Graphic novel recommendation: What Will Be, Will Be by Lê Phan

A recommendation by Quynh Than, Association of Asian Comics Critics Asia (ACCA)

Phan, Lê. What will be, will be. Ho Chi Minh City,  Vietnam: Du But Books, 2025.

Quynh Than is the co-founder and editor of Du But Books in Ho Chi Minh City and the publisher of this book.

 What will be, will be is a graphic memoir by Vietnamese comic artist Lê Phan. At 176 pages, divided into eight chapters, the book follows his journey from a child first discovering what it means to be an artist, to an adult navigating the uncertainties, disappointments, and hard-won lessons of a creative life. Each chapter is inspired by a well-known song and marks a different emotional stage in his path toward becoming a professional comic artist.

 For readers unfamiliar with Lê Phan, he is one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Vietnamese comics. In a local comics scene often shaped by manga-influenced aesthetics, he has long pursued a different visual and narrative path. That difference may have placed him somewhat outside the mainstream at times, but it has also allowed him to build a loyal readership entirely on his own terms. What makes his body of work especially compelling is his refusal to stay still. From mystery and dystopian storytelling to travel writing, childhood memory, and comic strips about life, love, and the strange comedy of being human, each of his books feels like a reinvention. It is almost as if every new project tries to undo the image created by the previous one. In What will be, will be, that process leads him to his most personal form yet: a storyteller willing to turn fully toward himself.

 In terms of plot, What will be, will be does not rely on dramatic twists. Instead, it draws readers in through the truthful rhythm of a life shaped by art. The first half carries the lightness of childhood: mischief, wonder, and the first sparks of obsession with drawing. The second half moves into more difficult territory, as dreams collide with reality and artistic passion is tested by confusion, failure, loneliness, and emotional exhaustion. What emerges is not simply the story of one cartoonist’s career, but the story of someone learning, repeatedly, how to lose himself and find his way back.

What makes the book especially interesting is that it works on several levels at once. It is an autobiography, certainly, but also a meditation on what it means to choose a creative life when it is a choice that rarely stable or well understood. At the same time, it serves as an informal cultural record of a generation of Vietnamese artists who grew up with manga, copied comics by hand, made homemade books, and searched for creative communities through magazines, forums, and small circles of fellow enthusiasts. In that sense, the book is both deeply personal and historical.

 Another strength lies in the contrast between style and subject. Lê Phan uses a simple, light, sometimes almost childlike drawing style to tell a story filled with self-doubt, reflection, hurt, and healing. The effect is powerful. The softness of the artwork makes the emotional honesty of the book hit even harder, without ever becoming melodramatic. Comics here are not just a delivery system for memoir, but the most natural language for memory itself: elastic, playful, fragmented, and emotionally precise.

 This is a book that deserves to be read because it is sincere without asking for pity, and thoughtful without ever becoming heavy-handed. For readers interested in comics, it widens the horizon of what Vietnamese comics can hold. For artists and aspiring creators, it offers not instruction so much as companionship and reassurance that doubt, detours, and even brokenness can become part of one’s language. What will be, will be is a gentle reminder that becoming oneself is rarely a straight road. Sometimes we must lose our way before we can recognize the shape of our own heart. Sometimes we must - as Phan wrote in the book - "gather our scattered pieces, one by one, and trust that they still belong to us". Lê Phan tells that journey with tenderness, humility, and grace, and proves that even the most uncertain path can, in time, lead us back to who we are.

Images from the book can be seen in the review at https://vietcetera.com/vn/gui-nhung-trai-tim-can-dam-dang-theo-duoi-dam-me

Graphic Novel Review - Interficial ARTelligence: The Moments That Met Me by Chuck D

Reviewed by Joe Hilliard

Interficial ARTelligence: The Moments That Met Me, by Chuck D., Akashic Books 2025. 240 pages. $24.95 paperback. https://www.akashicbooks.com/catalog/interficial-artelligence/

While Chuck D is known as a founder and front man for the rap group Public Enemy and his outspoken politics, he also has a burgeoning career as a graphic novelist. His previous graphic novels, the three-volume Stewdio: The Naphic Grovel Artrilogy and The Summer of Hamn: Hollowpointlessness Aiding Mass Nihilism, were modern history/political theory treatises. With his newest 2025 book though, he has turned overtly autobiographical, streaked through with social and political commentary, much like a Public Enemy album.

