I really have to commend Drawn & Quarterly for bringing Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s comics into English. They’ve already released three collections of his short stories, ones which reek of discomfort and alienation among every day, real people. I was a little wary, though, when I heard that their next Tatsumi project was an autobiography that ran over 800 pages long and only tackled a small fraction of his life. Could Tatsumi really have that much to say? As it turned out, I was very wrong for doubting; A Drifting Life may be set in the 1940s and 1950s, but it has quite a bit to say about here and now.

Hiroshi Katsumi was only ten years old when World War II came to a close with the surrender of Emperor Hirohito of Japan to the Allied Forces of the West. Three years later, Japan was only starting to really recover, and it was then in the city of Osaka that Hiroshi began to realize his dreams of becoming a comic creator. Manga was thought of primarily for children, with four-panel gag comics ruling the medium. As Hiroshi began to learn about creators who were trying something more, though, his own ambitions grew. But would manga ever be able to gain respect among the country at large? Or was he wasting his time and tying his future into a series of doomed publishers that overstepped their bounds?

Japan is these days often held up as the fantasy land of comics, one where everyone reads manga, where subjects like romance, cooking, or sports thrive just as much as action adventure and super-powers. It’s a bit of an eye-opening experience, as a result, to jump back some sixty years and learn that it most certainly wasn’t always that way. So much of what Tatsumi’s alter-ego Hiroshi Katsumi goes through in the pages of A Drifting Life rings very true for the North American comics medium of today. Family groups denouncing any comics that are aimed at older readers, fights over the name of the medium, struggles for creators to tackle subjects they want even as the market asks for something different, publishers trying to tie down talent in exclusives solely to deprive the competition—it’s simultaneously distressing and exciting to see that all of this happened decades ago in a country that now has such a rich and varied comic scene.

Hiroshi’s life, with all of this publishing history as a backdrop, still comes out as something interesting and well worth reading. Hiroshi’s love/hate relationship with his older brother Okimasa comes across so believable that you almost feel like you’re actually sitting alongside Tatsumi’s early life as a spectator. What I found myself enthralled with was the no excuses way in which Tatsumi writes the scenes with Okimasa. We learn about Okimasa’s chronic illnesses early on, but from there we see them alternately be friends and enemies with no rhyme or reason, just like how siblings all over the world interact. There would certainly be a temptation for Tatsumi to go back and try and add in interpretations of what may or may not have gone through Okimasa’s head at the time, but instead it’s all presented in stark black and white; this is how it happened, this is how he reacted, period.

The character of Hiroshi is by no means an angel the whole way through A Drifting Life, for that matter. While Hiroshi is our hero and protagonist, for every victory he has, there are just as many mistakes and bad decisions that play out. A Drifting Life is not only about the maturation of the comics market, but of Hiroshi as well, both struggling towards adulthood. Hiroshi’s naivety towards so many things in life—business, friends, women—is painfully awkward to read about at times as he seems to continually encounter something he knows nothing about. It’s a relief to see him slowly learn how the world really works, even if only to then find a new obstacle in his path moments later. Then again, that’s also true of the manga movement here. It’s fascinating to read about all of these different publishers struggle to find that golden ticket to success, and see all of the different publishing attempts that unfold over the years. So many of them, like the monthly hardcover anthologies, seem like such a pie in the sky dream even now that it’s hard to imagine another country attempting to build a publishing empire on these formats half a century ago. People who are savvy with understanding today’s comic market will be hard-pressed to not mentally insert contemporary publishing companies’s names on top of the ones that exist in A Drifting Life, and it’s a fun little mental game to play among one’s self.

The art in A Drifting Life is slightly more varied than what I’ve seen from Tatsumi in the past, perhaps because everyone here is based off of real people. While a lot of the secondary characters fall into Tatsumi’s trap of coming out of the same mold as one another, overall I was pleased to see how much stronger the art in A Drifting Life was in comparison to his short story collections. His characters are still wonderfully awkward and gawky, and Hiroshi and Okimasa in particular are wonderfully expressive; just looking at how Okimasa is drawn over the years is fascinating because he’s always clearly the same person even though Tatsumi is able to draw him looking both villainous and friendly in ways that transform his entire face. I also really have to give Tatsumi credit for how he draws Japan in the 1940s and 1950s; so much of the story comes to life in the way that he sketches the buildings and streets of Osaka and Tokyo. Between the drawings and the little details in the story about living in that time period (the scarcity of television, the dependence on telegrams rather than phone calls even in the late ’50s), one almost feels at times like this isn’t so much an autobiography but rather a guidebook for time-travelers heading to 1950s Japan.

