Category: Lifestyle

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Victory Point


By Owen D. Pomery (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-91039-552-3 (PB)

No matter where we are or when, we are all tied to key places and past events. Many of us also include abstract input in that chain of memory. In my head, childhood events are stored away in the pictorial style of Kirby, Ditko, Dudley Watkins and Hergé…

That distant sense of place and the picture postcard, Ligne Claire image efficiency clearly also impacted the sensibilities of architect and comics creator Owen D. Pomeroy (Between the Billboards, The Megatherium Club Vl. 1: The Great Ape) who here conjures up the powerful forces of recall and anticipation for his new book Victory Point: a beguiling seaside odyssey of many minor events and major changes.

With overtones of David Hockney to accompany the magnificently simple and engaging pictures, the tale follows urban bookshop worker Ellen Small – or “Minnow” as her dad calls her – as she returns for a short visit to the quaint seaside town she grew up in.

As Minnow contemplatively revisits old haunts and uncomfortably fails to reconnect with old friends and childhood acquaintances who never escaped the quasi-resort’s gravity well, she ponders how outsiders regard this seemingly legendary location.

For architecture students Victory Point is an icon: a bold 1933 experiment in social planning, intended to create a new kind of town and a “modern way to live”. Dedicated to promoting ethnic diversity, it was only partially completed and abides now in a timeless, unchanging state…

Moved in ways she can’t really express, Minnow visits the promontory Observatory where her mother died so long ago; chatting to a village newcomer and her child before reliving her own youth via a covert skinny dip in her old hidden coastal cove. She ends up spending the night with Dad in their old house. All the time that she’s talking to strangers and those she knows best, Ellen is pondering a big, life-changing decision…

Contemplative and philosophical, this gentle confection evokes sun and sea, past holidays and tomorrow’s unknown demands in a manner that feels quintessentially English: an unforgettable hotchpotch of vacation light, candy floss and the smell of briny ocean and vinegary chips. It’s a heartfelt paean to a mythical past with buildings, landscape and environment playing the parts of the lead characters, and with blessed tomorrows informing how the future should unfold. This is a beautiful, evocative and utterly contemplative visual experience no one could possibly resist, and possibly all the vacation you’ll need this year…
© 2020 Owen D. Pomery.
Victory Point is scheduled for release on September 10th 2020 and available for pre-order now.

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What We Don’t Talk About


By Charlot Kristensen (Avery Hill)
ISBN: 978-1-91039-555-4 (PB)

There plenty wrong with the world, but most of it could probably be sorted if people got together and discussed things rationally and honestly. Some individuals, however, don’t want to change positions or even agree there’s a problem at all. This book isn’t for them, and we’ll have to find more drastic ways to deal with their nonsense…

Dublin-based artist Charlot Kristensen graduated from Middlesex University in 2015 with a degree in Illustration and has since pursued a career in the arts. Her visual and narrative gifts are superbly highlighted in this vibrant examination of an interracial relationship in crisis. Kristensen is of Afro-Danish descent and clearly knows what she’s talking about and how best to depict it…

Painted in lavish and mood-setting colours, What We Don’t Talk About focuses on an idyllic modern romance as artist Farai accompanies her white boyfriend Adam to Lake Windemere to finally meet his parents. They’ve been lovers for two years now, ever since University, but her beautiful gentle musician is uncharacteristically nervous – even short-tempered – as the journey begins. Farai almost regrets the trip, even though she’s been pushing for it from the start…

Her nerves and his tension dissipate on the trip up, but are immediately revived when she meets Charles and Martha. The look on their faces and the tone of the greeting tell Farai an old story…

In frosty diffidence, the social amenities are followed but it’s not just a barely suppressed attitude of polite condescension Farai experiences. Martha’s blunt opinions extend to all aspects of her son’s life. Although she clearly opposes Adam’s choice of career, after meeting the girlfriend, Mother now has a new problem to gnaw at…

As the weekend progresses, Martha’s sneering, passive aggressive comments go from dismissive to openly hostile: mocking Farai’s clothes and denigrating the achievements of her Zimbabwean parents (a doctor and engineer). It soon transpires that it’s not just her who’s a problem: people with funny names or difficult accents and all Muslims also fail Martha’s tests of decency and acceptable standards. The matriarch also thinks the world should be grateful for British colonialism…

