Reviewing the Mail: Week of June 18, 2022

One book this week, another one from the library. I actually got the notification the previous Saturdays, so I could have gotten this quickly and included it in last week's list, but, as you can see, I didn't.

(Look for similar stretching-content-across multiple weeks tricks on upcoming Mondays!)

Alone in Space is a collection of Tillie Walden's earlier comics - three shorter (50-80 page) graphic novels that she did before her big breakout Spinning, plus over a hundred pages of short stories she did when even younger. (That section is titled "Comics by Tillie Walden Aged 16-20 years old," to make it clear, the way a Collected Poems will have a bunch of "Juvenilia" or "Poems Written in Youth" at the end.)

Walden has done several impressive books already in her still-young career: On a Sunbeam and Are You Listening? as well as Spinning. A lot of people have a book in them, one story they need to tell. Walden is something rarer: she's consistently putting in the work - making comics takes a long time - to make long, thoughtful, detailed stories, each of which is very different from the one before. I don't know if she can or wants to keep up that pace, but she's just hitting the back half of her twenties with four big books of her work out in the world, which is incredibly impressive.

So I'm going to read this one to see where she started, and tide me over until she finishes the next big new book.