Graphic Novel – Ring Reads

A Son Grieves and Reflects in ‘Adrift’

Adrift is a story about getting to know another part of someone after they’ve passed on, about discovering more about someone you thought you knew through and through and being unable to ask them about it.

‘Sounds’ a Captivating Journey of Music and Devotion

The cover of Between Two Sounds, featuring a simply drawn adult Arvo leaping from a precipice, implying that he is jumping to the next sound. Arvo and the precipice are in black, while the background is in simple strokes of tan and brown. The title is in the upper left-hand corner, with the author in the lower-left corner.

This is not a story of the Soviet Union versus Arvo Pärt, but about an authoritarian regime demanding performative patriotism against those who have far more interesting things to think about.

‘Call Me Emma’ a Journey of Self-Discovery Amid Tougher Teenage Years

Call Me Emma is ultimately a story about identity, both who we choose to be and who the world will supposedly accept. It’s one of those apparently universal parts of growing up, but here, it’s more obvious than most.

Wishes get Colonized and Corporatized in Shubeik Lubeik

The repercussions from wishes are negligible for the haves and devastating for the have-nots. Following the rules is detrimental for some, and far outside the sphere of concern for others. As with many things designed to “make life better”—technology, say, or medicine—the artificial scaffolding around wishes exacerbate, rather than reduce, inequality in the society they occupy.

Beware the Shadows in ‘Keeper’

Ghouls and goblins are scary enough, but the real horror draws heavily from the worst parts of real life. That’s certainly the case in The Keeper, a graphic novel from power couple Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes that gives form to the amorphous threat of racism and generational trauma. Aisha’s luck could hardly be worse.Continue reading “Beware the Shadows in ‘Keeper’”

‘Sennen’ More than Meets the Eye

It can be tough to pull off a good “world you thought you knew is actually walled off from the ‘real world’” story, and even tougher to make it feel fresh and new and thought-provoking. Sennen, the debut graphic novel by illustrator Shanti Rai, does all this alongside nailing a strong coming-of-age story in anContinue reading “‘Sennen’ More than Meets the Eye”

‘Waves’ Combines History, Grief

It’s true that cancer’s a bit of a shortcut to tragedy, as swift and unrelenting as it often is. If AJ Dungo’s In Waves were a graphic novel, I’d probably assume this was yet another The Fault In Our Stars wannabe. But this is a graphic memoir, not a graphic novel, and I would haveContinue reading “‘Waves’ Combines History, Grief”

Sharp Memory Cuts in ‘Grass’

“War is hard on women,” says a character near the end of Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, ruminating on the costs the main character has endured the whole novel and will yet endure. The line ran through my head again and again as I read Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s Grass, a graphic novel thatContinue reading “Sharp Memory Cuts in ‘Grass’”

‘Seek You’ Brings Connection to Loneliness

In case anyone’s noticed, we’re in a pandemic right now. The last two years have been, in many places and for many people, a study in loneliness. Throughout 2020, bloggers and news outlets weighed in on how to combat “skin hunger,” the phenomenon of longing for human touch. We keep searching for a “new normal”Continue reading “‘Seek You’ Brings Connection to Loneliness”

‘Sensor’ Sends Chills

I’ve mentioned before how much I love a good spine-tingling tale. I have to say, though, few stories have as tight a grip on the macabre and the uncomfortable as Junji Ito, for whom the ordinary is only fodder for nightmares. I got my introduction to the manga writer through Uzumaki and have shuddered everyContinue reading “‘Sensor’ Sends Chills”