And Adam? He’s loving and conciliatory but ultimately weak and avoiding the issue. He knows what his mum says is objectionable, offensive and just plain wrong, but can’t bring himself to say anything or rebuke his parents. He tries to divert conversations rather than defend Farai, even employing the “just a joke defence” at a most distressing family dinner…

He doesn’t seem to believe their attitude is unacceptable or that it even matters. Farai’s seen it all before. This is a love story that cannot possibly end well…

Like a modern-day Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, this powerful graphic drama forensically picks open the sores underlying much of modern society’s attempts to integrate and assimilate long-entrenched attitudes: revealing not just how far we’ve all come, but how far we still have to go.

Comics have always had an admirable record in addressing issues of bigotry and racial injustice, and this tale takes that to the next level with wonderful empathy and through the eyes of someone who’s sadly “been there, done that” all too often…

That the ignorance and intolerance still daily endured by so many today is perpetually ignored, diminished and dismissed by those in charge has never been more effectively shown as in this unforgettable vignette. Luxuriant colours and a welcoming cartoon style act to subversively and devastatingly prove that prejudice doesn’t lurk in dark corners any more but instead proudly rears its head everywhere it can. But that just means we can – and should – slap it down more forcefully and decisively.
© 2020 Charlot Kristensen

What We Don’t Talk About is scheduled for release on September 10th 2020 and is available for pre-order now.

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Sumo


By Thien Pham (First Second)
ISBN: 978-1-59643-581-0 (PB)

This book is about looking.

The magically multi and cross-cultural nature of pictures mixed with words continually generates a wealth of absolutely fantastic and improbable gems for readers with eyes and minds wide open. Back in 2012, this deliciously absorbing visual poem instantly became one of my favourite tomes: an elegiac and gently enthralling visual experiences of a kind I’ve seldom encountered in many a year, and one I often return to.

It’s all about pasts and futures…

The tale begins in a Japanese Dojo as another rikishi in training greets the dawn. He carries out his assigned chores and exercises with the other jonokuchi in the heya training stable. Despite his superior strength, size and speed, he is again knocked out. The supervising oyakata is in despair and doubts the spirit and determination of his latest find…

Scott once thought he was a big man in every sense of the term, but the glory days of High School Football never turned into the glittering, lucrative Pro career he dreamed of. Somehow, he ended up in his small town of Campbell with his best buddies, drinking beer and wasting his days.

When adored girlfriend Gwen dumped him, even that shallow, pointless life needed to end. They had been together since grade school…

Years ago, a visiting Japanese Sumo trainer had watched the boy play and never forgotten the warrior spirit he saw displayed in that sports arena. When the venerable gentleman offered a chance for fame and glory, Scott thought long and hard…

With nothing to lose, Scott accepted a bizarre offer: move to Japan and try out as a junior wrestler in the decidedly un-All-American enterprise known as Sumo…

This is a hard look at expectations and second chances…

The transition hasn’t been what he expected or hoped for. They dyed his hair and changed his name since all Sumo have professional shikona stage-names and looks. Only now “Hakugei” is failing again. If it wasn’t for the trainer’s daughter Asami and the idyllic occasional break spent fishing, this new life would be as intolerable as his old one…

This story is about striving…

With time fast running out, Hakugei must decide what he really wants and has to do it before the last match of the mae-zumo tournament. He has to win at least one bout or be sent home in disgrace …and he’s just lost the fourth one in a row…

It’s all about the build-up towards tension’s inevitable release…

This surprisingly contemplative and lyrical exploration of love, hope, honour and gigantic nearly-naked men bitch-slapping each other in truly explosive manner effortlessly blends and intercuts flashbacks and real time to craft a sublimely skilful and colourfully emotive experience. Cartoonist and teacher Thien Pham (Level Up) hypnotically and enthrallingly marries two wildly disparate worlds to produce an enchanting and thoughtful story that will delight and astound. This is a graphic novel you too will read over and over again.
© 2012 Thien Pham. All rights reserved.

