Review: Ghostwriter

Written and illustrated by Rayco Pulido

Available now from Fantagraphics

Review copy

In 96 pages, Rayco Pulio delivers a taut thriller that makes excellent use of the graphic novel format. I can see why Fantagraphics decided to translate Ghostwriter from the original Spanish.

Set in Barcelona, 1943, Ghostwriter follows Laia, a scriptwriter for a popular advice program on the radio, as she hounds the detective she hired to find her missing husband. Laia's advice is constrained by religious control and patriarchal oppression; she has to write that women should stay by their husbands and try to be better wives, no matter what horrors are in the letters sent to her. Laia's dead-eyed rage is a simple thing to understand.

I adore how the words and images work together to tell the story in Ghostwriter. Many things are shown before they become important, but since they were shown, the connections make sense and everything feels intentional. One of my favorite bits is when Laia throws a coin-like object in a jar in the first few pages. It gave me pause at first, trying to figure out this small object in black and white. Later, it became sinister.

For all the twists and turns it takes, Ghostwriter is not a very complicated story. Laia's motives are simple, no matter how convoluted her methods. There is a delightful economy to this dark little tale. Ghostwriter also isn't afraid to be a little silly or to include moments of juvenile behavior.

I quite enjoyed Ghostwriter and hope more of Pulido's work gets translated.

Review: A Smart Girl's Guide: Crushes

By Nancy Holyoke

Illustrated by Elisa Chavarri

Available now from American Girl

Review copy

The Smart Girl's Guide to Boys has been fully updated to become A Smart Girl's Guide: Crushes: Dating, Rejection, and Other Stuff. This book is a timely, relevant guide for young girls who are starting to become hormonal.

 The most obvious update to the material is the A Smart Girl's Guide: Crushes acknowledges that girls might have crushes on boys, girls, both, or neither (and that the same goes for boys). Most of the examples use boys and straight is generally assumed as the default, but there are nods to same-gender attraction throughout. (There is no trans inclusivity that I noticed, which is a lack.)

Elisa Chavarri's cartoons liven up the proceedings and also work to include all girls. There are boys and girls of many ethnicities shown, some variations in body types, and a very few disabled people. 

 I appreciate that the focus of A Smart Girl's Guide: Crushes is on how to handle crushes without losing sight of yourself and the things you value, such as schoolwork and friends. It covers many tricky situations, including how to say no clearly to someone who asks you out (without being mean) and how to dump someone (with signs of when it needs to be done).

The content is carefully targeted to the age group and doesn't go past kissing and hand holding. The book gets raciest when talking about things to watch out for. For instance, if a boy sends a girl a photo of  a woman in lingerie, that is harassment, not flirting. A Smart Girl's Guide: Crushes also covers tough situations like if a friend's boyfriend is being mean to her or if friends report to you that your boyfriend is mean to people when you aren't around. Though domestic abuse is a heavy topic, these red flags are handled at an entirely appropriate level with sensible advice.

I also appreciated how A Smart Girl's Guide: Crushes handled the role of social media and texts in modern-day flirting and dating, with reminders that texts and photos can be forever through screenshots and forwarding. The example shown is an embarrassing photo wearing a face mask, but teaching children to stop and think before sending even innocent photos is a good foundation. The book also emphasizes that selfies should also never be sent to people you only know through online games, but only to people you know in real life.

A Smart Girl's Guide: Crushes also doesn't give in to silly romcom logic. If someone starts dating someone they knew you were crushing on, that's fine. A crush isn't dibs. You can date someone a friend used to date and broke up with. There's also some handy gentle advice on how to avoid getting sucked into drama.

I think A Smart Girl's Guide: Crushes is a handy book to pass on to any young girl in your life. I suggest reading it first, so you know the jumping-off points for anything you might want to talk about in more depth.

Review: Stress Relief Dog Coloring Book

Illustrated by Pimlada Phuapradit

Available now from Rockridge Press

Review copy

I have never stopped enjoying coloring and I am quite happy that the trend of adult coloring books is still going strong. I've found that it makes it simple to find a coloring book with subject matter that I like. Since I'm inside most days, I am going through the books I already own, which meant this dog coloring book came at just the right time.

This Stress Relief Dog Coloring Book contains 35 designs by Thailand-based illustrator Pimlada Phuapradit. Like many adult coloring books, the designs are only printed on one side of the pages. I personally prefer the double-sided style of children's coloring books, but I accept that it is a lost battle.

Of the 35 designs, most are breed specific. At the end of the book there are several mandala-like designs with little dog silhouettes worked throughout. They're super cute! I felt the designs had a good mix of small and large areas and also liked that some dogs were more detailed, some less. I can choose whether I am in the mood to color something intricate, or if I want to do something simpler. The table of contents also reprints all the designs in thumbnail form, making them colorable by someone who wants to work on a really small design.

