Reviewing the Mail: Week of September 27, 2025

As I said last week, this is the first of three posts listing the books I just bought from Midtown Comics - "just," in this case, meaning "arriving Sep 15 and ordered Sep 2" - broken out into batches of five for my personal convenience. This first one has the beginning of the alphabet, according to author name.

I read a bunch of Art Bathazar and Franco's comics for younger readers - primarily Tiny Titans, but including other stuff - when my own kids were younger, and liked their energy and style a lot. And I am coming to realize, as I get older, that I don't need to stop doing things I enjoy just because they're supposedly for people a generation or two behind me. So I just got the Bathazar/Franco 2020 book ArkhaManiacs, which seems to be a goofy take on kid Bruce Wayne (not sure if it's pre- or post-orphaning, but I bet the book will resolutely not make that clear) and kid versions of his major villains.

I read Ludovic Debeurme's Lucille over a decade ago, and even, at that time, noted that the sequel, Renée, was on its way. I don't know why it took me that long to actually get Renée...well, yes, actually, I do: I forgot about it. The world is full of books, and we forget most of them most of the time. But I remembered this one, eventually.

I know very little about Betty Blues by the French creator Renaud Dillies. It's about a bird that plays jazz trumpet, and some kind of love affair either gone wrong or never actually started in the first place. But the art looks inky and complex and fun, and it's a big-format album, and I figured why not?

Similarly, I liked the energy of the cover of Robin Enrico's Life of Vice - about a reporter trailing along with celebrity Becky Vice on a trip to host an award ceremony in Vegas - even though I don't think I've read Enrico's work before.

Last for this batch is All the Presidents by Drew Friedman, one of his recent series of "I'm going to do a bunch of really detailed headshots, in my inimitable photorealistic style, of a specific group of people with some connection" books. This one was from 2019, and covered the first 45 Presidents, as the title makes clear.