Minnesota Reads

It’s so 2012, or maybe even 1994, to be reading Art Spiegelman’s The Complete Maus, and to scratch your head and think: “How is it possible that this has not been made into a movie?” Why no animated mice and cats, an occasional frog, and flashback sequences in shades of grey. It’s so ripe for [...]

When Persepolis opens, Marjane Satrapi is in grade school in Tehran. To her, the Islamic Revolution means now she has to wear a veil. Her French non-secular school closes and she must attend a gender segregated school. It means that when her mom is photographed by news agencies demonstrating in the streets, her mom must [...]

If I bit it today, the obit would say I was a writer who struggled to move beyond 2,000 word blog posts about what happened this past week at Subway. Survivors include the love of her life and two naughty kitties. If I cashed in at 22, it would say I was a college graduate [...]

Regardless of age, many of us probably know the same nursery rhymes. I think I was always partial to “Three Blind Mice” and “Humpty Dumpty,” though I have no clue why I liked the idea of the poor egg not being able to be put back together again. While designed for kids, Nursery Rhyme Comics, [...]

If you don't like gushing, stop reading this right now and start reading Wonderstruck. If you don't mind gushing, read this first, then start reading Wonderstruck. Wonderstruck is the follow-up to Brian Selznick's Caldecott Medal-winning The Invention of Hugo Cabaret. This novel is truly a work of art. It alternates between two stories, one told [...]

If you want to read another glowing review about the majesty and mystery of Craig Thompson’s much-awaited, much-ballyhooed new graphic novel Habibi, you should probably just skip this one. Before I get too far in here, I want to say that this book is beautiful. The art is spectacular. The care and attention that it [...]

Belated gracias to NY Magazine, who in 2007 did a Q&A with artist Adrian Tomine, who in turn answered exactly what I was wondering when I finished his graphic novel Shortcomings. Namely: Here I am reading a portrait of a cranky 30-something cuss, argumentative and flawed in ways that would take detangling spray to begin [...]

Sat down to write about artist MariNaomi’s draw-all tell-all graphic memoir Kiss & Tell: A Romantic Resume from 0-22,‘and found myself penning memories about playing tug-o-war over the one neighborhood boy on Fifth Place Northwest. Playing boyfriend-girlfriend in a room full of girls, sitting in a bean bag chair and drinking water we pretended was [...]

Now there is competition for my heart. Before, Ramona Flowers was the queen of all graphic novel heroines as far as my heart was concerned. Nobody came close to Ramona. Not the ass-kicking used-to-be fairy tale princesses in “Fables.” Not the real-life women who pepper so many of the graphic memoirs I love (think Alison [...]

In June of 1996, cartoonist Chester Brown’s girlfriend Sook-Yin — who would be his last girlfriend — admitted she had fallen in love with another man. She wanted to see how things would play out with this drummer and talked it out with Brown, who encouraged her to give it a shot. He continues to [...]

Historical Fiction. Despite its oxymoronic implication, I love the stuff. It takes the known part of history and infuses and embellishes the unknown into awesome possibilities. It?s like the “Jurassic Park” of literary genres with the fiction playing the part of the amphibian DNA and the History playing the part of Tyrannosaurus Rex DNA. Which, [...]

At the end of each chapter in Daytripper the main character, Bras de Oliva Domingos dies only to start the next chapter alive again, and at a different point in his life. That might seem a little spoiler-y, but come on it happens in the first chapter. And even with that knowledge, you should still [...]

Anya’s your typical angst-ridden American teen. She’s unhappy with her perfectly fine body; constantly dieting; has a crush on the hottie basketball star and loathes his beautiful, perfect, blonde girlfriend; she’s got one friend she’s not particularly fond of; and she likes to ditch class at her private Catholic school to go outside and smoke. [...]

If Julie Doucet was a man, she would have a girlfriend with huge breasts. She would throw her down on the hood of a car and have her way with her. She would look similar to the woman version of herself, but with more of a V-shaped torso. She would zip up her pants and [...]

During scary movies, I'm that annoying woman in the theater who screams and grabs the person next to her, whether I know them or not. I've given the wrong impression to both men and women because of this, but I can't help it. It's like a nervous tick; I can't control it. I don't understand [...]