Last night, trying, excitedly, to summarize “My Favorite Thing Is Monsters,” Emil Ferris’s debut graphic novel — or at least Part 1 of it — for my husband, I hit upon an obstacle: The book, which takes the form of a spiral-bound, three-hole-punch sketchbook/detective case study, kept by 10-year-old Chicagoan Karen Reyes, is kind of,…
As a Dutch Jewish couple hiding separately from the Nazis, Emmanuel Joels and Hetty van Son were literally drawn together by a comic book of Emmanuel’s romantic invention. After narrowly avoiding deportation to Auschwitz thanks to a policeman’s tip, the young couple spent 2 1/2 years living less than a mile apart, each in the…
Julian Voloj came of age in the nation that gave rise to Nazism and forced his grandparents and great-grandparents to flee to South America. Growing up in a small German town near the Dutch border, the son of Colombian-born parents, the 41-year-old says he always felt that his Jewish and personal identity were complicated matters….
When the artists Rutu Modan and Yirmi Pinkus formed the publishing house Actus Tragedus in 1995, it was, in Pinkus’s words, “an effort to find ourselves readers outside of Israel” for their comics and illustrations. Actus published books in English, an act that Modan and Pinkus said was seen at the time as snobbish and…
Miss Lasko-Gross’s shrewd, poignant “Henni” (Z2 Comics) arrives at a charged moment for cartoons and religion. In the graphic novel — a marked departure from Lasko-Gross’ acclaimed autobiographical comics “Escape from ‘Special’” and “A Mess of Everything” — the female lead abandons her village in a quest for knowledge. The blind followers, cynical leaders, and…
“When your parents are dying, it’s not like a baby, where people want to come over and play with the baby. Somebody comes over and brings you a little onesie or stretchy…. What are they going to do — bring Depends? Or a case of Ensure?” That’s Roz Chast, 59, perhaps best known for her…
● Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel By Anya Ulinich Penguin Books, 362 pages, $18 If the title of Anya Ulinich’s graphic novel, “Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel,” sounds familiar, you are probably thinking of Bernard Malamud’s story “The Magic Barrel,” which concerns one Leo Finkle, a rabbinical student who, on the verge of ordination, must find a…
Although her mother hasn’t read her new book, Anya Ulinich already fears the worst. When Ulinich was in the early stages of writing the novel two years ago, her mother begged her to stop. “She hates the idea of this book,” Ulinich said. Ulinich’s novel, “Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel” isn’t a salacious memoir. It’s a…
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