Graphic Novel Review: Raised by Ghosts by Briana Loewinsohn

Reviewed by Cassy Lee

Briana Loewinsohn. Raised by Ghosts. Fantagraphics, 2025. 224 pp.

ISBN: 9798875000508. U.S. $18.99

https://www.fantagraphics.com/collections/new-this-month/products/raised-by-ghosts

 

“Is there a word in the English language for nostalgia for the present moment?”, the teenaged Briana muses in one of the handwritten notes punctuating each deeply '90s nostalgic scene of this exquisite graphic novel. If not, Briana Loewinsohn’s Raised by Ghosts makes a compelling case that there should be. This beautifully drawn and deeply felt graphic memoir encapsulates the fleeting, bittersweet experience of adolescence—especially for those who grew up in the ‘90s—while simultaneously making the reader ache for a past that is just specific and relatable enough to feel like home.

Through an evocative layering of moments from her middle and high school years, via four-panel format pages punctuated by torn-out diary entries or letters, a picture emerges of a lonely, dreamy girl navigating a world that seems to exist slightly out of reach. Middle, and then, high school Briana is an artistic and observant latchkey kid, building a world for herself in the margins of neglect, loneliness, and a quietly persistent imagination. Raised largely by absence— her physically and emotionally unavailable divorced parents are never pictured, only spoken to through closed doors or just “off-screen” —she drifts through her neighborhood and her school life, documenting the world around her in a way that feels both intimate and alienating. This fragmented yet cohesive storytelling method allows the reader to inhabit the protagonist’s headspace, moving through her world as she does—half in the present, half in an internal landscape of memory and longing.

The book’s visual style is breathtaking. Loewinsohn employs a palette of rich, nostalgic earth tones—warm browns, amber golds, muted greens—that perfectly complement the wistful, melancholic tone of the story. Her young protagonist self is lovingly rendered, with expressive hands, long, flyaway hair, freckles, and a wardrobe that feels both effortlessly specific and deeply personal. Every panel feels like a memory does, slightly faded but still full of resonance. There’s a beautiful tension in the way Loewinsohn balances the digital medium with an analog aesthetic—paper textures and layered shadows make the book feel almost like an artifact, something lost and found again.

This is a book that thrives on specificity: the distinct details of Berkeley in the 1990s, the feeling of being on an AC Transit bus, the excitement of sifting through LPs at Amoeba Records, the ritual of recording a song off the radio onto a cassette and getting the liner notes just right. The Walkman, the folded notes passed in class, chatting on the floor of your room on a rotary phone with a cord, the Swatch watch ticking on the living room wall, microwaved TV dinners, the nods to comics like the Calvin and Hobbes t-shirt and the Charlie Brown special —all of these elements combine to create an atmosphere so rich with authenticity that you can almost hear the sounds of the ska show at the Berkeley Square or recall the feeling of being in the car with your best high school friends.

But Raised by Ghosts is more than just a nostalgia trip—it’s a deeply human exploration of adolescence, loneliness, and the small ways we find connection that will resonate with young readers now as well as adults who grew up in that time period. The protagonist is a dreamer, but she’s also someone struggling to fit in, to navigate the unspoken rules of high school, to figure out how to be seen in a world where she often feels invisible. Loewinsohn captures the ennui of youth with an almost aching precision: the boredom of waiting, the quiet desperation of wanting to be somewhere else but not knowing where, the way time feels both infinite and unbearably fleeting when you’re a teenager.

Perhaps the most poignant thread running through the book is the way friendships provide brief but vital lifelines—small moments of escape from the weight of isolation, of feeling alien. The protagonist may be alone much of the time, but she’s not without connection, and those moments of shared experience—having lunch on the grass together, passing notes, going to shows—offer glimpses of warmth and possibility, showing how friends help you pass the time. “Today we can try to not be here together.”

There’s also an experimental quality to the book, with a long interlude in which the protagonist literally steps into her own drawings, blending reality and imagination in a way that feels both playful and profound. It’s a reminder of how, we create worlds for ourselves as a means of survival, of understanding, of making sense of our place in the universe.

For readers who experienced high school in the ‘90s, Raised by Ghosts will feel like slipping back into a dreamscape of their own past. But it also speaks to something more universal—the strange, in-between feeling of being a teenager, of trying to construct an identity out of fragments, of existing in a liminal space between childhood and adulthood. Even younger readers who didn’t grow up in this specific era will recognize themselves in its pages; after all, nostalgia isn’t just about the past—it’s also about the now, about recognizing the fleeting nature of the present even as we live it.

Loewinsohn has created something truly special with Raised by Ghosts. It’s a book that lingers, not just in its imagery, but in the feelings it evokes. It makes you remember your own quiet afternoons spent staring at the ceiling, your own long bus rides with your buddies, your own yearning for something just out of reach. And perhaps, more than anything, it makes you nostalgic for the moment you’re living in right now—because one day, this too will be a memory.

