Motherlover - Lindsay Ishihiro

Motherlover - Lindsay Ishihiro

This bafflingly-poorly titled graphic novel tells of the friendship between Imogen, an awkward, hesitant mother of four whose husband keeps her firmly in her stay-at-home-mom identity, and Alex, a lesbian single mom of one daughter who's returned to her home town after the death of her strict parents.  Together, they bond over a shock to Imogen's marriage and Alex's own hangups.  Friendship turns to love as they realize they have come to need each other.  This is a well-crafted story, with fully fleshed-out characters and a lack of trite, quick resolutions.  The need to work on relationships and develop trust in all relationships is realistically portrayed.   The art is colorful and vibrant.  [4]

 

Night Fever - Ed Brubaker

Night Fever - Ed Brubaker

A disaffected book editor gets insomnia while at a convention in Paris.  He wanders into an underground masked ball for super-rich bored people, taking the identity of someone on the guest list.  This leads him into a dark world of drugs and murder.  Jonathan is not a hard boiled noir character, but an office guy who gets drawn into chaos and violence and finds he likes it, until it turns out he's the patsy.  This isn't Brubaker's finest work — it's not as intricately plotted as Criminal, and there are some odd plot points that don't really go anywhere (like Jonathan finding his own dream in a manuscript), but it's a fun read.  [3.5]

Space Dumplins - Craig Thompson

Space Dumplins - Craig Thompson

Craig Thompson is mostly known for Blankets, which I haven't read.  This one is about a girl named Violet who lives aboard a garbage-hauling spaceship with her father, a "lumberjack" (in this case hauling and refining space-whale excrement) and her mother, a fashion designer's assistant. When her father's deep-space fishing vessel disappears amid a crisis of — sigh — whale diarrhea, Violet sets off on a rescue mission with a fearful, erudite chicken and a small but exuberant orange alien.  The art is obsessively detailed: every panel is packed full of bizarre creatures, elaborate machinery, and throwaway visual jokes.  The pages burst with movement, and despite the density of detail, the storytelling is remarkably clear.  The emotional core is somewhat less successful. Thompson probably means the story to be about family, grief, responsibility, and growing up, but it's also a whirlwind of episodic adventures from a child's point of view, with childish physical combat being the deciding factor in many cases.  There are several comments about how the elite and the rich screw over the working class, and some examples of private school bullying, points which all land without being preachy.  Beneath the eccentric creatures, cosmic junkyards, and gleeful absurdity lies a charming adventure with genuine heart.  [3.5]

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.  [4]

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 from 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.  Tomine 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.  [3]

The Mystery Play - Grant Morrison

The Mystery Play - Grant Morrison

In a small English village of Townely, a revival of a medieval mystery play is being put on, when suddenly the man playing God is murdered just offstage.  Enter Sergeant Frank Carpenter, a bearded, taciturn detective, coming to solve the murder in a rather peculiar way: "I don't want to examine the smashed pieces of an event, you see what I mean?  Fragments are no good to me.  I want to see it whole, in relation to everything around it."  Carpenter uncovers some rather unsavory practices in the local politician, and a reverend who lost his faith and didn't get along with the deceased very much, but none of it adds up to anything.  Then a reporter uncovers a macabre secret about Carpenter,  and things start to get weird.  Carpenter is haunted by his past and every clue he finds.  I didn't really engage with this one much, despite Morrison's erudition and the interesting twists.  I liked his clever coat motif and the mob frenzy at the end, but I'm not wholly onboard with Morrison's ideas that we're all part of a collective organism or story, and the individual pieces don't matter as much.  And the symbolism is just so heavy handed. I mean, his name is Carpenter? and he gets a wound on his hand?  "The house is empty"?  It's all a bit on the nose.  This book has some interesting themes and exciting moments, but ultimately I found it just a collection of ideas rather than a complete work.  [3.5]

Hakim's Odyssey - Fabien Toulmé

Hakim's Odyssey - Fabien Toulmé

1. Book One: From Syria to Turkey - With simple, two-toned line drawings, Toulmé tells the story of Hakim, a young Syrian who owns a gardening store in Damascus.  After Assad comes to power, there are protests that are put down with brutal violence.  Hakim is picked up by the state police for helping some protesters. After being interrogated and tortured, he is released, but decides he must flee his business, family, and country.  Moving from Jordan to Antalya, Turkey, he discovers that life as a refugee consist of low wages, suspicion, and anger from the locals.  In Antalya, he marries a fellow refugee, then leaves with her family for Istanbul, where the book ends.  Especially given the strongman tactics of the American wanna-be king in the 2020s, this is an important, chillingly relevant, and upsetting story.