I liked the texture of the paper. My colored pencils moved across it smoothly and laid down a nice layer of color. It is suitable for both wax crayons and colored pencils. The book itself is a little bendy. I'll simply be careful where I store it.

I am very happy with this coloring book. I think the dog designs are super cute. I look forward to coloring in all of them!

Review: The Flapper Queens

Edited by Trina Robbins

Available now from Fantagraphics

Review copy

The Flapper Queens: Women Cartoonists of the Jazz Age is a gorgeous volume that presents the 1920's art within as it was meant to be seen: oversized and in color. (Excepting the black & white strips, of course.) The art within is gorgeously reproduced, although sometimes the text is a little blurred or placed on a dark background, which I suspect is an artifact of the sources.

This anthology includes selections from Nell Brinkley, Eleanor Schorer, Edith Stevens, Ethel Hays (with Gladys Parker, who took over her Flapper Fanny strip), Fay King, and Virginia Huget. There's also brief coverage of the Annibelle strips by Dorothy Urfer and Virginia Krausmann, which isn't listed in the table of contents.

While I appreciate getting to see this art so beautifully presented, Trina Robbins has never been the best anthologist. Her introductions are brief (a paragraph to a few pages of text) and lack analysis. Some of the artists have five times the amount of work represented as others. I had no clue why until the write-up on Virginia Huget mentioned she was one of the three flapper queens. So Nell Brinkley, Ethel Hays, and Virginia Huget are the eponymous queens, based on my observations, but there's no indication why the other women artists were chosen for inclusion with them. 

Since Trina Robbins has published two previous volumes on Nell Brinkley, it is no surprise that Brinkley gets the most coverage. (Both as a singular artist and in the outro discussing the end of the flapper comics trend.) However, this was a chance for her to showcase other artists as well. Much of the Brinkley material was previously printed in her 2009 volume The Brinkley Girls. It is now out of print, to my knowledge, but still available in the way high-quality material for the other artists isn't.

Also, the comics are presented in a baffling order. I understand keeping each strip by an artist collected together, but the dates are printed on them and many are not presented chronologically. If there is a different significance to the order, it is not given and I cannot ascertain it. There's also no given reasoning for why the strips reproduced within The Flapper Queens were chosen to represent each of the artists. Are these strips considered their best? (By who?) Where they chosen randomly? Maybe.

(There is also one error where Fay Kings "Preserve Your Own Personality, Says Fay King" is printed on both page 110 and 113.)

I also felt that historical context could make this a more valuable volume for readers interested in these cartoonists. Some of the humor eluded me, especially that of Virginia Huget. There are also periodic appearances by racial caricatures and stereotypes, most often in Nell Brinkley's The Fortunes of Flossie strip, which could have been contextualized.

I appreciate the work Trina Robbins has done to preserve the history of women in comics and present their art to new audiences, but I am often disappointed by her work as an anthologist.

At the same time at all, I am not disappointed at all to see the work of these artists beautifully presented. The fashion! The cars! The pretty, wild girls! If you like comics history, or simply looking into the past, then this is a wonderful, beautiful volume.

Review: Still Life Las Vegas

By James Sie

Illustrated by Sungyoon Choi

Available now from St. Martin's Press

Review copy

Voice actor James Sie's debut novel starts out strong, with a woman pushed to her limit, driving anywhere and lightening the car as she goes — including tossing out a car seat. This woman is Emily Stahl, musician, mother, carer to her depressed husband. The child who normally would occupy that car seat is Walter Stahl.

Still Life Las Vegas alternates between their points of view (Walter in the past, Emily in the present) and Walter's father's point of view (also in the past) and comics (drawn by Walter) telling the story of Emily as told to him by his father. Walter lives in Las Vegas, where his father moved him while trying to find Emily. Now seventeen, Walter is driven to chase down the secrets of his mother's history. A chance meeting with a living statue in the Venetian hotel, Chrysto, also puts him on the path to discovering his sexuality.

I loved both narrators. They're both searching for direction, albeit in very different ways. The interstitial comics are great too, Sungyoon Choi's art a beautiful accompaniment to James Sie's words. It's also provides a clear division between what Walter has been told versus Emily's actual words.

However, I felt that Still Life Las Vegas didn't quite live up to the strength of its opening. I felt Emily had reason to run from the very beginning, but the story keeps adding new layers of sadness to her past and reveals a horror that I think was gratuitous, not adding to the plot or being explored with the weight it deserved. As the story goes on, Walter also has to deal with the unfortunate truth as well as a betrayal.

Still Life Las Vegas is an engrossing bildungsroman, but ultimately too depressing for me. Still, I'm a little sad that James Sie has yet to write a second novel. I think he has a knack for description and character and I'd like to see what he'd write with more polish.