Comics Journal Magazine

The Comics Journal, commonly referred to as TCJ, is a U.S. magazine that covers news and critique related to comic books, comic strips, and graphic novels. It is recognized for its in-depth interviews with comic artists, insightful editorials, and sharp reviews of mainstream comic products. The magazine advocates for comics as a legitimate art form deserving of greater cultural appreciation, suggesting that they should be assessed with more rigorous critical standards.

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An Empty Room: The Existential Perils of Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy (The Graphic Adaptation)

1 week ago | tcj.com | Greg Hunter

An old cliche cautions against judging a book by its cover; then again, a good detective studies every clue. And a reader inspecting Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy: The Graphic Adaptation should consider the hints its jacket-a collaboration between the adaptation's overseer Paul Karasik and book-design luminary Chip Kidd-offers about the book. Each of the adaptation's cartoonists contributes a horizontal bar, forming a single figure out of the trilogy's three protagonists.
An interview with Julia Gfrörer: 'I don't think that I could make like a nice book if I wanted to'

1 week ago | tcj.com | Matthew Perpetua

Julia Gfrörer has built an acclaimed body of work over the past decade and a half with a steady stream of self-published mini-comics and zines, as well as three graphic novels - Black Is the Color , Laid Waste , and Vision - that have been published by Fantagraphics. Gfrörer's stories frequently explore transgressive sexuality, horror, the occult, and religion throughout history, and are meticulously illustrated with her distinctively sharp and severe linework.
Maria Bamford and Scott Marvel Cassidy on 5 senior dogs in heaven, 6 gallons of ice cream in the trash, and their graphic memoir, Hogbook and Lazer Eyes - The Comics Journal

2 weeks ago | tcj.com | Nicole J. Georges

Hogbook and Laser Eyes (Fantagraphics, 2024) is a love story. An ever-shifting and expanding family of rescue pug narrators describe the romantic adventure of their humans meeting and joining in wedded, mentally ill, comedy-loving, dog-rescuing matrimony. Co-authored by comedian Maria Bamford and painter Scott Cassidy (who drew the book), it's for everyone who knows what their dog's speaking voice would be.
Night Drive - The Comics Journal

2 weeks ago | tcj.com | Greg Hunter

Richard Sala was comics' most reliable artist of criminal masterminds and colorful lowlifes; of mystical mediums and femme fatales. Informed by surrealism and monster movies, his work landed somewhere between the garage-camp of the Cramps and the more sober otherworld-building of Thomas Ligotti. Sala brought an ironic touch to pulp iconography without ever condescending to it.
Donald Duck: Vacation Parade

3 weeks ago | tcj.com | Tom Shapira

Donald Duck: Vacation Parade belongs to a genre that I like to call "nothing more, nothing less." It gives you a promise early on: Donald Duck will go on a vacation and will suffer mischief in an entertaining manner, and for the rest of the story it tries and keep the promise. Simple? Yes, in theory at least. But consider: How many would-be humor comics actually made you laugh? How many action comics genuinely made you feel tension? How many adventure comics actually made you excited?
RIP Mark Zingarelli, 1952-2025

3 weeks ago | tcj.com | John Kelly

A memory of Mark that comes to mind is a fairly recent though trivial one, but it kinda captures "him." A little background: Most of us who were Seattleites at any given time-homegrown like myself or one-time transplants like Mark-have a deep affection and an affinity for Seattle's beloved, fast-food restaurant chain, "Dick's Drive In." An unapologetically stuck-in-time holdover from the late-1950s.
I'm Doing the Work I Need to Do to Live With Myself: Joe Sacco on Democracy, Genocide, and Drawing the Truth

1 month ago | tcj.com | Zach Rabiroff

If an artist can be measured in part by their capacity to look truth squarely in the eye without flinching, let it be said that Joe Sacco is an artist. For more than three decades, Sacco has been perhaps the most prominent and influential cartoonist-journalist in comics. His Palestine, published in 1993, was a probing and ambivalent first-hand report on a people and place trapped in a cycle of war and repression.
Unraveling the mystery of the man called Mad Peck, 1942-2025

1 month ago | tcj.com | John Kelly

Regardless of his Connecticut upbringing, John Peck was a particularly Rhode Island personality, educated by its premiere institution of higher learning - Brown University - and nurtured by the state's outré counter-culture, epitomized by the artists and creators who emerged from our other collegiate gem on Providence's East Side, the Rhode Island School of Design, which helped develop generations of quirky talents, including David Byrne and his band, the Talking Heads, film director Gus Van...
The Fate Remains Mysterious: an update on Diamond's bankruptcy

1 month ago | tcj.com | Brigid Alverson

It's been another dramatic week in the ongoing saga of the Diamond bankruptcy, with the original purchaser, Alliance Entertainment, dropping its offer and suing Diamond alleging, among other things, fraud and breach of contract, and Diamond making a quick pivot to sell to the backup bidders. The bottom line: Diamond will be sold to two bidders, the Canadian distributor Universal Distribution and Ad Populum, the parent company of collectible maker NECA and its subsidiary, WizKids.
The blunt force and furry drama Of Toxic Metal Press

1 month ago | tcj.com | Rob Clough

Welcome back to High-Low, a column that originated at TCJ.com in December of 2009. It was originally about mini-comics and small-press comics publishers, but since RJ Casey has the mini-comics part of things covered with his monthly column, I thought I'd focus on the output of specific small presses.