Poetry Comics by Grant Snider

Grant Snider is a thoughtful, positive, lovely cartoonist. And I think I've now come to the end of his work, and have to wait for him to generate some new books so I can read them.

That's as close to sad or negative as you get with Snider's work, and in our current hellscape world - gestures vaguely all around - that kind of honest positivity and care and creativity is hugely welcome.

Poetry Comics was his new book this year. It's not as tightly themed as some of his other collections - I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelves, for example, was entirely about books, and The Shape of Ideas was supposedly creativity-inducing - but there are clusters of comics here specifically about poetry, and the whole thing has that standard sweet Snider vibe. The central character, most of the time, is the dark-haired kid character; I tend to think of her as a tween Black girl, but Snider works in Everypeople, so that's mostly my (not entirely warranted) assumption.

I don't think this is pitched specifically at younger readers: Snider has done picture books as well, so he's made books for that audience. The characters are mostly kids - or at least, small and inquisitive and energetic and playful, which is nearly the same thing - and Snider's work is generally in a tone of cheerleading for its activities, which is very appropriate for a younger, inexperienced audience. I think, though, that most of his stuff is the sort of all-ages that works for tweens on up without being limited to the younger set.

Most, or maybe even all of Snider's work appears first as individual strips, typically at his website Incidental Comics, and this book is the same. It contains not quite a hundred pages of comics, mostly single-pagers, with loose running themes of creativity (especially making, or thinking about making, poems), play, and exploring the world. It's organized into four big sections by the seasons of the year, in the way that his books are generally loosely organized with some general schema.

Snider draws like R.O. Blechman (at least to my eye - no idea if anyone else agrees). He writes like no one but himself: down-to-earth, quietly honest, positive without being Pollyanna-ish, and just supportive at all times. His work is the kind of thing that gives you hope that humanity isn't doomed, and that, just maybe, at least some of us are actually good people.