TRADE REVIEW: The Mueller Report Graphic Novel

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By Ariel Baska — Hands up, who read all 448 pages of the Mueller Report when it was released last year? Those of you who did, you feel like re-reading it? No? Well, never fear. Regardless of your relationship to the original (and redacted) tome, this graphic novel is an invaluable resource for navigating this moment in our country’s history, while simultaneously providing an enlightening, gripping, and rather hilarious take that fills in missing pieces you never knew you needed.

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REVIEW: Eve Stranger, the final book from Black Crown at IDW

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By Bruno Savill De Jong — The narration in Eve Stranger is in the second person. It opens the comic telling the protagonist “your name is Eve Stranger. You wrote these words last night. You don’t remember”. So, the narration is also in the first person, a diary from a past version of Eve to update her ‘present’ self (alongside the audience) of her current circumstances.

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REVIEW - Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes

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By Bruno Savill De Jong — Over 30 years later, the events in Tiananmen Square still hold a powerful resonance. Those widespread protests seem particularly resonant given the current resurgence in support for Black Lives Matter. Even if Tiananmen Square’s demonstration are not exactly comparable, they still function as an important cautionary tale. Often the protests are only remembered for their tragic end, when the Chinese government violently dispersed the gatherings and continued to eradicate them from their official history. But in Tiananmen 1989, Lun Zhang, with assistance from journalist Adrien Gombeaud and artist Ameziane, provides a first-hand account of the inner-workings of the protests, detailing the political tensions within Beijing as youthful hopes for reform were dashed against the hardened and uncompromising state.

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A Radical Shift of Gravity - Graphic Novel Review

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By Bruno Savill De Jong — As the first pages of IDW / Top Shelf’s graphic novel A Radical Shift of Gravity remind us, perspective is a funny thing. It begins with journalist Noah Hall interviewing people, finding how “where they were when ‘it’ happened” shapes their entire worldview afterwards. ‘It’ is an inexplicable selective “Shift” in human’s gravitational pull (other objects being unaffected), reducing it to roughly the same as the Moon.

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The Lab by Allison Conway - GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW

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By Ariel Baska — This is a harrowing and relentless debut from Allison Conway, and it follows a newly-minted big-headed biped on a twisted journey through a sinister lab. Notably, the narrative is completely silent of commentary, except for the pathos wrung from our protagonist’s small, pained eyes. Those eyes are the first lights we see in the cross-hatched gray and black nothingness from which the vision of the lab emerges.

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Sleeping Beauties #1 - NEW COMIC REVIEW

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By Wesley Messer — Let’s call this the case of I’m woefully unfamiliar with the book this comic is based on. Yet, I always find it interesting to see comics based off of novels come to life. Comics and novels are two completely different languages storytelling-wise. Coming into Sleeping Beauties, I know of Stephen King and Owen King from the get-go, so that helps. The concept of this story — a sleeping sickness that only affects women — also intrigues me. So, overall this is a new experience for me in reviewing something like this. I’m excited to say that this experience was a rewarding one, so please join me on my journey through the realm of Sleeping Beauties.

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British Ice by Owen D. Pomery - REVIEW

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By Bruno Savill De Jong — White is not a color, but the absence of one. It dilutes and covers up cultures which it comes in contact with. Imperialism, therefore, is a blizzard that buries its colonial atrocities against indigenous populations under thick covers of blank snow. It is up to others to melt it away. This is what Owen D. Pomery attempts to convey in British Ice, a well-meaning if shallow tale of a fictionalized remote British Overseas Territory in the Arctic. Even somewhere so distant, colonial resentments bubble beneath the surface, with British Ice surveying the factional divisions of flying a British flag amidst the frozen Arctic wasteland.

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Corto Maltese: The Ballad of the Salty Sea - REVIEW

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By Zack Quaintance — I am, I must admit, somewhat of a neophyte when it comes to European comics. This is not deliberate, to be sure, and I’ve certainly enjoyed the few experiences I’ve had with European comics, specifically thinking here of The Incal by Jodorowsky and Moebius. But I do have to note that those experiences have been too few.

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