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Thirst as Ecological Distress: Planetary Health and Water Scarcity in Brenda Larusso’s Cánidos [Canines]

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by Dr. Velebita Koričančić, Mexico City   A dehydrated ecosystem appears as an illness affecting the collective body in Brenda Larusso’s Cánidos  (2024), published by the Fondo de Cultura Económica after the book won Mexico’s National Young Graphic Novel Award in 2022.[i] Dedicated poignantly “To those who have experienced thirst,” Cánidos (“Canidae” or “Canines”) is an almost wordless narrative of drought and forced migration, but also survival, offering a striking intervention in contemporary Latin American sequential art. With text limited largely to paratextual elements (the title, chapter numbers, and back-cover synopsis), Cánidos uses the comics page to address ecological crisis…. Read More

Illegal Cargo

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by Matt Peters   Content Advisory: Strong language and brief depictions of military conflict and gang violence   The anguish of searching for a missing loved one is the central theme of Illegal Cargo, a graphic novel by author and illustrator Augusto Mora. Mora embeds that theme in a story about the many perils that undocumented immigrants face on their journeys from Central and South America to the United States. The main character in Illegal Cargo is José Sendero, a father in El Salvador whose long history of economic and personal hardships has led to a life of excessive drinking…. Read More

Follow Me In

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Guest review by Rob Wells. Follow Me In is Katriona Chapman’s debut graphic novel, but she is hardly new to comics, having contributed to various anthologies and self-published eight issues of her comic / zine Katzine in recent years.  I am fairly new to Katriona’s work, having only bought the first two issues of Katzine a few months ago, but I enjoyed those two issues so much that she quickly became one of my favourite current comic artists and I pre-ordered Follow Me In as soon as I heard about it. Katriona is an incredibly talented artist, whose beautiful, deceptively-simple… Read More