ALL-NEGRO COMICS: America's First Black Comic Book, wonderful anthology that's a 2025 WINNER OF THE EISNER AWARD

ALL-NEGRO COMICS: America's First Black Comic Book
CHRIS ROBINSON (created by Orrin C. Evans)
Image Comics (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: WINNER OF THE EISNER AWARD • The first comic ever created by African Americans, for African Americans.

Three quarters of a century ago, Orrin C. Evans lead a team of cartoonists to create the first comic book anthology of original Black characters created by Black talent, with the expressed purpose of entertaining while rejecting harmful stereotypes and pushing boundaries in the industry. This was only 8 years after Action Comics #1, 6 years after Captain America #1 and a whole 19 years before Black Panther hit the pages of Fantastic Four.

All-Negro Comics #1 should be among those revered moments in comic book history, but the original print run was quickly removed from newsstands and faded into obscurity, remaining largely unknown for 75 years. . . until now.

All-Negro Comics 75th Anniversary Edition (an Eisner Award-winning collection) preserves that history for generations to come, containing All-Negro Comics #1, in full and digitally remastered for clarity, several essays for historical context and contemporary reflection, as well as new stories by Black writers and artists of today, featuring the original characters.

This award-winning volume includes:

• The complete single issue from 1947, digitally remastered! Consistent colors, crisp text, and no damage! • Contemporary comics and prose stories, featuring the All-Negro Comics characters, written by notable Black creators of today • Essays that provide historical and cultural context to deepen your reading experience • A discussion guide and resource list

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I had no inkling (!) this series of comics ever existed. Which is the point of banning and suppressing books: If you don't see yourself in popular culture, you have no reason to think you belong in it. I myownself, standing on an already enormous mountain of white male privilege, was also given the gift of growing up after Stonewall...I know exactly how important it is to see your Self, your identity and looks, your behavior and thoughts, in the culture around you.

I can't even imagine how much more important it is today, and certainly was in the past, to Black children...adults, too, but comics reach both groups.

The Eisner Award has never been given more thoughtfully and necessarily than to honor these groundbreaking creators, ignored far, far too long:

I liked seeing the cover art, just as art, without the usual impedimenta to get in the way of its kinetic design. It's easier to enjoy as art:

In my defense of personal ignorance about this comic book's existence, I offer the fact I never read a comic book in my life until I was almost ten. I got books whenever I wanted, bought for me or from the library, so I never developed the interest or formed the habit. Of course, no one pitched them to me like Orrin C. Evans pitched these comics:

Silver-tongued devil, no?

So your comics maven will enjoy the Eisener winner part, your Black history maven will enjoy the recovered history and the prescience of Orrin C. Evans in doing it at all, and it looks lovely on the tablet if you've got an ereader! Now, enjoy some of Ace Harlem's adventures:

#ReadingIsResistance

LITTLE MONSTERS 1–6, beautiful art by Dustin Nguyen retells postapocalypse tale of survival

LITTLE MONSTERS 1–6
JEFF LEMIRE (illus. Dustin Nguyen)
Image Comics
$16.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: They are the last children on Earth... who also happen to be vampires.

For longer than they can remember, these child vampires have lived a life of eternal wonder amongst the ruins of humanity. But shocking events fracture the group and set them on a path of discovery that will shatter their innocence forever.

It's Lord of The Flies meets vampires in the first volume of a bold new ongoing series from Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen, the Eisner-winning creative team behind the best-selling DESCENDER and ASCENDER series.

Collects issues #1 - 6

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: There's a reason I included a work with such a well-trodden plot-path in my #Booksgiving recommendations. It's not for the sheer inventiveness of reusing Lord of the Flies only vampires trope. Jeff Lemire, as comics people know, delivers on his stories as promised. That is a given.

It's the choice of Dustin Nguyen for the art, and the way these character-establishing pages make the story to come and the characters who will enact it feel so full and investable. I feel clear that these forms are very much the ones that the words were written for:

The reasonable issue that I have heard said of these stories is, well, what about this is new...why should I invest in this iteration of The Walking Dead with kid vampires?

You and I should probably gravitate to other stories. The teens I say should get this are not quite as sophisticated yet. There is violence and there is definitely blood. Those are givens, in the genre and in this medium. To someone who has not read a hundred iterations of this scenario, though, it is fresh and can be very involving. I won't say this is the most action-packed take on the tale, but it has enough to give a fourteen-year-old a lot to chew over with their helping of gore.

Well done art lifts a familiar story higher than it started out to be.

IPHIGENIA IN AULIS, The Age of Bronze Edition graphic novel retelling & THE BRIDE OF ALMOND TREE, Australian post-WWII disillusionment

THE BRIDE OF ALMOND TREE
ROBERT HILLMAN
Text Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: World War II is over and Hiroshima lies in a heap of poisoned rubble when young Quaker Wesley Cunningham returns home to Almond Tree. He served as a stretcher-bearer; he’s seen his fair share of horror. Now he intends to build beautiful houses and to marry, having fallen in love with his neighbour’s daughter Beth Hardy.

