June 19, 2013
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‘Calling Dr. Laura: A Graphic Memoir’ by Nicole J. Georges

Posted on March 29, 2013 by in Illustrated, Reviews

Nationally, Portland, Oregon is known for being a rainy green city of bicyclists, 20-something hipsters, and enough log-jammed trends from the nineties to fill a whole season of Portlandia. One of the ancient trends that still thrives in the Pacific Northwest is the making of zines. And while the nation at large may have discovered PDX via Portlandia, it’s hard to imagine putting a bird on anything if Nicole Georges hadn’t imagined Portland first. (more…)

‘Not My Bag’ by Sina Grace

Posted on February 6, 2013 by in Illustrated, Reviews

Retail is a service industry, one that promotes the work ethic “the customer is always right.”  Bending over backwards to please customers might increase sales, but it takes its toll on retail staff, who must remain ever-solicitous, even to customers who are wrong, criminally insane, or blatantly ripping off the store.  Add to that the fashion industry, a business easily taken in by appearances and fueled by vanity. Top it off with long hours (including nights and weekends), lousy pay (plus commission, another form of lousy pay), and a big dollop of competition, and you have all the makings of a job from hell. (more…)

‘Transposes’ by Dylan Edwards

Posted on January 22, 2013 by in Comics, Illustrated

One of the many difficulties for transgender or gender non-conforming folk is to get an overview of what transgender life is like, and most importantly, what a typical transgender life can be. Until fairly recently, most transgender biographies have been hidden, whispered about, or recorded as oddities. And the CIS world has not been welcoming, treating trans* identity as a medical or psychological abnormality, instead of one of many normal progressions to finding one’s self. (more…)

‘Spit and Passion’ by Cristy C. Road

Posted on December 25, 2012 by in Illustrated, Reviews

Not all LGBT coming of age tales are tales of coming out. Punk raconteur, musician and artist Cristy C. Road’s latest graphic memoir is instead a tale of the closet, and how the band Green Day saved her tween, queer soul.  This is a very thorough tour of that small space, where as a young lesbian, Road struggled to find her queer identity. Outside of her closet, the beliefs of her family, school and American culture denied her queerness, striving to keep that closet door shut tight.  For many of us, memories of our twelve-year-old crushes (c’mon, ‘fess up, who of you liked the Monkees? Boyz II Men? New Kids on the Block? Justin Bieber?) are dalliances we don’t ever want to see on Facebook, or write about ourselves. Then again, twelve-year-olds aren’t known for their musical taste, and the bands we first love are often more about the visionary doors they open for us, than who they really are. Road was lucky that the band she fell for had enough integrity that their songs rescued her, gave her a nom de plume she that keeps to this day, and featured a lead singer, Billy Joe Armstrong, who is now her fan.
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‘Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, & Me’ by Ellen Forney

Posted on November 18, 2012 by in Bio/Memoir, Illustrated

An association between artistic creativity and mental illness is something many of us take for granted without questioning which came first or why the two should be linked. In her new graphic memoir, cartoonist Ellen Forney tackles that question in light of its impact on her work as an artist with Bipolar I Disorder. Her personal story is both funny and touching, but the research Forney did while trying to understand her own condition gives Marbles usefulness beyond the human sharing common to memoir. (more…)

‘The Legend of Bold Riley’ by Leia Weathington

Posted on September 23, 2012 by in Illustrated, Reviews

When a culture is repressive towards women or queers, I figure it is usually reacting against something (or someone) strong it wishes to suppress. So for instance, when I read Biblical or Islamic rules meant to keep women in their place, I can’t help but wonder what kind of powerful, intelligent, agile women existed before these religions, that required such harsh, bigoted sanctions to shut them down. Unfortunately, many of the old tales to tell us got lost or were never recorded in the first place, given that keeping women illiterate was part of the sanction. Queers, women and other minorities are constantly in search of our lost history. We’ve also become masters at creating our own alternative histories to fill in the void, when all legends seem to belong to someone else. (more…)

‘No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics’ edited by Justin Hall

Posted on August 4, 2012 by in Illustrated, Reviews

Somebody needed to do this: compile a knowledgeable, historical collection of queer comics. But the task was daunting in more ways than one. There’s the difficulty of curating any historical collection to include the most representative art works and artists of the era. But queer comics pose an added challenge, as many were published by underground, indie and non-mainstream publishers, or were self-published. It would be almost impossible to pull together a collection like this without an insider’s knowledge of LGBTQ comics, and contact information for their creators. (more…)

‘Spandex: Fast and Hard’ by Martin Eden

Posted on July 30, 2012 by in Illustrated, Reviews

If you like your superheroes to be LGBT, the news is good, sort of. “Queer” seems to be the new super power everyone’s copping to. The Green Lantern, aka Alan Scott, came out as gay, and the cover of X-Men #51 hosts North Star’s nuptials to his guy Kyle. Not to leave out the ladies, we discovered a while ago Batwoman was a lesbian, and while not a superhero, it’s good to know Kevin Keller is keeping it real, and gay, with Archie, Veronica, Betty and Reggie. (more…)

‘Three #3′ edited by Rob Kirby

Posted on July 2, 2012 by in Illustrated, Reviews

There’s only two covers for Three #3 – which seems a shame, as it’s a book so triplicated its creator Rob Kirby had to instigate, curate and edit it – but both covers are great! Ed Luce’s (Wuvable Oaf) front cover sports a three-headed knight, straight out of Monty Python’s Holy Grail. But look closely, his heraldry is really a teaser for Luce’s story, which opens the book. “Love, Lust, Lost” are three parallel wordless tales. “Love” is about a big hairy adoptive kitten dad, who successfully crosses species’ boundaries to raise his kits in all the correct feline ways. “Lust” involves an indoctrination ritual into a secretive, sexual pig-nosed cult. Enough said! And “Lost” is about a trip to pay respect to maybe a person and/or a place, but most certainly a memory. The panels of all three stories all appear on the same page, but Luce’s adept use of coloring helps readers delineate which path is which. Wordless reading like this is an absorbing kind of literacy, and puzzling out these images is pleasurable. (more…)

‘Tangles: A Story about Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me’ by Sarah Leavitt

Posted on June 13, 2012 by in Illustrated, Reviews

Sarah Leavitt takes on the difficult task of chronicling the devastating loss of both her mother, and her mother’s memory to Alzheimer’s, in this graphic novel. Alzheimer’s makes us wonder who we are without our memories. And this memory loss disease is particularly cruel because it’s rarely predictable, and while progressive, the sufferer of the disease can vacillate from being fully adult to childlike, unreachably cut off by anger, fear or silence. (more…)

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