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The Garden


By Sean Michael Wilson & Fumio Obata (Liminal 11)
ISBN: 978-1-912634-16-3 (HB)

We’re all locked up in our own heads as much as in our homes these days, and constantly in search of solutions to ease anxiety however we can. Please allow me then – in timely fashion and most serendipitously – to get in an early plug for this forthcoming sublime gem laced with helpful suggestions on healing mindfulness.

Not only is the message calming and helpful – and delivered in beguiling imagery guaranteed to reset your outraged Alpha Waves – but it also guarantees a solidly entertaining read while helping to moderate your hunger for physical relaxation and contemplative rejuvenation.

Until recently equally at home in Britain and Japan, Scottish author Seán Michael Wilson (Breaking the Ten, The Story of Lee) was inspired to write The Garden after being asked by a comics newcomer if there were any about gardening. After taking a beat and realising the range of subjects covered in graphic novels was quite limited – and getting smaller – the writer, educator and dedicated Humanist – who has previous form on cerebral topics and non-mainstream graphic narratives – decided to create one himself…

Wilson originally took a degree in psychology, with a postgraduate diploma in clinical hypnotherapy before transferring to the Ninth Art. In comic form, besides more traditional fare, he has co-crafted political and philosophical tracts such as Goodbye God – An Illustrated Examination of Science Vs. Religion and Portraits of Violence – An Illustrated History of Radical Thinking and adapted many Western and Eastern literary classics such as Wuthering Heights, Sweeney Todd, Book of Five Rings and Tao Te Ching. This is a man with wide interests who has learned how to kick back and slow down…

His collaborator here is equally distinguished with similar antecedents. Author, educator, artist and animator Fumio Obata (Just So Happens, DC Thompson, Internazionale) was born in Tokyo in 1975, before moving to the UK at age 16. His BA Illustration degree from Glasgow School of Art was compounded with a Masters in Communication Design from the Royal College of Art before he began pursuing a comics career in Britain and Europe.

In this gloriously welcoming hardback, the classic tale of early success leading to burn-out and transformative healing through new purpose follows formerly high-flying financier Joanna who spectacularly and very publicly suffers an emotional meltdown.

Recovering in her house, a conversation with sister Samantha sets her on a path to a new life that begins with a trip to Japan and a course in creating traditional Zen designs at the Garden Institute of Kyoto.

Once there, Joanna learns that it’s not actually all about her at all…

Filled with delightful human moments and a broad cast of appetising characters, Joanna’s learning curve is a marvellously tempting invitation to combine our personal urban nightmare with a more bucolic experience that Williams was a appeal to the suppressed nature lover in us all, and the life-changing challenge even comes with an appealing Poem of the Garden to start your own verdant rebirth…

Calm, contemplative and mentally refreshing, The Garden is a seed of surprise just waiting for you to plant it…
© 2020 Sean Michael Wilson & Fumio Obata. All rights reserved.
The Garden is scheduled for release on May 21st 2020 and is available for pre-order now.

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A City Inside


By Tillie Walden (Avery Hill)
ISBN: 978-1-91039-541-7 (HB) 978-1-91039-520-2 (TPB)

Transitions are important. In fact, they are literally life changing. Here’s another one captured and shared by the amazing Tillie Walden…

We usually attribute wisdom and maturity in the creative arts to having lived a bit of life and getting some emotional grit in our wheels and sand in our faces, but maybe that’s not the case for Texas-raised Tillie, whose incredible string of releases include I Love this Part, Spinning, On a Sunbeam, and Are You Listening? and award-winning debut graphic novel The End of Summer.

A City Inside is another seamlessly constructed marriage of imagination and experience to unflinching self-exploration, constructing a perfect blend of autobiography and fantasy into a vehicle both youthfully exuberant and literary timeless.

Opening in a therapy session, the story delves intimately into a woman’s past, from isolated southern days to bold moments of escape – or is that simply drifting away? – in search of peace and a place to settle. We all leave home and then grow up, and here that transition is seen through the tentative alliance with an ideal first love. That fumbles and fails, thanks to the dull oppression of the Happy Ever After part that no fairy tale ever warns you about…

Eventually life builds you into the being you are – hence the symbolism of a vast internal metropolis – and life goes on, or back, or away, or just somewhere else. That’s pretty much the point…

Supremely engaging, enticingly disturbing and ultimately utterly uplifting, this shared solo voyage to another county is a visual delight no lover of comics can possibly resist. Apart from the graceful honesty on show, the most engaging factor is the author’s inspired rearrangement of visual reality. These dictate mood and tone in a way a million words can’t, supplying a sense of grace and wistful whimsy to the affair.

