Book Review: Tell Me a Story Where The Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund by Caitlin McGurk.

reviewed by Alex Dueben

Caitlin McGurk. Tell Me a Story Where The Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund. Seattle:  Fantagraphics, 2024. ISBN-13: 9798875000041. $45. https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/tell-me-a-story-where-the-bad-girl-wins-the-life-and-art-of-barbara-shermund

Caitlin McGurk’s book about the late cartoonist Barbara Shermund makes plain its goal in the introduction: "we can’t claim that Barbara Shermund was the first to do anything, the last to do anything, or the best to do anything…But her work was good, and it was strong, and there was once a time when it was everywhere.” Throughout the book, the reader can see McGurk thinking aloud in the text, taking care to credit others while showing her work, but the introduction makes clear one of the impulses at the heart of a lot of comics studies: the work is interesting, and it compelled the author to learn more about the artist who made it.

Shermund worked in advertising and drew movie posters, but she was best known in her lifetime as a gag / panel magazine cartoonist and illustrator. One of the first three women inducted into the National Cartoonists Society, Shermund contributed to both The New Yorker and Esquire magazines for decades, in addition to her 1944-57 syndicated comic strip Shermund’s Sallies at King Features. The book is an oversized hardcover and McGurk and the book’s designers use the large size to present Shermund’s artwork in a variety of ways. From full page spreads, to pages showing four illustrations, to pages where the images are fitted in between the text, this might be considered the default option as far as presenting comic art in a book, but it seems an especially good choice considering that much of Shermund’s work originally appeared in magazines. Most of the images are presented in a larger size than they might have originally appeared, but it provides a sense of how people would have read them at the time, as well as how Shermund no doubt thought they would be seen.

What stands out most to me is how much McGurk was able to write about Shermund, given how little information there is about the cartoonist. An intensely private person, Shermund left little behind about the details of her life. This fact meant that McGurk had less to write about, but it also meant that she leaned into that gap and focused on Shermund’s artwork. Other times, like when detailing the generally shameful way that women were treated by the National Cartoonist Society, McGurk relies mostly on the writings and recollections of other people involved to give an accounting of what happened, the reader left to understand what being a professional female cartoonist meant at the time.

One reason that there is so few secondary sources about Shermund is that she was ignored or dismissed by decades of scholarship about these two prominent magazines, with her name misspelled and sometimes not even mentioned in surveys of the slick magazines’ cartoonists despite the hundreds of pieces she drew for Esquire with more than a thousand for The New Yorker. It is only in recent years that comics historians – primarily women – such as Liza Donnelly recognized and celebrated Shermund, and McGurk, who is the Curator of Comics and Cartoon Art at The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, and Associate Professor at Ohio State University, is careful to credit them.

This generosity towards previous scholarship makes clear McGurk’s perspective on comics, as one would hopefully expect from a comics librarian at one of the biggest collections in the United States. Just as she sees Shermund as an artist in conversation with others, McGurk sees her own scholarship in conversation with a network of people with shared and overlapping interests and tastes. That includes the responsibility scholars have in acknowledging these debts, both in our own works and those we write about.

The book’s title paraphrases the caption in one of Shermund’s most famous cartoons, but it also feels like a challenge and a description of what McGurk wanted to do in this book. To remind the world there once was a woman who became an artist, and though she was never rich, spent decades doing what she loved and helped to define an iconic American magazine. She lived a life of her choosing and spent years in a house on the shore where she fished and swam in the ocean. And decades later, upon her return to public awareness, people still read and love her comics.

The book is a great look at an artist. It is a comprehensive look at Shermund’s life as a commercial cartoonist and illustrator that is also an art book with scholarly integrity. More than that, it gestures at a way forward in comics studies, noting that there are still many cartoonists who have been ignored, forgotten and erased and that whatever canon exists should remain in flux for a reason and there is much work left to do. McGurk’s rediscovery of Shermund’s work and her life conveys a feeling of freedom and excitement about what is possible in comics studies, and the book celebrates that feeling and why Shermund’s work can remain relevant and visceral.

 Alex Dueben is a writer and historian who has written over 1,000 articles about comics and books, poetry and art for The Believer, Vulture, The Millions, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other publications. Formerly a writer at Comic Book Resources, he has been a regular contributor to The Comics Journal and other leading comics publications for years, and is the writer and editor of the artist monograph Hurricane Nancy.

