Every week I’m faced with the challenge and privilege of deciding which of the amazing new additions to Comics Plus stood out the most for me, to highlight for our readers each month. I often look for a common theme that ties them together, and this month I was struck (call it synchronicity, if you will) by a common thread weaving through many of my selections that really got me thinking about the value of libraries themselves. How the open exchange of ideas has always gone hand-in-hand with the advancement of society, but the information that shapes our past and present is always so tenuous, and that ultimately the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge is sadly just as often a direct battle against ignorance and oppression itself.
This isn’t to say that every title this month is a super-serious selection, but maybe you will also appreciate how their free access and accessibility through libraries represents an incalculable value for all of them.
What better example of the continuing pursuit of knowledge than a beautifully illustrated book? What better symbol of triumph than a library of thousands upon thousands of those books — along with the open challenge to “Read All The Comics!“?
EMERGENT & CHILDREN
We continue to add all sorts of great titles to our ever-growing Picture Book collection, but one in particular stood out this month, and not only because of its UNESCO accolades. With a strong reliance on imaginative “chimeric” animal illustrations, The Most Important Thing (Red Comet Press) demonstrates the importance of diversity in such a fundamental, yet playful way, I can see it becoming one of those foundational books that helps mold a whole generation of new readers. And I know all the animals are supposed to be equal, but see if you agree with me that the Owl actually has “the most important thing.”
Speaking of imaginative picture books with minimal text and a strong reliance on visual storytelling, The Big Adventure: A Maggie and the Ferocious Beast Book (Frederator Books) will have young readers studying each colorful page to fill in the blanks and launch a whole series of new adventures in their imagination. Just the sort of “exercise bike for the mind” to train up for when they age into the next books on this list.
KIDS
The manga-influenced, video game-inspired graphic novel Ultralazer (FairSquare Graphics) is a sure-fire treat for any Adventure Time (Oni Press) fans, while the ever-engaging Kay O’Neil returns us to their delightful fantasy world with Tea Dragon Festival (Oni Press), and proves once again to be worth the acclaim. As enchanting a place as nearly any other fantasy world you could name, yet somehow even the infrequent (but still exciting) action sequences have at their heart a gentler touch, always striving towards peace, community, and understanding.
My #1 pick for Kids goes to the completely wordless Yellow Butterfly (Red Comet Press), Ukrainian artist Oleksandr Shatokhin’s gripping metaphorical exploration of life and hope in his war-torn country. With symbolic imagery that is both troubling and inspirational, readers young and old are left to discover their own meaning in the golden butterflies that permeate the gray and shattered surrounds.
I’ll spare you my half-baked theories on why we need “Lexile levels for visual comprehension,” but even without words this book expects a certain maturity level from its reader that likely isn’t appropriate for emerging readers. In other words, this is the first picture book I can remember seeing that encourages young readers to think about other children currently growing up in a warzone, even if in just the broadest terms. Encouraging an earnest yet empathetic education concerning some of the troubling truths of the world can only help foster the kind of global empathy the future will surely require, and this is another important addition to every library’s collection.
TEEN
We get a bit of a breath of fresh air from all that seriousness here with two very different, but equally interesting titles that are both edgy enough to be considered YA for some. First is the adorable, quirky (and maybe a little potty-mouthed), Lucky Cap Scouts (Silver Sprocket), which is an offbeat, surreal exploration of the weird and at times kinda sad phenomenon of obsession over cute collectibles — specifically those blind box figurines — and how they might view themselves if they suddenly came alive! Admittedly, I picked this one mostly based on its cuteness, as our readers seemingly can’t get enough of the cute stuff, but it’s also punctuated by some hilarious bouts of identity crisis and humorous beats of existential dread; so yeah, it’s “edgy-cute.”
My #1 pick goes to Pantomime (Mad Cave), a teenage crime thriller that follows a group of deaf kids who discover they have a penchant for pulling off heists. A simple schoolhouse B&E to recover confiscated electronics quickly escalates to grander and grander larceny, until the group find themselves way out of their depth when a botched job to steal from a professional criminal suddenly has them on the hook to a very dangerous man indeed. Will they be able to figure a way to get out from under his thumb, and how can they be sure he’ll stay out of their lives after that? Plus, it’s one of three titles this month that utilizes elements of sign language in dialogue, yet another nonverbal communication it’s interesting to see comics tackle.
YOUNG ADULT
Now let’s shift gears again as we start to get into the real meat of the titles that started this thematic line of thinking in the first place…
The supernatural investigation story gets truly inverted in Banshees (Scout Comics), a dark take on slasher horror with a twist at the end of issue #2 that suddenly turns it into the ultimate revenge tale. The eerie and surreal Skin Deep (Silver Sprocket) blends sci-fi, romance, and horror in a moody, liminal style whose limited palette lends itself well to both the evocative and the unsettling.
But far and away, my #1 pick goes to one of the top books of the month for me, if not for the year. The Library Mule of Cordoba (Ablaze) is the perfect blend of history, action, and comedy, with European sensibilities that can comfortably walk the edge of the cartoonish while shifting from humorous to serious, joyous to cruel and back again — all while providing vivid historical context to the various peoples (and values) of Moorish Spain precariously perched at the precipice of its educational hegemony.
In a way, it’s the perfect graphic novel for a platform “powered by LibraryPass,” and features the premise that (probably unsurprisingly) formed the central thread that got me rethinking about the importance of libraries in the first place. I’m hardly alone (even among secularists) in seeing works of art and literature as sacred works, and the museums and libraries which house them as important as any temple. So from fabled Alexandria to Timbuktu to Nazi Germany to the much more recent Middle Eastern heritage sites targeted by the latest extremists, any deliberate destruction of a repository of man’s accumulated knowledge, art, and cultures is an anathema to which the only true parallel is genocide.
