Pushing Buttons

This "futuristic workplace kerfuffle" recently came to my attention via social media, and I was very glad to buy and read a copy. Pushing Buttons features an eventful first day at work. It stars Margit, a young woman who has not had a job in months and is facing eviction. Luckily(?), her best friend Chloe is a supervisor for a local company and scores her a position operating a 3AZ machine, which involves reading a manual to learn which wires to connect and buttons to press. Chloe's supervisory position makes for some awkward situations, and Margit starts to question their friendship. She also quickly realizes that this gig has lots of restrictions.

This was a relatively short graphic novel, but I found a lot to relate to. I felt quickly drawn into the personal drama, and as I realized more about the social and work dynamics the more engrossed I got. The artwork is geometric and cartoony, somewhat drawing to my mind alternative comics artists like Kaz or Chris Ware. I felt that the cute, regular drawings made for a great atmosphere for the rote and soul-sucking situations Margit finds herself in. Additionally, the adorableness of the characters adds an interesting accent to the ways they put up certain appearances and treat each other. 

Pushing Buttons was made by Ursula Blix, an animator and artist who recently graduated from The Animation Workshop in Viborg. She has drawn a bunch of comics and covers, but as far as I can tell, this is her debut graphic novel, drawn as a final school project. She drew this interview that tells a little bit more about her work on the book. I was not able to find any reviews of it online, but I will definitely keep my eyes peeled to see what else she publishes.

Pushing Buttons was published by Black Panel Press, and they offer a preview and more here. 

Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass

 

I have read a few of the YA graphic novels that DC Comics has published the past couple of years (you can check out my two reviews here and here), but this one really took me by surprise by how much I liked it. I don't mean that I underestimated the talent who collaborated on this book, as writer Mariko Tamaki is one of the best writers working in comics today, and I have enjoyed artist Steve Pugh's work for decades now. 

Dear readers, I suffer from what I call "Batman fatigue." I used to love the character, and there was a time when I felt it was the greatest superhero creation ever. But after decades of reading some great stories, I have gotten to the point where there is just too much Batman out there for me. Sure, I admire writer Tom King's meta-commentary comics when I have read them, and works like The Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Knight, Batman: Year One, Batman: The Animated Series, and the 1966 Batman TV show are some of my favorite things ever. But I am over the umpteenth "final battle" between Batman and the Joker, and I am sick to death of the latest "most ultimate, extreme version ever" that has driven the comic books over the past two decades. Plus, I have some issues with Harley Quinn, who has come a long way, but whose origins truck in some pretty toxic masculinity and decades of abuse in her relationship with the Joker.

What impressed me most about this book was how well it imagined this whole universe that I found not only fresh and riveting, but that also left me gasping for more when the book ended. That is no mean feat.

Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass re-imagines Harley Quinn (or Harleen Quinzel, as she starts out) as a troubled youth who was sent to live with her grandmother in Gotham City, only to end up living with a large Asian drag queen named Mama and her coterie of drag performers. 16-year-old Harley goes to school, gets into trouble, but also befriends a girl named Ivy, here conceived as a mixed race, activist teenager with a Black father and Asian mother. Ivy is an environmentalist who finds solace in the community garden, but the entire neighborhood is threatened by aggressive gentrification perpetrated by the Kane Corporation (who are a sort of evil version of Starbucks). She and Harley also also have a major beef with Gotham High's Film Club, which is run by their classmate, elitist jerk John Kane.

Ivy presents one option of using social activism to combat this injustice, but Harley also meets a masked stranger who calls himself the Joker who offers an alternative course of action, to use terror and bomb and burn the city. None of these changes comes off as ham-handed, but they are rather nuanced, logical, and thematically apt. Also, this books turns the convention version of these characters on their heads, confronting issues of toxic masculinity, classism, racism, incarceration, and misogyny head-on. 

The story and themes are augmented by the artwork, which is incredibly detailed, so that the entire city and its motley cast of characters comes alive. There are a few key players who are important throughout the book, but the backgrounds, crowd scenes, layouts, and setting also loom large and add so much personality and ambience. This book is fantastic, an incredibly smart, moving, and suspenseful reworking of overdone characters. If this is the future of mainstream comics, sign me up please.

Like I wrote above, both of the main creators involved with this book are accomplished comics veterans. Tamaki has won a ton of awards, including multiple Eisners, being a finalist for the Printz Award (twice!), and a Caldecott Honor. She is known for the graphic novels This One Summer, Skim, and Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me. Pugh's most notable works in the US have been multiple runs on Animal Man, drawing the Saint of Killers mini-series, and a recent run on the utterly great The Flintstones mini-series (For real. Go read my review.). Both creators speak about their collaboration on Breaking Glass in this interview.

All of the reviews I have read about this book have been very positive. Ray Goldfield wrote that he felt "it’s the most essential read for anyone who hasn’t seen themselves represented in DC Comics yet." Kirkus Reviews summed it up as "a riotous read." Publisher Weekly observed, "Harley is a relatively breezy character whose questionable ethics often mirror those closest to her, and pairing her with a found family of drag queens and community organizers directs her chaotic whimsy toward a social justice bent."

Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass was published by DC Comics, and they offer more info about it here.

Maids

Maids is a crime tale based on the Papin sisters, Christine and Léa, who worked together as maids until they murdered their employer's wife and daughter. This is a slow burn of a book, only six chapters long, with the first five establishing background and subtly ramping up tension. The events occur mostly in the Lancelin residence, where Christine began work as a maids. She advocated for her younger sister Léa to be hired on as  cook, and the two were reunited in service.