 

Interview with Holler Author, and Climate Justice Activist, Denali Sai Nalamalapu

 Interviewed by Cassy Lee

 Denali Sai Nalamalapu . Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance, Timber Press, 2025. ISBN: 9781643265230, $21.99. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/denali-sai-nalamalapu/holler/9781643265230/?lens=timber-press

 Denali Sai Nalamalapu is a climate activism organizer from Southern Maine and Southern India. Denali lives in Southwest Virginia. They have written for Truthout, Prism, and Mergoat Magazine, and their climate activism has been covered in Shondaland, Vogue India, Self, The Independent, and elsewhere. They studied English Literature at Bates College and completed a Fulbright grant in Malaysia. You can find them at @DenaliSai on Instagram.

 Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance is their first book. In this powerful work of graphic nonfiction, Denali tells their own story of getting involved in climate activism and serves as a guide introducing readers to six ordinary people- a teacher, a single mother, a nurse, an organizer, a photographer, and a seed keeper - who became resisters of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a project that spans approximately 300 miles from northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia

The following video conference interview with Nalamalapu took place on May 12, 2025 and has been edited for clarity.

Cassy Lee: The title has such a clever double meaning— “holler” as in a rural Appalachian valley, and “holler” as in to get loud. I grew up in a rural area of California where climate activism was often seen as “treehugger” stuff. How did you find the courage to start “hollering?” Has this work made you feel more like an outsider in your hometown—or brought you closer to your community?

Denali Sai Nalamalapu: For me, coming from India to the U.S., I think I was kind of preprogrammed to hold nuances like what it means to be an environmental protector in a world and a country that often doesn't like activists, at least in a generalized form. And part of that's just because I am always, to some degree, an outsider either in the U.S. or in India, so I'm very used to things that I do not culminating in a sense of fitting in. Also, I am innately someone that feels injustice very deeply. So on top of living in the dynamic of always feeling like an outsider to some degree, I also regularly feel compelled to investigate and speak about injustice in a way that is not always welcomed by normalcy and certain communities and people who for different reasons would like to maintain the status quo. I think those two attributes about me as a person helped prepare me for the realities of being a climate activist, which is this interesting mix of caring about people and place even when people might not be excited about having you there. And I think as a queer and activist of color, there are even more nuanced layers [in me] than your average climate activist.

Generally, activists get portrayed as looking a particular way. But I was interested in telling this story in particular because the activists don't look a specific way. And I feel a sense of belonging in that reality, which is that, for example, one of the characters has lived on family land for seven generations from when her white ancestors settled on this land. And one of the individuals in the book is from the Monacan tribe who are indigenous to this land, and she came later in her life. She grew up in Baltimore and then came back to Appalachia where her ancestors once lived and the Monocan tribe currently is. It's been important to me to tell those nuanced stories because I think climate activists get sidelined in part because there's an unwillingness to really understand how diverse the movement is.

p. 22

CL: Why did you choose comics as your storytelling format? Your clean, consistent style—line drawings, limited palette, expressive characters—conveys so much with apparent simplicity. How did you develop this style?

DSN: When I was a child, my mom gave me a secondhand cartooning how-to book. I was really captivated by this way of interpreting people's faces in many different shapes and exaggerating different parts of them and making the landscape around them in some way part of the cartoon as well. And then as I grew older, I got more into traditional forms of writing and art that are respected more by people like my teachers or members of my family. For example, I got into things like portraiture and ceramics and printmaking, which tend to be more highly respected than comics. I think I was figuring out what my voice was and what felt authentic to me and what other people responded to. I was also really into writing and ended up studying English literature in college. Then when I was thinking about how the Mountain Valley Pipeline site had been communicated previously and what we hadn't done to communicate the struggle against this pipeline, comics and graphic novels came to mind. And I realized that I could merge my love for illustration and my skills in writing into the comics and graphic novel form.

I started consuming and creating more comics and, in reflection, I think of it as a full circle moment where I started with cartooning and learning how to write in my young childhood, and then diverged for thirty years, and then now came back to the form and feel really connected to it as a tool of climate communications. So often the narrative around climate change and the science of climate change is conveyed in black and white text. I think that leaves a lot of people out of the movement and unable to access the stories, but a form like comics where you can access information through the words, you can access information through the pictures, you can access emotions through the pictures. There are just so many different ways of absorbing different parts of the story for people of all ages and all levels of busyness, and that feels really important to me.

