Alison Bechdel

Cartoonist Bechdel’s The Secret to Superhuman Strength is the story of her life-long fascination with fitness and strength. Interwoven in this memoir are her experiences coming out, various obsessions with types of physical fitness, and her grinding anxiety over the need to perform and produce. Gripping, sometimes funny, …

Berkeley Breathed

Bloom County Episode XI: A New HopeBreathed’s first collection of Bloom County strips in 26 years is a bittersweet and rather odd collection. While fans are delighted he is back, the topic matter that lured Breathed back is unfortunate. Bloom County suddenly burst back into life in the summer of 2015. Almost immediately, Breathed …

RunawaysBrian Vaughan

I heard this graphic novel mentioned as NPR commentator David Lipsky’s guilty pleasure. It is full of funny and snappy dialogue (Vaughan wrote for a few seasons of Lost), interesting plot devices and some great illustration. However, Lipsky hits the “guilty” bit of guilty pleasure right on: …

I Love Led Zeppelin- Panty-dropping ComicsEllen Forney

Sweet! Forney illustrates “How to be a Fabulous Fag Hag” with Margaret Cho, “How to Twirl Your Tassels in Opposite Directions” with Teresa Dulse, Forney’s almost-kinda date with Camille Paglia and her friend’s incredibly embarrassing meeting with Tom Waits. Heckuva good collection.…

The League of Extraordinary GentlemanAlan Moore and Kevin O’Neill

I know, let’s have a comic book. And lets have lots of villains, lifted directly from Victorian literature. Right, and since we lifted lots of villains, lets also lift a bunch of other characters and make them heroes – kind of. And let’s set it …

Penguin Dreams and Stranger ThingsBerkeley Breathed

As a refreshingly amusing and light read, I have been plugging away through a bunch of collections of Berk Breathed’s comics. I’m amazed at what an excellent barometer of popular culture and politics Breathed’s (the creator of Opus and Bloom County) comics are. In particular, the Penguin Dreams …