Beth has other plans. An ardent socialist, she is convinced the Party and Stalin’s Soviet Union hold the answers to all the world’s evils. She doesn’t believe in marriage, and in any case her devotion is to the cause. Beth’s ideals will exact a ruinously high price. But Wes will not stop loving her. This is the story of their journey through the catastrophic mid-twentieth century—from summer in Almond Tree to Moscow’s bitter winter and back again—to find a way of being together.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Believing in A Cause has some costs. Patty and Wes Cunningham, Quaker siblings, are raised to believe their god has a purpose for them. When that purpose is made manifest, it is the organizing principle of the entirety of their lives from then on. World War II is the driver of Patty's purpose, as she serves Humanity in nursing its broken and abused; this takes her to Hiroshima and its almost unbearably damaged people, and her path in life is set for good. It leads her to the tender regard of a Japanese doctor, and Patty is sorted.

Wes, who serves in the war as a stretcher bearer, is wounded and realizes he wants one thing: to go home to Almond Tree, build a house, marry and raise kids who won't fight in wars. It isn't until this purpose in life is revealed to him that he begins to think about the party of the second part to this contract with god: mother/wife. When he sees his childhood friend Beth, everything clicks into place and he knows who he is to husband for his lifetime.

Elizabeth Hardy is a woman on fire. She ends World War II with an unquenchable Marxist faith, a belief that the Soviet Union is a Utopia, and that she must serve the Party however she can there in Australia. Wes, sweet and solid, isn't likely to assist her in any way getting the Revolution exported. His declaration of devotion is, well...not important to her. She says, "what about my sister? she'll do all that stuff for and with you!" but Wes, Quaker to his core, knows god wants him to serve Beth so he does.

Despite the devotion she does nothing to deserve and the huge amount of practical assistance she gets from Wes, Beth remains a loyal Communist to the point of being sent to prison over it. Beth's wildness is, it's clear, addictive to Wes and resonates with his own "must serve god's will" faith, so I was unsurprised by his eventual reward. Beth's passion leads her into ugly places and enables a user's streak in her. That she isn't perfect is, I admit, a relief but her imperfections are consistent throughout and clearly march along Wes's lines. After Beth becomes acquainted with the realities of Soviet Russia, she learns how far ideology can fall from reality. In the end, faithful, loyal Wes softens her landing and the life they lead can now begin.

Australia in the Cold War wasn't at terrible risk of falling into the Soviet orbit but there were many True Believers whose attempts to nudge the country there weren't successful. It's like all faiths to me, is Marxism. Unappealing, bringing out the worst in people, and making the world's most vile behavior Okay when it's for the cause. Wes and Patty's religious faith is presented as a contrast to Beth's political faith, but is equally gross. They're taught to be self-sacrificing for god's sake, not because it's the right thing to do. Wes doesn't even do the right thing! He enables an abuser and gets the back of her hand for it for far too long.

As historical fiction, I enjoyed the light shone on ordinary Australians' lives in the upheaval of WWII and its aftermath. As a novel, I wanted to shake Wes and shove him into Fanny Hardy's arms with a stern injunction to forget that crappy sister-in-law of his. And Beth needed to rot in the Soviet jail for her selfish, self-centered antics that could easily have cost her innocent family so much more.

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IPHIGENIA IN AULIS, The Age of Bronze Edition
EURIPIDES; ERIC SHANOWER; EDWARD EINHORN
Image Comics
$16.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: High King Agamemnon faces the most crushing dilemma of his life. Kill his beloved eldest daughter? Or forfeit victory in the Trojan War? A father’s secret plot clashes with a girl’s romantic dreams in this chilling classic play from Ancient Greece.

The most powerful dramatic script by EURIPIDES springs to life anew in a fresh adaptation by writer EDWARD EINHORN (Paradox in Oz, Fractions in Disguise, The Marriage of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein) with AGE OF BRONZE art by Eisner Award-winning ERIC SHANOWER (AGE OF BRONZE, Oz Graphic Novels, Little Nemo: Return to Slumberland).

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: A graphic-novel adaptation of the basic story of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

dramatis personae from age-of-bronze.com
I don't really know what else to say; if you haven't read those stories, or haven't seen the innumerable retellings in such media as exist then you've got one helluva learning curve ahead. This graphic version will, I suppose, do nicely to get you into the story. The idea that Agamemnon was required to kill his own child for a war against his sister-in-law's little bit on the side. It's a stupid reason to go to war, and the cost of it was staggering.

The art is, as you'd expect from Eric Shanower, convincing and technically accomplished. The story is adapted from Euripides by playwright Edward Einhorn. His success or failure is a matter of personal taste; I liked it fine.

Familiar or unfamiliar as you may be with the source material, it's a fantastic and worthy project, executed well, and solidly entertaining.