Stack Overflow: Comics Grab Bag

Today’s stack: comics! Here’s a mix of comics—adventure, romance, short stories, and satire.

Nico Bravo and the Trial of Vulcan by Mike Cavallaro

This is the third book in the Nico Bravo series, which I’ve mentioned before a while back.) This mythological mash-up story has Nico being sent on a delivery mission by Vulcan, and he doesn’t really understand why—it seems to be a long elevator ride to the center of the earth that would be unnecessary if Buck (the unicorn) just teleported the supplies instead. It turns out that Vulcan is really trying to keep Nico out of the way for a while because he’s been put on trial by the other gods, and is now tasked to retrieve several artifacts … but this may all be a ploy put together by his accuser, Ahriman, the God of Evil. Meanwhile, Nico’s delivery run doesn’t go as smoothly as anticipated, either.

This one is pretty fun and draws out the mystery as it jumps between the two main storylines. You finally learn the truth about Nico’s origins, and see how Vulcan’s trials and Nico’s journey end up intertwining. My middle school kid has read all of the Nico Bravo books and has enjoyed them—while they do borrow various characters from mythology, it’s more of a loose interpretation and draws from a much broader range of stories than something like Percy Jackson, and is a bit sillier.

Unico: Lost written by Samuel Sattin, illustrated by Gurihiru, based on manga by Osamu Tezuka

Here’s another third chapter in a comics series: Unico is still being hunted by Venus, and his travels have him meeting the Sphinx and encountering the fey (including Queen Titania). There are a lot of side characters who pop up, allies to one side or another: strange group of bounty hunters trying to capture the Sphinx, a mysterious figure who rescues the Sphinx’s daughter from Venus. And some friends from the first book appear again: Chloe and Toast, the cats from the first book, have been recruited to help Unico using some technology that lets them leap in time–but they’re still learning how to control it.

I really like the artwork in this series: the monstrous hunter Iver and his winged steed are fantastic. The differences in scale between characters is also a lot of fun: the Sphinx towers over her daughter, who is closer to Unico’s size. The storyline can be a bit harder to follow, though, particularly explanations for why things work the way they do—it often feels like a lot of hand-waving—and I don’t know how much of that is from the source material and how much is new in this adaptation.

Everything Amplified by Sarah Lippett and Ziggy Hanaor

Nel and Ludo are twins; Nel has always felt a little bit overshadowed by her brother Ludo, who is more outgoing and popular and even more favored by their parents. Nel, on the other hand, is moody and listens to the wrong music, and wishes she could be more like her cool aunt Jan. This graphic novel covers a tumultuous period of Nel’s life, starting a band, falling in love, feeling betrayed, making new friends. There’s a time when the roles feel reversed and Ludo is down and is having trouble functioning but Nel is on the rise.

It’s a book that really captures some of the ups and downs of adolescence—especially the intense emotions—and wraps them up in a story about music: listening to music, making music, discovering music. Of course, that also means it can be pretty painful to read—like the title says, everything is dialed up to 11. As an adult, it mostly made me glad that that part of my life is well in the past, even as I wonder how much is still in store for my youngest kid, who’s still in middle school.

Angelica and the Bear Prince by Trung Le Nguyen

After a long period of burnout, Angelica is working on re-entry, starting with a summer job at the theater. It’s a place that holds a particular magic for her, since she fell in love with the plays that she saw there as a child. She’s also been messaging a mysterious new friend who runs a social media account for the Bear Prince. But who’s behind the costume?

The book weaves together Angelica’s present-day adventures working at the theater alongside her best friend Christine (who has been cast as the princess) with scenes from the play, which is based on the Norwegian tale “East of the Sun and West of the Moon.” Although Angelica (and the Bear Prince) are the main characters, I really liked all of the supporting cast too, who felt like real people. Angelica’s parents are adorable: they have their own struggles and it’s clear that Angelica and her mom often butt heads, but they also know they care for each other. Christine has a subplot about her relationship with her boyfriend who never seems to have time for her. Phoebe Jorgensen is the founder of the theater, and she is still grieving the loss of her husband, which comes out in unexpected ways.