CL: I appreciated how the book begins with your personal connection to the land, then expands to feature stories of six everyday people who may not have considered themselves activists, but who took action against the Mountain Valley Pipeline in different ways. Was your goal always to have a balance between an element of both graphic memoir and comics journalism centered on a diversity of voices, or did that approach evolve as you got deeper into the project?

p. 156

DSN: When I started the project, I initially just wanted to profile six different activists, and their work and their stories. But as I worked with mentors and my editor and my agent on making my manuscript more accessible and sharpening it as one does during the editing process, we realized collectively that a guide with whom someone could walk through the stories and initially get to know and then learn along with could help the reader take in the nuances and the complexity and the, depth of each individual story. I think because of being socialized as female and especially being an Indian daughter, I was taught to be in the background and be more behind the curtain and uplift others. So it didn't come intuitively to put myself in the story.

p. 55

I am glad I did because I think a lot of environmental narratives get told with the person behind the curtain as sort of an unnamed omniscient narrator. But I think it's important for us to put ourselves into these stories sometimes because we are just as human and complex and flawed and nuanced as the people we're writing about. And so for the reader to get to see that, I think is an important marker of transparency and speaks to the reality that nothing is apolitical. There is a reason why I told this story, and there's a reason why I live in and am connected to Appalachia. And I wanted to share that with readers so that we could carry on together.

CL: Spoiler alert: despite years of resistance, the MVP began pumping gas in June 2024—even after pipeline ruptures during testing. A year later, what has the impact been on the community? Do some locals see benefits? What’s happening with the proposed extension to North Carolina—are protests ongoing?

DSN: I live in Southwest Virginia in one of the communities that's right next to the pipeline, and it has always been true that the pipeline was a project created to make a company money. It was never a project created because there was an existing need.

Scientists have long been certain that we don't need new fossil fuel projects. And particularly, the Southeast of the U.S. does not need more gas pipelines. Sometimes I think of the number of pipelines we have in the U.S. as similar to the number of highways we have. Like, if you look at a map of the pipelines in the U.S., it makes you dizzy. And so we never needed another one.

It's just that some CEOs decided that they wanted to take advantage of the Appalachian fracking boom in the twenty-tens and pumped out as many project proposals as they could to see what stuck and what didn't. So I would say that still stands today. The gas isn't needed in our communities. What we actually need are more renewable projects that can bring us into the future rather than drag us into climate demise. And then in terms of the Mountain Valley Pipeline Southgate Extension, the MVP and many other fossil fuel companies are continuing to be prolific in how many new fossil fuel projects they're proposing, including the MVP’s proposing an extension into North Carolina called the Southgate Extension.

p. 125

So right now, that project is trying to get regulatory approval to go into North Carolina and resistance continues, especially with indigenous led groups on the ground in North Carolina. But  next to that extension, there are dozens of other fossil fuel projects that are being proposed in Virginia and North Carolina. Resistance to those projects continues, as well as advocacy in the courts, because often the fossil fuel industry will target climate activists with really serious criminal and civil charges. Many activists in the Mountain Valley Pipeline movement were targeted with those charges and are still defending themselves in court. So that fight also continues in this misuse of the courts for this dying industry's aims, and is something that, for example, Enbridge, a big fossil fuel company, used as a tactic in the North Midwest of the United States to hurt Greenpeace, one of our biggest environmental groups in the country. The current federal administration is only stoking more fears that climate activists will be targeted in ways like they were with the MVP.

CL: There’s a poignant scene in which after the pipeline gets pushed through, you enter a period of depression. How do you keep hope alive? Are you focusing on new causes now? Any you’d like to highlight for our readers?

DSN: I think that an important part of climate activism is to redefine winning as not just 100% sunny circumstances, but rather as a reality that holds more realistic complexity. For example, winning the climate fight doesn't necessarily look like a pristine utopia, and losing the climate fight doesn't necessarily look like complete demise, but rather there's a complete gray area spectrum of possibility in between the two. It's similar with the Mountain Valley Pipeline fight. Like, some people, especially fossil fuel proponents, will say climate activists lost that fight. But there is a case to be made that ten years of community-led struggle and ten years of this pipeline getting tied up in the courts and in regulatory agencies because of its own ineptitude is a community win. I mean, so many community members, including the ones profiled in this book, built lifelong alliances and friendships and relationships from the pipeline fight. And I think that's an important part of being human is to build community with each other. So my hope is that we can redefine winning in a more nuanced way. Yes, we can always have long-term strategy and it's important to have long-term goals, but I think it's also really important to honor the work we do and did every day, and that's important to me when I think about the Mountain Valley Pipeline site. Yes, this one pipeline did go forward. But, also, the fossil fuel industry took note of how much resistance happened on the ground and especially in a marginalized and over-exploited region like Appalachia. They took note of the reality - that these people that they thought they could prey upon and would just be silent about it - weren't silent. So that's where I get my hope. I also think that I feel most authentically connected to the communities and planet when I'm fighting for them. The surface level, “did we win?” sort of mentality feels less truthful. Even if one wins against one pipeline site, there are so many other fossil fuel projects that are being proposed in so many other communities enduring disproportionate burdens of environmental injustice, that we have to support and be in community with each other. So the reality is a lot more complicated than did one fight culminate in the end of a project or not.

