Graphic Novel Reviews: Enchanted Lion Books

 

Reviewed by Liz Brown, Outreach and Instruction Librarian, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.

Enchanted Lion Books features a catalogue primarily from the Eurocomics scene, although with diversions to other countries and continents. They frequently feature illustrations with strong painterly influences, including works by well-known artists, such as Matthew Forsythe, Daniel Salmieri, and Yuki Ainoya. The subject matter is poetic, contemplative, and emotionally aware. Their titles, particularly from their picture book line, have won multiple awards and recognitions. Many of their titles are clearly chosen for broad appeal across age ranges, and their Unruly Imprint is for “picture books intended specifically for adults and teenagers.” Readers who already read graphic works are likely to be a receptive audience to this line, and additional appeal may come from those who enjoy and collect visually-based books, such as artistic monographs. The following reviews include books marketed towards their middle grade/young adult readers.

            Blexbolex. Translator:  Karin Snelson. 2023. The Magicians. Brooklyn, NY:  Enchanted Lion Books.

         The Magicians is a story of three self-serving magicians who escape their confines only to be pursued by a stubborn Huntress and the single-minded Clinker, who are intent on keeping their mischief under control. The plot follows its own internal logic, rather than a strict narrative structure, playing with the concept of the characters’ internally-generated methods of creation. The magicians, as with artists, can create their own realities, but also get stuck inside that which they create. Over the course of the story, clear lines of who is the protagonist and who is an antagonist erode as the characters’ identities are interrogated and manipulated by outside forces.

Each page of the book is a full panel, with a few lines of spare dialogue or explanatory text captioning the framework of the story. Blexbolex takes advantage of the generous gutters to entrust his audience to fill in details and nuance. The artwork features Blexbolex’s characteristic style, but the illustrations are more visually complex than his prior work for picture books, including densely-layered stencils that create a broader color palette featuring half-tones and shadows. Visual references to vintage illustrations call to mind the works of Henry Darger, with additional cross-cultural references to Asian graphic arts.

 

Fig. 1. The Huntress succeeds after a battle. Page 106.

         While the fairy tale framework of the story might appeal to young readers, the visual complexity, absurd bends in the plot, irreverent humor, and focus on the development of character identity suggest that older readers--teens and adults--are a more likely audience for the work.

         Isol. Translator:  Lawrence Schimel. 2024. Loose Threads. Brooklyn, NY:  Enchanted Lion Books.

Loose Threads is one of six picture books created for the exhibit, “Palestinian Art History as Told by Everyday Objects,” organized by the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, Palestine. It imagines a story on the surface of the hand-embroidered shawl that illustrator, Isol, received when visiting the Tamer Institute for Community Education. The work plays with the concept of the front side of the embroidery, where the designs are legible iconography of traditional Palestinian cross-stitching, and the back side of the embroidery, where you see the abstract shapes formed by the work between the stitches. Isol’s story is a digital collage about the characters living on the visible side of the embroidery. They keep losing objects that slip through the small tears in the fabric, into “the Other Side.” Plucky heroine, Leilah, sets out to mend the tears, but her patches don’t have the intended effect.

 

Fig. 2. Leilah dreams about the inhabitants of the Other Side.

         The images in this work are largely full-page spreads with no more than five sentences of text, broken into five short chapters. It would be a good transitional book for students who progress from picture books into longer material and who are working on reading independently.

As the Gazan genocide continues to unfold, this book has particular interest and poignancy in sharing Palestinian culture through material objects, but it is worth noting that Isol is a Spanish-speaking, Argentinian artist invited to work on the project, not a Palestinian herself. The book’s theme of mending is both a literal device in the story, but also alludes to generational healing and the passing down of heritage.

        Oyvind Torseter. Translator:  Kari Dickson. 2016. The Heartless Troll. Brooklyn, NY:  Enchanted Lion Books.

