J. R. Weil AK Press ($18) by Niels Strandskov Things have changed since Joseph “Yellow Kid” Weil prowled the racetracks and saloons of turn-of-the-century Chicago looking for people with more money than sense who would soon find that ratio reduced, considerably. Weil's autobiography, co-written with W.T. Brannon in 1948, makes it clear from the outset […]

Walter Benjamin translated by Howard Eiland and others Belknap Press of Harvard University Press ($27.95) by Nathan Clay Barbarick One hundred years ago, a twenty-year-old Walter Benjamin argued that "the best part of our youth has been spent far from school, far from a school that pays no attention to this youthfulness and imbues it with no […]

edited by A. David Lewis and Christine Hoff Kraemer Continuum ($34.95) by Spencer Dew This collection of essays emerges from an academic conference, its contents touching on issues relating to comic books, broadly, and “religion,” more broadly, aiming to capture such facets as magic, in theory and practice; Christianity, as creed and culture; and certain […]

Simon Reynolds Faber & Faber ($18) by Marshall Yarbrough A lack of inherent value characterizes the music industry. As in the fashion industry, novelty reigns; indeed, “fashion—a machinery for creating cultural capital and then, with incredible speed, stripping it of value and dumping the stock—permeates everything.” Part polemic, part survey of the present-day musical landscape, Simon […]

Bill Holm Milkweed Editions ($16) by Emily Walz More than twenty years after Bill Holm first traveled to China, his writing still captures the spirit of the China experience. Coming Home Crazy is a vivid picture of a foreigner’s life in China, of teaching English abroad, and of the author’s delight in his students. Presented as an […]

Matt Wagner Vertigo/DC Comics ($12.99 each) by Stuart Hopen This review gets personal. Madame Xanadu is a beautiful Gypsy tarot reader who comes to the aid of young lovers threatened by a variety of monsters, mostly of the B-movie ilk. The sign on her shop invites the passer-by to “enter freely, unafraid,” though the shop […]

In the Saturday, September 9, 1989 issue of the Star Tribune, art writer Mary Abbe wrote a column entitled “Lush growth of art blooms in 21 shows.” In it, she previewed a few of the art openings going on that evening, mostly in and around the Warehouse District in downtown Minneapolis. “Nothing demonstrates the unprecedented expansion […]

An Essay on the Iowa Writer’s Workshop 75th Anniversary Reunion by Shawn Patrick Doyle In popular culture terms, Iowa seems like a state in need of a publicist. For screenwriters, it’s a fallback hometown for any character who is just a bit too earnest or naïve for her own good. Iowans don’t seem to mind. In […]

I became a writer because I’ve always enjoyed observing more than being observed. So it seemed unfair, a kind of callous cosmic irony, that realizing my Ever-Since-Childhood-Dream—publishing a book—meant I was expected to fight tooth-and-nail to be observed as much as possible. I’d known this would happen, but only in the vaguest terms, and I’d somehow […]

Alan Moore et al. Knockabout ($5.95/each) by Rudi Dornemann Alan Moore tends not to stay in one place artistically. When he made a name for himself in comics in the early 1980’s, he reworked the conventions of science fiction and superhero comics. In the years since, he’s written extremely detailed historical comics (From Hell), highly […]