Jeremy Tinder, Top Shelf Black Ghost Apple Factory is a short collection of even shorter minicomics. With seven stories packed into 48 pages, it’s fast moving and surprisingly dense. Tinder’s work is in some ways reminiscent of Jeffrey Brown’s “emo” stories, but he sometimes elegantly and sometimes uncomfortably straddles the line between parodying the genre [...]

Tales from Palomar #2 Gilbert Hernandez, Fantagraphics Delphine #2 Richard Sala, Fantagraphics Sammy the Mouse #1 Zak Sally, Fantagraphics “The pamphlet market is dead,” Gary Groth decreed last year, and with some exceptions Fantagraphics has of late been trying other formats for its comics. This usually means hardcovers, but recently Fantagraphics, as part of some [...]

Bud Fisher, NBM We are living in the golden age of comic strip reprints, which is good because the golden age of comic strips ended so long ago that there are few echoes of it still audible in our dull and shrinking funny papers. With complete serializations of Peanuts, Thimble Theatre, Krazy Kat, Dennis the [...]

Jamie Tanner, Adhouse Speaking of weird… The Aviary is a comic of the absurd that gains its power by constantly appearing as though it’s about to cohere into sense, but never doing so. A man with a ape’s head walks into a burlesque house and tells one of the girls, “I am a patron of [...]

Ariel Schrag, ed., Viking Penguin About as far from the world of Teen Boat as you can get are the teenage comics contained in Ariel Schrag’s Stuck in the Middle anthology. Schrag is already well known as the autobiographical comics wunderkind who had read too much James Joyce for her own good. She still hasn’t [...]

Josh Green and Dave Roman, Cryptic Press I intentionally hate most things so that my love, when it does come, will be pure. In more concrete terms, I hate most mincomics so I can love Teen Boat. “The ANGST of being a teen–the THRILL of being a boat!” the cover of every issue proclaims, and [...]

Andy Hartzell, Top Shelf Fox Bunny Funny is the sort of book that demands to be read as allegory, although its unclear to me what the allegory might be for. Its unnamed protagonist is a young anthropomorphic fox who wishes he were an anthropomorphic bunny. Since foxes, naturally, kill and eat bunnies this wish is [...]