         A contemporary retelling of the Norwegian fairytale, “The Troll with No Heart in His Body,” The Heartless Troll begins with the third son setting out to rescue his brothers and make his fortune. Torseter has an established cast of characters whom he grafts into different roles throughout his books. Central is the Moomin-like, donkey-headed hero, Prince Fred--simple, trusting, and malleable--who is frequently the protagonist in Torseter’s works. But more interesting--both in writing and visual design--are the newer characters introduced for the story. Prince Fred’s anthropomorphic, reluctant nag provides an amusing counterpoint to Fred’s tepid heroism. Torseter gives voice to what is traditionally an unspeaking role in the story, using the steed’s cowardice as a source for his witticisms. The monstrous Troll visually calls out art history references, including Leonard Baskin’s prints and Picasso’s “Guernica.”

 

Fig. 3. The first night of Prince Fred’s quest.

The illustrations revel in their physicality, with inked lines and textured backgrounds imitating the grain of drypoint etchings, and intentionally-visible collaging of materials in large spreads. The drawings feature spare lines on large swathes of black, with limited color employed for emphasis. The work is in the same milieu as Anne Simon’s comics, especially her adaptation of Greek myth in The Song of Aglaia, but Torseter sticks to sparser dialogue, a simpler plot, and less allegorical intentions. His retelling is amusing and visually interesting, but lacks the substance to hold up to deeper probing.

             Oyvind Torseter. Translator:  Kari Dickson. 2023. Mulysses. Brooklyn, NY:  Enchanted Lion Books.

         Mulysses is a composite story, drawing tropes from multiple sea-faring sources, but not a true adaptation of any particular one. The story contains pursuit of a menacing whale, as in Moby Dick, escaping the island of a one-eyed monster, as in Ulysses, plumbing the ocean depths for mysteries, as in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but with an irreverent and absurd tone that is uniquely Torseter’s own. The comic’s primary cast is, once again, made up of Torseter’s recurring characters--the eponymous, mule-headed protagonist; his elephant-headed, sea-captain foil; and generic, female, “harbor tavern gal” love interest; along with cameos of other recognizable characters in the background. Mulysses is out of work and about to be evicted. With a one-week deadline looming over him, before he loses all his worldly possessions, he signs on to a questionable voyage captained by an eccentric millionaire in hopes that the reward will be enough to recover his belongings from storage. Of course, with both an inept captain and crew, only mayhem can ensue.

 

Fig. 4. An average day for Mulysses at sea.

Along with Torseter’s established grainy line work, collaged spreads, and limited color palette, he has started incorporating printmaking techniques into his work. He uses stamp printing for texture in his panels--clothing and hairstyles for background characters, wheels on vehicles, furniture, waves in the sea--and also layers colors in halftones, either in imitation of or truly printing with a risograph. The use of these printing methods is tentative and experimental, but the results seem worth pursuing further, as they add tactility to the illustrations, which Torseter is clearly in pursuit of when making his art. The book’s design is in a horizontal format, which intentionally calls to mind photograph albums, as one might have once used to store vacation snapshots; however, it should still fit on most standard bookshelves. While the content is appropriate for all ages, Mulysses’ motivating worries over rent and work mark this as a comic geared for adults. It would appeal to fans of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (dir. Wes Anderson, 2004)

Graphic Novel Review: Should We Buy a Gun?

 Reviewed by Cord A. Scott, UMGC-Okinawa

Dave Cowen and Gabriel Wexler. Should We Buy a Gun? Los Angeles:  SerioComics, 2025. 330 pp. US $35.00. ISBN:  979-8-9920-5509-2. https://www.shouldwebuyagun.com/

  

Comic books have often contended with serious political issues. It is not often through direct discussion, but through allegories. When we think of the PATRIOT Act (2001), we think not of a direct comic, but the story arcs in Avengers:  Civil War. While there are historically- or politically-based comics, they can be text-laden or even biased in their political leaning. However, many political issues are not simply a matter of black and white, but of nuance and a variety of factors that influence the outcome. Add to that the charged arguments of gun control in the United States, and the topic would seem to be a bad idea. This is most certainly NOT the case with the publishing of Should We Buy a Gun? 