 

Cassy Lee is an art teacher, a librarian, and a comics artist, currently working on her MFA in Comics at California College of the Arts to bring these passions together in the next stage of her career, in comics librarianship, visual narrative workshops, and creating her own graphic novel memoir about healing from intergenerational trauma. She also grew up in the ‘90s passing notes in class and going to shows at the Berkeley Square so may be a little biased about this book.

Comics Review: Ground Zero Comics: Move Beyond Nuclear Weapons

art by Pat Moriarty

reviewed by James Willetts

Leonard Rifas, et.al. Ground Zero Comics: Move Beyond Nuclear Weapons. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2024. https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/ground-zero-comics-move-beyond-nuclear-weapons

 

Leonard Rifas is comics’ most enduring anti-nuclear activist, a tireless advocate for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. For over fifty years Rifas has been producing educational comics on the dangers of atomic weapons and nuclear power, as well as an array of other causes (such as food production, energy policy, motherhood, and corporate crime). Ground Zero Comics sees Rifas return to anti-nuclear comic books, with his new one serving as both a history of the anti-nuclear movement and a call to action. Arguing that we are in a new nuclear arms race, Rifas calls on ordinary people to challenge US policy through protest and activism. As Rifas puts it, “If we’re going to make it through the crises … a lot of things will have to change. If we have no voice, we’re not going to survive.” (32) Ground Zero Comics, a continuation of Rifas’ commitment to independently-produced educational comics, combines traditional cartoons and sequential comic strips with maps, graphs, charts, and scientific diagrams. Rifas combines his alternative comix sensibilities with the publishing power of Fantagraphics to create a slick and professional product.

While Rifas is the driving force behind Ground Zero Comics, he divides artistic duties with three other interior artists: David Lasky, Max Clotfelter, and Kelly Froh. Each is responsible for one of the comic’s four sections, with colors overall by Lasky. The first section introduces the central narrative, as a crow and a squirrel teach an unnamed protagonist about nuclear weapons. These pages feature Lasky’s illustrations over street maps and satellite imagery, covering the history of nuclear weapons in Washington state. Rifas, who resides in Seattle, concentrates much of his attention on the Pacific Northwest and its nuclear industry and anti-nuclear movement. Because of this, Ground Zero Comics can, at times, feel geographically isolated. The Space Needle, the Columbia Center, and the University of Washington function to illustrate scale, but provide a narrow point of reference for non-Washingtonians (or, indeed, non-Americans).

In the second part, Clotfelter covers the science behind, and destructive consequences of, nuclear weapons. His loose art style is the most reminiscent of the 1970s comix tradition that Rifas emerged from, and his illustrations of burned, irradiated, and mangled bomb-victims carries a commensurate sense of horror. One illustration on page 9, blending his style with that of Barefoot Gen’s Keiji Nakazawa, is particularly effective. Here Lasky leans into vibrant greens and pinks for a psychedelic style that accentuates the uneasiness of Clotfelter’s art.

Rifas provides art for the third section of Ground Zero Comics. This, along with the final section illustrated by Froh, feature the most traditional form of illustrated comic strip, with fewer infographics and maps. In Froh’s section the protagonist’s grandfather tells her about his personal history of anti-nuclear activism. This comes across as the most personal to Rifas. I was left wondering how much of the grandfather’s account was autobiographical, with a call to action motivated by the knowledge that “if dying old anti-bomb activists are not replaced by young activists, the anti-bomb movement dies with them.” (30) Ground Zero Comics argues that demonstration and protest have been successful in the past and can be again: “Much of the credit for stopping the drift towards nuclear war belongs to the millions of ordinary people around the world who joined or supported movements to demand peace and nuclear disarmament.” (29)

The choice to utilize multiple artists can lead to a jarring and incongruous mixture of text and art. It’s most successful in the sections illustrated by Clotfelter and Rifas, where the fusion of cartoons, satellite imagery and google maps, enhance the text. Unfortunately, the text of the final section fits uncomfortably alongside Frohs’ art, which is missing the same data-led imagery of earlier sections. The visualizations of scientific and geographic data in earlier sections enhance the illustrations, and this final section suffers for their absence. Lasky’s coloring lacks the same depth here, as talking heads opine against flat colored background panels.

It should also be noted that not all of the graphs and charts included are successful. A graph showing the potential impact of nuclear war shows population growth since the year zero (17). While it adequately shows that a nuclear war would see a massive drop in global population, there is no way for this graph to demonstrate that while hundreds of millions might die in the war, the majority of the population loss would come in the following years (seemingly recognizing this the comic adds in the fact that the “number of people who would starve to death after two years: over five billion”). A shorter time span, showing only the world population today and deaths over the years after an atomic war would help to demonstrate this.

