October 2017 – Commons Comics

National Hispanic Heritage month just ended, so although I’m a bit slow on the uptake, here’s a new addition to my archives, a review originally posted by the Elkhart Truth on December 1, 2015.

Warning: Beware the bad puns.

Thanks to Better World Books, 215 S. Main St. in Goshen, for providing me with books to review. You can find all of the books I review at the store.

Author Van Jensen and illustrator Jose Pimienta had some trouble finding a publisher for their graphic novel “The Leg.” Part of the problem was the story’s hero: as their Kickstarter video pitched it, the protagonist is “the strangest hero comics has ever seen.” Continue reading ““The Leg,” by Van Jensen and Jose Pimienta”

Poppies of Iraq, by Brigitte Findakly and Lewis Trondheim, Drawn and Quarterly, September 2017, list $21.95 (adult, maybe teen)

NOTE: Drawn and Quarterly sent me this book free for review.

It takes a few pages to settle into Poppies of Iraq, Brigitte Findakly’s memoir of her home country Iraq. The narrative is disorienting, seemingly jumbled at first. As Findakly recently told an interviewer for Comic Book Resources, “I wanted to share my memories in a way that felt like the reader was seated next to me, having a conversation with me. . . . I allowed myself to digress, especially when the current events in Iraq would capture my attention while I was writing the book.” Continue reading “Review: Poppies of Iraq, by Brigitte Findakly and Lewis Trondheim”