Unlike a traditional chronological autobiography, Chuck D slings together a collage of images and time slips, much like old-school rap where the cut up of words, images, feelings, all intertwine, entangling. Functionally, Interficial is a collection of two-page spreads of reminiscences, in no particular order, of people he has met. Not simply a greatest hits collection, but the subtle hints, deep cut grooves following from the big notes we all know. The grandiose to the sublime. Mixing and matching, scratching the beat, page to page to page. Vignettes of the big moments and the small, on the stage, sharing a drink in a car, changing tires. Short meetings with the famous. From the ‘80s to his New York youth to the present, and yes, looking to the future, for those he still wishes to meet.

Some of the art is scribbled and ragged. Lines show through, as he has not erased the original preliminary sketches. He uses markers and colored pencils over his pencils. It's his notebook, copied out, the colors bleeding through page to page. There is a fierce spontaneity to the work. It has a certain rough-hewed Bill Sienkiewicz circa Big Numbers feel. Or like what John Jennings is currently producing. With that rawness. More ragged. Like a live performance caught in media res. It's Sam Cooke's Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 and not the singles that are on the radio and streaming. Throaty and raw. Each spread is a person that Chuck D has spent time with. "The moments that met me." While the art does not fall into caricature, eschewing the obvious, on the opposite spectrum, some of the sketched faces are not immediately recognizable, even while reading the text. But others are amazing in their true to life feel. Snapshots. Dick Gregory massaging Chuck D's feet. Debbie Harry in disguise, looking like Natasha from Bullwinkle. Teenage Keith Shocklee changing tires at Sears. It's the vibrancy that works so well, the immediacy. Warren Beatty working on Bulworth, the crackle of looking in from the outside into old Hollywood.

Unfortunately, some of the writing is hard to follow, falling around the margins and tumbling around the images. Circling over the drawings and enveloping them. This is particularly a product of the notebook form. Words scribbled on drawings. Rushing out in a notebook stream. A bigger issue, speaking to the production itself, is the tight paperback spine that obscures the center of each of the two-page spreads, especially as you get closer to the center of the book. The words and art sink into themselves, obscuring words and images. It's very frustrating.

Even with these faults, Interficial is compelling in short bursts. The non-linear approach lets you delve in with fits and starts. Opening at random and being surprised. Seeing the relevance to today as Chuck D's social concerns hums, lecturing with Angela Davis, lobbying in Washington DC with Anita Baker, his wish to meet Barack Obama. If it were larger format, it could easily be a coffee table book to be read over and over again. It's not perfect, but it engages. Which is what Chuck D wants. And what you expect, and want too.

Graphic Novel Review: Champion by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Reviewed by Brian Flota, Humanities Librarian (Professor), James Madison University

Champion, written by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld and illustrated by Ed LaRoche. Ten Speed Graphic, 2025. ISBN 9780593835746. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/747045/champion-by-kareem-abdul-jabbar-and-raymond-obstfeld-illustrated-by-ed-laroche/ 

    Five days prior to writing the first draft of this review, I turned 50 years old. For most of that half-century, I’ve been a fan of the Los Angeles Lakers. This means I’ve long been familiar with the life and career of Hall of Fame center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was a key part of five championship teams during his tenure with the Lakers from 1975 to 1989. As a fellow record collector, I’ve always been touched by this anecdote. When his house burned down in 1983, one of the things he lost was a massive collection of treasured jazz music. In the aftermath of the fire, fans presented him with many of the records the jazz aficionado lost. This is but one testament to how beloved a public figure he is.

