Reviewing the Mail: Week of 12/25/21

For Christmas, I got some books I've already mentioned (not all of those: just the ones that were basically new). I also got a box this week that did not get wrapped up, because there was already enough stuff for me under the tree.

But these are things I bought from the Fantagraphics sale around Thanksgiving (I forget if it was officially a "Black Friday" or "Cyber Monday" sale), expecting that they would be Xmas presents for myself, before those other books lapped them in between.

No One Else - a new short graphic novel from R. Kikuo Johnson, author of Night Fisher. That book was from 2005, and I think this is Johnson's first since then.

Good Night, Hem - the new graphic novel from the Norwegian cartoonist who goes by "Jason," making his work nearly un-Googleable. This looks to be a historical story about Hemingway in Paris in the 1920s, though, knowing Jason, there could also be aliens or time-travel or just a lot of punching.

Patience - Daniel Clowes's last big GN, which is a few years old at this point. I like Clowes's stuff without loving it, and that may be why it's taken me this long to get what is a pretty big (expensive) book.

Monsters - this is from Barry Windsor-Smith, and apparently he's been working on it, on-and-off, for three decades. That is not necessarily a recipe for a better book, but the reports have been good so far, and BWS's art looks lovely as usual. (Well, "lovely" may be the wrong word for a book called Monsters that seems to be filled with ugly faces. But you know what I mean.)

And last is Farewell, Brindavoine - this is by Jacques Tardi, and I understand it's pretty early in his career. Maybe his first big success? Maybe his first solo book? Something relatively early and important, I think. And recently republished in a new American edition, probably with a new translation.