{After a really nice run of novels, I took a break to dig through a pile of unread graphic novels. More and more, I like having a record of what I read in the entirety, so here are some quick notes on them as well.}
Your Black Friend and Other Strangers by Ben Passmore. The opening story, which gives its title to the collection, won many awards–and quite deservedly so. It’s a direct, moving, and powerful piece focused on the intersections of race, community, and friendship. The rest of the pieces are pulled from earlier in Passmore’s career and vary quite a bit. He’s at his best at two extremes: direct, political pieces that reflect his time spent engaging in direct action protests (including the Charlottesville protests of last summer) and abstract, dream (or nightmare) like pieces that are really meditations on a mood.
Herman by Trade by Chris W. Kim. Speaking of mood pieces … Herman is a loner who works in urban sanitation. He has a gift: he can physically transform himself into anybody else. Throw in a casting call for a film about street performers, and out comes a story about the nature of identity and performance. It is enigmatic and ambivalent, and that makes it compelling, although it certainly requires an openness to a determined lack of explanation.
M.F.K. by Nilah Magruder. This reads as if it is the first entry in a much longer story. It is engaging and lovely, but wildly incomplete. The story focuses on two young people: the boy raised in a remote village and yearning to explore the wide, wide world; the girl a foreigner found wounded in the surrounding desert. Throw in some magic and some recurring threats, and you have the first chapter of a longer adventure. This was released last fall, and I do hope we get more.
Josephine Baker by Catel Muller & José-Louis Bocquet. Over 400 pages of comic here, plus biographical notes for another 100 or so, all dedicated to the life of the iconic Josephine Baker. It’s a pretty typical graphic novel biography: short on critique and certainly a bit on-the-surface. At the same time, what a life! If–like me–you were unaware of her WWII activities, or her constant financial hardships, or her “rainbow family,” or her ongoing significance in French popular culture, or, or, or … well, it’s all worth knowing.
Best Wishes by Mike Richardson & Paul Chadwick. A love story in contemporary Manhattan, with a drop of soap opera and a larger dollop of thoughts around the significance of marketing. The plot is well-structured, although there is never any real doubt as to the resolution of the central love affair.