Today’s stack: more comics! Here are a few recent comics and two that are out this week.
Phenomena Book Two: Matilde’s Quest by Brian Michael Bendis and André Lima Araújo
I wrote about the first book in this series back in 2022, and it had been long enough that I went back to re-read it before starting in on the second, and I’m glad I did. The first book just throws you right into the middle of it: you find yourself in a strange world filled with what appear to be people and aliens, in the middle of a kid having a conversation with a vendor, telling an outlandish story about himself. You gradually come to learn that in this world, stories are currency, and people are particularly concerned about maintaining control over how their own stories are told.
Unfortunately for our trio of unlikely companions, the word has gotten out about the events of the first book, which culminated in a big battle at the Golden City of Eyes. Now they’re being celebrated as legends and—as is often the case—the stories get a little bigger and more over-the-top every time they’re told. Boldon and Matilde aren’t too pleased with this, though Spike doesn’t seem to care as much. They’re on their way to Matilde’s home, where she has some unfinished business. They arrive in Valentia Verona—what used to be London, complete with a city skyline that has replaced the Eye with a literal giant eyeball—and find a city at war. Everything is in turmoil as two factions fight over whether technology or magic is supreme, and Matilde attempts to make peace.
The world that Bendis and Araújo have created is just so bizarre and remarkable, but I love the way that the characters interact with each other, and underneath it all there are some great observations about humanity and the world we live in now, even though it feels far removed from what we see in Phenomena. If you like sci-fi adventure stories, put this one on your list!
Haruki Murakami Manga Stories adapted by Jean-Cristophe Deveney, illustrated by PMGL
Way back when—probably two decades ago now—I had a friend who recommended Haruki Murakami to me and I read one or two of his novels. What I remembered is that they have this sort of surreal, dream-like quality to them, and they don’t always resolve in a way that my Western-trained sensibilities expect stories to wrap up. It left me feeling a little unsettled, but also intrigued in the way that he was able to build these worlds within worlds, stories within stories.
These books are collections of Murakami’s short stories, told in comics form. There are two volumes of these now (with a third expected next year): the first volume was published in October 2023 and contains the stories “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo,” “Where I’m Likely to Find It,” “Birthday Girl,” and “The Seventh Man.” The second volume was just published in April and includes “The Second Bakery Attack,” “Samsa in Love,” and “Thailand.” I came across the first one at the bookstore and picked up a copy for myself, and the publisher sent me the second book recently.
Like the novel I read so long ago, some of these stories are unsettling. There are some that feel more or less realistic with nothing that seems magical, but some of the characters behave in weird ways. And then there are those where things are definitely out of the ordinary, like when a giant frog appears and tells a man that he alone can help the frog save Tokyo from a devastating earthquake. I feel like secret knowledge of some sort appears in several of the stories, whether in the form of somebody who claims to grant wishes to somebody who is able to read somebody’s secret desires. “Samsa in Love” was an interesting twist on Kafka’s Metamorphosis, in which the main character wakes up and realizes he has become a young man named Gregor Samsa.
The illustration style isn’t what I normally think of as “manga,” though I think the term here is just used to mean “comics.” It is both more detailed and a little more grotesque: instead of wide-eyed, beautiful people, the characters in these books have wrinkles and warts, they’re caught making unflattering faces or bent into odd poses. They do feel like they fit the stories, with that vague sense of unease, and the blurring of the line between reality and fantasy.
Plain Jane and the Mermaid by Vera Brosgol
I’ve been a fan of Vera Brosgol’s work ever since Anya’s Ghost in 2011 (back when I said I didn’t read a lot of graphic novels, a statement that seems laughable now!). Since then she has illustrated a few picture books as well as the comic book memoir Be Prepared, and this week her latest graphic novel is out. I was excited to read it, because although I’ve enjoyed the picture books, I like to spend a little more time in these worlds that she has created.
Jane doesn’t have a lot going for her: everyone around her thought she was too plain, even her parents—who have unfortunately passed and didn’t even leave the house to her. She makes a plan to marry her crush, Peter, who is too handsome for his own good but is a lousy fisherman: she’ll get her dowry, and he’ll get away from his father. Alas, Peter gets kidnapped by a mermaid (too handsome for his own good, see?) and it’s up to Jane to go rescue him.
I don’t want to spoil too much, but the story is just delightful. The mermaids are beautiful but horrendous, and Jane’s quest leads to encounters with a variety of colorful characters, from an old witch who shares some magical tools to a grumpy seal she names Mr. Whiskers. Some of it has the feel of a folktale, with the rules that Jane has to follow and the promise of true love (or at least a marriage of convenience) waiting at the end. But other parts have modern sensibilities, particularly Jane’s journey to understand her own value and discovering her strengths.
Karate Prom by Kyle Starks
Don and Sam first meet at a karate tournament—Sam knocks Don out with one hit because he was too distracted by her beauty, but then they hit it off and decide to go to prom together. Unfortunately, both of them have some very possessive exes: Sam’s ex hires a series of goons to attack Don at prom, and then Don’s ex—part of an actual global crime family—shows up at the after party at the mall. There’s a whole lot of punching involved.
The plot reminds me a little bit of Scott Pilgrim, though in this case both characters have terrible exes, and it’s also set in high school, so you get some high school angst thrown in there too. It’s also pretty silly in between the fight scenes (and sometimes during them). There is a bit of a heart-warming moral at the end, but it can be a little hard to separate it from the “sometimes you have to punch people” storyline.
My Current Stack
On Free Comic Book Day, I happened to grab a couple of first issues of some older comics, and two of them that intrigued me were Time Before Time by Declan Shalvey, Rory McConville, and Joe Palmer, and Crossover by Donny Cates and Geoff Shaw. Time Before Time is a time-travel story: Tatsuo works for the Syndicate in 2140, taking high-paying clients back into the past to live in better days, and he and his friend have cooked up a plan to steal a time machine and go hide out in the past themselves … but things don’t go as planned. Crossover is about a world-changing event that happened in 2017, when all the fictional comic book characters suddenly appeared in Denver, causing mass destruction. Soon after, a force field was put around all of Colorado, shutting the comic book characters in and the rest of the world out—though of course there were many people still inside at the time. The premises are intriguing, so I may look up both of these soon to see what happens next.
I also just started reading another upcoming novel, The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks. It’s about a massive train line built to cross Siberia, a magical wasteland filled with strange creatures. So far I’ve met two of the main characters at the start of a journey that’s just leaving Beijing. I’ve also finished The Boy from Clearwater (mentioned last week), so I’ll write more about that one soon.
Disclosure: I received review copies of the books included in this column. Affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support my writing and independent bookstores!
