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36days

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by Katya Robin Paul Flippen’s 36days records the final phase of his father’s life, a disabled veteran undergoing medical care. The title 36days omits the usual space between words, compressing the period into a single unit. Thirty-six image panels are interspersed throughout the spare sequential text. All the image panels are grey, daubed and abraded with a variety of textures. They remind me of miasma, the obsolete medical theory that disease was caused by bad air. Firm ink line drawings hold their space over these foggy backgrounds. Engineering diagrams, partial maps, medical equipment and ornamental swirls ooze from a telephone… Read More

Papaya Salad

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by Felix Cheong   War memoirs usually announce their scars, complete with bandaged words that barely conceal old wounds. Elisa Macellari’s Papaya Salad does something quieter, and perhaps more effectively. Her debut graphic biography retells the picaresque life of Sompong, her Thai great-uncle. When the young Macellari meets him at a family gathering, he regales her with his rags-to-rattled story—one so dramatic that it could only be true. Born to a humble family, Sompong applies for and lands a Thai military scholarship. But before he can be sent abroad to a military academy in Berlin, World War II breaks out,… Read More

Dumb Reminders

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by Fernando Gabriel Sosa Dumb Reminders (2026), written by Humberto Avila and illustrated by Kat Penrose, is a poignant and fiercely honest autobiographical short comic exploring the aftermath of a traumatic C4-C5 spinal cord injury. Originating from a life-altering motor vehicle accident near Christmas, the narrative shuns conventional “inspiration porn” or over-dramatized heroics. Instead, it invites the reader into the quiet, claustrophobic reality of living with quadriplegia, confronting the erosion of social support, the grief of physical loss, and the difficult psychological adjustment to a radically altered life. The title itself touches upon the core paradox of living with a… Read More

The Nightingales

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by Cassy Lee In a small town in Oregon in 1985, Emil Wilson’s father made a decision to take in a coworker named Jim and his two dogs who had been evicted from their home. The family is told that Jim is dying of cancer, but it soon becomes apparent that he is a gay man dying of AIDS during the early years of the epidemic, when the disease remained poorly understood and was surrounded by fear, stigma, and misinformation. While Wilson’s mother is not pleased about bringing a stranger into their home, his younger sister, seventeen-year-old Lou, approaches Jim… Read More

ULTRASOUND

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BY ISHANI ANWESHA JOSHI   Published by Fantagraphics and adapted into a feature film directed by Robert Schroeder, Ultrasound (2022) by Conor Stechschulte narrates the story of Glen and Cyndi, who are subjects in a neurological experiment manipulating their memories and perceptions. The text is structured into four distinct parts, each introduced by a quote that encapsulates the central philosophical concern of its respective segment. A work of fiction, the book is framed as a science fiction thriller that deals with medical themes such as mind control, human experimentation, gaslighting, and depression, among others. For scholars and practitioners of comic… Read More