Tim

Trashed by Derf Backderf is a fictional expose of East Coast garbagemen with a non-fiction overlay of relevant facts about trash and landfills in the US. The book is mostly filled with comical scenes of garbagemen antics with fun characters and an interesting busy art style. In between these scenes Derf elaborates on his message of reducing how much trash we create. I enjoyed my time reading it and I think I learned some good tips along the way.

Wow, I'm stunned by Emily Carroll. I have never read anything quite like Through the Woods, a collection of short horror comics. I shy away from horror in most mediums because I'm not a fan of extreme violence or sex crimes. Through the Woods tells a few creepy stories that are genuinely frightening and fascinating to read; they bring me back to my childhood evenings entranced by reading Goosebumps late at night, steeping myself in that “innocent” fear. Carroll's work combines that experience with excellent storyboarding, using stylized drawings to tell her frightening stories in way different from a horror novel or film. All I can say is, what a gem!

Twentieth Century Eightball is a collection of gag strips from the 1990s written by Daniel Clowes' earlier self. The things I funny in Wilson or interesting in Ice Haven or endearing in Mister Wonderful are altogether absent in this collection. The strips are crass, boring, and mostly not that funny. There are a few gems, especially “Art School Confidential” and “Ugly Girls” where you see maturity peeking out. Beyond that, not much else grabbed me. Maybe it is a symptom of the 1990s you-had-to-of-been-there. Whatever the case, I'm glad the younger Clowes built upon Eightball to make is recent great works.

Duncan the Wonder Dog by Adam Hines burrows into your brain and implants itself, getting us to question our place in the world seen from the perspective of all creatures. Loosely, Hines is telling us a story of several characters in a world where all animals can speak but are still treated as they are now: cows are still slaughtered for food and humans still keep pets. Besides the premise, the most interesting aspect of Hines' work is how he lays a rich groundwork of different scenes in the world from landscapes, to cityscapes, to wild areas, to journal entries, and then places his narrative bits between it all. It seems Hines is telling us there's a wide world out there, and these stories are only one side of the picture. Hines' beautiful black and white art matches the tone of the stories perfectly. The going is slow; it won't be until a few hundred pages in that everything clicks. This is not an uplifting story, but at the end I felt more wonder than discouragement.

Sometimes a book feels disconnected, or “lost in translation” if it is a translated work, while I am reading it. But then the end comes and re-frames my entire experience of the book. A Girl on the Shore by Inio Asano kept me lost throughout but by the time I get to its conclusion, it finally connects. The story centers on a 14 or 15 year old girl in Japan and her struggle to find connection in the midst of sexual escapades with a classmate. There are explicitly drawn scenes, which typically I would find off putting but here I found them to be in service of Asano's themes of trying to find connection with others in any way possible. The struggle is how does one navigate discovering who they themselves are, while also wanting to explore others, in a way that doesn't leave casualties? How do you grow up but not hurt others in the process? Asano illuminated my sense that as I have grown, I too have left a turbulent wake. What is the way forward and how can we do things differently? Asano's insights show more than they tell and in that way they are a powerful.