A Drifting Life is ultimately an enthralling book, in how it manages to speak not only of a world half a century ago but also towards today’s comic market. It’s almost painful when the book ends in 1959, with only a brief epilogue set in recent times that is painful to read—both in what is said about Hiroshi in his older age, as well as what isn’t said about the unchronicled years. I never would have predicted that after reading over 800 pages of Tatsumi’s life, I’d be hoping for another volume down the road, but that’s exactly the feeling that A Drifting Life evoked in me. If only all autobiographies were this engrossingly good. This is a book for the ages.

Purchase Link: Amazon.com

One of my favorite travel books from the past couple of years has got to be Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea. Traveling to the capitol of perhaps the most notoriously isolationist country in the world, Delisle shared his experiences in a graphic novel that was both fascinating and informative. When I heard that his latest book, Burma Chronicles, was about his living in the a foreign country for an entire year, I was more than a little excited. His stay wouldn’t be just for a month or two, but for such an extended period of time that it held many more possibilities. What I found? Not entirely what I expected.

Delisle’s wife Nadège works for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), a humanitarian organization that sends doctors to countries in desperate need. When she accepts a year’s position in Burma (or Myanmar, the name that the military junta that controls the country now call it), Delisle thinks he has a good idea of what to expect in this southeast Asian country. What he actually encounters, though, is at times stranger and more implausible than anything he’s come across before.

One of the things I loved about Pyongyang was how well it illustrated visiting a country where everyone acts in lockstep to the will of their ruler. There’s no dissention, no arguments, just an entire nation of people who do everything that’s expected of them. With Burma Chronicles, that’s very much not the case. Some of the most interesting sections of this book are about the relationship of the people of Burma to the military rulers that dominate the country. The people of Burma are regularly apologizing to Delisle and his wife over all the inconveniences and outright madness that goes on. It’s those sort of encounters that make Burma Chronicles so interesting, as he finds pages in his magazines cut out, or entire DVD shops are forced to get rid of all non-Burmese production DVDs. And of course, the unseen figure of Aung San Suu Kyi overs over the entire book, the winner of the 1990 elections who was forbidden to take office and has been under house arrest on and off since 1989 and has so far served a full 13 years. Living near where Delisle’s family is, it’s hard to not smile at Delisle’s attempts to be able to walk by her house, even as the idea of being trapped in house arrest for years at a time is chilling.

The rest of the book really varies in terms of interest; a fair portion of the book can be best described as, "Boy, foreigners sure are strange." It’s a lot of little travel vignettes that could have happened in just about any travelogue, Burma or elsewhere, and they’re easily the weakest part of the book. They’re not bad, certainly, but after delving so deeply into the culture of North Korea and China in his books Pyongyang and Shenzhen, it’s a slight disappointment here to see these other stories tossed off so casually and without any heft to their narrative. On the other hand, the times that Delisle does immerse himself in the local culture are really strong; towards the end of the book, his three-day stay at a monastery is one of my favorite portions of the entire book. You get such an idea of what a monk’s life might be like (especially considering that monks are forever in both the forefront and background of at least half of the stories in Burma Chronicles) that even if you forget his searching for illegal software, or forgetting his towel before taking a shower, this will stick with you. At the end of that experience Delisle wistfully says to himself, "If I’d known, I would have come here from the start of my stay and not waited till the end." I can’t help but join in that sentiment.

Delisle’s stripped down, simple art style is charming. Perhaps more importantly, it is a great sort of "everyman" art, letting the reader insert themselves into the travelogue if they choose to imagine it as such. With getting an entrance visa to Burma difficult at best even if for humanitarian reasons, Delisle’s Burma Chronicles is probably the closest that most people will ever come to seeing the country for themselves. That said, I do love how he draws the surroundings in Burma; when he’s drawing locations like a cramped paper store, or the streets winding through his neighborhood, you get such a clear, beautiful glimpse into this other country.

