Footpath Flowers

Text: Jon Arno Lawson

Illustrations: Sydney Smith

Publisher: Walker Books Ltd

This is a gorgeous little comic that you will find in the picture book section of your library or bookshop. It’s about 30 pages, all art no words, and about a little girl out for a walk with her Dad.  She picks wildflowers that are growing in the pavement and gives them to people she thinks needs them. That’s the whole story, there’s no twist. It’s simple and it’s lovely. The little girl clearly has a very generous spirit and an innocence about her and she’s kind. I got this out of my library and I will be purchasing a copy for my son for when he’s a little bit older.

The New York Four

Story: Brian Wood 
Art: Ryan Kelly
Publisher: MINX (DC Comics)

What’s it about?

“New York City – It awes me into silence sometimes. And it makes me want to shout out at the top of my lungs. Is there any place better?”

The New York Four is a black & white 2008 comic from acclaimed DMZ-writer Brian Wood aimed at young adults, with Ryan Kelly on the artwork. It was originally a digest-sized graphic novel released through Minx, a line published through DC Comics.

The book doesn't just simply revolve around a strong female lead character, but four of them! Each with their own short narratives woven through the book.

The New York Four is about these four young women that are starting their freshman year at the New York University. They all left their homes and family behind, looking for the freedom you get living in NYC.

As the story opens we meet Riley Wilder. Most of the book is seen through her eyes. Riley's pretty shy, always get straight As and spends all her time on her cell phone, only speaking to all her "friends" she met at parties through it. Her and a couple of friends are kind of short on money, so they decide to share an apartment outside the campus together.

There's Lona Lo, a gal who likes keeping tabs on everyone and kind of comes off as a stalker at times. Ren Severin who's more interested in these older guys and hanging out with other peoples than her classmates. And finally Merissa Vasquez, who's having some troubles with her grades...

One day Riley gets to reconnect with this older sister, Angie, who ran away from home much to her parents' chagrin. Riley never really knew her much before, and she finds her back that year of college!

There's also this guy, Frank, who Riley falls for... but also appears only interested in dating both sisters at the same time.

Seconds

Story: Bryan Lee O'Malley
Art: Bryan Lee O'Malley & Jason Fischer 
Publisher: Ballantine Books

What’s it about?
Seconds is the highly anticipated first new comic from Scott Pilgrim creator, Bryan Lee O'Malley. Following a pretty impressive success (for such a small indie title), which even resulted in a much bigger motion picture feature, O'Malley went back to his roots. By releasing a new self-contained graphic novel!

Seconds tales the story of this woman, Katie Clay, who is a young talented chef and the proud owner of a local restaurant, called Seconds. Lately, Katie has been struggling with both her personal and professional life. Things have been quite stressful for our heroine, she is in the transition of opening her own new restaurant, leave the old place behind and try to finally move out of that restaurant's second floor and get a proper apartment to live in. And she's been guessing her step of the way. Is that new place a good or bad decision, should she settle for that building or a better locations, and has she been making good decisions all her life and how did she lose the good thing she had going on with her ex-boyfriend?

But one day she finally get the chance to redo it all!

She finds this mysterious white-haired magical girl she calls Lis. She's the resident house spirit at Seconds.

A young waitress named Hazel was severely burnt by Katie's fault. Lis offers Katie the one-time only use of a magic notebook which grants her the ability fix past mistakes. The rules? She has to write down the mistake she wishes to "correct". Ingest a magic mushroom. Go to sleep. And the next day when she will wake up, things will have changed anew.

But soon Katie finds a loophole. She decides to grab a few more of those mushrooms and starts abusing this newfound power. Trying to fix everything, her past relationship, the future new restaurant. Everything! Until it's perfect!

And it only makes things worse and worse the more she tries changing things...

Seconds is a fun entertaining little fable featuring some gorgeous pages with help of Bryan Lee O'Malley's new team of assistants.

Lost at Sea

Art & Story: Bryan Lee O'Malley
Publisher: Oni Press

What’s it about?
Lost at Sea is a black & white graphic novel by Bryan Lee O'Malley. It was first published in 2003 through Oni Press.

It's a "coming of age" story about this girl named Raleigh. She is on a road trip with some fellow classmates from school she doesn't know much. She tagged along as they were driving across America, from California back home to Vancouver, Canada.

Raleigh has always by a loner, distanced from other kids at school. She doesn't talk much and keeps to herself since her childhood friend moved away.

She was visiting her father and tried to go back to this long-distance boyfriend she had a relationship with. Since she missed her train back home, she kinda took this occasion to join a road trip when these guys Stephanie, Dave and Ian were also on their way back.

She spends the story thinking back and forth about her relationship (this guy she met on the internet!), who she was, who she is now and who she wants to be.

Oh. And also, she believes cats are after her. She thinks her mom sold her sold her soul as a kid, for success and her career. Yep.

The story does get kinda surreal at times. She sees cats everywhere. She believes a cat stole her soul. She forces everyone to wake up in the middle of the night to attempt to catch the cat back, as she slowly opens up to the others.

It's a comic about a girl just as much looking for a point of anchor in her life had she been actually "lost at sea".

