graphic novel from writer/artist Tian Veasna, based on a harrowing true story he lived through as a child. That story is his family’s struggle to survive/flee the reign of the violent Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, following that group’s seizure of power in 1975. What emerges is a memoir comic of sorts that does not quite feel like a memoir comic. Instead it reads as a tense and harrowing story of escape, dotted with devastating-yet-important notes from a history largely unknown to many in the United States.

Read More

Department of Mind-Blowing Theories - REVIEW

in

By Zack Quaintance — Department of Mind-Blowing Theories is the new book from cartoonist Tom Gauld, a poignant and often hilarious storyteller who in this work has turned his ample talents toward the bite-sized and satirical. The book is a compendium of single-page cartoons done for New Scientist, and, as such, they entirely skew that profession. It’s not a linear story of any sort, but, then again, that’s probably not want anyone is expecting when they pick this book up.

Read More