I almost hate to admit that in the end I actually enjoyed Pyongyang more than Burma Chronicles, but don’t let that chase you away from this book. Burma Chronicles is a strong, fascinating book about a part of the world that most people will probably never visit. I think that after such high expectations from Pyongyang, though, Delisle’s much more casual, lighter portions of Burma Chronicles couldn’t help but disappoint a tiny bit. If I’d never read anything by Delisle before, I doubt I would have never noticed what I was missing. Regardless, it’s definitely a book I’m glad I read, and the next time Delisle travels to a foreign country, I hope he creates a book about it too. I know I’ll be ready and waiting to read it.

Purchase Links: Mars Import | Amazon.com

While cleaning house, I recently uncovered a copy of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s Abandon the Old in Tokyo. I’d read his first collection in English, The Push Man and Other Stories, and thought it was good enough to buy the second one. And then, somehow, I’d lost and forgotten about the book. Determined to read the book that I’d misplaced for so long, I sat down and started reading it—and couldn’t stop until I was done. I certainly won’t be misplacing Tatsumi’s books again.

The back cover copy of Abandon the Old in Tokyo says that Tatsumi tells the private lives of every day people, and that’s a good a description as any. If there’s an additional thread or theme to be found here, I’d say it would be discomfort and alienation. All of Tatsumi’s protagonists don’t seem to fit into the world around them, no matter how hard they try. That’s certainly true in the titular story of the book, as Kenichi tries to juggle the demands of his aged mother as well as his fiancée. Seeing him unable to really cope with either of their requests makes Kenichi come across not as someone being oppressed, but more of a sad sack figure, pathetic and pitiable.

It’s even more painfully apparent in “Beloved Monkey”, one of the stranger stories in the collection as a factory worker in Ueno tries to find a connection of any sort in his life. His pet monkey, the woman he met at the zoo, even the city itself are all things that the nameless mans reaches out to, even as all of his plans fall apart. Watching his attempts to change his life make the reader cringe, because his ideas almost always come across immediately as ill-thought and not sensible. Even as he tries to make things better, you can see disaster on the horizon. The story itself ends abruptly, almost as if it’s missing a page at the end. It feels almost like the perfect end to the story; not only would seeing any more of his life unraveling come across as painful, but the strange, almost unfinished story fits his life in general.

Some stories have protagonists easier to empathize with than others. “Occupied” is easily the most so, with Mr. Shinakawa’s plight of no longer being wanted to create children’s comics a legitimate one. His naiveté at some of the seedier elements in life is a little sad, but at the same time it’s also part of his own growth in the story, discovering new sources of inspiration. “The Washer” is the sort of story that seems to fall into the “really pathetic main character” category at first, but the more I saw of the window washer’s life and how he deals with his job and his daughter, the more I began to really appreciate him. He’s not perfect, he’s a little too reserved when he needs to speak up (no doubt in part thanks to the cultural differences between Japan in 1970, and now), but by the end of the story I had to say that I found myself liking him a lot. Tatsumi’s story “The Hole” and its strange revenge fantasy doesn’t seem to really fit with the others in places; the protagonist isn’t really who you think it is at first, and while she’s a pitiable person, I had to admit that when it was over I found myself unable to love or hate her. Her actions are questionable at best when it comes to morality, but at the same time Tatsumi does such a good job of getting inside her head that you find yourself somehow giving a pass to someone who perhaps doesn’t deserve one.

If there’s one weak spot in Abandon the Old in Tokyo, it’s certainly Tatsumi’s art. He’s not a bad artist, but he definitely has real limitations. Most of his characters fall into a standard male or female look; while it works on the idea of all of these people being a sort of “everyman” character, it’s rather distracting seeing the stories collected together, with almost all of the main characters looking like each other. I don’t think it’s any small coincidence that Mr. Yamanuki in “Unpaid”, the one male character to look radically different from the other men in the book, is easily the most visually memorable. It’s in “Unpaid” that Tatsumi’s art is at its strongest, not only in terms of different looking characters but also in how Tatsumi is able to depict an incredibly disturbing scene without showing any of the details of the act in question. Instead, Tatsumi just shows the edges of the scene, getting close enough that the movement and motions are enough to let you understand what’s happening, but mercifully staying clear of the center of the event itself.

