Quarantined Comics

T...is for Tomine! that is Adrian Tomine, one of our all time favorite graphic novelists, who we've covered on this podcast before (The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist, etc). We recently had the privilege of sitting down with Adrian Tomine on Raman's OTHER podcast, Modern Minorities, where superfan Ryan tagged along for a chat...

In today's world, solving a crime often isn't the end. Everyone has their own version of events and the means to amplify that version, whether true or not. Nick Drnaso's eerie graphic novel "Sabrina" takes place in mundane environments: offices, homes, restaurants, but beneath it all is this feeling of incredible insecruity and of a world in upheaval. "Sabrina" is perhaps one of the most unconventional murder mysteries ever written.

This week, Raman and I look at "Roaming," the latest graphic novel from our favorite comic creator cousins: Jillian and Mariko Tamaki. We previously reviewed their coming-of-age collaborations "Skim" and "This One Summer."

"Roaming" is in fact three coming-of-age stories in one. Three young women take a trip together to New York City in 2009 (we say 2005 in the podcast. We are wrong). Two of these women, Danny and Zoe, are old friends who have planned this trip for a long time. The third, Fiona, is Danny's mercurial friend whose presence soon disrupts the entire trip.

Q is also for QUEENIE, GODMOTHER OF HARLEM, Elizabeth Colomba and Aurelie Levy's historical graphic novel inspired by the life of Harlem's legendary mobster, Stephanie Saint-Clair. Queenie follows the life of Stephanie Saint-Clair—the infamous criminal who made herself a legend in Harlem in the 1930s. Born on a plantation in the French colony of Martinique, Saint-Clair left the island in 1912 and headed for the United States, eager to make a new life for herself. In New York she found success, rising up through poverty and battling extreme racism to become the ruthless queen of Harlem’s mafia and a fierce defender of the Black community. A racketeer and a bootlegger, Saint-Clair dedicated her wealth and compassion to the struggling masses of Harlem, giving loans and paying debts to those around her. But with Prohibition ending, and under threat by Italian mobsters seeking to take control of her operation, she launched a merciless war to save her territory and her skin. In an America still swollen by depression and segregation, Saint-Clair understood that her image was a tool she could use to establish her power and wield as a weapon against her opponents. With meticulous details—in both story and art Saint-Clair’s story is brought to life in a tense narrative, against a sometimes bloody backdrop of jazz and voodoo. The story tackles the themes of colonization, corruption, police violence, and racial identity, but above all, Queenie celebrates the genius of a woman forgotten by history...

In our last episode, we looked at "On a Sunbeam," about an intense love through space. This week, we look at "Patience," about an intense love through time. Part romance, part mystery, and all sci-fi trippiness, "Patience" came out in 2016 and marks one of Dan Clowes's most ambitious graphic novels yet.

Jack and Patience are young, very much in love, with a baby on the way. But one day, Jack comes home from "work" -- you can read the graphic novel to figure out why that's in scare quotes -- to find his wife murdered on the floor. For the next 17 years, he tries to track down her killer and, when that fails, robs some guy of his time machine and travels back in time to prevent the murder from happening.

Of course, everything goes as planned. You may think you know what happens, and who the murderer is, but you're probably wrong.

Have you ever thought about enrolling in an space-Hogwarts, falling in love, only for your high school sweetheart to get wisked away by her space-homesteader aristocrat sisters, and deciding to join a space-cathedral reconstruction crew living and working on a space salamander eating chili and playing board games while making your way to your lost love? If so, then have we got a book for you: "O" is for ON A SUNBEAM, Tillie Walden's star crossed lovers' tale of Mia, Grace, and all their rad friends - sure to make you marvel at the simple things in life, but in space...

N is for NOT ALL ROBOTS - a future fiction work by Mark Russell, who you might remember for schadenfreude takes on modern society thru his critically acclaimed work on "The Flintstones" (seriously, look it up)

Cartoonist Art Spiegelman began serializing the tale of his father's Holocaust surival in 1980, famously depicting the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats. The strip ran from 1980 to 1991, and was eventually collected in two volumes. In 1992, it became the first graphic novel to win the Pulitzer.

Even today, the book has a rare power, providing a visceral and incisive look on the daily and often hourly struggle to survive as the Nazis invaded Poland and continued their systematic extermination of the Jews. Perhaps because of that continued power, Maus is constantly in the crosshairs of political censors, anxious to pull the book from libraries, an action that ironically often fuels the book's popularity and sales.

In this episode, Raman and Ryan will talk about Maus and its legacy. They'll be joined by Emily Mintz, an oil painter and sculptor who builds exhibits for the Bronx Zoo. Maus holds a special place in Mintz's life, a descendent of Jewish refugees who grew up hearing the stories of relatives who survived, and many who didn't.

Have you ever wondered what its like to be a asian teenage artist coming of age in the suburbs of the big city, with an unpredictable and often unbearable mother, while also saddled with a sense of regret and enui? this week we're reading IN LIMBO, the debut graphic memoir by Deb JJ Lee. Our story introduces us to Deb, a young Korean American teenager, trapped in a inescapable feeling of otherness. For a while, their English wasn’t perfect. Their teachers can’t pronounce her Korean name. Their face and her eyes―especially their eyes―feel wrong. Things only get harder once high school starts - shifting sands of arts and academics, escalating tensions at home, friendships made and frayed, and mental health struggles that are all too real to anyone who's ever felt like an outsider. With stunning art and a tale that feels like you're slipping in and out of an all too familiar dream, this is a story that you can't leave easily. Everybody hurts...sometimes.

K is for KARI, the 2008 debut by Indian graphic novelist Amruta Patil, who's since gone on to become a leading voice in the Indians comic scene, illustrating a number of projects - including a reimagining of the Hindu epic the Mahabharata. In Kari, we meet the eponymous protagonist upon her surviving a heartbroken suicide attempt, and we follow her to at work and at and home in the hustle and bustle of smog city. A marketing and advertising exec who turns her creative eye on the world, she lives a semi-closeted queer life, living with many single women, befriending or romantically rebounding with a business colleague with weeks left to live, and just surviving in a monsoon drenched city. In deeply drawn black and white chapters we journey thru Kari's crowded loneliness, sleeper success, and death - all in the shadow of her departed partner. The book is a sensuous yet wry commentary on life and love and unlike anything we'd ever seen. One of the rare episodes where Ryan and Raman agree on (almost) everything.