Author: Jessica Baldanzi

Photo by Jill Steinmetz I’ve been a comics fangirl since I was a kid—Betty and Veronica to my big brother’s Spider-Man comics—and Chris Ware and Lynda Barry helped complicate my understanding of the genre when I lived in Chicago and their comics were serialized in New City and The Chicago Reader. I first brought comics into my professional life when I created and taught a course called The Graphic Novel in 2008. I’ve taught that class many times since then, have also given talks about comics to general audiences and scholars alike. Commons Comics began in 2013 as a way for me to learn how to blog and to stay current in the field. It was hosted first by my college, then picked up by The Elkhart Truth, a local newspaper, before I moved it to my own page. I teach English at Goshen College, a small but mighty liberal arts school in the “Michiana” area, east of Chicago on the border of Michigan and Indiana. My specialty in graduate school was twentieth-century and more recent American Literature, but my teaching has brought me into multiple fields. My upper-level courses have ranged from critical theory and gender and popular culture to memoir writing, and my introductory courses from to composition and speech to creative writing. I am now co-editing an essay collection with comics and religion scholar Hussein Rashid about Kamala Khan, the new Ms. Marvel. Look for it on the University Press of Mississippi in the coming year. (Working title: Ms. Marvel in America.)
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Comics Against Racism: Asian-American Edition

“They Called Us Enemy” by George Takei, with Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, and Harmony Becker. Top Shelf, July 2019. 208 pp. Paperback, $19.99. Middle to high school.

Also mentioned in this post: “Superman Smashes the Klan,” by Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru. DC Comics, May 2020. 240 pp. Paperback, $16.99. 12 and up.

Thanks to Fables Books, 215 South Main Street in downtown Goshen, Indiana, for providing Commons Comics with books to review.

COVID-19 PROTOCOL: Please wear a mask as required by local mandate, and follow store guidelines. You may enter at either the front or back entrances. High risk customers can still make browsing appointments before or after hours, and all customers can continue to order online at fablesbooks.com, over the phone 574-534-1984, or via email fablesbooks@gmail.com.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted—I’m working on a BIG manuscript about representations of women’s bodies in graphic fiction, so I won’t be posting new content until the summer. In the meantime, here’s a re-post from 2019 of George Takei’s “They Called Us Enemy,” about his and his family’s experience in internment camps for Japanese Americans.

If you enjoy this post, you might also appreciate my most recent post about “Superman Smashes the Klan,” by comics master and all-around-awesome human, Gene Luen Yang.

How do you decide whether to stand for your principles or protect your family? It’s not a decision any parent should be forced to make, but actor and activist George Takei lived the consequences of his parents’ honesty. Fortunately for Takei—and for his massive fanbase, many of whom have followed him from the first “Star Trek” to his more recent roles in shows from “Furturama” and “Archer” to “Kim Possible”—he not only survived, but eventually thrived.

Now 82, this isn’t the first time that Takei has told the story of his family’s time in US internment camps for Japanese Americans. His memoir “To the Stars” also inspired the musical, “Allegiance.” The graphic memoir “They Called Us Enemy” is the most recent version of this thankfully brief chapter in his life, published by Top Shelf, best known for US congressman John Lewis’s graphic memoir trilogy “March.” Co-writers Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott helped Takei translate the narrative to comics form, and the art of Harmony Becker—subtle and manga-inflected (see, for example, the backgrounds and the giant tears on the page below)—transforms the story into a work of art.

When Takei and his family were first imprisoned in May 1942, they didn’t have any choices to make at all: US soldiers came to the door with bayonets to kick them out of their house. They had ten minutes to pack.

Continue reading “Comics Against Racism: Asian-American Edition”

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“Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children’s Crusade: A Graphic Novel Adaptation.”

“Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children’s Crusade: A Graphic Novel Adaptation.” By Kurt Vonnegut, Ryan North, and Albert Monteys. Archaia: Boom! $24.99. September 2020. 192 pp. Ages 13+.

Thanks to Fables Books, 215 South Main Street in downtown Goshen, Indiana, for providing Commons Comics with books to review.

COVID-19 PROTOCOL: Please wear a mask as required by local mandate, and follow store guidelines. You may enter at either the front or back entrances. High risk customers can still make browsing appointments before or after hours, and all customers can continue to order online at fablesbooks.com, over the phone 574-534-1984, or via email fablesbooks@gmail.com.

“No way, this is crazy,” was the initial reaction of Barcelona-based comics artist Albert Monteys when an editor from Archaia offered him a gig reinterpreting Kurt Vonnegut’s classic 1969 novel “Slaughterhouse-Five.” As writer Ryan North recently told “Black Nerd Problems,” his response was similar. “You definitely don’t want to be the one who messes up Vonnegut, you know?”

“Slaughterhouse-Five” is so singular and beloved, who wouldn’t be skeptical of a comics adaptation? I love and believe in this format—and I love and believe in North’s work so far, and what I’ve been learning about the work of Monteys—but much like these creators, my first reaction when I heard about this book was raised eyebrows. Adaptations are often simply a way for everyone to make a quick buck out of a recognizable title. I’m not alone in having been burned by rushed and ill-thought-out adaptations, which get fans excited, then fail to move much beyond the status of mere illustrated book—and often poorly illustrated book at that.

Yet once Monteys saw the script that North had drafted, he changed his mind. North’s remix and reinterpretation of Vonnegut’s original is its own brilliant thing. The book also serves as a memorial to Vonnegut himself, who died in 2007. It’s a tricky business respecting longtime fans and newcomers alike, so North and Monteys address that tension immediately, fleshing out a famous line drawing from the original novel, and harnessing it to serve as a moment of silence for its creator:

Continue reading ““Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children’s Crusade: A Graphic Novel Adaptation.””

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“The Golden Age: Book One,” by Roxanne Moreil and Cyril Pedrosa.

“The Golden Age: Book One.” By Roxanne Moreil and Cyril Pedrosa. Trans. from the French by Montana Kane. (Originally published 2018.) First Second, February 2020. 224 pp. Hardcover, $29.99. 14 and up.

Thanks to Fables Books, 215 South Main Street in downtown Goshen, Indiana, for providing Commons Comics with books to review.

COVID-19 PROTOCOL: Please wear a mask as required by local mandate, and follow store guidelines. You may enter at either the front or back entrances. High risk customers can still make browsing appointments before or after hours, and all customers can continue to order online at fablesbooks.com, over the phone 574-534-1984, or via email fablesbooks@gmail.com. *Order deadline to ensure Christmas delivery: December 15.*

Right from the opening pages of “Golden Age,” French artist Cyril Pedrosa catapults readers into his surreal, color-lush medieval-era landscape:

Co-writer Roxanne Moreil doesn’t waste time either, swirling the class divide central to this story immediately into the visual soup. The peasants pause their work to watch the nobles and their dogs trample their crops for the sake of royal recreation. Trouble bubbles up from the very soil of the kingdom of Antrevers. Continue reading ““The Golden Age: Book One,” by Roxanne Moreil and Cyril Pedrosa.”