A third volume of Tatsumi’s stories is due out shortly from Drawn & Quarterly, and after reading Abandon the Old in Tokyo, I’ve promised myself that as soon as I get it, I won’t lose it for months. Disturbing and creepy in places, Tatsumi’s Abandon the Old in Tokyo is the kind of book whose stories will be hard to forget about. If you’re ready for a trip through the underbelly of humanity, look no further than Abandon the Old in Tokyo.

Purchase Links: Mars Import | Amazon.com

One of my favorite books published in 2002 was Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons, as Barry told stories of her past in an attempt to exorcise those demons. In doing so, her observations on a lot of parts of life had really resonated with me, bringing up those emotions and ideas that I’d been carrying around for years as well. In her first original graphic novel, What It Is, Barry plumbs her early life again as she tries to understand imagination and creativity and how it works. The end result is perhaps one of the most necessary books of 2008.

What It Is is several different books in one. The most prominent feature of the book is Barry telling her own story, about the games she played as a child, her experience with art classes, the effect her home life had on how she viewed the world, and more. That part alone is worth the cover price of the book, easily, and it’s the easiest part of What It Is to fixate on. Interwoven throughout this narrative, though, are full page questions, massive collages that ask a question and are then a combination of Barry giving some of her own ideas to the answer, as well as asking more questions at the same time. “Where/why do we keep bad memories?” “What happens when we read a story?” “What is the difference between awake and asleep?” My initial inclination upon seeing these was to skip them, and no doubt go through the book later and examine them. I was maybe about 20% of the way through the book when I stopped and looked at one of them really closely. Then I went back, and started the book over. In some ways these are part of the narrative, these “essay questions” that that Barry asks. So much of What It Is involves getting inside Barry’s head, and these creations of paint and clippings and stamps come together in a way that a simple written answer never could have conveyed.

The story itself is, honestly, a little disturbing in places. Maybe it’s because it’s easy to see our own defeat in parts of Barry’s story, the way that creativity is so often beaten down by others or even by ourselves. Barry talks about how she stopped doing things like bursting into song around other people, that sudden moment of being self-conscious about the way that others look at us. “It’s not that we stop singing,” she notes. “I still sang. I just made sure I was alone when I did it, and I made sure I never did it accidentally.” And really, how many other people are in that same boat? Barry believes it happens to most of us, still singing but secretly and all alone. And it’s easy for most readers, I suspect, to see that in themselves.

At the same time, though, Barry uses What It Is to show how she got herself out of that cycle of doubt and self-defeat in her art. There’s a section where she’s continually questioning herself, the art having shifted from lush painted pages on yellow legal pads, to a simple thin pen line on a white page, full of muted greens and Barry’s own demons mocking her for being able to answer the two questions she continually asks herself about her art (“Is this good?” “Does this suck?”). And then, as she finally answers the question, everything shifts back to its original style. It’s a visual trick that others have used as well, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less dramatic or appealing here. It’s almost as if we’re hearing Barry exhale as that final tick forward occurs, answering a puzzle that she notes she’ll forget she’s solved before and have to go through again and again. But in that moment, as Barry not only gives her sudden moment of clarity to the reader but explains it in context with her earlier statements on creativity and quitting, it’s hard to not be completely enchanted by What It Is.

The last third of What It Is, once it has finished urging people to rediscover their own creativity once more, turns into two manuals on doing just that. It’s not a narrative here, but Barry’s discussions on how to get your project rolling and ways to recognize your own imagination very much feed into everything she’d said in the book up until then. It’s the sort of thing that you should read even if you aren’t planning on working on your own creative project, just so that you can have some of those long-dormant sparks in your own head again.

What It Is’s strange blend of workbook, narrative, and existential essay doesn’t feel like anything else out there, but in the best possible way. Barry’s art is at its most expressive and open here, and it’s hard to not just keep reading and re-reading it. (In the space of a week I’ve already read it five times.) If What It Is doesn’t top a number of best-of lists at the end of the year, I will be shocked. Buy this book, buy this book, buy this book.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com

Some places in the world are mysterious because they’re physically remote; places covered by jungle, or amidst treacherous mountainous terrain, or perhaps isolated islands within the Pacific Ocean. It was thinking along those lines that initially drew me to Guy Delisle’s graphic novel Pyongyang; it’s an incredibly remote place not through physicality, but rather because of a policy of isolationism. I expected to find a vague idea of what it’s like to live in North Korea through Delisle’s book. What I ended up with was so much more.

