Category: Graphic memoir

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“The Talk,” by Darrin Bell

“The Talk.” Written and illustrated by Darrin Bell. Henry Holt. $29.99. June 2023. 352 pages. Teen to adult. (School Library Journal suggests Grade 10. My 7th and 9th graders enjoyed and learned a lot from it.)

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

Check Fables out online at www.fablesbooks.com, order over the phone at 574-534-1984, or email them at fablesbooks@gmail.com.

Thanks also to my colleague Cynthia Good Kauffman for passing her copy of this book on to me.

From Macmillan Publishers, us.macmillan.com

Before his 2023 graphic memoir “The Talk,” Pulitzer Prize-winner Darrin Bell was known as a political cartoonist more than a memoirist. “The Talk” earned him a new fanbase, as well as multiple best-of-the-year accolades, from “Publisher’s Weekly” to “Time.” The book was so successful, in fact, that Bell’s publisher wanted to extend its reach to another format. Documentary? Fictionalized film? Nope. The audiobook version of “The Talk” was released in August of 2024.

You’re probably thinking what I was thinking when I heard this news: “Audiobook from a comic? How does that even work?” Bell was skeptical, too, he told “Comics Beat,” “until I read the script.” Much like screenplay writers are hired to rework books for film, Macmillan hired a scriptwriter, who turned Bell’s story into, essentially, a radio play.

Darrin Bell with his son, recording his own dialogue from the book. Image from Bell’s Substack, “Disobey in Advance.”

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Two Books from Conundrum Press: “Kwändür” by Cole Pauls and “Shelterbelts” by Jonathan Dyck

“Kwändür.” Written and illustrated by Cole Pauls. $25.00. November 2022, 140 pages. All ages.

“Shelterbelts.” Written and illustrated by Jonathan Dyck. $20.00. May 2022, 224 pages. Teen to adult: Contains drug references.

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

Check Fables out online at www.fablesbooks.com, order over the phone at 574-534-1984, or email them at fablesbooks@gmail.com.

NOTE: I received a free review copy of Shelterbelts from Mennonite Quarterly Review. Portions of this review have been adapted from that one.

“I see publishing as an art form,” Andy Brown, founder of Conundrum Press, told “Broken Frontier” in late 2022. Valuing careful curation over profit has paid off for the press. Brown started Conundrum in 1996, but narrowed its mission and focus to literary graphic novels in 2010, catching the early edge of our current comics zeitgeist. Now based in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Conundrum continues to steadily and quietly gain readers and recognition.

Conundrum also works to build comics community, and has instituted a fund—or “bursary,” in Canadianese—to publish mini-comics by emerging black and indigenous authors. Keep an eye out for example, for rising stars Talysha Bujold-Abu, Jazz Groden-Gilchrist, and Jordanna George, the first three recipients of this funding, which began in 2020.

Conundrum was diversifying its library long before the summer of 2020, however. One indigenous author that Conundrum has been publishing since 2019 is Cole Pauls. The Canadian Broadcasting Company calls Pauls’ work “Indigenous Punk,” but he told an interviewer for “Discorder Magazine” that “Indigenous Futurism” might be more precise. For “Dakwäkāda Warriors,” the young adult sci-fi allegory that Pauls began in 2016 as individual zines, he worked with elders from his community to make the book bilingual, placing the Southern Tutchone language alongside English. (Pauls calls himself a Champagne and Aishihik Citizen and a Tahltan comics artist.) The words share the page with aliens and space lasers to create an allegory against forced assimilation.

from Vault of Culture, https://www.vaultofculture.com/vault/oncomics/paulsdakwakada

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“Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands,” by Kate Beaton

“Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands.” Written and illustrated by Kate Beaton. Drawn and Quarterly: $39.95. September 2022, 436 pages.

Adult: salty language, drug references, sexual assault

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

Check Fables out online at www.fablesbooks.com, order over the phone at 574-534-1984, or email them at fablesbooks@gmail.com.

“Two Years in the Oil Sands,” the subtitle of Kate Beaton’s memoir, “Ducks,” makes it clear that Beaton’s time in this alien landscape will be finite: two years. What readers don’t know is just how difficult that time will be. But difficult doesn’t mean bereft of beauty:

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