Two things are making me feel very grounded right now. One is supporting local climate leadership on the city and state level. In a time where the federal administration is rolling back environmental protections and attacking states and local governments for their climate action, it's a really important and beautiful thing to lean into strengthening our state and local governments. Our localities along with our communities are on the front line of the climate crisis, especially in places like Louisiana and Florida and California, but also in places like Western North Carolina and Appalachia and other parts that aren't coastal. And so our localities are not only leading on climate action, but they aren't going to stop anytime soon even though the federal government is attacking their climate action. So what feels really helpful to me is both supporting local climate candidates in Southwest Virginia, but also there are so many mayors that are running on climate platforms that are really exciting in terms of municipal executive leadership and from there on up including Congress in Washington DC.

p. 113

The other thing giving me hope right now is mutual aid networks because I do think getting involved in local networks is not only an important thing to do in the present, but is also a radical reimagining of our future and a practical one in terms of making connections. You need to know who has a hammer in your neighborhood and who knows how to grow the best tomatoes. Those are very practical things that will be helpful. I mean, we just saw with bird flu what it was like to have eggs that cost $9 a dozen. I think it's important that we know who is resourced locally to weather storms that we've weathered before and that are increasingly impending, especially with corrupt administrations that only support billionaires. So mutual aid, both on the day-to-day level and broader, feels important to me. With both of those things, most people have a local government, and most people have at least a regional mutual aid network. So these feel, to me, like tangible things that we can do alongside any broader climate action that I think is still important. It's still important to gather in large numbers and show each other how many of us there are and other strategies that maybe seemed more like the go-to in hopeful times.

CL: Do you see yourself primarily as a climate activist or as a cartoonist/author/artist? You said this book was the hardest thing you’ve done. Do you see yourself doing more comics like this? What’s next for you?

DSN: I definitely think my organizing and my creative work are important together. They sort of feed each other. I don't think I see myself in the near future stopping either because my organizing work feels very practical. It feels like I can see the difference that I'm making in my relationships with people. I focus on communication, the media and social media. And my creative work feels like more of the slow deep work. I worked on Holler for three years, which is a lot longer than any specific organizing project, beyond stopping the Mount Valley Pipeline, which was a very big project. The creative work is longer than the day-to-day projects, and it's more playful and colorful, and it's the stuff that feels like it's what I would be doing if the world was a better place. So I guess they kind of balance each other out. The organizing work fills a part of me that feels like I can't just sit and watch the world burn. And the creative work is partially that, but it's also really fun, so it gives me energy to do the organizing.

I find it really helpful to have multiple projects moving at once because otherwise, I put too much pressure on myself for one project. I don't think it's actually reasonable to be so worked up about one thing that I’m doing, so I like having multiple projects. And these days, what I'm thinking about is middle grade and young adult fiction and what it could be like to tell diverse stories of environmental resistance for and from the perspective of young people. In a different way, I don't think we can look to any one source right now to tell our story of climate hope. So what does it look like for us to write that story into existence? Those are the two general projects I'm working on right now.

CL: Who did you imagine your audience to be while writing? What do you hope readers take away from the book?

DSN: I remember the first reader that came to mind is the grandchild of a nurse who reads the story of Karolyn Givens and feels connected to her story because their grandmother was a nurse and then follows the book from there. I imagined just random people picking up the book and seeing that a college student is in the book and feeling a connection because they're a college student. I imagined people who are ordinary people who know about climate change and environmental destruction but maybe don't feel like they have the skills to do anything about it – they don't feel like their background is in forestry or sustainability or biology and feel sort of outside the movement. My hope is that they'll pick up the book and feel a connection to these stories and then start thinking about what's going on, where they are, and how they want to plug in with the skills that they have.

p. 32

Cassy Lee is a librarian and a comics artist, currently finishing up her MFA in Comics at California College of the Arts to bring these passions together. She is working on a graphic novel memoir about healing from the intergenerational trauma she experienced in her own rural childhood. You can see her work at cassylee.com.

All artwork is from Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance © Copyright 2025 by Denali Sai Nalamalapu. Published by Timber Press, Portland, OR. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.

Graphic Novel Review: Trouble Is My Business, by Arvind Ethan David, Ilias Kyriazis, and Cris Peter

 review by Charles Henebry, Boston University.

