Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees - Patrick Horvath

Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees - Patrick Horvath

Sam Strong, an anthropomorphic bear and the owner of a hardware store in the tiny town of Woodbrook, has a secret.  Every now and then, she goes to the city to kill strangers.  Just to take the edge off, you know?  But she really does love her town.  So when someone else starts committing grisly (ha ha!) murders in Woodbrook, the usually serene community is thrown into chaos — and Sam needs to find the killer before the police start looking too closely at her own movements.  This is a pretty standard thriller plot with few surprises in the endgame.  It stands out in that the protagonist is also a serial killer, and the "talking animal" setting adds a novel, ironically cute layer to it.  Horvath’s illustrations reinforce this tone beautifully. His thin lines and warm, gentle colors evoke children’s books and Sunday funnies, while his real strength lies in facial expressions: the animals' placid smiles, flickers of fear, and moments of barely concealed menace carry much of the emotional weight.

Shortcomings - Adrien Tomine

Shortcomings - Adrien Tomine

A black and white slice of life graphic novel set in the Bay Area.  It follows Ben Tanaka, a movie-theater manager, drifting apart form his girlfriend, Miko, who is involved in Asian-American organizations and art.  She suspects him of fetishizing blonde white girls.  He is indifferent to her flirtatious come-ons and spends his days looking at DVDs and venting to his only friend, Alice Kim, a sharp, socially confident lesbian who plays the field and occasionally punctures his self-image.  When Miko takes an internship in New York City for four months, Ben has no intention of accompanying her, and their already strained relationship threatens to break.  TTomine tells this story with his trademark minimalist precision: spare lines, controlled pacing, and a cool observational tone that lends the book a strong sense of realism.  But since Tanaka is such an unpleasant character — he is in fact all that his girlfriend accuses him of, and more, yet reacts to her suspicions, and Kim's mild criticisms with outright hostility — I finished the story with antipathy and a shrug, not admiration.