Literary

Project: SuperiorVarious ArtistsAdHouse BooksThey say that inside every indie comic artist there is a superhero fan-boy waiting to get out. AdHouse’s latest comic anthology gives those inner fan-boys an outlet. Ranging from touching tribute to absurdist parody, today’s hottest alternative superstars, such as Bryan Lee O’Malley, Dean Haspiel, Scott Morse, Tara McPherson and Brian Wood, […]

Talk to the HandLynne TrussThe author of one of last year’s best books (Eats, Shoots and Leaves, an outraged treatise on this culture’s appalling grammar) delivers an outraged treatise on this culture’s appalling manners. I know it doesn’t sound like much fun, but oh, oh, oh, fun is exactly what it is. Especially if you’re […]

Daredevil: The Devil Inside & Out, Vol. 1Ed BrubakerMarvelSince Frank Miller’s legendary ’80s Daredevil stories, the brooding, blind vigilante has been the hero with grit and realism—as far as it goes in tales of men in tights. Brian Michael Bendis’ run outed Matt Murdock to the public as Daredevil, but the revelation of his secret […]

Scott Pilgrim Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim vs. the WorldBryan Lee O’MalleyOni PressWith Scott Pilgrim, O’Malley has taken all the fun things about growing up after 1980 and combined them in his series of original graphic novels. There’s videogame action with a rock ‘n’ roll soundtrack, characters you can’t help but love, and pop culture references […]

The WreckageMichael CrummeyThe Wreckage is a gorgeous novel set sometimes in a Newfoundland outport, sometimes in the city, and sometimes in a World War Two prisoner-of-war camp in Japan. Michael Crummey writes beautiful sentences of the sort that make other writers wonder why they bother. The book is loosely based on bits of Crummey’s family […]

The Fate of The ArtistEddie CampbellFirst SecondAs a memoirist, Eddie Campbell could be described as willfully obscuring. His minimalist artwork on Alan Moore’s titanic Jack the Ripper tome From Hell tended to reveal truths in the darkness, whereas his Alec series (the titular hero a character standing in for the author), though also based on […]

Teenagers from MarsRick Spears and Rob GGigantic Graphic NovelsThe independent comic series and cult favourite that launched the careers of Rick Spears and Rob G is collected in one volume. Set in the uptight suburban town of Mars, amateur comic artist Macon finds himself fighting for his freedom and his art alongside his punk girlfriend […]

A Year of Magical ThinkingJoan DidionJoan Didion had an annus horribilis to rival Queen Elizabeth’s that time. First, a few days before Christmas, her only child, 33-year-old Quintana fell seriously ill, was hospitalized and put into an induced coma. Then, the night before New Year’s Eve, her husband died of a massive heart attack while […]

Fun Home: A Family TragicomicAlison BechdelHoughton MifflinCartoonist Alison Bechdel of Dykes to Watch Out For fame wrote and illustrated this story, an autobiographical account of the relationship between a girl and her father. The memoir of Bechdel’s childhood in Pennsylvania recalls, jumping through a fractured chronology, her burgeoning homosexuality and her parent’s repression. He taught […]