Arvind Ethan David, Ilias Kyriazis, and Cris Peter. Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business. New York: Pantheon Books, 2025. 116 pp. US $29. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/722904/raymond-chandlers-trouble-is-my-business-by-raymond-chandler-and-arvind-ethan-david/

It’s good. Really good. I approached this comic book adaptation with a twinge of apprehension: Chandler’s Philip Marlowe stories have been adapted before, and not always to good effect, but the creative team on this handsomely-printed hardcover volume gets almost everything right.

Let’s start with Chandler’s writerly voice, equal parts style and cynicism: Arvind David’s script preserves the story’s best lines unchanged, except for revisions to update references like now-forgotten celebrity Fred Allen, who becomes Humphrey Bogart (p. 5). The staccato back and forth of Chandler’s dialogue is highlighted in splash pages like the one pictured below (p. 11), where word balloons stylishly interweave with strands of cigarette and cigar smoke. Deadpan line deliveries are enhanced by Ilias Kyriazis’ expressive cartooning.

 

 The plot is no less propulsive than the original. Marlowe is cold-cocked, held at gunpoint, shot at, and gut-punched. He escapes being murdered only by crashing his car into a wall. Chandler had a way of forcing the pace by having the bad guys show up and say something revealing before pummeling the detective unconscious. David and Kyriazis preserve and even intensify this pacing by making it more cinematic: the innovation of the car wreck being an excellent example.

While faithful to the tone and pacing of the original, the comic marks a vital departure in perspective. In Chandler’s fiction, there was always something wonderfully claustrophobic about Marlowe’s first-person narration: we see only what he sees, feel only what he feels, value only what he values. But David’s script periodically shoulders Marlowe aside to show the world from someone else’s point of view. And this choice has political resonance, because the characters so elevated happen to be Harriet Huntress, a suspected gold-digger, and George, a Dartmouth-educated African-American chauffeur. As the book’s cover suggests, this is no less their story than Marlowe’s, and trouble is their business, too.

 The comic owes a debt to the tropes of film noir: venetian blinds, smoke-filled rooms, expressionistic angles and moody lighting abound in these pages. But it is not a mere derivative storyboard. Kyriazis’ layouts make brilliant use of the flexibility of the comic-book page: for example, using a dead body as outline for panels in which characters debate what to do in the wake of that killing (p. 40). The character designs are excellent, with each given memorable and expressive features. Chris Peter’s colors provide subtle emotional cues, reinforcing the differing perspectives of the various narrators: Marlowe’s panels are largely greyscale, George gets moody reds, and Harriet greens and yellows. There are a few slips where the artwork doesn’t match the script, as for example a gun described as a .22 gets labelled in the illustration as a .45 (p. 82). But overall, the visual storytelling is dynamic and immersive, making this adaptation a delight for any fan of hardboiled detective fiction or film noir.

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.

The Forum for Humor & the Law (ForHum) and CGFoE just launched the largest survey ever conducted on political cartoonists’ online experiences.

from the Columbia Global Freedom of Expression newsletter

We have more exciting news. The Forum for Humor & the Law (ForHum) and CGFoE just launched the largest survey ever conducted on political cartoonists' online experiences. Are you a political cartoonist? ForHum and CGFoE welcome your input. Do you know a political cartoonist? Please spread the word. 

100% anonymous and secure, the survey – available in English, Spanish, French, and Arabic – consists of generic, close-ended questions that do not require detailed descriptions. The results will form the basis of an upcoming report by Cartooning for Peace, Cartoonists Rights, and their partners on the prevalence of issues such as censorship, abuse, and security threats faced by political cartoonists globally. The report will serve as a credible advocacy tool, offering evidence-based recommendations to social media platforms, lawmakers, and other stakeholders. 

IJOCA vol. 1-1 (1999) and Index (vols 1-25 available via print on demand

The IJOCA team is pleased to announce that the long out-of-print 1-1 is available again. This was made from scans so the quality is slightly below that of current issues, but it's the same size and will complement your set. Lulu will print and ship the issue to you directly. 