The premise is one that many Americans might well relate to:  the idea of people who have grown up in one part of the country with a set of standards, and the realities that sometime intrude. In the story, two newlyweds, Dave and Maggie, live in Austin, Texas, in what would be considered standard lives. He is a high school counselor, from a liberal family in New York. Maggie is from Texas and is a producer for the National Public Radio station in Austin. They are liberal-leaning and look at the ills of society through that sort of a lens. When events lead to a mugging, where two youths hold a gun on the couple (and in an ironic twist, escape on e-scooters), the elements of reality and shock set in. The couple are trying to have a child, and this threat to safety, and the breakdown of the defense narrative--“if I were threatened by a guy with a gun, I would ….,” is destroyed. Dave cries because of his lack of protecting his young bride, and Maggie sees threat everywhere. Soon after, she purchases a gun, bedecked in American flag colors, and Dave is shocked, as it goes against what he sees as a perpetuation of the violence narrative.

It is here that the story deviates from the expected. Cowen writes the story in such a way, that early on, it is clear that this issue is simply not as easy as many believe. For foreign readers, the idea of gun ownership is a part of American culture and governance, where the guns now outnumber people in the U.S. But, the idea of gun ownership, its origins, and the problems of the current government’s regulating the industry are all brought into the story arcs.

One area that Cowen hones in on is the concept of gun arguments directly. For people on both sides of the issue, there are statistics in their favor. However, it is not as clear-cut. While the location of Austin--a politically liberal city in a conservative state of Texas--is important to the story, several other cities could fit the bill. Gun advocates note that despite some of the most restrictive gun ownership laws in the country, Chicago is still a dangerous place, with a large overall number of murders because of gun violence. What is often not discussed is the loose checks and purchasing requirements in Indiana, where one can actually walk across the street from Chicago to Indiana, then purchase a weapon with little restriction, thereby negating the Chicago laws. This sort if disparity in enforcement occurs in several areas throughout the United States.

The story line also looks at issues of mental health (one of Dave’s students in high school has mental health issues, as well as a broken home), a mass shooting (in this case, the son of the governor and several other members of legislature), as well as media discussion of gun ownership through Maggie’s employer, National Public Radio (NPR).  The strain of gun ownership, combined with issues concerning ownership and proficiency of the weapon, leads to discussions about what members of society should possess weapons, and potential use of a firearm, when other deterrents might work with less lethal force.

The story also goes into the omission of specific parts of speeches from famous leaders, such as Martin Luther King, who advocated non-violence, but noted the need for a weapon (193). There is also a conversation between Maggie and her minister concerning what is discussed concerning the ownership and use of weapons in all forms within the Bible. The historical narrative even goes so far as to mention what Gandhi and King thought of weapons as a deterrent to violence (233), as well as the seemingly controversial aspects of shootings, from George Zimmerman to the Black Panthers, where race was also a considerable factor (193-194).

The end of the book weaves together some elements of the back stories, as well as ancillary characters. In all, the story is one that, as noted in the blurbs, does use humor to weave in serious issues. It is a book that should provoke conversations on the issue of gun ownership in America.

Book Review: Analyzing the Marvel Universe. Critical Essays on the Comics and Film Adaptations

 reviewed by Cecilia Garrison, Teaching/Research Assistant, California Institute of Integral Studies

Douglas Brode, ed. Analyzing the Marvel Universe. Critical Essays on the Comics and Film Adaptations. Jefferson, NC:  McFarland, 2024. 245 pp. US $49.95 (Paperback). ISBN:  978-1-4766-9066-7. https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/analyzing-the-marvel-universe/

 

     Douglas Brode’s Analyzing the Marvel Universe instructs us, from the prologue, to “[s]how me a nation’s mythology...and I will tell you all you would ever want to know about its people” (11). Brode’s contribution to the work of popular culture is extensive, and, as with this text, offers insight into the far-reaching impacts of something so simple as a comic, a television show, or a movie. He has collected, in this book of diverse essays, writings from medievalists, scholars of popular culture and English literature, sociologists, artists, novelists, and more. This winding text takes us through an array of the ways Marvel Comics lexicon has become increasingly multi-textual, increasingly a space of American mythos creation, and increasingly an exercise in what stumbling through slow and inconsistent progress towards modernity may look like.

