Goddess of War

This oversized book is as much an homage to underground comics as it is a tightly reverent meditation on history. Creator Lauren Weinstein presents us with a wacky female war deity who loves to drink, shirk responsibilities, lives in a surreal sort of Bat-cave, and loves to time travel in order to screw great warriors throughout the ages. Yes, it has a lot of silly to it, but Weinstein also incorporates true historical events - specifically the betrayal of Native Americans during the 19th century. Granted, it's an odd mix, but the result is a sexy psychedelic romp with an ultimately serious tone. Her multi-layered imagery falls into place quite well with her interesting sense of panel design. Can't wait for #2!

www.pictureboxinc.com

Mai The Psychic Girl

I am seriously in need of brushing up when it comes to Manga, the Japanese comics form, and probably the world’s single most popular style of comics. A friend gave me Mai as a gift, and man, what a great way to continue my education. Written by Kazuya Kud_ and illustrated by Ryoichi Ikegami, the story of a teenage girl who comes into her own superpowers is an often-used device, but the moody black and white drawings, lively characters and insightful take on human interactions brought out in the writing only enhance the rich story. And it’s a lot of fun, too!

www.viz.com

You'll Never Know

Carol Tyler’s tortured reminiscence of her relationship to the weird world of men who won’t be honest with their feelings is uplifting and one of the more human comics I’ve read in a while. The central story revolves around the artist trying to get her father to discuss his experiences in World War II - something he’s refused to do for over 40 years. But Tyler also looks at her own relationship with her ex-husband and starts to see a pattern with the uncommunicative men in her life. Her drawings are animated and her pages masterfully designed, yet deceivingly so as her visual style is quite simple. The warmth of the color tones she uses adds an organic quality to this intensely personal labor of love – can’t wait for Part 2!

www.fantagraphics.com

La Vénéneuse Aux Deux Eperons

I should probably find out what the title of this book means, but I’m afraid. Stéphane Blanquet’s pantomime graphic novel about weird sexual cults, freaky bourgeois sexual exploits, and, well, disturbing sexual abuses, is told entirely in silhouette. This is NOT a book for the squeamish. But its hallucinatory vision transcends the moral tags we might attach to it, and its play on the comics form is dazzling. The narrative is challenging to follow, but Blanquet seems more concerned with creating a strange and terrifying world than making the story clear. The final product is a haunting dark wood of the soul, imagery which will likely scar your mind forever. Highly recommended.

www.cornelius.fr

Burma Chronicles

Guy Delisle is definitely the sort of dude you want to have a beer with. While making very interesting comics, and working on mediocre animated projects (this is his own judgment), he’s taken the time to write and draw graphic chronicles of several countries he’s lived in abroad. Sharing with us the year he spent in the repressive dictatorship of Burma, where his wife worked as a physician for Doctors Without Borders, Delisle offers a peek into his own mind and perceptions of the world along with a powerful look inside this secretive country,. Insightful, revealing, humorous, his rudimentary illustrations use an economy of lines to perfectly express the multitude of contradictions he encounters in the land he finds himself in, and in himself.

www.drawnandquarterly.com

Chiggers

Hope Larson’s wonderfully rendered telling of a tweener’s coming of age during summer sleepaway camp once again has made me feel like I was once a little girl. The material is familiar: first encounters with boys, secrets told by night, drifting from old friends, alienation, discovery, campfires and bug bites. But Larson’s powerful empathy with her characters makes the tale special. The art is easy to take in, one object seemingly flowing into another, big round eyes in the heads of young ladies soaking in their early experiences with growth. Even the lettering plays a part in the overall effect, winding like a river trying to find the path of least resistance. This is a perfect read for teenagers, and is equally satisfying for anyone who’s already walked the fiery path of lost youth.

www.amazon.com

Low Moon

If you’ve never entered Jason’s weird world of anthropomorphic ducks, cats, and various other animals, this book is a great place to start. Weird, surreal, and yet a little too familiar, this Norwegian artist uses deadpan imagery to tell his bizarre tales which can combine such incongruous elements as the Old West and cell phones to tell stories of vanity, pettiness, and self-deception. His characters kind of look like grown-up and disillusioned versions of Daffy Duck and Goofy, and the subject matter often feels like Southern grotesque. This collection of short stories plays with off-base narratives, which are not always easy to follow, but the ugly emotions depicted are unmistakable.

www.fantagraphics.com

Chicken With Plums

Best known for her autobiographical work, Iranian artist Marjane Satrapi here instead offers a portrait of a long-lost relative who also happened to be a musical genius. The wonderfully woven tale incorporates history with artistic license as we see a man who has given everything to the practice of his beloved tar (a type of guitar) only to see his life slip away from him the day his wife breaks it during an angry fight. It’s a powerful glimpse into the selfishness of an all-consuming artist who finds the repressive culture he lives in stifling. Satrapi’s illustrations seem to form like clouds, leaving impressions of flesh and blood folk. At once a compelling tale of a faraway land lost to time, and an omnipresent statement on human frailties.

www.randomhouse.com/pantheon

T-Minus: The Race to the Moon

Now here’s a book that everyone can enjoy. Writer Jim Ottaviani masterfully tells the true tale of the space race between Russia and the US, starting 100 years before we ever got to the moon. But unlike classics such as The Right Stuff or Apollo 13, this story almost entirely focuses on the faceless scientists tirelessly laboring throughout the decades to make the dream real. Wonderfully rendered by brothers Zander and Kevin Cannon, the work is simple and straightforward yet quite expressive. Besides being entertaining and educational, this may be one of the single greatest examples of the comic book form, employing virtually all of the elements which make the medium unique. Kevin told me this was due to budgetary concerns which demanded less pages be produced, proving again how necessity breeds innovation. If you’ve never read a comic in your life, I really can’t think of an easier way to test the waters.

www.amazon.com

Wandering Star

Teri Sue Wood hasn’t done another book since she finished this great space opera over a decade ago, and we are the poorer for it. The story of intergalactic conflict isn’t terribly fresh, but the hook here for me is the sometimes alarmingly brilliant dialogue Wood employs. Her characters have exchanges worthy of Shakespeare in their piercing expression of moral dilemmas. Her art is strangely inconsistent – the characters are beautifully realized while the space scenes almost look like what a little kid would scribble while not paying attention in math class. But it makes sense that she should concentrate on the human side of things (even if most of her characters are actually aliens) since what matters most to her is how we react to conflict. A great comic for any age group.

www.amazon.com