Joshua Malbin

We Will Remain collects five short pieces by Andrew White. Three of them are more or less stories, and two are closer to the realm of comics poetry. As a narrative writer I was naturally drawn more to the stories. I especially liked the last story in the collection, the title story, about a statue built 10,000 years ago and how it survives to the present day before it is destroyed to make way for a freeway, and then about the monuments our civilization will leave behind when it is gone.

You can see White experimenting with his art in different ways over the course of the book. He likes to manipulate things digitally so that the backgrounds show through characters’ faces. That works to best effect in the middle story about a woman who builds herself a little garden hideaway in a cave in the woods.

A couple of preview pages available at the Retrofit link above. Process pages on White’s Tumblr.

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In Sand Castle a family, a couple, and a group of American tourists happen to come to the same secluded beach, where they find the body of a dead woman and a North African man who swears he didn’t kill her. What you think is going to be a story of racial scapegoating turns out to be something else entirely as things slowly begin to go wrong for the group over the course of a long day.

I don’t want to give away what goes wrong, because author Pierre Oscar Levy introduces and builds it quite subtly, but I will say that it presents an enormous challenge to artist Frederik Peeters, and that he completely pulls it off. He has a simple style with a heavy line, all in black and white, with either very heavy shading or none at all (reflecting the light at the seashore). He has to choose his details carefully and they are all pretty much perfect.

Preview at the link above.

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Matt Kindt is working out how to tell a certain kind of big story using a lot of little stories. It’s a method you usually see on TV, like how Buffy would always have an overarching Big Bad but also each episode have to deal with the Monster of the Week. He began to do it with 3 Story, three perspectives on a constantly growing giant, one from his mother, one from his wife, and one from his daughter. He’s doing it in an ongoing way with MIND MGMT, where the overall quest involving the world-spanning secret spy organization makes room each issue for a look at the special talents of one of its current or former agents. Red Handed: The Fine Art of Strange Crimes is probably the most complete expression of it so far.

Each piece of Red Handed tells the story of a different quirky criminal. There’s a woman who steals chairs and caps her career by stealing an electric chair. There’s a woman who steals signs to write her multi-warehouse-sized novel about an ant trying to communicate with humans by arranging letters the size of its own body. There’s the aging pickpocket who can’t remember which wallet contains his actual ID because he’s losing his memory and with it losing track of his actual identity. All these perfect little psychological portraits of outlandish criminals, all solved by the city of Red Wheelbarrow’s genius Detective Gould.

Separating these stories are pieces of Gould’s own life and an ongoing dialogue, word balloons against a black background, between Gould and a criminal he’s caught, all about the nature of art, morality, and justice. That dialogue lets us know that someone has manipulated all these criminals into doing something in concert, in ways Detective Gould can’t understand and for reasons he can’t fathom, even though he can solve any crime, understand any motive.

This is the piece of work that cements Kindt’s transition from journeyman to master. I look at what I wrote about his previous books and I see I wasn’t completely taken with them, but this one is my favorite book of 2013 so far, and it’s not even close. It’s high-level stuff, dealing with major themes and intricately assembled, using genre tropes in an entirely new way. It’s going to get a ton of praise from everyone who writes about comics or thinks about them, and it’s going to deserve it.

Preview here.

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Comics for Grownups Episode 15 with Alex Rothman is now available on iTunes. RSS link for Android users here.

In this episode we discuss:

š #13, a compilation from kuš

Red Handed: The Fine Art of Strange Crimes by Matt Kindt

Le Fils du Roi by Eric Lambé

The Complete Deep Girl by Ariel Bordeaux, and in general publisher Robyn Chapman‘s possible ambition to bring out more zines of the 1990s

Post by Molly Brooks

Sand Castle by Frederik Peeters and Pierre Oscar Lévy

Suspect Device #3, a compilation published by Josh Bayer

We Will Remain by Andrew White

3 New Stories by Dash Shaw

Mumbai Confidential Book One: Good Cop, Bad Cop by Saurav Mohapatra and Vivek Shinde

Good Riddance: An Illustrated Memoir of Divorce by Cynthia Copeland

Country Ass-Whuppin’: A Tornado Relief Anthology from 12-Gauge Comics

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Comics for Grownups Episode 14 with Alex Rothman is now available on iTunes. RSS link for Android users here.

In this episode we discuss:

B+F by Gregory Benton

Zegas #0 by Michel Fiffe

Easy Pieces by Neil Dvorak

Miniature Jesus #1 by Ted McKeever

My Dutch Foreskin by Daniel Pucca

Little Garden Comics by Darryl Ayo Brathwaite (Also online here.)

Artichoke Presents: Sketches and Streams by Antonio Romero

MIND MGMT Vol. 1 by Matt Kindt

The Battle of Blood and Ink by Jared Axelrod and Steve Walker

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I have a new audio story out from The Drum: A Literary Magazine For Your Ears. Check it out! You can also read it in texty version over on the Stories page here.

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Comics for Grownups Episode 13 with Alex Rothman is now available on iTunes. RSS link for Android users here. This episode was recorded using a single Rock Band mike in a basement near MoCCA, so apologies for the slight sound issues. In this episode we discuss:

Hand-Drying in America by Ben Katchor

Ant Comic by Michael DeForge

Letting It Go by Miriam Katin

Punk Rock Jesus by Sean Murphy

How to Fake a Moon Landing: Exposing the Myths of Science Denial by Darryl Cunningham

Polarity #1 by Max Bemis, art by Jorge Coelho

Dia de los Muertos by Riley Rossmo

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Comics for Grownups Episode 12 with Alex Rothman is now available on iTunes. RSS link for Android users here. Miked guest this week: Andrea Tsurumi.

In this episode we discuss:
When David Lost His Voice by Judith Vanistendael

In the Kitchen with Alain Passard by Christophe Blain

Maximum Minimum Wage by Bob Fingerman

The Massive TPB vol. 1: Black Pacific by Brian Wood, art by Kristian Donaldson and Garry Brown

Hawkeye and FF, both by Matt Fraction, art for FF by Michael Allred

We also get in plugs for the NY Comics and Picture-Story Symposium, the writeups of same in the comics section of the Rumpus, and the upcoming MoCCA Festival.

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Comics for Grownups Episode 11 with Alex Rothman is now available on iTunes. RSS link for Android users here. Special guest: Francis the not-yet-I.

In this episode we discuss:

Joe the Barbarian by Grant Morrison and Sean Murphy

Susceptible by Genevieve Castree

District 14 (Season 1) by Pierre Gabus and Romuald Reutimann

Study Group Magazine #1

Farm School #1 by Jason Turner

Nemo: Heart of Ice by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill

Everybody Loves Tank Girl by Alan C. Martin and Jim Mahfood

Army of God: Joseph Kony’s War in Central Africa by David Axe and Tim Hamilton

Alex’s propagandizing to children with Nick Sousanis

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Comics for Grownups Episode 10 with Alex Rothman is now available on iTunes. RSS link for Android users here. No guest.

In this episode we discuss:

On the Ropes by James Vance and Dan E. Burr

Before the Dark Gate by Keren Katz.

The Untold Tales of Dog Mendonça and PizzaBoy by Filipe Melo, Juan Cavia, and Santiago R. Villa

Flocks #1 by L. Nichols (again)

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