Table of contents: 1. Editor's Note: Finally, an International Journal for Comic Art 2. Comics Criticism in the United States; A Brief Historical Survey 3. A Framework for Studying Comic Art 4. Comic Art in Scholarly Writing: A Citation Guide 5. The Marumaru Chinbun and the Origins of the Japanese Political Cartoon 6. Proving "Silas" an Artist: Winsor McCay's Formal Experiments in Comics and Animation 7. William Hogarth: Printing Techniques and Comics 8. Breaking Taboos: Sexuality in the Work of Will Eisner and the Early Wordless Novels 9. Comics in the Development of Africa 10. Featuring Stories by the World's Greatest Authors: Classics Illustrated and the "Middlebrow Problem" in the Postwar Era 11. Recovering Sensuality in Comic Theory 12. The Horrors of Cartooning in Slim's Algeria 13. Mr. Punch, Dangerous Savior Children's Comics in Brazil: From Chiquinho to Monica, A Difficult Journey 14. Brazilian Adult Comics: The Age of Market Postmodern Spatiality and the Narrative Structure of Comics

https://www.lulu.com/shop/john-a-lent/the-international-journal-of-comic-art-vol-1-no-1-springsummer-1999/paperback/product-yv5r6wj.html

We published an index to the first 25 volumes in 25-2. This is now available as a standalone volume of ~260 pages at https://www.lulu.com/shop/john-a-lent/international-journal-of-comic-art-author-country-and-genre-index-volumes-1-25-1999-2023/paperback/product-rmz4j5m.html 

All issues are also available electronically, directly from us. Details are on IJOCA's blog under subscription information.

Montgomery County art teacher publishes 8th children's book on space adventures [Jonathan Roth]

April 2, 2025 

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/montgomery-county-art-teacher-publishes-8th-childrens-book-on-space-adventures/3881870/

While Jonathan Roth's first passion is art, he incorporates another passion into his children's books: space. The Montgomery County art teacher explains how some of his children's books came to be. 

(this was meant to be posted to the ComicsDC blog, but since it has readers, I will leave it here as well)

Upcoming California Rare Book School course "The Social and Material Lives of Comic Art,"

Prof. Charles Hatfield's California Rare Book School course, "The Social and Material Lives of Comic Art," is to be held at UCLA from July 28 through August 1 (the week after the San Diego Comic-Con).

https://www.calrbs.org/the-social-and-material-lives-of-comic-art-or-how-comics-get-around-2025/

International Journal of Comic Art Index 1999-2023 now available as free ebook

International Journal of Comic Art Author, Country, and Genre Index Volumes 1-25 (1999-2023)

by Grace Livingston Wright Hulme, Jae-Woong Kwon, John A. Lent, and Xu Ying

Drexel Hill, PA: International Journal of Comic Art, 2025

online at https://archive.org/details/ijoca-index-1-25-2023

This index includes all articles published in International Journal of Comic Art from Vol. 1 (1999) through Vol. 25 (2023).

This index is a culmination of previous indices created after five and ten years. Jae-Woong Kwon and John A. Lent were responsible for the five-year index. Xu Ying joined them on the ten-year index. Grace Hulme incorporated them into this twenty-five-year compilation that she updated from Vol. 10 through Vol. 25. She received help from Denise Gray, John A. Lent, and Mike Rhode.

originally published in International Journal of Comic Art 25:2, Fall/ Winter 2023, and slightly corrected and updated from that version

A print on demand version is in production for libraries and those who prefer paper.

IJOCA seeks David Kunzle memorial articles

submit material directly to John please.

from:

John A. Lent <john.lent@temple.edu>

David Kunzle Memorial

 

As many of you know, prominent comics scholar, David Kunzle, died January 1, 2024. In my view, there has not been any of us in comics studies who stood on David's level as a pioneer in the field.

With support of his widow, Marjoyrie Kunzle, I will devote a considerable amount of space in the International Journal of Comic Art, Vol. 27, No. 1, as a memorial to David.

I call upon the comics studies community to contribute essays about Prof. Kunzle, their interactions with him, how they benefited from his work, and/or more generally, what makes an important scholar, using David as a model.

The deadline is June 1, 2025. There will not be any specific limitations on number of words. If appropriate, include photographs or other illustrations.

Graphic Novel Review: Wicked: The Graphic Novel Part I, by Scott Hampton

reviewed by Julian Lawrence

Wicked: The Graphic Novel Part I. Gregory Maguire, adapted and illustrated by Scott Hampton. New York: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2025. https://www.harpercollins.com/products/wicked-the-graphic-novel-part-i-gregory-maguirescott-hampton

 The publication of Eisner-winning veteran Scott Hampton’s wonderfully illustrated adaptation transports the transmedial Wicked phenomenon into comics. The strength of this property lies in the range of themes that underlie its overarching tale of transformation. Elphaba’s character transformation in Wicked portrays her as going “from being a misunderstood outcast to being a friend, a love interest, and a social movement activist” (Schrader, 2011: 49). Furthermore, “Elphaba's peers initially ostracize her for her physical difference, but we soon see that her real difference is political” (Wolf, 2008: 9).

