A selection of October graphic novels

 Monet: Itinerant of Light by Salva Rubio with art by Ricard Efa (2017) 112 pages

Captures the Impressionist style in the backgrounds of comic panels. Really explores the starving artist trials of Monet. He was often rebellious of authority, but with this graphic bio being so short, you are mostly struck by how often Monet and his family were struggling to make ends meet with his irregular income as a painter. I read it on an older Kindle from Libby, which isn't as great at being able to zoom in on small text boxes or bubbles.

Mary Shelly: Monster Hunter Vol. 1 by Adam Glass and Olivia Cuartero-Briggs with art by Hayden Sherman (2019) 120 pages

Fun! Interesting Frankenstein pastiche. It combines the night Mary and Byron and the others had their horror writing competition with Mary meeting a woman Dr. Frankenstein, who is trying to create a man who is a protector of women. The series starts off promisingly with the art conveying the Romantic and Gothic nature of the time period, and the writing making use of increased feminist themes. But the last issue does not end in a way that was satisfying to me.

The Tomb of Dracula: The Complete Collection Vol. 1 by Gerry Conway, Marv Wolfman, et al. (2017) 507 pages

Comics of the '70s feel a bit too much like soap operas for my taste. The art is sometimes too busy and hastily finished. Still, the continuity and character development are strong as it moves forward. Blade is introduced in this series. Great twists and turns for the imagination. I like the black and white art and stories through time of the Dracula Lives! series in the second half better than the first half. That is with the exception of the story set in Hollywood, which is cynical in the worst way. 

Monstress, Book One by Marjorie M. Liu with art by Sana Takeda (2019) 521 pages

Epic! I'm glad I picked this edition that includes issues 1 through 18. No other ending point would have felt conclusive. The fantasy elements are stronger than the steampunk elements until it gets into the later issues. I love the world building. I love the matriarchal society. The writing and art are so well matched. Maika and Kippa are great characters. Kippa is like Jiminy Cricket, a conscience for  Maika who has a monster inside her. Ren, the cat, and later Zinn, an old god, are created with fantastic complexity too. This book is full of stunning visuals and sometimes gruesome, bloody horrors. Figuring out who are Maika's allies and who are her enemies is difficult. Many different factors are intertwined in the plot. Five stars!

A selection of January graphic novels

 Battlefields: The Night Witches by Garth Ennis with art by Russ Braun (2009) 79 pages

It is fascinating that Russia did have women pilots in their air force during WWII. Half the story is following a German squad pushing into Russian territory with one conscientious young man as our narrator. The other half focuses on just a couple of the women pilots who fly night missions dropping bombs. One in particular, Nadia Anna, achieves the rank of Captain and is a survivor despite a brief romance with heartbreak and her plane going down. The story succeeds in showing the horrific tragedy of war. The art work is a bit cartoon-y, but not far-off in portraying the gritty realism.

Hokusai: A Graphic Biography by Giuseppe Latanza and Francesco Matteuzzi (2021) 128 pages

I really enjoyed the art and the biographical story. Like Hokusai making woodblocks to stamp multiple prints of his art, some of the graphic novel's images are repeated. In between the story of his life there are full pages of text with historical background about Japanese art, or explaining terms and historical periods. Some of this felt repetitive, unfortunately, like a different author had lost track of what had previously been explained. However, this did not drastically lessen my enjoyment. I thought the book was aimed at teens at first, but it does mention and show a bit of the erotic art that Hokusai made during one part of his life.

The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel (2021) 240 pages

I loved this even more than Fun Home. Bechdel is even more revealing about herself, and explores engrossing related topics. Exercise trends through the second half of the 20th century, Romantic poets, Transcendentalists, Kerouac, Zen Buddhism are all connected. She explores mountains as a symbol for human achievement. The aphorism "it is about the journey, not the destination" comes across.

Will Eisner's New York: Life in the Big City by Will Eisner (2006) 421 pages

I've read a couple of his other realistic graphic novels and highly recommend this one as well. "New York: The Big City" consists of short vignettes. "The Building" tells the backstory of four ghosts who hang around a particular intersection where a historic building has been torn down and a new one constructed in its place. These stories reveal the tragicomic world Eisner is drawn to portray. "City People" is filled with more observations in mostly one or two page vignettes. A longer tragic story is told in Collisions. "Invisible People" contains three longer stories. Sanctum tells the sad story of Pincus Pleatnik. The Power tells a symbolic story of a healer named Morris. Eisner says of Mortal Combat, "In relating the story of Herman, who became the unwilling prize in a clash of wills, I hoped to evoke the helplessness of a person caught in an intersection of the traffic of life."

Past Tense: Facing Family Secrets and Finding Myself in Therapy by Sacha Mardou (2024) 336 pages

A courageous memoir. I picked it up at my new comic shop because it is by a local St. Louis author. Her journey to overcome her anxiety and unpack her childhood trauma is fascinating. She specifically delves into a therapy model called Internal Family Systems (IFS) because she finds it helpful after some initial skepticism. Mardou's art style is a bit loose, but expressive. Freeing herself from generational trauma reveals truly healthy outcomes.

Foursome

Foursome: Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Paul Strand, Rebecca Salsbury by Carolyn Burke  419 pp.

This historical account of four artists at the forefront of art in the early 20th century focuses in large part on photographer Alfred Stieglitz and the influence he had on getting photography recognized as an art form. Stieglitz's various art galleries featured all types of art including that of Georgia O'Keeffe, his sometime model, painter, and later wife. Photographer Paul Strand was a protégé of Stieglitz who later transitioned to motion pictures. Rebecca "Beck" Salsbury, who married Strand, was a painter of mediocre success which improved after switching to reverse painting on glass. The Stieglitz-O'Keeffe marriage was unusual in that they generally spent many months apart while working on their respective arts. The large difference in their ages and Stieglitz's philandering also affected the marriage. Strand and Salsbury later divorced but remained friends. These four personalities merged and clashed throughout the  decades between the 1910s and Stieglitz death in 1946. Strand, O'Keeffe, and Salsbury remained friends and shared gallery shows until her death in 1968. Strand died in 1976 and O'Keeffe outlived them all until 1986 in spite of multiple health problems. This book was informative but rather dry.

Monet: Itinerant Of Light

Monet: Itinerant Of Light by Salva Rubio, illustrated by Efa 111 pgs.

A beautifully illustrated graphic novel that covers much of the life and times of Monet.  He spent much of his life struggling and in poverty.  He bounced around on loans from a variety of people and an occasional benefactor. He had a hard time feeding his kids but he never considered trying something else to make money. He knew he was a painter and nothing else.  The art here is full of Easter eggs of famous paintings that weave into the story.  Lovely.