You’d have to be bereft of vision and afflicted with a heart of stone to reject this comic masterpiece – available in hardback, softcover and digital formats – which no one should miss.
© Tillie Walden 2016. All rights reserved.

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Madame Cat


By Nancy Peña, translated by Mark Bence (Life Drawn/Humanoids)
ISBN: 978-1-59465- 813-6 (PB Album)

Churlish men have joked about women with cats for eternity. Here’s a superbly irrepressible cartoon collection BY a woman about her own cat. It’s hilarious, extremely addictive and among the top five strips about feline companions ever. Laugh that off, guys…

Toulouse-born Nancy Peña probably caught the comics bug off her father: a dedicated comics collector. She studied Applied Arts and became a teacher while carving out a sideline as a prolific creator of magazine strips and graphic novels such as her Medea series, Le Cabinet Chinois, Mamohtobo and many more.

Hectic as all that sounds, she still found time to invite a companion animal to share her life…

Madame is a cute little kitty who shares her house and converses with her. The bewhiskered treasure (Madame, right) has a vivid interior life – probably swiped from a number of deranged mad scientists and would-be world conquerors – and is the mischievous stuff of nightmares all those legally responsible for a pet know and dread. There is nothing the tiny tyke won’t attempt, from drinking artists ink to exorcising the artist’s long-suffering and utterly unwelcome boyfriend.

Madame knows what she is and what she wants and will baulk at nothing – not even the laws of physics – to achieve her aims…

The engaging bombshell bursts of manic mirth are rendered in engaging duotone (black and blue, but I’m sure that’s not symbolic of anything) with titles such as ‘Madame flirts’, ‘Madame suggests’, ‘Madame insists’, and ‘Madame smells’ as the wee beast moves in, makes allies of the other felines in the area and promptly takes charge: wrecking the life and house of her carer and only giving in return permission to be adored. Every cat person alive will identify with that…

Available in paperback and digital editions, Madame Cat is a sparking example of domestic comedy. Mixing recognisably real events with potent imagination and debilitating whimsy, Peña has introduced a classic cartoon character who is charming, appalling and laugh-out-loud funny. If you’ve been thinking of getting a cat, along with all the medical and pet-care books, get this too. You won’t be sorry. Well, not with the book, at least…
“Madame” © 2015-2016 La Boîte à Bulles & Nancy Peña. All rights reserved.

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A Man & His Cat volume 1


By Umi Sakurai, translated by Taylor Engel (Square Enix Manga & Books)
ISBN: 978-64609-026-6 (PB)

The relationship between human and pet is endlessly fascinating. Animal lovers always want to know what other people’s non bill-paying companions get up to and they’re also always looking for points of similarity. How many times have we all heard “Yeah, my fuzzball also piddles on electrical points” or “no, Jolly Mister Creampants has never dug up a corpse… as far as I’m aware…”?

That shared compulsion has produced a lot of funny and so-so books and comics, but few have matched the astounding success of cartoonist Umi Sakurai (The Vampire Called God) with her strip Ojisama to Neko. It’s even more remarkable because the humour is gentle and almost all on the side of the rather ugly, pitifully self-deprecating moggy in his narrative asides. The rest of reading experience is more heartwarming than funny. This is a series about honest sentiment and the human rewards of animal companionship.

