Author Archives: Justin McGuire

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Nils Tree of Life - Feature Image Reviews
“Nils: The Tree of Life”

By | Feb 18, 2020 | Reviews

Jérôme Hamon looks at our world, and moves it forward to a future where near-magical hover cars and holograms coexist with mixtures of old religions and actual magic. It’s a fascinating world of contrasts, a world of nature and technology, and it’s a world on the edge of destruction. Franco-Belgium comics have a long history […]

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Reincarnation Stories Feature Reviews
“Reincarnation Stories”

By | Dec 16, 2019 | Reviews

There’s a recurring gizmo in Reincarnation Stories, “The Plot Robot.” It’s a carnival contraption, a combination of a one armed bandit and fortune teller machine. A desperate writer can pull a lever, and the robot ejects a story idea on two cards. “A king” “is kidnapped”. Spain Rodriguez, Kim Deitch’s friend and coworker, mocks it, […]

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Reviews
“Making Comics”

By | Nov 12, 2019 | Reviews

Lynda Barry is the most inspirational cartooning teacher in the world, bar none. I first read Lynda Barry in Syllabus, which was a semi-autobiographical and mostly-instructional book on creating comics. It was sitting in the library, and was just too odd not to pick up. I find it impossible to read Lynda Barry’s books for […]

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Fake Lake Feature Reviews
“Fake Lake”

By | Oct 18, 2019 | Reviews

What’s black and white and red all over? I don’t know, but it’s 50ish pages long, funny, and drawn by Adrian Norvid. By Adrian Norvid It’s noon on Tuesday in Fake Lake and the smell of the Tire Stack (still smoldering after thirty years) is wafting through the window of the Greasy Spoon Diner. Inside […]

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fushigi yugi genbu kaiden 12 feature Reviews
“Fushigi Yûgi: Genbu Kaiden” – Volume 12

By | Sep 3, 2019 | Reviews

The names of the final three chapters are “Heaven’s Roar,” “The Fallen,” and “Love That Lasts a Hundred Years.” Anyone, even someone deaf to the storytelling tropes and directions up to this point, could still write the correct ending just from those chapter titles. They’re perfectly evocative. The entire final volume is an extended death […]

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Fushigi yugi genbu kaiden volume 11 Reviews
“Fushigi Yûgi: Genbu Kaiden” – Volume 11

By | Aug 27, 2019 | Reviews

Volume eleven of “Fushigi Yûgi: Genbu Kaiden” turns on the family drama of a dying kingdom, with the machinations of two brothers coming to their final fruition. Then they die, one after the other. Written and illustrated by Yuu Watase When schoolgirl Takiko Okuda attempts to destroy her father’s translation of The Universe of the […]

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Sithrah 5 by Jason Brubaker Reviews
“Sithrah – Volume 5: Light City”

By | Aug 20, 2019 | Reviews

I originally discovered Jason Brubaker by accident. I was poking around Kickstarter and saw the name Brubaker and thought, “The guy who writes all the crime comics? I love that guy!” and immediately backed his project. I was thinking of Ed Brubaker. But it was the happiest accident in my life of comics, because Jason […]

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Fushigi Yûgi: Genbu Kaiden - Volume 9 feature Reviews
“Fushigi Yûgi: Genbu Kaiden” – Volume 9

By | Aug 13, 2019 | Reviews

Fushigi Yûgi: Genbu Kaiden volume nine is a book of connections. A lot of plot threads that I didn’t even know were still open are suddenly being tying together. Written and carefully illustrated by Yuu Watase Into China’s past, a young girl fights for love! Back in her own world, Takiko tries to forget about […]

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fushigi yugi genbu kaiden volume 8 Reviews
“Fushigi Yûgi: Genbu Kaiden” – Volume 8

By | Aug 6, 2019 | Reviews

This is volume eight, the penultimate volume, and our heroine has hit her nadir, abandoned by friends, lost. In a traditionally-structured shorter story, this would be near the start of the third act instead of butting against the end, but the three-act story-telling framework doesn’t lay quite so evenly on top of an episodic and […]

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