 Wicked has impacted a variety of mediums including literature, theatre, film, and now comics. I discovered Wicked when I attended a live performance of the show in the summer of 2024, over twenty years after the Tony Award-winning musical premiered, and almost 30 years since the novel’s publication in 1995. I have not read author Gregory Maguire’s novel, but now that I have read the graphic novel, I have added the book to my 2025 summer reading list.

 Themes relevant to LGBTQ+, race, and disability are clearly presented in the stage, film and comic book adaptations of Wicked, yet the theme of speciesism jumped out at me the first time I saw the musical performed. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes speciesism as “the view that only humans should be morally considered” (Gruen and Monsó, 2024). The group of human animals with whom I attended the performance understood the show’s themes of identity and transformation, but they all overlooked the significance of speciesism in Wicked. This appears to be the case for most audiences with whom I discuss the topic; people downplay or ignore the catalyst that leads to Elphaba’s transformation, namely her advocacy for animals. Like the musical, animal oppression is important to the film, and this theme is explored in more detail in Hampton’s adaptation. Thus, in this review of the graphic novel, I will address the importance of Elphaba’s transformation into a vegan advocate for the animals, which ultimately leads to her vilification by Oz society.

 Like Elphaba, I have been an advocate for the animals since January 2000 and over the decades I have noticed a palpable anti-vegan bias in society that has compelled “scholars and legal bodies to recognise anti-veganism as a prejudice, resulting in the protection of ‘ethical veganism’ under the UK Equality Act 2010. Some evidence, reported by The Times, even suggests that vegan-related hate crimes may be on the rise in the UK” (Gregson, Piazza, and Boyd, 2022: 2). As such, the broad lack of media and critical focus on the vegan theme in Wicked is not surprising to me. For instance, it has been suggested that “the Animals stand in for the racialized Other, with strong associations with Jewishness in the musical” (Wolf, 2008: 10). However, a vegan reading of Wicked (musical/film/comic) aligns with critiques of unsustainable and inhumane practices that slaughter billions of land animals annually in factory farms. It can be said that Wicked is commenting on our contemporary animal holocaust rather than the Holocaust.

 Through a vegan lens, Wicked does not focus on racism or sexual orientation, but speciesism. As a woman, Elphaba brings an additional feminist layer because “both sexism and speciesism are not only positively correlated but are also underpinned by group-dominance motives, consistent with ecofeminist theorizing highlighting the role of patriarchal values of domination underlying attitudes towards both women and animals” (Salmen and Dhont, 2023: 5). Elphaba is vilified and hunted down by Oz society not because of her skin colour or the romantic relationship she has with Glinda; rather, Elphaba is perceived as “wicked” by Ozians because she is a woman fighting the Wizard’s patriarchal oppression of animals. Visually, Hampton creatively demonstrates the connection between speciesism and sexism on two pages: the large panel on page 59 portrays a white cockatoo in a cage (fig.1), and on the last panel of the next page, the male Munchkin Boq gazes lustily at two women in their white undergarments through a window whose frames simulate the bars of a bird cage (fig. 2).

fig. 1

fig. 2

 The graphic novel adaptation includes the animal rights theme and utilizes it as the motivation that transforms Elphaba into the story’s Wicked heroine: she wants to be a voice for the increasingly silenced and voiceless animals. The wise goat, Dr. Dillamond, becomes her mentor as they work together to fight legislated animal oppression. On page 76, Elphaba says to Boq: “I admire the goat intensely. But the real interest of it to me is the political slant. How can the Wizard publish those bans on Animal mobility if Doctor Dillamond can prove, scientifically, that there isn't any inherent difference between humans and Animals?” (Maguire and Hampton, 2025: 90). As such, Elphaba “notes the unjust treatment of Animals, the questionable conduct of the Wizard, and the ways in which greater equality might be achieved” (Kruse and Prettyman, 2008). Most of us acknowledge equality as it relates to diversity, equity, and inclusion for humans. However, the theme of non-human animal equity lies at the foundation of Wicked’s narrative as Elphaba “flies on a broom at night in order to free captive Animals” (Schrader, 2011: 57). Fighting animal abuse is a noble cause, but the authorities in Oz vilify Elphaba for defying the Wizard’s legislated oppression of non-human animals.