The text combines the works of several authors, including Brode himself, covering topics that range from the astounding failure of the Broadway musical, “Spider-Man:  Turn Off the Dark,” to development of G.I. Joe from an action figure we must never refer to as a doll into a fully-fledged IP with comic books and a TV show, to the clumsy attempts Marvel has made over the years into intersectional and diversified narrative creation. The chapters include detailed histories of various Marvel IPs, critiques of mishandlings of characters and identities, and the importance of growth for the characters, Marvel itself, and the industry at large, in order to keep up with their ever-growing and evolving fan base.

The text’s initial essay is Lauer’s thorough assessment of why “Spider-Man:  Turn Off the Dark” failed so spectacularly, and it is with this opening essay that the reader receives what could almost be a warning, an instruction, a plea from fans both old and new:  “For an adaptation to have a chance at success, adaptors need to care about their source material, understand and work with their own medium specificity, and, ideally, have a new point to make by bringing the original’s concept to a new medium” (21-22). It is, with this understanding of what Marvel fans are looking for, their transmedia adaptations that the text takes off, acknowledging Marvel’s success, while pressing the media giant for more, for better. Anke Marie Bock’s critique of the characterization of Sue Storm as condescending and vilifying of feminine sexuality recognizes that while this stereotypical representation of women may have been what audiences in the 1970s were comfortable with, it none-the-less perpetuates uncomfortable stereotypes of women’s inferiority to men. In an essay on the four-issue anthology, Fearless, Christina M. Knopf argues that “[d]espite Marvel’s assertions that its books are not political, simply telling stories about the ‘world outside your window,’ such works cannot help but carry sociopolitical messages,” (107) and lays claim that the highlighting of female talent and female stories is what makes the anthology as remarkable as it is. Karl E. Martin argues that despite its diversion from the comics and the real critiques of the film adaptation, “Black Panther,” and its messaging, the film “engages African discourse in remarkable ways, exposing millions of viewers worldwide to a decades-old conversation” (217) around Pan-Africanism and the work of W.E.B. DeBois. The editor’s own treatise on the ways in which Black Mamba serves as a mirror to the changing perception of American female activists by broader society, ponders the origins of a villainess who is sometimes heroic and takes the identity of “a complex, ambiguous female deity that threatened the patriarchy of Western civilization” (74). These essays speak to the growing number of vocal comic and comic-adjacent property consumers who seek a more thorough and nuanced representation of the full array of spectrum-spanning identities in their superhero content.

Several of the essays within the text contend with the relationship between representation, responsibility, and engaging storytelling. Hafsa Alkhudairi, in her essay on Kamala Kahn, a.k.a. Ms. Marvel, explains that the responsibility for an entire identity’s representation, at this time in the Marvel lexicon, often falls onto the shoulders of one or maybe a few characters of that identity group, and protests this. She claims, at the close, that both Marvel and the audience “need more stories of people from different genders, races, and religions, all thoroughly nuanced to relieve the pressure on those who do exist” (98). This essay, and others like it, including Jaclyn Kliman’s critique of the Black Widow’s film presence as indicative of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s problem of being “stuck in the supposed obstacle of writing a complex, leading superheroine,” (79), laud Marvel and the MCU for their progress towards a more inclusive and diverse character array. However, they are also pointing out what many fans may see as obvious. Marvel’s attempts are often clumsy, falling short of, or missing the mark entirely. From the call to acknowledge where current and past X-Men comics (and films) have been lacking in terms of a genuine critique of structural oppression and systemic racism, by Quincy Thomas, to the analysis of the ways in which even our ideas of what a villain or a bad guy looks like to modern audiences according to J.S. Starkweather, to Susan Aronstein and Tammy L. Mielke’s assessment of the value of high-quality, consistent character development and the importance of modernizing male characters such as Tony Stark--Analyzing the Marvel Universe, argues that Marvel fans and scholars are looking for better from their comics and film studios.