Guy Delisle works for a French animation studio that subcontracts work out to a North Korean company. When Delisle is sent to Pyongyang to supervise production on a new animated television series, he is warned in advance of what he can and cannot bring into the country with him. Once inside its borders, though, he finds a world where restrictions and routine are a way of life.

It would be easy for Delisle’s Pyongyang to be little more than an anti-North Korea screed, playing on fears by making the country full of militaristic monsters. What we get instead is a still-opinionated but calmer approach to his travels there. Perhaps the best thing about Pyongyang is how Delisle’s able to describe how Pyongyang is a city built to be a showcase that almost no one can ever actually visit. It’s an impression that Delisle builds up slowly, first concentrating on the reason why he’s actually there (supervising animation) and then we begin to slowly gain an understanding of the country. The immediate stop to the statue of former President Kim Il-Sung seems a bit exaggerated and over the top at first, but as Delisle continues to show near deification of Kim Il-Sung, both through words as well as the art, it begins to sink in more and more until Delisle’s looking into a mirror and seeing the deceased President looking back at him barely has you bat an eye. Likewise, the multiple (and virtually identical) restaurants in the hotel for visitors named #1, #2, and #3 seems a little hard to believe until Delisle shows us the extravagant subway of which foreigners never see more than two stops, and the elaborate museums in honor of Kim Il-Sung. In Delisle’s eyes it’s a place designed in many ways by trying to cater to the expectations of others and what they would expect to find in a capital city.

There’s a nice sense of humor that runs throughout Pyongyang. Delisle is clearly the kind of person who is able to laugh at the situations he’s in rather than take them too seriously. It’s a generally sarcastic tone, with Delisle always finding something to chuckle at from his overly serious translator to his own weight gain while in North Korea. When Delisle does get serious about his journey to North Korea, it’s a noticeable shift in the travelogue. Often it’s in the form of a rhetorical question; upon wondering if North Koreans really believe the propaganda that they’re barraged by, Delisle immediately follows this up by calmly pointing out not only the restrictions on traveling outside the country, but the ever-present fear of being sent to a rehabilitation zone (along with the rest of your family) and never heard from again. It’s a sobering response to his initially flip question, “Do they really believe the bullshit that’s being forced down their throats?” It’s this ever-present switching of tones that ultimately makes Pyongyang work, being both grim and humorous and understanding when each should be used to a make a point to the reader.

Delisle’s art in Pyongyang is a simple, angular style that relies heavily on gray pencil shadings. It’s a wonderfully expressive style, which considering Delisle’s earlier career as an animator shouldn’t be surprising. Delisle understands how to break a figure down to its basic form and make it able to move gracefully across the page, showing just the right moments and motions to make the character come to life. Delisle saves most of his detail-rich art for what rightfully deserves it: the scenery of North Korea. It shines in his chapter breaks, full-page drawings of impressive architecture and scenes that sum up the next section of the book. Looking at the massive buildings and opulent ballrooms, it’s almost staggering when you think about it, all the effort and thought put into creations that almost none of its intended audience of the outside world will really see. It’s excellently illustrated, and really brings Delisle’s ideas and recollections to life.

Pyongyang is a really fascinating book; it’s a chance to look behind the proverbial curtain and learn more about a city whose connection to the rest of the world is simultaneously growing closer and farther away at the same time. In the end you feel like Delisle’s experiences have only touched the tip of the iceberg, but that even with such limited knowledge you are beginning to gain an understand of this truly distant nation.

Purchase Links: Mars Import | Amazon.com

You have to be patient if you’re a fan of the cartoonist Seth. Seth’s comic Palookaville (collected into graphic novels as It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken and Clyde Fans) is published once, maybe twice a year… but it’s always clear that each issue is a labor of love. I think that’s why when Drawn & Quarterly first published Seth’s sketchbook compilation Vernacular Drawings I was so excited, and why I keep coming back to it years later—the amount of time and passion that went into each one is always apparent.