Ojisama to Neko began life as a self-published weekly webcomic on Twitter and Pixiv before being picked up for strip serialisation in print magazines Monthly Shōnen Gangan and Gangan Pixiv. To date the emotive vignettes have filled four tankōbon tomes and had well over 560 million views. It is astoundingly popular, garnering awards and recommendations wherever it appeared. Now its available in English and I’m beginning to see why…

This slim but well-stuffed volume sets the ball rolling in ‘A Man and a Cat’ as a humble, homely, slightly huge and rather old cat ponders his life in the pet shop. He’s been there an awfully long time, gathering dust but no admirers as younger, prettier cats and kittens come and quite rapidly go…

As his price tag is regularly lowered, he understands and accepts his fate, but everything changes the day a distinguished gentleman comes in and without hesitation picks the flabbergasted veteran. The answer comes in ‘All Alone’ when the gentleman is revealed as a recent widower. He had discussed with his wife getting a cat just before…

The short moments of bonding continue when the new family unit decide on ‘The Cat’s Name’ and stock up on “essential supplies” when ‘The Man Goes Shopping’. Rejoicing in the name Fukumaru, the cat plays that old “I’m hungry” tactic in ‘Super-Mewracle Crunchies’ and the freshness of the learning curve for both is proved when ‘I Have a Cat Now’ sees the Man try to bath The Cat…

Both man and beast are visited by unwelcome memories in ‘Good Night, Fukumaru’, but their co-dependent bond is clearly solidifying. When Fukumaru remembers those distant days of kittenhood in ‘Good Night, Mister’, it leads to an explosive triptych about litter boxes, discreetly dubbed ‘The Noble Feline in the Bathroom’ Parts 1, 2 and ‘Afterward’before ‘Kneady-Kneady Fukumaru’ shares his first human bed…

When ‘The Man Wakes Up’ they discover the wonder of taking cat photos, but when the adoring human leaves for work (he’s a silver fox music teacher, utterly oblivious to his affect upon the younger educators at school), his devoted and grateful new companion experiences abandonment issues in ‘Fukumaru Minds the House’ and responds just as you’d expect at day’s end in ‘Welcome Home’…

‘Loyal Kitty Fukumaru’ settles in and they learn the joys of selfies, with only the odd moment of discord when a dog-loving pal asks about the “ugly cat” only to learn ‘My Pet is Number One’.

A household Rubicon is crossed in ‘Fukumaru and the Black Thing’ when a locked room is opened and a magnificent piano is revealed, whilst the trauma of carry cases and collars is confronted in ‘Safe, Worry-free Design’ before the household standing of the black thing vis a vis scratchable items is explored in ‘Attack from the Purriphery’.

‘The View Beyond the Invisible Wall’ is Fukumaru’s first taste of modern gardening, followed by a return outing for the dog-lover who has learned his lesson in ‘Your Precious Cat’, after which ‘I Promise You’ sees the Man – AKA Mr. Fuyuki Kanda – further impress the youthful school staff as ‘Hellos and Good-byes’ flashes back to that pet shop, revealing how lonely Miss Sato almost took the lonely straggler on the day Kanda walked in and proved love at first sight…

Peppered throughout one-page gag moments, this initial outing ends on a low-key yet warm note sharing further revelations about sad Kanda and wife before he chose to share his life ‘With Fukumaru’…

Forthright, painfully honest and packing hidden tear-jerking episodes the way a fluffy kitten packs sheathed claws and razor-sharp teeth, A Man & His Cat is a compelling buddy story no pet-carer or comics aficionado should miss.
© 2018 Umi Sakurai/SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. English translation © 2020 SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.

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House of Clay


By Naomi Nowak (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-511-5 (TPB)

Not every story should be about overcoming great odds, or triumphing over the impossible. Sometimes it’s enough just to keep going…

Painter, illustrator and graphic novelist Naomi Nowak (Unholy Kinship; Graylight) crafts in painted style a dreamy yet potent exploration of the uses and abuse of love in her tale of a young girl who turns her back on a wealthy family and identity. Calling herself Josephine she journeys to the coast, taking a dreadful job in a sweatshop, amongst broken women and girls, and sewing clothes for unpleasant bosses. The only one she can truly confide in and share her thoughts with is a mute work companion…

Restless and roaming, Josephine’s off-duty wanderings bring her to an obnoxious old fortune teller while her unconfined fantasies lead into a romantic entanglement and some life-changing conclusions in a stylish tale of emancipation and empowerment that manages to stay firmly grounded in the unreal, but important.

Colourful, lyrical, sometimes bordering on the pretentious, but eminently readable and beautiful to look at, this different sort of graphic narrative has a great deal to offer the reader looking for more than fistfights or funny stuff.
© 2007 Naomi Nowak. All rights reserved.