Historicity plays a significant role across the essays in the text. Cyrus R. K. Patell urges comics readers and scholars to approach comics reading with a cosmopolitan reading practice, using comics as a way to explore the “interplay of sameness and difference, of comfort and discomfort in texts we encounter” (181). In this cosmopolitan reading practice, the non-realistic fiction of comics of yore provide a unique perspective into what those at the time of writing may have understood about the world, with what authors believed would resonate with their readers. In Edward Salo’s exploration of G.I. Joe, from toys to comics to television and beyond, he seems to unknowingly put Patell’s urging to work, providing a unique analysis of the impact of historical context on the changing scope of a character aimed at depicting the ideal American soldier and role model for young boys. Scott Manning’s unique take on Marvel’s recurring visual trope depicting Wolverine punctured with arrows situates Wolverine as both indestructible in the Marvel cosmos, but also as in reference to a distinctly medieval mythos, drawing connection from history’s storytelling and our own. When seeking an ideal example of the changing landscape of comics into transmedia universes, Mark Hibbett holds Doctor Doom up as the shining beacon for others to follow, pointing to his remarkable consistency through his appearances in comics, movies, video games, and television shows, even when his components become stretched or altered. Perhaps among the most notable for our current time is Ora C. McWilliams and Joshua Richardson’s essay on Secret Empire and the conversation it forced readers and Marvel writers and executives alike to have about the histories of comics characters and the comics industry broadly, about bigotry both in the industry and the fan base, about fascism, about cultural divides, and about fan response to the way characters are used and for what messages. To move forward into each new era, Marvel and their fans must acknowledge the history of both their comics and characters, and of what context has brought them into creation.

With certain essayists, a close reading allows for Marvel’s limited expression of difference to shine in new light. Dennin Ellis and Melissa Guadrón urge readers to look past the Thing as a stand-in for disabled people everywhere, and acknowledge that he has qualities that characters, such as Man-Thing, the Zombie, and Omega the Unknown, inherently lack:  “a healthy support system in his family and friends, and the ability to determine his own destiny” (151); they urge readers, and Marvel more broadly, to consider how some powers may come at a cost of explicit disability and what loving those characters could look like for fans. In Jerold Abrams and Katherine Reed’s essay on “Guardians of the Galaxy,” they argue these wisecracking, explosion-laden films provide viewers with the opportunity to investigate the relationship between subjectivity and intersubjectivity through the characters of Rocket Racoon and Groot, exploring the nature of language and of self-consciousness. Jeffrey McCambridge posits the Nameless as a means of looking to the unique language of trauma, memory, and pain. He describes their haunted, apathetic existence as indicative of the nihilism inherent in Marvel’s cosmos and their lexicon, forever doomed to repeat itself in an effort to balance the cosmic scales of justice and tell their stories again and again.

Brode’s text closes with an essay which brings each of the other essays together in a seamless, comprehensive conclusion. Without Garret L. Castleberry’s essay on “The Spreadable Media Model of Mass Communication,” there is a real chance this text could have come across as unfinished and even disparate. However, Castleberry takes the reader through Marvel’s growth from a mom-and-pop comic shop with extraordinary name value somehow still teetering on the edge of total bankruptcy, to an incredibly and increasingly powerful arm in what may well be the strongest mass media conglomerate in the world, providing Disney with necessary broad appeal and cultural investment even among the most vehemently critical. He details the conflict between what he labels “fantagonists”--the aggravated, “mostly male, mostly anonymous” (226) fans whose demographics make-up is that of historic majority of comics readers who set out to derail stories, such as Black Panther or Captain Marvel, because these stories did not represent them; and incredible value-add that “inclusive storytelling and character diversification” (227) had, not only to movie-goer’s experiences and superhero movies’ showings at high-culture awards shows, but also Marvel executives’ bankroll. At the close of the text, Castleberry’s succinct contextualization and analysis of the way that Marvel, their cinematic universe, and their acquisition by Disney informed, and was informed by, a changing landscape of fan interaction styles, media consumption modalities, and the power of intergenerational and cross-cultural consumer branding.

