Transcript:
From four panel instagram webcomics to full-length graphic novels you can find in Barnes & Noble, there are lots of great comics out there.
Comics are great, and everybody should read as many of them as they can.
But if you only have time for a few, I want to recommend three comics I read this year that felt especially important to be reading right now. The comics on this list are very different, but they’re all artistically strong, easy to find, and they permanently changed the way I thought about politics and the world.
*Recs on bookshelf: “Sports Is Hell” by Ben Passmore, “What Happens Next Will Shock You” (web comic) by Max Graves, “Fun Home” by Allison Bechdel, “The End” by Anders Nilsen, “Sexile” by Jamie Cortez, (more from staff?) “On a Sunbeam”
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Like many, I originally read “Persepolis” in middle school. Since then, I’ve revisited it twice, once for a high school English class, and recently after seeing quotes of Satrapi’s circulating on Instagram following the United States’ attack on Iran. Every reading has left me heartbroken and blown away.
“Persepolis,” the 2003 English first volume, is an autobiographical account of Satrapi’s childhood during the Islamic Revolution in Iran. It’s a brilliant dissection of history and politics, balancing both with all the complex human textures of lived experience.
The classics are a classic for a reason. If you haven’t read “Persepolis” (and its sequel), you need to, and if you haven’t read it in a while, now would be the time. We are lucky to have a text as smart as “Persepolis,” and we should all be familiar with it.
*Other Recs: Maus by Art Spiegelman, Other Russians by Victoria Lomasko, Persepolis 2.
Punk Rock Karaoke by Bianca Xunise
Do you freeze up when someone asks you for a YA graphic novel recommendation?
Do you need a text for the young people in your life that is a joyful and empowering example of the ways in which the personal is political?
Do you need a reminder of what concepts like solidarity and mutual aid actually look like when played out day-to-day?
“Punk Rock Karaoke,” made by School of the Art Institute of Chicago faculty Bianca Xunise, has your back on all those fronts and more. (It also happens to double as a killer playlist.) The book is centered around the music industry dreams of three bandmates from Chicago’s Southside as they navigate life post-high school graduation. It’s a great book to recommend to all the alt kids in your life, and a great book for the alt kid living within you, too.
*Other Recs: This One Summer by Jillian, Night and Dayna by Mariko Tamaki, and Parachute Kids by Betty C. Tang
Birds of Maine by Michael Deforge
Imagining futures and visualizing the good life is one of fiction’s most important jobs, and “Birds of Maine” is indeed dreaming of a very good life.
Part loose coming-of-age story, part speculative fiction, the book explores a future in which a sect of sentient birds have defected from Earth to build a utopia on the moon. It’s unapologetically weird, super funny, and sincerely hopeful. Where “Birds of Maine” dips into criticism, it is well articulated, and where it loves, it loves very deeply.
Deforge’s utopia is one that I can see myself and the people I love living in. One that includes sickness, awkwardness, disability, unanswered questions, death, and lots and lots of worms. Weirdness is Deforge’s main tool in reconciling the many disparate elements of his world, and perhaps his world’s core truth.
“Birds of Maine” left me wanting to make Earth more like the moon, and what a strange gift that has continued to be.
*Other Recs: Holy Lacrimony by Michael Deforge, 17776, a web multimedia by Jon Bois, and Stone Fruit by Lee Lai