A fun quirky tale about four college age-kids driving back home around holidays.

I Don't Like My Hair Neat

Continuing the Thought Bubble theme, next up is Julia Scheele's I Don't Like My Hair Neat.

Art: Julia Scheele
Writer: Katie West and Chrissie Williams:
Self published

What's it about?
I Don't Like My Hair Neat is a collection of stories. The first (and main) one is Positive - an 18 page story about a woman fearing she might be pregnant.  How did it happen? Who is the father? What will the kid look like?

Sugar Glider Stories

Sugar Glider Stories

Tales from the Sugar Glider Universe

Writers: Various
Art: Various
Creators: Daniel Clifford (writer) and Gary Bainbridge (art)
Publisher: Cottage Industry Comics and Unterwelt Comics

What's it about?
Sugar Glider is set in Newcastle, England, and follow the exploits of Susie Sullivan, a costumed crimefighter dressed a little like Catwoman, but with a vastly different personality and background.  Tales from the Sugar Glider Universe gives us self contained stories from this universe.

Susie only has a few walk on parts in this issue, instead the stories focus on her family, other costumed supergroups, disgruntled cafe employees and loved up young men.  The stories don't interlink, instead they provide charming slice of life anecdotes from the Sugar Glider characters' lives.  There are a few stories told in the present, but most is told in flashback: 5 months ago.. 4 months ago.. 2 days ago.  It finishes in the here and now, interviewing a detective at the scene of a nightclub fit, tempting us to find out more.

Normally we only review trades at New readers... but as this is a small press comic and unlikely to be traded it seems rather unfair not to mention it.  So instead it is a 40 page just over A5 in size, magazine style format.

Sequential Art

 Sequential Art

A webcomic by Phillip M Jackson

What's it about?
It's a webcomic that started out slice of life-ish, then branched out more unusual topics like aliens and laboratory testing of intelligent scientist squirrels.  It about a group of people, Art (an artist),  Kat (a cat and photographer), Pip (a penguin, makes his money by buying and selling on Ebuy), Scarlet (a squirrel with a very short attention span), the denizens (black blobs) and Leonard/Ducky (a platypus).

It's told in strip format, with a gag in each instalment and it's British.

LGBT History Month presents Antique Bakery

Writer and artists: Fumi Yoshinaga
Publisher: Digitla Manga

What's it about?
An old antique shop reopens as a bakery.  A surprising selection of characters staff the shop, some unlikely coincidences take place and some delicious cakes and pastries get baked.

Calvin & Hobbes

Writer and Artist: Bill Watterson
Publisher:  Sphere

What’s it about?

Mostly, it’s about six year old Calvin and his overactive imagination.  His best friend is a stuffed Tiger named Hobbes, with whom he invents numerous characters and stories, ranging from Spaceman Spiff, Captain Stupendous, tyrannosaurs (usually based on his mother), alien invasions (usually based on both parents), and far far more.

The perils of Calvin’s life can be summarised thus:

School, bathtime, Rosalyn the babysitter, school photos, camping trips, his long suffering neighbour neighbour Susie and his very attentive parents.

Maggie the Mechanic. A Love and Rockets book

written and drawn by Jaime Hernandez

What’s It About?
The thing about siblings is you love them but at the same time you need space from them. When Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez decided to start a comicbook together they neatly solved this problem by taking half the book each. In his half Gilbert created the village of Palomar (reviewed here) and in his half Jaime created Las Locas.

The Locas are a largely female, largely Mexican-American cast living around the early-80s LA punk scene. Jaime Hernandez tried to inject some reality into communities and peoples he had too often seen portrayed in the media only through stereotype and cliché: the punk scene, homosexual relationships, bisexuality and his own Mexican-American background. Added to this realism was a touch of science-fiction and so Maggie the Mechanic, Mexican-American bisexual punkette, also ends up travelling the world fixing up spaceships and armies of robots, riding a hover-scooter and teaming up with professional wrestler/revolutionary agitator Rena Titanon between adventures at home with a large, varied and endearing cast of friends.


Now Fantagraphics are publishing a series of collections bringing together the complete canon of Las Locas stories in strict chronological order of publication, starting with Maggie The Mechanic.

Heartbreak Soup. A Love and Rockets book

written and drawn by Gilbert Hernandez
Publisher: Titan Books

“Welcome my friends, to Palomar. Where the men are men,

and the women need a sense of humour.”
- Carmen

What’s it About?
Palomar is an isolated hamlet on the coast of Mexico mostly untroubled by the passage of time or the existence of the outside world. There are no phones, no televisions and only six cars running in the entire town, most anything anyone eats is grown or hunted locally. If you want a bath most likely you won’t have one in your house so you’ll have to go see the banadora and she’ll bath you.

Palomar was the creation of Mexican-American author Gilbert Hernandez who populated it with a wealth of interesting, diverse characters. Published over thirteen years the Palomar stories were a soap opera on a grand scale as it followed the town's ever-growing, ever-evolving population through love, death, marriage, childbirth and everything in between. Heartbreak Soup is the first in a series of books from Fantagraphics collecting the entire Palomar canon in strict order of publication.