Over the course of the book, we get insights into the young women's lives, from their troubled upbringing to their years in a convent. They were unusually close and frequently got into trouble. As maids, they often were up to some form of chicanery, pilfering items, messing with food, and trying to enjoy some of their employers' finery for themselves. They worked everyday from 6 AM to 7 PM and were also treated shabbily by the Mrs. Lancelin and their spoiled daughter Genevieve. On February 2, 1933 after being blamed for a power outage in the house due to a faulty iron, the sisters brutally murdered Mrs. and Miss Lancelin.

The artwork in this book is spare but masterfully laid out in ways that build suspense to a crescendo. The color palette is warm, which contributes to a muted, dark ambience that lend a drabness to scenes of everyday life and also a sinister edge to the violence. It's a beautifully affecting book, and Skelly gets every ounce of nuance and feeling from her economical imagery. This book is gorgeous and horrible as well as a clinic in storytelling.

And what an opening page!

 This book is the creation of Katie Skelly whose prior comics include My Pretty Vampire, Operation Margarine, Nurse Nurse, and The Agency (NSFW). She speaks extensively about her work on Maids in this interview.

The reviews I have read of this book have been positive. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly summed up, "This subversive horror story will satisfy readers who like their crime stories served with gender and class analysis and a pretty whipped topping." Writing about Skelly's art, Etelka Lehoczky opined, "It's a style that invites you to take it at face value while mocking your inclination to do any such thing. The theme Skelly expresses in every layer of this book is our tendency — or need, really — to underestimate anyone and anything we can't immediately assimilate: maids, girls, comics, comics about girls." Tom Murphy had a different take on the visuals, writing, "Its strong structure and narrative get as close as possible to the bond of blood between the sisters, but the bubblegum realisation on the page creates an uneasy dissonance."

Maids was published by Fantagraphics, and they offer a preview and more information about it here. Due to violence and adult subject matter, I suggest this book for mature readers.

The Quitter

If this were a superhero story, The Quitter might have been called the Secret Origin of Harvey Pekar. A life-long resident of Cleveland, Pekar was a ground-breaking creator who brought memoir, ordinary life, and autobiography to the comic book world. His stories typically followed his job as a file clerk for a VA hospital, the people he interacted with there, his relationship with his wife, his daily routines, or the jazz music he so loved and appreciated.

Pekar self-published his stories in American Splendor, a series of comics that have been coming out since 1976. The series featured art by underground comix legend Robert Crumb, who was an early supporter. It also attracted a great number of other artists who told Pekar's stories. He also wrote a few graphic novels, including Our Cancer Year, a chronicle of his battle with cancer that won the 1995 Harvey Award. His comic works were adapted into a movie that won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Fim Festival. Pekar died in July of this year, and his life is properly celebrated in this obituary.

The Quitter tells the story of Harvey's early years, from his days growing up in a Jewish/Italian neighborhood and learning to take up and fight for himself. He also detailed his coming up under very traditional, old-country Jewish parents, trying to fit in various neighborhoods, and his many undertakings. The reader follows Pekar from job to job and pursuit to pursuit with access to his private thoughts and feelings. This is a very honest and uncompromising look into the life of a young person struggling to find his place in the world, a person who messes up and who tends to quit when things get difficult. Although it portrays relatively mundane events the book is still compelling and evocative.

Pekar's contributor here is Dean Haspiel, a writer/artist who has numerous credits in comics, graphic novels, and movies, tending toward biographical works. Of late, he won an Emmy Award for his title designs for the HBO series Bored to Death.

Like Pekar's other works, this one has been typically well received. The reviewer at Grovel liked Haspiel's attempts to capture the young Harvey but felt that this work was more for established Pekar fans than new ones. Blogger charlieblizz differed on opinion here and found the book's conversational tone very inviting. Rick K wrote that even though it is a thin volume "The Quitter has the heft of a full novel, only it is admittedly a lot faster, more fun and easier to read."

A preview is available here from the book's publisher, Vertigo.

Buddha, Volume 1: Kapilavastu

Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989) accomplished much in his lifetime. He was trained as a medical doctor but his love for drawing manga led him in a different direction. Nicknamed the "Father of Anime" and also the "God of Manga," Tezuka is often considered the Japanese version of Walt Disney. He is credited with the creation of the "large eyes" style of Japanese animation and also created over 700 manga in his lifetime. In the US, his most famous creation is probably Astro Boy, originally called The Mighty Atom, a character who appeared in cartoon series in the 1960s, 1980s, and 2000s as well as an upcoming movie.

Kapilavastu, named for the birthplace of Buddha, is the first of 8 volumes published by Vertical in which Tezuka presents a chronicle of Gautama Siddhartha Buddha along with some fictional elements and characters meant to provide drama, add comic relief, and move the story along. Originally, this narrative ran serially in Kibou no Tomo magazine from 1972 to 1983 and was Tezuka's last great epic work. Although he was more of a humanist than anything else, Tezuka admired and respected Buddha and felt that his story was inspirational and important to be told. The official website of the book has character and plot descriptions for each of the 8 volumes.

Critics have commented on how readable the book is but also how modern slang and behaviors might detract from the overall narrative, how light the story is in regards to its subject matter, how Tezuka straddles the line between writing for adults and children, and how multiple sensibilities come to play in this work.

Tezuka's official website is here and contains links to the publishers who put out his works, but there is also an encyclopedic fan website called Tezuka in English.

For more information on Buddha, there are websites that sketch his life via written works and poetry, detail his teachings, and
place both into religious context.