8. DREAM DIARIES by Shazleen Khan
Well-known for the Webcomic BUUZA!!, Shazleen Khan explores three dreams in delicate pencil drawings with spot colors in what seems a departure in style. This was ordered from the 2022 Short Box Festival, and I believe it's not in print anymore.
9. BREAKWATER by Katriona Chapman
This may be the most realistic comic I've ever read. It reads like you've just randomly dropped into the middle of someone's life and experience the day to day effects of meeting someone new on their job. No melodrama around here. However, life happens. The story unfolds naturally not twisted to artificially ramp up drama or emotion. I knew this book was going to be good, but come on! Katrina Chapman should be talked about as one of the best graphic novelists working today.
BONUS: Ryan Carey reviews BREAKWATER ON Solrad many years ago.
10. VICTORY POINT by Owen D. Pomery
Finally, I've finished reading the 2020 publishing schedule of Avery Hill Publishing! From THE IMPENDING BLINDNESS OF BILLIE SCOTT to this beautiful book by Owen Pomery, I consider it the best run by any small press publisher in recent years. For his part, Owen Pomery comes up with the perfect story for his architecture-based art style, a young woman at a crossroads returning home to visit her widowed Father, based in a seaside experimentally designed village.
11. NOW #11 edited by Eric Reynolds (Hoopla Digital)
I've been buying Fantagraphics earnest attempts at an ongoing anthology since PRIME CUTS in the mid 80s. I've looked through a couple earlier issues and was ambivalent. A lot of credit to editor Eric Reynolds for the variety of art and narrative styles in this recent issue. While I'm not sure any of them are completely successful, they were definitely worth the effort to read them. The one that engaged me the most was "Mandorla" by Australian artist Stacy Gougolis . The artist plays with time, memory, and reality in a lengthy story of an event so tragic and mundane as falling off a cliff.
A couple Fantagraphics veterans also turn in some nice work: Chris Wright with "Money Coil" and an unusual short by Steven Weissman.
12. LATE BLOOMER by Carol Tyler (Hoopla Digital)
This was such a great collection, I remember Carol Tyler from WEIRDO (her first published story was Aline Kominsky-Crumb's first issue as editor, not a coincidence I'm sure). She came along well after the fading away of underground comix, but her comics are firmly in the tradition of Kominsky-Crumb and Diane Noomin (although unlike those two her character is herself and not a caricature of herself). This is some very dark personal work that doesn't necessarily read that way. The last story, "The Outrage", is one of the best comics stories I've ever read. Built on a four-panel per page grid and incredibly colored, this is just Tyler's life unfolding as she struggles with her relationship with Justin Green and motherhood and everything else. I'm not sure if this was finished in her later graphic novels, but it's a wonder as is. Highly Recommended!
13. THORGAL VOLUME #0: THE BETRAYED SORCERESS by Jean Van Hamme and Grzegorz Rosinski (Hoopla Digital)
The first two volumes of this long-running series offers an origin of sorts for the title character. At this point Grzegorz Rosinski's art owes more to Jean-Claude Mezieres, which is not a bad thing at all. I enjoyed this quite a bit and look forward to reading future volumes this year.
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