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Shadow Life

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Book Review by Kevin Wolf   Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. (Dylan Thomas – 1914-1953)   Almost immediately we read that Ms. Kumiko Saito—an elderly Japanese-Canadian woman— in Shadow Life, Hiromi Goto’s first graphic novel and drawn by Ann Xu, only needs life’s necessities and discards the rest. This graphic work wonderfully merges the words and pictures symbiotically without excess. One can’t exist without the other, because too much would be lost if either was missing. Shadow Life is… Read More

Der Sommer ihres Lebens (eng: The Summer of her Life)

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Contemporary German writers and comic artists are tackling some of the most challenging issues humanity faces today. Many of these problems are not to be found on the front pages of the newspapers, but nonetheless play direct and crucial roles in the lives of us and our loved ones. In Barbara Yelin’s 2017 graphic novel Der Sommer ihres Lebens (eng: The Summer of her Life) the illustrator, along with writer Thomas von Steinaecker, takes on themes of ageing and care for the elderly, as well as the consequences of outdated gender roles in daily life and work. At the beginning… Read More

You’ll Never Know

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This series of three gorgeous memoirs shares Carol Tyler’s effort to investigate and retell her father’s traumatic experiences in World War II. Along the way we are also witness to struggles with her marriage, raising her daughter, her efforts to be a good daughter herself, and much more. Carol, a painter, has a stunning visual style, and she uses the landscape format of the book, meant to resemble a photo album, to her (and our) great advantage. Paul Gravett chose You’ll Never Know as the best autobiography/biography of 2012. In his blog post he wrote, …in the end what floored… Read More

Joyce Farmer: sex, politics and aging parents

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Outside the world of underground comix enthusiasts, Joyce Farmer is probably best known for her latest work, Special Exits (Fantagraphics 2010), a memoir (though the names are changed) of her experience caring for her parents during the last few years of their lives. Special Exits is Farmer’s first book-length comic, famously praised by Robert Crumb, but Farmer has been an important figure in comics since the 1970s. I’ll get back to Special Exits in a minute, but first I want to make sure to tell you about her work from the 70s. I wish I’d been more familiar with it… Read More