Ride On

It’s a sign, I think, of how accepted comics for young women have become (in contrast to the bad old days of a couple of decades ago, when comics were superhero stories for young men) that we finally have a horse book. The horse book used to be a staple of fiction for girls. But horses are generally...

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Heartstopper Volumes 1 and 2

If you haven’t heard about Heartstopper by now, you clearly don’t know many young people. It’s a successful Netflix TV show, with some of the best, most absolutely faithful casting I’ve ever seen in a comic book-based project. But first, it was a charming graphic novel about two cute boys falling in...

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The DC Book of Pride

The DC Book of Pride is subtitled “A Celebration of DC’s LGBTQIA+ Characters”, and it is. However, for those who want more than a pretty volume for a coffee table that shows they appreciate queer superheroes, the book isn’t nearly as useful as it could be. The short character descriptions are written...

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Sherlock Holmes Solo Mysteries: The Crown vs. Dr. Watson

As regular readers know, I enjoy choose-your-own-path books, particularly when they’re Sherlock Holmes-related (and even more so when they’re comics). Thus, I was curious to know more about the line of Sherlock Holmes Solo Mysteries, seven paperbacks published in 1987 and 1988. The first one is Murder...

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Random House Worlds Putting Out 3 Marvel What If Novels

From a recent press release: “Random House Worlds, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House, announced today a collaboration with Marvel Entertainment for an adult novel series (World English) carrying on the classic Marvel tradition of “What If…?” storytelling. This officially...

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Besties Work It Out and Besties Find Their Groove

Kayla Miller’s Click series (five books so far, the latest being Crunch) has a spinoff. That’s the benefit of writing about kids in school — there are more stories to be told about Olive Branche’s sixth grade classmates. Particularly if you bring in a co-writer (Jeffrey Canino) and another artist (Kristina...

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Distressed Beeping: Andi Watsons Single-Page Comics

I’ve been a fan of Andi Watson’s work since the mid-90s, when he came to attention with the Skeleton Key series. In the 200s, his Breakfast After Noon and Slow News Day were wonderful examples of how comics could tell stories of everyday lives. More recently, his kids’ fantasy graphic novels Glister...

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Batman in “Mystery of the Scarecrow Corpse” (Book/Record Set)

Thanks very much to a generous reader of SherlockComics.com, I have now acquired a copy of the 1976 Batman Book/Record Set that contains two stories, “Gorilla City” and (the reason I have it) “Mystery of the Scarecrow Corpse”. (All pictures below taken by me, as you can see from the slight wonkiness.)...

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Revenge of the Librarians

With Revenge of the Librarians, Tom Gauld returns with another volume of witty, insightful cartoons about books, writers, and readers, following You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack and Baking With Kafka. The humor requires a certain level of literacy, but the feeling of “getting it” is addictive,...

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Cinderella Closet Volume 1

I didn’t expect to like another “schoolgirl has crush, gets a makeover, learns about life” manga, but the twists in Cinderella Closet volume 1 by Wakana Yanai kept me interested enough to want to read another volume. “Country mouse” Haruka came to Tokyo for university. She had dreams of romance and...

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Can You Survive the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes?

Can You Survive the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes? combines the interactivity of a choose-your-own-path book with three classic Sherlock Holmes stories: “The Red-Headed League,” “The Speckled Band,” and to say the other would be giving things away. The reader gets to pretend to be Sherlock Holmes himself,...

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Read a Manga Classic for Free

Manga Classics accurately adapt well-known books into the comic format, keeping the original language. They’ve done a bunch of great works, including several Shakespeare plays. If you want to sample one, they’ve put their version of Anne of Green Gables (the only authorized manga adaptation by the estate...

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The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies

I have just read a historical mystery that I adored! The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies stars Lady Augusta and her twin sister Julia and is set in Regency London. The two women are in their forties and unmarried, so everyone, particularly their officious brother, thinks they should be ignored....

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