    This is but one relatively minor anecdote in a lifetime filled with serious political, cultural, and religious commitment off the basketball court. When he rose to fame as a basketball player at Power Memorial Academy in Manhattan as a high schooler, he was known as Lew Alcindor. During his three years as a starter at UCLA (1966-1969), during the reign of the legendary coach John Wooden, he led the team to three national championships and a record of 88-2. If one watches the first part of Ezra Edelman’s fantastic documentary O.J.: Made in America (2016), a stark contrast is marked between the UCLA center and his peer O.J. Simpson, then the star running back at crosstown rival USC. Simpson, also a young Black man, was a people-pleaser who sought fame and adulation while avoiding controversy (until 1994, that is). There is no way on Earth he would have attended the Cleveland Summit (as Edelman’s documentary makes clear). The event was organized by former NFL football player Jim Brown in June 1967. Eleven prominent Black athletes, including the 20-year-old Abdul-Jabbar, then still a college athlete, gathered to discuss the decision by heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali to declare himself a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, costing him his championship belt and income. The next year, Abdul-Jabbar took a big political stand himself, boycotting the 1968 Summer Olympics in protest of the long-standing racism against Blacks in the United States. These decisions could have affected his professional prospects. It was a risk he was willing to take, but he ultimately withstood any controversy these decisions generated. Three years later, after converting to Islam, he publicly changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. As a young man, he demonstrated he was unafraid to take controversial stances that he was committed to, and sincerely believed in.

    Champion, written by Abdul-Jabbar with his long-time collaborator Raymond Obstfeld, might come as a surprise to those that only know him as a basketball player. In fact, Abdul-Jabbar has authored or co-authored over a dozen books, ranging from autobiography and memoir to history. Over the last decade, he has branched out into fiction, writing a series of books focusing on Sherlock Holmes’ brother, Mycroft. This resulted in the publication of his first graphic novel, Mycroft Holmes and the Apocalypse Handbook (2017). Champion focuses on an elite high school basketball player named Monk who gets caught vandalizing a rival school’s mural with original art of his own. This act could have a deleterious effect on his NBA prospects. As a result of his actions, he is tasked with giving a presentation on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s life off the basketball court, a presentation he must ace to escape punishment.

    Abdul-Jabbar, Obstfeld, and Laroche have put together a page-turner with a simple, but effective message: be a complete person with a variety of interests. While his imaginary case study of Monk focuses specifically on student-athletes, few of whom make it to the pros, and, when they do, aren’t pros for very long, the book’s core message of having multiple interests and skills is something any reader can benefit from. This isn’t just about “career prospects.” Throughout the narrative, Monk repeatedly states that he has only one goal: to become a professional basketball player. However, his instinctual knack for art, a talent he takes for granted, could provide a realistic alternative to his dream career. His teammates, coaches, and family work to convince him to take his art seriously, which he refuses to do for much of the narrative.

    Throughout the graphic novel, his peers and mentors have interests beyond sports, as shown by  “trading card” profiles of the characters. These cards provide information about their lives, their athletic accomplishments (when relevant), and life outside of sports. The first of these trading card profiles focuses on Anthony B. Bagwell, whose “position” is listed as “Security Guard” in a curved triangle on the card’s upper left-hand corner. This is the security guard who catches Monk in the act of vandalizing the team mascot’s mural at a rival high school. His card lists the following facts about him:

●             Ranks 3rd in security guards at Mountain Range Security.

●             Is on his 4th attempt at being a vegan (his record is 6 days).

●             Defeated in combat 3 times by wife, Ida, in Elden Ring.

●             Calls his 3-year-old son “Donut.” (2)

Another card gives us information about Monk’s “High School Basketball Coach” Jefferson V. Blaine:

●             Played center on Culver High School state championship team.

●             Played point guard on UCLA national championship team.

