by Jeff Mason Set in the DC Comics universe, Whistle: A New Gotham City Hero is an easy-to-read 6-chapter story of a teenager’s well-intentioned efforts to help her family make ends meet. The story follows 16-year-old Willow Zimmerman, a non-super-powered, Jewish teenager with a penchant for local activism and a love of stray dogs. Willow is growing up in Down River, an historically Jewish neighbourhood that has seen better days and whose residents are currently troubled by a murderous gangster and the mystery of buildings suddenly being “greened” by lush vegetation. Along the way we meet Willow’s Down River High… Read More
Trouble Down South
by Matt Peters In 2021, Andrew Oh’s life took a detour. He woke up feeling a strange soreness in his groin, a pain that had no apparent cause. As the sensation persisted over the next few days, he couldn’t take his mind off the possibility that he was suffering from a hernia, a testicular torsion, or cancer. With growing anxiety, he decided to seek medical attention. But seeing a doctor neither confirmed his worst fears nor erased them. Along for his medical journey were readers of Oh’s weekly webcomic, Day and Age. Oh had been writing and illustrating the… Read More
Medical Mentions Book Review VIII
Medical Mentions is a group of graphic works. The graphic works reviewed here are books whose primary topics are not medical, and yet they cover a medical topic with some depth at some point in the work. The rest of the work might be fictional or nonfictional, while the medical portion is often technical and five pages or more. The reviewer will usually neither recommend nor discourage reading the work, except when the rest of the work is deemed outstanding or terrible, respectively. Typically, six graphic works will be part of the review with one paragraph for each. Prior Medical Mentions… Read More
Bipolar Bear’s Misadventures
Book Review by Kevin Wolf I haven’t read Judith Viorst’s Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (September 2009, Atheneum Books) which is illustrated by Ray Cruz, so I don’t know if the book under review is also a spoof of Viorst’s work or only borrowing some of its title, but I’m ok with that; because, Kathleen Founds in Bipolar Bear and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Health Insurance: A Fable for Grownups is venting her own frustrations in an allegory about struggling with a chronic mental health issue (bipolar disorder) which is exacerbated… Read More