Seth’s art in Vernacular Drawings uses a deep, thick line to flesh out his creations; you almost get a physical sense of weight from just looking at the finished product. On many of the pages you can see a literal heavy stroke of paint slapped onto the page, but its these broad strokes that helps give Seth such power over his subject. He’s got such control over these thicker lines and strokes that it makes the art almost pop out at the reader, grabbing their attention from the very first page.

Part of its power is certainly Seth’s slightly unusual subjects on display in Vernacular Drawings. Primarily inspired by old magazines and photos, we get poses of former, forgotten celebrities standing proudly to be seen. We view businesses tucked away on corners, with barbershop striped poles and discarded dairy containers on display. We get crooked grins from hockey players, cats dancing with pigs, and even the Justice Society of America. (I was surprised and delighted by that last one, too.) Seth’s art style helps bring across the idea of a “simpler time” in his subjects, with its stripped down style and to-the-point look and feel.

Don’t mistake the earlier description of Seth’s art as somehow being unskilled, though; that’s very much not the case. This is a deliberate look that is carefully crafted from start to finish. Looking at something as simple as the porch of a house, everything pulls together perfectly; the shades of blue and green that complement each other and give a unified color look to the piece, the carefully paced loose nails in the support beams, the box in the center of the porch serves as the focal point that everything else points towards, even the background houses that are just numerous enough that you know you’re in a town, but infrequent enough to not feel like a city. That’s the sort of thought that goes into every single piece in Vernacular Drawings and the reader is all the richer for it as a result.

Vernacular Drawings is a book that for several years now has regularly made it back onto the coffee table for easier access at the drop of a hat. Just flipping through the book always brings a real sense of joy and contentment, as Seth painstakingly recreates images from an earlier time that you get the impression he’d rather have lived in. Printed on thick paper and a strong hardback binding, Vernacular Drawings is beautiful from start to finish.

Purchase Links: Mars Import | Amazon.com

Savvy comic readers know all about Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde, his look at the United Nations designated “safe area” enclave for Muslim Bosnians in the heart of Serbian-controlled Bosnia. What they might not know about is before Safe Area Gorazde, Sacco released Soba, the first in a series of planned stories about Bosnia to be published by Drawn & Quarterly. It’s been a while, but the second Bosnia comic at Drawn & Quartelry has finally arrived in the form of The Fixer, Sacco’s new graphic novel.

When Sacco arrived in Sarajevo, he needed some help getting around the war-torn city and understanding its people. That’s where Neven came in. A self-proclaimed hero during the height of the conflict in Bosnia, he’s willing to show Sacco around for a price. Through Neven, Sacco begins to learn about Sarajevo’s warlords that really controlled the city, and just what really happened during the Bosnian war… and how in the end, you can never truly escape your past.

Sacco’s comics journalism has gotten stronger over the years, and The Fixer definitely follows this trend. Weaving the stories of Sarajevo’s self-proclaimed saviours and Neven works surprisingly well because these are all stories of people who truly do care for Sarajevo, but whose actions can be questionable at best. Sacco gives us Neven’s tales at face value, letting the reader determine both the ethics and even the truth of the matter on their own. It’s a fine line to walk between relating to the reader the sort of charisma and charm that surrounded Neven and painting everything he says in a good light, but I think it works well here. You understand how Sacco and Neven establish both a business and personal relationship, but you’re still wanting to keep a careful distance away from Neven. More chilling, then, is reading about the warlords protecting Sarajevo from Serbian attacks. On the one hand, these are people who acted to keep the Serbians from exterminating the Muslim population of Bosnia. The actions they chose to take as more time passed, though, move into morally uncertain grounds. It’s fascinating to watch how these men change from heroes to demonized figures, as well as how their ultimate fates finally came about. An important chapter in Sarajevo and Bosnia’s history, Sacco keeps the reader enthralled from start to finish.