That terrible prospect faces the three unlikely protagonists of this story, when the throne of the Caliphate of Al-Andalus (aka Spain) is usurped by its power-hungry vizier, and the price for the support of the fundamentalist clerics is the destruction of the former ruler’s immense library of “devil-inspired” books — subjects like mathematics, medicine, poetry, etc. The displaced head librarian must rely on a former assistant-turned-thief, a clever copyist (possibly history’s Lubna), and what is probably the orneriest mule in all of Europe to somehow safeguard what precious “few” volumes they managed to save from the fanatical flames. All of this while attempting to avoid greedy peasants, corrupt soldiers, Berber mercenaries, Viking slavers, and many other hardships. It’s exciting and funny and goddamn heartbreaking… all which (re)engendered in me such a deep appreciation for the knowledge that actually has survived to shape our present society, as well as mourn the incalculable wisdom lost to the ashes of history and wonder what might have been if only…
I’d considered scrapping my usual format and dedicating this entire article to why I like this book so much, but as always, there were just too many good titles this month, so I hope I’ve given you enough reason to check it out for yourself as I finally pivot to where this common thread eventually leads.
ADULT
For our mature readers, there were a bunch of interesting, original, and occasionally oddball titles to consider. Peter Kuper’s ambitious The System (PM Press) is a fractured vignette of modern life’s seedy underbelly, while the fun/troubling/occasionally pervy What We Wished For (Humanoids) is the ultimate (naturally) sarcastic Gen X take on the superhero power fantasy. While the strangely alluring, and at times borderline erotic Betrayal of the Mind: The Surreal Life of Unica Zürn (Humanoids) is equal parts biopic of a troubled artist and a showcase of the Surrealist art world she was an intrinsic part of, the eminently strange Putty Pygmalion (Silver Sprocket) is a full-on surrealist’s nightmare that touches on a premise so weirdly cringeworthy to even hint at it would spoil the ride (just think Eraserhead meets One Hour Photo). I think it’s also worth considering why the Nazis tried so hard to suppress Surrealism, and conversely maybe why I feel like celebrating the freedoms inherent in all its next iterations.
My absolute #1 pick for Adults goes to the title that pulls this long train of thought together, the absolutely fascinating graphic memoir, Their Blood Got Mixed: Revolutionary Rojava and the War on ISIS (PM Press), which masterfully blends the investigative journalism of a documentarian with the insight of a political theorist to paint a superb and inspiring picture of true democracy in action (particularly in terms of gender/race/religious equality) in Northern Syria, even with seemingly all odds against them as they battle oppression from all sides (particularly Daesh who were eventually driven out). At over 250 pages this book is admittedly quite dense, and there’s far too much nuanced material to unpack here, but suffice to say every page, every testimonial is worth giving your attention. Especially when considering how violent intolerance from extremist ideologies is an all-to-real feature of our modern world as much as it was for the keepers of knowledge and culture of all our centuries past. But in contrast, that spark of cooperation across all perceived boundaries (in this case “Their Blood Got Mixed” refers to Kurds and Arabs fighting side by side) echoes the eternal need for the free exchange of ideas, especially all forms of expression (artistic or otherwise), and demonstrating (once again) how education is at the root of the informed consent which is the foundation of any true democracy.
Where contemporarily somewhat closer to home we have our own resurgence of book bans, draconian legislature, and other less soft forms of censorship to contend with, the unlimited simultaneous access model of the digital library (which of course we’re only too proud of) suddenly starts to feel like the logical — indeed the indispensable — next step on our arc of progress into the future. Since the relaunch of Comics Plus back in 2020 as a platform for schools and libraries, the books we offer have been read more than one million times by readers of all ages, in multiple countries, and that number is growing every day.
Even if comics are still considered “just funny books” to some people, it’s nice to think about how our own humble collection plays an enriching role within that very long line of libraries stretching back to antiquity. Considering the selection above I hope you’d agree.
Honestly, that’s just a small sample of the great comics, manga, and picture books added to Comics Plus last month. With literally thousands of titles to choose from across a wide range of genres, I could keep writing forever! Be sure to check in every month for more highlights, and browse our expanding list of past Rob’s Advisory selections.
Until next month, here are some more honorable mentions that (mostly for space reasons) didn’t quite make my list, but you may also enjoy checking out:
- Addicted to War: Why the U.S. Can’t Kick Militarism (PM Press)
- Disney Manga: Descendants – Mal’s Royal Challenge (Tokyopop)
- Intertwined: the Last Jewish Daughter of Kaifeng (FairSquare Graphics)
- My Mom Had An Abortion (PM Press)
- Nightmare in Savannah (Mad Cave)
- The Powerpuff Girls (Dynamite)
- Real Cost of Prisons Comix (PM Press)
- The Resistance: Uprising (AWA)
- Star Trek: Day of Blood—Shaxs’ Best Day (IDW)
- Vikings (Capstone)
Read All The Comics!
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Rob Randle is the Production Director for LibraryPass, and has worked in and around the comic book industry in various capacities, including as a book reviewer for the NY Journal of Books, and a judge for various comic book industry awards—the 2006 Eisner Awards, among others. Before joining LibraryPass, he had been the Director of Publishing for iVerse Media LLC since 2010, and prior to that was a purchasing manager for Diamond Comic Distributors where he helped to manage the monthly Previews catalog for close to a decade starting in 2002. Additionally, Rob occasionally does freelance work as a comics creator, and is the author of the critically acclaimed graphic novel Serial Artist. Rob holds a B.A. of Illustration from the Maryland Institute, College of Art (MICA).
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