Following up on my columns about comics for kids and young adults in the past month, this week I’ve got some comic books for adults. A few of these may be appropriate for older teens—some of them have content that may not be appropriate for younger readers, but others I think will just not interest them as much.
Aya: Claws Come Out by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie
This book, set in the Ivory Coast in the ’70s, is actually the fourth book in a series about Aya and some of her friends (and frenemies). I haven’t read the previous volumes so I didn’t have some of the background, but there is a quick summary of the characters at the start of this book to help you jump into it. The first book in the series featured Aya as a teenager and in this one she’s a young adult, juggling various responsibilities like applying for an internship at the company where her dad works.
The book jumps around between various characters: Bintou is a celebrity on a soap opera, but is starting to experience the dark side of fame as fans of the show conflate her with her TV character; Albert had revealed to his parents that he was gay in a previous book and is still dealing with the fallout from that; Innocent is in France with his boyfriend but may be deported if he doesn’t get his papers. There’s also a whole subplot at Solibra, the company Aya’s dad works for—the boss has a strange relationship with Grégoire, whom he rescued from prison and has given a prominent position at the company, over his own son Moussa.
Even starting in the middle of the story, I found myself quickly drawn into the stories. The books were originally published in French and translated to English, but there’s a lot of slang and colloquialisms that were unfamiliar to me, plus the setting itself was new to me as well. Abouet based Aya on herself, so although it’s not strictly autobiographical, it’s inspired by her own life. I’m interested in looking up the previous volumes to catch up, and based on the way this one ended I’m guessing there is more to come, too.
The Great Beyond by Léa Murawiec
Ideally, you’d read The Great Beyond without knowing too much about it, because as you read it you gradually grasp what’s happening. It’s a commentary on the attention economy, but taking to a surreal extreme. It’s a little strange and dreamlike, in part because of the illustration style. The people are cartoony and often stretch and bend in exaggerated ways, with usually simple faces and details omitted, like fingers and noses. But then there are backgrounds filled with little details: a shelf full of books, a crowded city street, and, most of all, the signs. Signs everywhere: jutting out from the towering buildings, sandwich boards on the sidewalk, lit up in neon. What’s weird is that all the signs appear to be names.
What you soon learn is that in this world, “presence” is life—it’s the amount that somebody, anybody, is thinking about you at any given time. Manel Naher’s job is staring at a list of names for a set amount of time, people who paid for a boost in presence. She and her friend Ali have big plans, though: as soon as they’ve got everything together, they’re going to get out of this apparently endless city and go to the Great Beyond. Nobody knows what exactly is out there, though there are rumors.
But those plans are interrupted: it seems there’s a hugely popular pop star also named Manel Naher, and anytime somebody hears the name, they think of the pop star instead of our protagonist. Her presence drops to nothing and she collapses, requiring emergency medical care and is prescribed a strict procedure to follow to raise her presence: she needs to attend parties and get her name in front of people as much as possible. If she can become famous, she thinks, then maybe she can live a normal life … but that’s not how it works, is it?
The story feels a little bit loose in places and it doesn’t all tie together in a neat bow by the end, but it was very intriguing, and visually striking. It’s a thought-provoking book, and I liked the metaphor of “presence” and how it functions in Manel’s world.
The Hard Switch by Owen D. Pomery
I first came across Owen Pomery’s illustrations in Senet Magazine: he had done an illustration of Carcassonne that looked like 3D cross-sections of land. I found him on Instagram and saw that the isometric slices of land were one of his specialties, but I also liked the style of his other illustrations too. So when I saw that he had a graphic novel coming out, I was very interested.
The Hard Switch is a sci-fi story, set in a world where navigating interstellar jumps requires a mineral called Alcanite. But Alcanite is running out, and when it does, everyone will be stuck in place (or risk making jumps without Alcanite, with potentially deadly consequences). Haika, Ada, and Mallic are trying to get by, looking for salvage and making deliveries with their cargo freighter, but they’re not sure what they’ll do once the Alcanite runs out. A chance discovery sends them on a dangerous chase that could lead to important secrets about jump travel, if they can stay alive long enough.
I really enjoyed this one: it reminds me a little of Firefly, with the scrappy crew that keeps running into trouble. Although many of the characters are human (as far as we know), there are also various aliens throughout the story, including Mallic himself, who appears to be an octopus. My only complaint, really, is that the book ended too soon! It plops you into the middle of a story about a world coming to terms with an imminent crisis—the so-called “hard switch” of the title—and then ends after introducing an intriguing mystery and conspiring villains. I’m definitely hoping there will be a sequel!
The Wilderness Collection by Claire Scully
This book is something between a comic book and an art book—it doesn’t tell a story, but is more of a collection of scenes or images, grouped into three chapters: “Internal Wilderness,” “Desolation Wilderness,” and “Outer Wilderness.” There’s not a lot of text in the book, just a brief description of each section. “Internal Wilderness” seems to be based on memories and dreams—perhaps places that Scully hopes to visit and places she remembers, though we aren’t told which ones are which. “Desolation Wilderness” is based on the real place in Eldorado National Forest, with landscapes featuring mountains and forests and lakes. “Outer Wilderness” consists of imagined, alien landscapes, strange cliffs and underwater plants.
Everything is rendered with bold black outlines and hatching and limited color palettes. The first third is mostly dark blues, giving the impression of nighttime that fits the dream theme. The middle section has a lot of earth tones and greens, a more naturalistic feel. Finally, the last third takes the earth tones but then throws in some vibrant purples and pinks and teals, giving it an otherworldly feel to it. I enjoyed paging through the book and pondering the images, though I felt a little unmoored by it as well. The small amounts of text weren’t enough for me to feel like I really knew what to do with the book, and I think I would have liked a little more direction or commentary.
Curses by George Wylesol
This book is by far the strangest one in today’s column, and perhaps the hardest to describe. It’s a series of comics—mostly disconnected, as far as I can tell—and they’re all pretty surreal and often inexplicable. Some are more story-shaped than others, which seem to be a collection of panels and some words that are more about evoking a mood than providing a plot you can follow. The style of art varies from chapter to chapter, but a good deal of them have the look of something created in an old digital drawing program—strangely crude people with misshapen features, a pixellated story about a videogame. But it’s printed to look kind of like an old zine, with discolored pages and that old photocopy quality, too. There is one story that uses more of a vector illustration look—everything there is clean, thick lines and flat color. The stories themselves are vaguely unsettling: a threatening realtor selling you a “prison of fear,” a guy who goes viral for a drug trip, an unsettling ritual that results in the apocalypse.
It’s kind of a wild ride, and I read the whole thing just to see where it would go, but I’m not entirely sure I can tell you even now. If you enjoy avant-garde, experimental comics, this could be for you, but if you’re looking for more traditional comic books then you probably won’t enjoy it. You can get a feel for Wylesol’s style at his website.
My Current Stack
I finished reading A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence and found it pretty informative, though also out of date in some aspects. I’ll share more in-depth about that in an upcoming column. I’ve got a few more time travel books on deck, plus a selection of comics that feel pretty pertinent to our current state of politics. While politics isn’t a subject I dive into frequently in this column, I feel like there are definitely a lot of things that have me feeling more and more concerned, so my reaction is to work through some of those through my reading—though not all of it is encouraging. More on those soon!
Disclosure: I received review copies of the books in this column; affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support my writing and independent booksellers!
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