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2 months ago | 
goodenoughjob.substack.com | Christopher Blackwell |Solomon Brager |Sophie Johnson
SUBSCRIBE: by Erin Mc.I read a lot of Substack newsletters, and a lot of them are good; but this is the rare one that I never skip. It’s relatively new, and Erin is a personal friend of mine, and still I think this newsletter has real legs. The topics are exactly the kinds of topics I care about most. I think this week’s newsletter is about bread and butter? Like… literally. And then there’s one about calming things, and one about hibernating… you get it. It’s up our alley. We want it.
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Apr 15, 2024 | 
publishersweekly.com | Solomon Brager |Anna Härmälä |James Loewen |Nate Powell
Chad Bilyeu. Scratch, $29.95 (176p) ISBN 978-94-93166-80-6Bilyeu’s eclectic debut graphic memoir proves full of thoughtful and introspective vignettes. Raised in Cleveland, Bilyeu came to Amsterdam in 2009 for the weed but stayed for the city’s “palpable” history. He touches on many subjects in Harvey Pekar–inspired asides, each of which is given its own look by a different artist.
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Apr 15, 2024 | 
publishersweekly.com | Solomon Brager |Anna Härmälä |James Loewen |Nate Powell
Boum, trans. from the French by Robin Lang and Helge Dascher. Pow Pow, $22.95 trade paper (228p) ISBN 978-2-925114-30-7“Miss, you have a jellyfish in your eye,” an optometrist tells 20-something Odette in the opening pages of this quietly courageous slice-of-life graphic novella from Boumeries cartoonist Boum.
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Apr 15, 2024 | 
publishersweekly.com | Solomon Brager |Anna Härmälä |James Loewen |Nate Powell
Atsushi Kaneko, trans. from the Japanese by Ben Applegate. Fantagraphics, $14.99 trade paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-68396-932-7Kaneko (Bambi and Her Pink Gun) outdoes himself with this gonzo sci-fi reimagining of Osamu Tezuka’s classic manga series Dororo. In Kaneko’s hands, the feudal Japanese setting of Tezuka’s original becomes a futuristic dystopia with a Soviet brutalist aesthetic.
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Apr 15, 2024 | 
publishersweekly.com | Solomon Brager |Anna Härmälä |James Loewen |Nate Powell
Siobhán Gallagher. Andrews McMeel, $19.99 trade paper (336p) ISBN 978-1-5248-6768-3Part graphic memoir, part self-help manual, Gallagher’s accessible debut draws on examples from her own life to explore how women are taught to see themselves. “To be a girl is to go from being an observer to being observed,” she writes, recalling the negative body image she developed at a young age (“If I were a Pokémon, I bet I’d be one of the ugly ones...
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Apr 5, 2024 | 
publishersweekly.com | Solomon Brager |Anna Härmälä |James Loewen |Nate Powell
Dave Lapp. Conundrum, $30 trade paper (540p) ISBN 978-1-77262-094-8Vignettes from the unsupervised fringes of a 1970s Ontario suburb comprise this wistful graphic memoir from Lapp (Drop-In). Over a languid summer off from elementary school, David explores the abandoned fields near his family home. Tagging along behind Edward, his slightly older next-door neighbor, David combs the grassy landscape for mice, frogs, and insects.
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Apr 5, 2024 | 
publishersweekly.com | Solomon Brager |Anna Härmälä |James Loewen |Nate Powell
Sig Burwash. Drawn & Quarterly, $29.95 trade paper (236p) ISBN 978-1-77046-711-8Burwash’s confident debut aches with joy and pain. Drew, a tough and suspicious “bushwacker,” is determined to build a cabin in the woods on their own. Flanked by their dog Pony, Drew cuts down trees, salvages wood from an abandoned house, swims and fishes in the nearby lake, and accepts coffee, chats, and chain saw lessons from a local lumberjack.
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Apr 5, 2024 | 
publishersweekly.com | Solomon Brager |Anna Härmälä |James Loewen |Nate Powell
Noah Van Sciver. Uncivilized, $24.95 (120p) ISBN 978-1-941250-59-4A budding comic artist undergoes trial by bully in Eisner Award winner Van Sciver’s deeply vulnerable and darkly comic graphic novella, which marks a return to the intimate style of his memoir One Dirty Tree. One of nine kids in an impoverished Mormon family in “New Jersey 1992ish,” young Noah is a panicky, dorky eight-year-old whose only respite from the chaos of his filthy home and nearly friendless life is comics.
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Mar 22, 2024 | 
publishersweekly.com | Solomon Brager |Anna Härmälä |James Loewen |Nate Powell
Aidan Koch. New York Review Comics, $24.95 trade paper (208p) ISBN 978-1-68137-835-0With this quartet of meditative and painterly stories, Koch (After Nothing Comes) juxtaposes humankind’s general instability and search for permanence against the organic, regular flow of nature’s rhythms. The title piece follows a nameless female protagonist’s travels, which include a stopover with some old friends.
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Mar 22, 2024 | 
publishersweekly.com | Solomon Brager |Anna Härmälä |James Loewen |Nate Powell
Kit Anderson. Avery Hill, $19.99 trade paper (208p) ISBN 978-1-910395-77-6Anderson (Weeds) whisks readers to the liminal space between daily life and fantasy in this tender collection of comics stories. By toying with color, panel boundaries, and layered narration, she explores themes including loss, anxiety, and connection with nature. Often gender-ambiguous characters lend the volume a queer undertone.