Sacco’s carefully textured art in The Fixer helps the reader really understand just what this period of time was like in the city of Sarajevo. Sacco carefully draws both run down alleys and gleaming office buildings, showing how in many ways Sarajevo was no different than any city in your own country. As The Fixer moves forward in time, the wreckage and debris grows, with weeds sprouting out of cracks in the road and shattered and burnt out windows staring down into a ghost town. You can see this reflected in the eyes of its citizens, as hope is slowly crushed out of them when their family, friends, and belongings are taken from them. It’s a sharp contrast to the calm, even joking expressions of the warlords, who are clearly relishing in their new positions of power. The beseiged people of Sarajevo have found themselves oppressed by both their attackers and their saviours, and Sacco makes sure to carefully bring these people to life in their posture, their movements across the page, and the world around them. The Fixer’s art is as expressive as if Sacco had come back from Bosnia with a book of photos instead of art; you really feel like you’ve gotten a glimpse into the Balkan wars.

It’s been a decade since war ripped Bosnia apart, and we’re still learning of the horrors and mistakes of that time period. The facts have always been on record, but it’s these smaller human stories of what it was really like to live in the war zone that help us really understand what happened. Sacco’s chronicling of the war is truly a comic that will stand the test of time, both in subject material and presentation. I can’t think of a better person to create this memoir of an event the world would rather forget.

Purchase Links: Mars Import | Amazon.com

One of the great things about the original Drawn & Quarterly anthology was how each new issue would introduce new and upcoming talents in comics who may not have received wider exposure in the comics industry. While the new annual anthology volumes still do that, it’s great to see Drawn & Quarterly taking a new proactive role in bringing this talent to the forefront. That’s where Drawn & Quarterly Showcase comes from, helping identify and celebrate the new superstars of comics. But are the choices for this first book the real deal?

Drawn & Quarterly Showcase Book One focuses on two creators: Kevin Huizenga and Nicolas Robel. Huizenga is best known for his Supermonster minicomics, telling primarily slice of life stories where our everyday world is mixed with magic realism and hope. Robel’s stories are less grounded in reality, where our world and the fantastic are one and the same. At a glance, there’s certainly similarities. But in the end, the two creators show a sharp contrast to one another.

Huizenga’s half of Drawn & Quarterly Showcase is used for three short stories focusing around his protagonist Glenn Ganges and his wife Wendy. There’s a subtle link between the three stories, as it moves from a rumination brought on by flyers for missing children, to trying to have children of their own, to a flock of birds brought on by Glenn’s search for children. Sound like a bit of a reach? Anything but. Huizenga’s three stories flow into each other effortlessly, letting him tell three different tales while still providing a unified whole for his part of the book. What interested me the most about the stories was how Huizenga grounds the first story in reality, then slowly lets the fantastic creep in. Glenn’s quest for an ogre’s feather to help his wife become pregnant, for instance, is still grounded in the world around him. Huizenga’s story makes it all feel natural, and it’s a real feat. Huizenga’s art looks really attractive in a two-color printing process. Huizenga’s drawing of Glenn with his solid eyes and button nose gives him a nice vulnerable look that really helps you empathize with him. The green inks give it a nice texture, never overused or blatant. Huizenga’s subtle art is a perfect match for his stories.

Robel’s half of Drawn & Quarterly Showcase is distinctly less subtle, though. Printed in reds and greens, it assaults your eyes the second you open the book with its colors at war. The panels are full of action and zigzagging lines that fill up each panel, always keeping the reader busy. The whole package works well together, with the colors providing a softness that the inks on their own might not have provided. The drawings, the word balloons, and the art all work together as a unified whole that most artists find hard to achieve. The story itself is much more fantastical than Huizenga’s entry, with the protagonist’s spirit traveling through memories dealing with separation and isolation. It hammers its points home a little too much, though, and what could have been a powerful shorter story seems to overstay its welcome by just a little too much. I wish Robel had gone for two shorter stories instead, but there’s still enough positive aspects on display to want to see more by Robel in the future.

Does Drawn & Quarterly Showcase Book One succeed in showcasing two up-and-coming comic creators? Very much so. After reading this book you’ll definitely want to buy more comics from Huizenga sight unseen, and certainly want to see more of Robel’s works as well. Drawn & Quarterly’s track record for creators has always been extremely strong, and a Drawn & Quarterly Showcase looks to be a vanguard of introducing new talent to their already-impressive stable. I, for one, can’t wait to see who they find for Book Two.

