Posts by author
Monica Johnson
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Fresh Comics #12: Rolling Blackouts
Some books take such a mammoth effort to produce that it’s hard to want to be critical of them. Rolling Blackouts is one of those books. The nearly 300 pages of delicately crafted, watercolored panels make evident that Sarah Glidden is a…
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Fresh Comics #11: Gorgeous
Where in the world did Cathy G. Johnson come from, and why isn’t Gorgeous a much longer book? That’s what I want to know. This book is so good it makes me hate Johnson a little bit for making it…
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Fresh Comics #10: Hot Dog Taste Test
When I started reading this book, I hated it. I thought, this is what happens when an illustrator takes a shot at storytelling. It’s just one drawing after another until you hit the requisite 175 or so pages that equals…
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Fresh Comics #9: Bird in a Cage
Countering our culture’s disregard for all things elderly, comics have become a medium of choice for celebrating the lives of our oldest and wisest generation. Bird in a Cage (Conundrum Press, 2016) joins a growing roster of graphic novels about the elderly…
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Fresh Comics #8: John Black’s Body
In the imagined scenario wherein my apartment burns to the ground and I lose all my worldly possessions, there are just a few things I would miss—family photographs (of course), an old wooden trunk my grandmother reupholstered and that I used…
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Fresh Comics #7: Giving Up The Ghost
If you’ve never heard of Whit Taylor, then now is the perfect time to discover her. Ghost (2015) is her understated masterpiece, self-published just months ago. As I began reading the book, I thought I was in for a nice little story…
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Fresh Comics #6: Abortion, Comics Style
Comics is a great medium for communicating complex or divisive topics, and so it makes sense that embedded within comics history we can find stories of abortion. Insane as it is that in 2015—forty-two years since Roe v. Wade—politicos are still arguing…
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Fresh Comics #5: Who is Lee Marrs?
That’ll be the name of the documentary that gets made when people learn to love Lee Marrs. Who is Lee Mars? Honestly, I don’t really know who she is. I’m sure I could ask her. I could actually call her…
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Fresh Comics #4: Making Babies!
Aside from defecating or having sex, giving birth is one of the most common life experiences. Half of the world’s population is capable of doing it and every single one of us has been through it, even if we have…
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Fresh Comics #3: Remarkable Histories
One of the goals of the Fresh Comics series is to shine some light on superb works of comic storytelling. Another is to look a little deeper into the content of these superb comics and to ask “fresh” questions about them.
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Fresh Comics #2: Transmissions from Beirut
What are the fundamental differences between telling your own story, telling the story of another, and telling your story about trying to understand someone else’s story?
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Fresh Comics #1: An Iranian Metamorphosis
The question that lingers even after reading the book is about the use of symbolism in the cartoon and who has the final say—the creator or the readers?