Analyzing the Marvel Universe leaves the reader hopeful for a time where Marvel, and their media parent, Disney, are able to acknowledge the gaps they have left in their history, and, in fact, the places where they have done harm, and move towards a new superheroic future. The research is clear, based on this text, that comics and superhero fans are not going anywhere, but, in fact, the number of people invested in the content is ever-growing, and the faces of those fans are ever-changing. The writers here are clear in their messaging:  fans are intrigued by the history, wanting to understand where their beloved characters are coming from both in the Marvel canon and within historical context, but fans also want to see characters that move forward into a world of increasing diversity, acceptance, and affection, for that which is different. Brode attests that Stan Lee, the proverbial father of Marvel Comics, insisted his characters be as three-dimensional as possible and dared to dream of a superhero team in Fantastic Four that included not just men, but even a woman with powers and a position of her own, stereotyped and strained though it may have been. This, according to the essayists included in this text, is all the modern Marvel fan wants:  to expand the full realm of individuals “of valor who, despite their strength and courage, revealed deep psychological problems when alone and lonely” (10). At the end of the day, Marvel is growing, media are changing, and the fans are responding in kind.

 

• Table of Contents

Introduction: Prelude to a ­Pop-Culture Phenomenon
Douglas Brode 1

With Great Power Ballads, There Must Also Come—Great Responsibility! A ­Re-Assessment of the ­Spider-Man Legacy
Emily Lauer 15

“I am…”: Tony Stark’s Evolving Masculinity from Comic to Endgame
Susan Aronstein and Tammy L. Mielke 24

Armored Warriors Full of Arrows: From Obscure Crusader and Arabic Texts to Marvel’s Wolverine
Scott Manning 38

Not a Giant, But a “Real” American Hero: Reinventing the American Military Man in G.I. Joe, a Real American Hero Comic Book (1982–1994)
Edward Salo 50

Doctor Doom: Marvel’s Transmedia Supervillain
Mark Hibbett 59

Beyond Good and Evil: DC’s Catwoman, Marvel’s Black Mamba, and the Tradition of the Dark, Dangerous Woman
Douglas Brode 69

“You are ­mind-blowingly duplicitous”: Black Widow and the Male Gaze
Jaclyn Kliman 79

Finally, a Muslim Teenage Female Superhero: The Intersectionality of Feminism and Islam in Ms. Marvel

Hafsa Alkhudairi 90

The True Meaning of Fearless: Feminism in Fearless and the Marvel Universe
Christina M. Knopf 100

Sexuality as the Devil’s Tool: Namor and His ­Never-Ending Love for Invisible Girl
Anke Marie Bock 109

“We are Groot”: Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity in Guardians of the Galaxy
Jerold Abrams and Katherine Reed 119

“I remember a shadow, living in the shade of your greatness”: Tracking Thor and Loki’s Codependency Across the Nine Realms and Beyond
J.S. Starkweather 130

“Foul of form and barren of mind”: Disability in the Comics of Steve Gerber
Dennin Ellis and Melissa Guadrón 150

A Kree by Any Other Name: The Nameless and the Problems of History, Forgetting, and the Pain of Memory
Jeffrey Mccambridge 160

A Secret Empire Among Us: Or, “When Is There a Good Time to Discuss Fascism?”
Ora C. McWilliams and Joshua Richardson 168

“They do things differently there”: Not Brand Echh, 1967–1969
Cyrus R.K. Patell 179

Children of a Lesser Atom: The Dearth of Difference in Marvel’s ­X-Men
Quincy Thomas 191

Black Panther: From W.E.B. Du Bois to Wakanda
Karl E. Martin 210

The Spreadable Media Model of Mass Communication: Tracing the Corporate Continuity of ­Disney-Marvel and the MCU
Garret L. Castleberry 219

About the Contributors 239

Index 243