fig. 3

 Hampton’s effective portrayal of the Wizard as a deformed, monstrous animal evokes the spirit of the late comic book horror artist Bernie Wrightson’s fearsome creatures of yore. In her meeting with the Wizard (fig. 3), Elphaba implores him to “reverse your recent judgements on the rights of animals…The hardship on the Animals is more than can be borne” (Maguire and Hampton, 2025: 126-127). Her pleading falls on deaf ears, and the meeting is fruitless; thus, Elphaba’s resistance and activism is born. Parallels between humans and non-human animals are affirmed later in the comic when Fiyero walks into the bedroom while Elphaba sleeps: “a smell of perfume still in the air, and the resiny, animal smell…” (143).

fig. 4

 The graphic novel is indeed beautifully illustrated, and Hampton is a master of quality comic art. His depiction of Dr Dillamond’s violent murder is respectfully illustrated, with the hint of a glazed-over goat eye peering out from underneath the shroud that covers his unfortunate corpse (fig 4). The caption above this sad illustration explains that “his throat was still knotted with congealed ropes of black blood, where it had been slit as thoroughly as if he had wandered into an abattoir” (90).

 I note, however, that despite the careful detail in the art, some of the text renders could be improved. For instance, captions are sometimes casually applied, unfortunately obscuring interesting portions of the art (fig. 5).

fig. 5

fig. 6

 In another couple of instances, speech bubble fonts randomly change (fig. 6). These are typographical and editorial issues that can be rectified in future printings; they do not impact the detailed watercolour art overall. It is, nonetheless, a very wordy comic, with lots of telling rather than showing. However, moments where Hampton shows, rather than tells, effectively and wordlessly capture tone and mood. Pages 146-47 present a particularly touching sequence that clarifies the impacts of the Wizard’s laws on the oppressed animals (fig. 7).

fig. 7

 The graphic novel opens with a Leo Tolstoy quote: “In historical events great men – so-called – are but the labels that serve to give a name to an event, and like labels, they have the last possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.” In contextualizing that quote with Wicked: The Graphic Novel, it can be said that greatness is achieved when individuals permit the moral progress of history to guide their actions. Elphaba’s advocacy for the animals presents a critical and ethical step forward for civilization, and that is Wicked’s underlying message.

 Tolstoy was a strict vegetarian, which inspired him to ask: “Who will deny that it is repugnant and harrowing to a man's feelings to torture or kill, not only a man, but also even a dog, a hen, or a calf? I have known men, living by agricultural labor, who have ceased entirely to eat meat only because they had to kill their own cattle” (Tolstoy, 1886: 16). Consider that quote before you bite into another’s flesh while eating a sandwich or a burger, because Dr Dillamond’s hypothesis is correct: there are no relevant scientific, biological, or theoretical differences between humans and non-human animals. We all want to defy gravity, including Elphaba flying on her broom, lambs gamboling in the fields, dogs running in a park, and caped children leaping from swings.

 References

Gregson, Rebecca, Jared Piazza and Ryan Boyd. 2022. ‘“Against the cult of veganism”: Unpacking the social psychology and ideology of anti-vegans’, Appetite, 178, pp. 106143–106143. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2022.106143.

 Gruen, Lori and Susana Monsó, "The Moral Status of Animals." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Fall 2024 Edition. Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.). Available at <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2024/entries/moral-animal/>. Accessed February 22, 2025.

 Kruse, Sharon and Sandra Spickard Prettyman. 2008. “Women, leadership, and power revisiting the Wicked Witch of the West.” Gender and education, 20(5), pp. 451–464. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09540250701805797. Accessed February 22, 2025.

 Salmen, Alina and Kristof Dhont. 2023. “Animalizing women and feminizing (vegan) men: The psychological intersections of sexism, speciesism, meat, and masculinity.” Social and personality psychology compass, 17(2). Available at https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12717. Accessed February 22, 2025.

 Schrader, Valerie Lynn. (2011) “Witch or Reformer?: Character Transformations Through the Use of Humor in the Musical Wicked.” Studies in American humor, 23(23), pp. 49–65. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/42573612. Accessed February 22, 2025.

 Tolstoy, Leo. 1886. What I Believe. New York: William S. Gottsberger.

 Wolf, Stacy. (2008) “‘Defying Gravity’: Queer Conventions in the Musical “Wicked.’” Theatre journal (Washington, D.C.), 60(1), pp. 1–21. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2008.0075. Accessed February 22, 2025.

 

Julian Lawrence is a senior lecturer in comics and graphic novels at Teesside University, specializing in storytelling, graphic memoir, and comics pedagogy. As a cartoonist, researcher, and teacher, his work bridges creative practice and academic research, exploring comics as a medium for education, reflection, and social change. http://www.julianlawrence.net/

A version of this review will appear in print in IJOCA 27:1