Ground Zero Comics is clearly designed to be used in a classroom setting, and some of these issues could be mitigated by discussion. This is, ultimately, where Ground Zero Comics shines. Throughout, Rifas provides activities for readers, from drawing “a picture, image, cartoon, illustration, or graphic that represents “nuclear weapons”” (7) to opportunities for readers to think about their own stance on whether the US should dismantle her atomic arsenal, the scale of American military spending, and the utility of protest against nuclear policy (21). Each section could be isolated and given to high school or university students (although the text seemingly assumes an older audience, as one activity includes calculating how much of the readers taxes go to nuclear weapons).

Perhaps the most telling evaluation of Ground Zero Comics then is not about the comic itself, but how it can be used. If the audience is unclear, and the materials relevance outside Washington is more limited, it does provide an obvious and replicable model for educators to adapt. Rifas’ infographics and activities provide excellent starting points for discussion or teaching, even if student don’t end up reading the entire comic.

To supplement this, Rifas and the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action also provide a substantial online resource pack, containing “a hundred pages of solid documentation, lesson plans, further thoughts, and fun facts,” available at https://www.gzcenter.org/comic_book_sources. This is ultimately best considered (in conjunction with the online resources) as an academic aid for anyone looking to teach on the history and morality of the bomb. In this respect, Ground Zero Comics is an invaluable introduction that comprehensively and thoughtfully discusses the arguments around nuclear weapons.

Book Review: Hurricane Nancy by Nancy Burton, edited by Alex Dueben

Reviewed by Cassia Hayward-Fitch

Nancy Burton. Hurricane Nancy. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2024. 112 pp. US$30 (Paperback). ISBN: 9781683969839. https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/hurricane-nancy

 This retrospective of Nancy Burton’s work, Hurricane Nancy – one of the artist’s pen names – is the first-ever collection of Burton’s work, and the latest in a line of Fantagraphics’ collections of underground comix by female artists, preceded by anthologies such as The Complete Wimmen's Comix (2016) and Tits & Clits 1972-1987 (2023). Like these two earlier publications, Hurricane Nancy attempts to make the work of a pioneering female comix creator available to a broader audience, helping to alter public perceptions of the “boys only” nature of the underground comix movement. The book is split into four sections and begins with an introduction that situates Burton as the first female artist to emerge from the broader underground comix movement. This is followed by a selection of Burton’s comix and artwork, divided into work created between 1965 and 1971, and her new artwork from 2010 to the present. Finally, the edition is rounded off with an all-new interview by editor Alex Dueben. Here, Burton discusses her involvement in protest movements, the impact of her global travels and music on her art, her artistic background, and the factors that led her to cease creating art in 1971 and then to resume in 2010.

The presentation of Burton’s early work has an archival tone; the comix are mounted on a black background, with many of the pages featuring scans of the original artwork; sepia-toned and complete with stains, rips, marginalia notes, correction fluid marks, and faint blue tracing lines. This creates an intimate reading experience, giving the reader the impression that they are being made privy to Burton’s private collection. The selection of work from 1965 to 1971 begins with “Gentle’s Tripout,” a serial comic strip about a group of friends who go on a journey to find the “Wicked Wandering Hag” in the hope of lifting the curse that has rendered one of their number, Vera, silent. After the comic abruptly ends with an incomplete, half-finished strip, it is followed by a selection of artwork that resembles the psychedelic poster art of the time. Similarly, Burton’s artwork from 2010 to the present, which features gigantic figures who peer through house windows, larger-than-life cat heads, lizards, and birds, bears similarities to the Alice in Wonderland-esque poster art of the 1960s. Her style also resembles artists such as Aubrey Beardsley in that, where most psychedelic posters utilized brilliant color, Burton’s artwork, like Beardsley’s before her, is drawn in black ink on white backgrounds. Across both sections, the artwork is unaccompanied by captions, dates (except when this is indicated in the artwork itself), or contextual information. This alleviates the feeling that a critic is breathing down the reader’s neck, dictating the “correct” way in which the art should be interpreted. It is only in the interview that concludes this collection that Burton herself situates her work within the broader context of her life and artistic influences, which, alongside the underground press movement and poster art, she lists as art nouveau, abstract expressionism, and formline art.

Overall, this collection presents a decade-spanning overview of an artist whose career has one foot in underground comix and the other in poster art but who has yet to gain significant recognition within either sphere. Burton's entire career is contextualized through the inclusion of the introduction and interview, and the collection demonstrates the fluid divide between underground comix and other contemporary artistic movements, making it a valuable addition for scholars wishing to broaden discussions of female underground artists and the nature of the underground comix movement itself.