The illustrations are great, with stylized borders for the fairy tale portions, and a bit of manga influence that occasionally shows up in extreme facial expressions. You expect a love story between Angelica and the mysterious Bear Prince, but what you get is a lot of small love stories along with it: an old couple who live next door, Christine figuring out what she wants from a relationship, Phoebe’s memories of her husband. I haven’t read Nguyen’s first graphic novel, The Magic Fish, but reading this one makes me want to go find that one to read next.

Forgive-Me-Not by Mari Costa

Aisling is the princess, about to turn eighteen and dreaming of romance in her future. But then one evening, a strange girl breaks into her bedroom and reveals the truth: Aisling is actually a changeling, and Forget-Me-Not is the true princess who was stolen away and has grown up in the Faerie realm, indentured to Aisling’s real father. Forget-Me-Not plans to use Aisling to buy her way out of servitude, but it’s also too late to get her life back, and she isn’t really all that interested in being a princess. Aisling, on the other hand, has grown up thinking she was a human princess, and is terrified at the thought of being traded off to the Seelie Court as a bargaining chip. (And her first few encounters with the Fae folk quickly teach her that she must be careful.)

As they journey through the Faerie realm, though, the two gradually start to understand and appreciate each other. Yep, it’s the old enemies-to-lovers trope and though it’s not unexpected (I mean, just look at the cover), it’s still very sweet and often funny.

The Woodchipper by Joe Ollmann

This book is a collection of short stories—they just happen to be comics. The title story is about a guy who is having panic attacks about an incident at work involving a wood chipper even though, as he keeps saying, nothing actually happened. But through the story, you can see the impact that a close call can have on someone’s mental health and well-being. “Nestled All Snug” is about a woman who gets trapped in a bookstore bathroom on Christmas Eve and her increasingly desperate attempts to get out. In “Meat,” a security guard named Kara befriends one of the vegans who shows up to protest the meat-packing facility, and ends up involved in a high-stakes break-in to find evidence … which leads to a really creepy revelation.

In most of the stories (aside from “Meat”) there’s not necessarily a lot that actually happens, but instead it’s about the somewhat-neurotic characters spiraling and obsessing about one thing or another, which colors all of their interactions with others. As Ollmann says in his notes afterward, men should go to therapy, and sometimes the future of humanity feels pretty bleak. The stories aren’t very happy (or chipper?), but they do a good job of putting you into a character’s mind and letting you look at the world from a different perspective for a few pages.

Hotel & Farm by Ben Katchor

I’ve read a number of things by Ben Katchor over the years but it had been a while. He has a very dry humor, and his comics are satirical depictions of a world that is like ours but kind of tilted just a bit. The comics read like an anthropological study of a city’s history and traditions, little-known “facts” that Katchor has fabricated (or at least distorted). While there are recurring characters, the book is more about the world itself, the strange practices and habits of Echoic City. The book kicks off with a story about manure, explaining a trend in which the ultra-wealthy paid top dollar for regular deliveries of manure to their minimalist residences… which then leads to a depletion of resources that requires the creation of artificial manure. We also follow the stories of various fruits and vegetables (some real, most imagined): the complex conditions needed to cultivate or harvest them, the esoteric rituals involved in their sale, the reactions of the people who consume them. A hotel looks nothing like its brochure. A guest cannot rest or make any plans until he can confirm his check-out time. The cost of unnecessary elevator trips leads to arrests and interrogations. Some hoteliers debate the value of the chocolate mint placed on the pillows.

I find it hard to explain why these comics are so compelling to me, with their sour-faced people and strangely-named locations. Something about the illustration style and the deadpan delivery of the text makes this alternate reality feel real. I get a similar feeling from when I’ve learned a new, unusual fact about the world, except I know this is fictional and somewhat absurd. The book isn’t really a story, but it ends up being kind of a portrait of Echoic City, filled with little vignettes about its population. I have two older books by Ben Katchor, and reading Hotel & Farm inspired me to pull them off the shelf and I’ve been slowly making my way through them as well.

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My Current Stack

I’ve got some time travel stories in the queue currently: I finished A Crime Through Time by Amelia Blackwell (Georgiana Darcy is pulled forward to 1999 to solve a murder mystery) and I’ve started Time to Burn by Ellery Lloyd, about a time travel agency that sends the ultra-wealthy back in time for history tourism … but of course things go wrong. And there’s a bunch more on the shelf after that, but I have to decide what to read next!

Disclosure: I received copies of these titles for review. Affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support my writing and independent booksellers!