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Goblin Girl


By Moa Romanova, translated by Melissa Bowers (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-68396-283-0 (HB)

Scandinavian artists and authors seem to have a real knack for combining comics with therapy and producing truly memorable books you really want to tell your friends about. Here’s another…

Stockholm resident and dog-lover Moa Romanova was born in 1992. She’s an artist and musician who studied painting at the Gothenburg School of Fine arts and is a graduate of the wonderful Malmö Comic Art School. She’s probably done a whole bunch of other stuff too, if her debut graphic novel Goblin Girl is anything to go by. Already available in seven languages, it started life as Alltid Fucka Upp when first published in Sweden…

The Goblin in question is a young woman of artistic temperament and ambitions who suffers from panic attacks and other insecurities. Despite being broke and stuck in a grotty squat over a shop, she’s getting by, thanks to mum, friends and a counsellor I personally wouldn’t give house room to. Looking for love – aren’t we all? – she hooks up online with a minor TV celeb who’s far too old for her, but at least he seems to listen. It’s not undying passion, but in the absence of anything better…

He seems to want nothing, but validates her life and even offers to sponsor her art career. Are things finally looking up?  Aren’t there always strings attached?

And so, her life progresses: drink, panic attacks, other people, concerts, social services, work, no work, body issues, relationships, fraught travel, psych evaluations and admissions: all the crap that makes up a modern life if you’re not born perfect but still have a brain to be unhappy and discontented with…

Dealing with contemporary life, mental health issues and the inescapable problem of unequal power dynamics in all relationships in an uncompromising but astonishingly steady – if not upbeat – manner, Goblin Girl (available in breathtaking oversized hardback or digital editions) is a remarkable testament to modern living, beautifully drawn in a deliberately ugly way and deeply moving. You won’t all like it, but those of you who do will read it over and over again and still come away wanting more…
© 2020 Moa Romanova. English translation © 2020 Melissa Bowers. This edition © 2020 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

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Hobo Mom


By Charles Forsman РMax de Radigu̬s (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-176-5 (HB) eISBN

The most wonderful thing about the comics medium is that it is utterly transformative and variable; dependent upon the abilities of the individuals or teams of creatives involved. Hobo Mom is a sublime case in point, a single story crafted by two separate cartoonists working simultaneously and collaboratively, even though situated thousands of miles apart.

Forsman is a multi-award-winning graduate of Vermont’s celebrated Center for Cartoon Studies (founded at White River Junction by James Sturm and Michelle Ollie in 2004), whose previous releases include Celebrated Summer, The End of the Fucking World and I Am Not Okay with This. You should also be aware of his self-published mini-comics Snake Oil, Revenger and Slasher…

Max de Radiguès hails from Belgium. He was born in 1982 and, when not creating books and comics for youngsters and adults, runs publishing houses L’employé du Moi (Ego Employee) and Éditions Sabarcane. In September 2009 he began a one-year residency at the Center for Cartoon Studies and turned his experiences into Meanwhile in White River Junction from Six Feet Under the Earth: a biography celebrated at the Angoulême International Comics Festival 2012.

During 2018, although divided by an entire ocean, these gentlemen used the magic of comics to seamlessly craft this poignant, understated examination of family break-up and possible renewal…

Single parent Tom lives a quiet life with his young daughter Sissy (and her pet rabbit Hazel). It’s not paradise, but it will do. Meanwhile, on a freight train, a bindlestiff heads toward them, practising what she’s going to say. It’s not an uneventful trip, but what lies ahead is far more daunting the hardship, privation and potential molestation and murder…

A little later, Sissy is playing when a woman introduces herself as Natasha and asks if her dad’s home…

That’s all you’re getting. You’ve already guessed what’s going on from the title, but you really must see for yourselves what happens when a compulsion for independence battles a need to renew maternal drives, and a need to keep moving wars with a hunger for love and even suffocating emotional ties…

And that’s not even considering how the stay-at-homes might feel and react…

Deceptively simple but devastatingly effective, Hobo Mom is a cunning and evocative exploration of humanity anyone with a heart must read.
© 2019 Charles Forsman – Max de Radiguès. This edition © 2019 Fantagraphics Books Inc. All rights reserved.