Small Press Expo 2023

I find myself able to attend the Small Press Expo 2023 (Saturday only — but given how there were more people that wanted rooms than available in the hotel, that’s maybe easier to handle this year). It’s held September 9-10 in Bethesda, Maryland. I’m most interested in the debut books, as a convention...

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Lost Legion of Super-Heroes Art by Stuart Immonen

The below, I’ve been told, was intended to be one of the pinups for the oversized Legion of Super-Heroes #100 (which was cover-dated January 1998 and was one of the last issues of the series KC Carlson edited). It did not run, I think, because it was thought to be TOO close in style to Archie Comics...

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Science Comics: The Periodic Table of Elements

The Science Comics line continues with The Periodic Table of Elements: Understanding the Building Blocks of Everything, an introduction to the basics of chemistry by Jon Chad. Mel is anxious about her upcoming chemistry test on the elements, because pressure makes her nervous. She dreams herself into...

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Washington’s Gay General

Two of the biggest trends in graphic novels over the past few years are graphic memoir (biographies and autobiographies in comic format) and non-fiction comics (particularly those about scientific topics or history). I love both, as I find them both educational and a terrific use of the combined textual/visual...

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Kiss Number 8

We not only live in changing times, but we live in quickly changing times. Kiss Number 8 came out in 2019, and as the story of a girl realizing she’s gay, complicated by the unspoken family history she discovers, it already feels a little like a period piece. (Not enough of one, though, given current...

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Why I Adopted My Husband

I’m glad to see more manga memoirs coming out. Comics is such a great format for nonfiction true-life stories, as they show what happened in such approachable fashion, including the emotional affect. The trend seems to have started with My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness (2017), with more recent...

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