●             Has 4 “Best Dad in the World” mugs and 2 Teacher of the Year Awards. (9)

 

    As we can see in both examples, Laroche’s trading card profiles sidestep the traditional statistics and career highlight fare that make up the bulk of the text on the back of sports trading cards, giving equal importance to the personal aspects of their lives. Coach Blaine’s card reveals him to be flexible and adaptable. He went from center to point guard when he transitioned from high school to college basketball. After college, he became a father and a teacher, identities he is proud of. As the narrative progresses, we get other testimonials from Monk’s mother, Wanda, who was a point guard on UCLA’s women’s basketball team, and who is currently an ICU physician’s assistant, and his aunt Sissy, who once sang backup for Stevie Wonder and the Four Tops, recorded her own solo album in 1980, and is currently a record store owner where Monk works part-time (19). Throughout the story, Monk denies or tries to suppress his interest in things outside of basketball, including art, history, music, and social justice. Abdul-Jabbar and Obstfeld do a good job of keeping Monk’s internal tensuion unresolved for much of the book’s duration, which serves to make his story more engaging. 

     Abdul-Jabbar's graphic novel is a pedagogical tool to express some of the reasons he wants a character like Monk to know his story as well as the story of Black America. Kareem appears as a figment of Monk’s imagination as he’s working on his assigned project about the man. He points out the 135th Street YMCA in Harlem, where Kareem grew up. At first, during his youth, he saw it as a “crappy old building.” Then he learned “that Malcolm X, Claude McKay, George Washington Carver, Jackie Robinson, and Paul Robeson had all stayed or performed here” (32). On the next page, we get trading card profiles of each of these historical figures. He also highlights that inside the building is the famous Aaron Douglas mural “Evolution of Negro Dance.” Kareem says:

Looking at that mural back then, I instantly felt connected to the evolution it portrayed. Like them, I had started in the dark about who I was, being the person everyone expected me to be without really knowing who I wanted to be. Then, through the physical discipline of basketball and the mental discipline of reading, I had stepped out of the shadows into the bright sunlight of finding myself. (34)

       Through his research, Monk learns about the Harlem Riot of 1964, which began when an off-duty police officer shot a fifteen-year-old Black child, James Powell (59). Lastly, Monk learns about Kareem’s participation in the Cleveland Summit. These are three important parts of an aspect  of American history that have either been erased or relegated to margins in most mainstream, conventional, whitewashed histories of the twentieth century. Abdul-Jabbar, with his graphic novel specifically directed at a young adult audience, successfully fills in some of these gaps by effectively blending them with a relatable story.

    The weird thing about Champion is that the sections delving into the life of Abdul-Jabbar reads as self-hagiography (even if it may be a well-deserved self-hagiography). When Monk complains to his girlfriend Lark about having to write a report about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, she replies, “You mean the Kareem who …,” and then rattles off two entire pages of Abdul-Jabbar’s accomplishments on and off the basketball court (including his small but memorable role in the 1980 comedy Airplane!) (15). Throughout the narrative, even more Kareem facts are presented.

    Not surprisingly, Abdul-Jabbar and Obstfeld give us a graphic novel with a happy ending. Monk’s various interpersonal conflicts with Lark as well as his teachers, teammates, and family are resolved, and he gains a greater understanding of what it means to be a well-rounded young man. The narrative culminates with Monk and his community getting together to create a dazzling mural on the side of Aunt Sissy’s record shop titled “Evolution of a Champion,” which highlights eleven of Abdul-Jabbar’s accomplishments off the court. In this reviewer’s opinion, even if it does come off a bit strange and heavy-handed, as though Abdul-Jabbar is just patting himself on the back, there just aren’t too many people in this world who deserve that pat as much or as hard as he does!

     You do not have to know much about Abdul-Jabbar to like Champion. He, along with his collaborators, have put together a very accessible story. It has history, dramatic tension, life lessons, good advice, a bit of mystery, and even a little romance. To be commended is the artistry of Ed Laroche, whose illustrations are precise and stylistically varied. He brings Monk’s graffiti art to life in a style different from the one that dominates the rest of the narrative. This is not always an easy thing to pull off, but Laroche navigates between these styles seamlessly. Even if we do get plenty of “Kareem facts” in Champion, his story is clearly one worth telling, and he also wants you to know about his culture, his people, and all those who helped him become the man he is. Its breezy mixture of history, biography, and fiction makes recommending Champion a slam dunk.