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On the surface, releasing a sketchbook seems like a vain exercise. For many comic artists, it probably is; stripped of stories and sequence, you’re left with a series of drawings that need to not just look good, but look so good that people want to buy a book of it. Drawn & Quarterly certainly seems to understand exactly who in comics deserves this treatment, first with Seth’s Vernacular Drawings collection, and now (co-published with Dutch company Oog & Blik) Chris Ware’s The Acme Novelty Date Book.

At the same time, though, there are already glimmers of the artist that Ware will become in these early entries. His skill at rendering architecture is starting to appear, and with each page you can see a stronger grasp of his own talents and what he’s capable of. Then Ware moves to Chicago, and everything radically changes. Suddenly we’re getting watercolor paintings of his surroundings, more portraits of himself and others, and a rapid growth of an artist. That’s not to say that Ware’s perverse sense of humor has gone away entirely, but it’s much more under control, or at least less on display here in the Date Book. From comments on his own appearance in self-portraits to the occasional sexual joke, there’s a real sense of wit through the second half of the Date Book, and it put a real smile on my face.

The Acme Novelty Date Book is nothing short of astounding. An amazingly talented artist, it’s a real revelation to see these private creations that show the hidden side of Ware. Not many creators would be willing to put a decade’s worth of experimenting and tinkering about on display, but even fewer would end up representing themselves outstandingly. Hopefully we’ll get a second volume in less than ten years, because for both artists and people who merely appreciate art, this is a must-have book.

Purchase Links: Mars Import | Amazon.com

It’s always fascinating to watch someone come into comics at an older age than most others, because their approach is fueled by completely different things. Michel Rabagliati read French graphic albums as a child, but it wasn’t until much later in his life that he started first creating comics for Drawn & Quarterly. With each work the audience has gotten to watch Rabagliati refine his skills, and his newest graphic novel, Paul Has A Summer Job, is easily his most accomplished creation to date.

Paul dropped out of high school when administrators took away the one thing he had to look forward to—a fully-funded art project to create a series of murals—was taken away from him. Trying to find employment, the future looked to be a mind-numbingly dreary… until Paul got the opportunity to work at a summer camp for under-privileged children. Paul thought it would be fun and some quick cash, but what he didn’t expect was to learn a lot about children, women, and of course, himself.

In many people’s hands, the basic plot of Paul Has A Summer Job would have come across poorly, but Rabagliati infuses a sense of wonder and innocence into his story that turns it into something special. Rabagliati’s semi-autobiographical story isn’t afraid to show Paul stumble early on, the better with which to contrast his eventual behavior as his self-confidence and understanding increases. It’s an enthralling journey towards manhood to watch, because he’s able to make it seem both real and sympathetic; as Paul re-examines his own life, it’s tough as a reader to not do the same thing. There’s a nice sense of humor on display here along with all of the internal growth, mind you. Paul’s “Daniel Boone” dreams when he first arrives at the bare-bones camp are hysterical, and the fun they have with the children is positively infectious. It’s a great balance between humor and drama, and both sides of the book bring a lot to the final product.

Rabagliati’s European influence is best seen in his bare-bones art. Like such great masters of the form like Hergé, Rabagliati draws his characters with a minimal number of lines. A quick line for the nose, dots for the eyes, squiggle in a mouth and a couple extra lines for hair, and his characters are ready to roll. What’s amazing about this, though, is how expressive and emotive these characters end up being. When Paul is working at the printing press, you can see a real sense of despair on his face, one that is evident with or without narrative text. Likewise, Paul’s farewell scene with Marie is all the more touching because you can see how much he really cares about her in his bittersweet smile and sad eyes. For someone so relatively new to comics, it’s great to see how well Rabagliati understands the medium.

Paul Has A Summer Job is Rabagliati’s longest work to date, and I don’t think it’s a small coincidence that it’s also his most accomplished. Rabagliati knows just how to tweak a real experience into an enthralling story, and in the already overcrowded genre of comic book biography, Rabagliati is a shining star. Seeing in his biography that he’s already working on another project starring his Paul alter-ego is some of the best comic book news I’ve heard all year. You can find Paul Has A Summer Job at Mars Import.