Articles by John Seven
INDIE VIEW: FICTIONAL FATHER makes you hurt till you laugh
Fictional Father By Joe Ollmann Drawn and Quarterly In the world of comics, I’ve always felt like Joe Ollmann inhabited his own space, but I’m not sure I can cohesively define what that space is.
INDIE VIEW: SAVE IT FOR LATER stresses complexity alongside activism
Save It For Later: Promises, Parenthood, and the Urgency of Protest By Nate Powell Abrams Comics Arts Many of us can remember the punch in the gut feeling on November 9, 2016, when the election results were clear and the reverberations of that sensation. The point of reference that settled most easily in our grasp was that of September 11, 2001, when the jolt of an attack was heightened by the uncertainty of what would follow.
INDIE VIEW: A HOUSE WITHOUT WINDOWS pulls away the curtains of the Central African Republic
A House Without Windows Written and photographed by Marc Ellison Illustrated by Didier Kassai Humanoids Life Drawn I’m going to confess — and I have a feeling that there are plenty others out there who could do the same — that I didn’t know much about the Central African Republic prior to reading A House Without Windows.
INDIE VIEW: PARENTHESIS offers the fragility of self
Parenthesis By Elodie Durand Top Shelf Productions There are so many horrors a human can face, and one of the worst, at least for me, comes from the inside — losing yourself. There are many ways to do that, from mental illness to dementia and Alzheimers, addictions that bring blackouts, brain injuries, strokes, plenty more.
INDIE VIEW: THE GRANDE ODALISQUE is the best kind of art appropriation
The Grande Odalisque By Jerome Mulot, Florent Ruppert, Bastien Vives Translated by Montana Kane Fantagraphics The word “badass” has become tiresome in its overuse, and yet that’s the only word available to me to describe the main characters in The Grande Odalisque. Alex and Carole, best buddies and daredevil criminals, have absorbed every meaning of that word, including the inevitable nihilistic outlook that eventually arrives in a badass lifestyle.
INDIE VIEW: AFTER THE RAIN uncovers the contradictions of terror
After The Rain Written by Nnedi Okorafor and John Jennings Illustrated by David Brame Abrams Megascope The first title in the much-anticipated Megascope imprint from Abrams Comics Arts, After The Rain, is in many ways a herald for Megascope’s larger focus and mission, and the writer who adapted Nnedi Okorafor’s short story into comics form, John Jennings, is the obvious choice to script the book that plays that role.
HINDSIGHT 2020: 15 TV Series That Elevated the Pandemic Year
Ethan Hawke and Joshua Caleb Johnson create magic in The Good Lord Bird If 2020 was the longest year ever then that meant there was more room for good TV series to stream than usual. It’s surely a coincidence that the makers of such things rose to the occasion, making the usual Top 10 lists outdated and demanding addendums and expansions that brought them closer to something we can pronounce as complete.
INDIE VIEW: Everyone should be a LUNATIC
Lunatic By Dan Mazur Ninth Art Press When humans try to understand the non-human world, we have a tendency to anthropomorphize those things different than us. In the case of animals, it’s an act of interpretation that helps maintain a crucial form of empathy that may not entirely be accurate but probably has aspects that align in some way with their inner life. Leastwise it’s a helpful way to maintain cross-species connections that help preserve the lives of animal earthlings.
INDIE VIEW: The playful pathos of KUSAMA: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL
Kusama: The Graphic Novel By Elisa Macellari Laurence King Publishing I have, in passing, encountered photos of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama and when that happened, did wonder about them, but I confess to never putting in the effort to finding out more about who this colorfully-polka-dotted was.
INDIE VIEW: Seeing through THE IMPENDING BLINDNESS OF BILLIE SCOTT
The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott By Zoe Thorogood Avery Hill Publishing Is it art without humanity? That’s probably an unanswerable question and certainly, plenty of arguments exist that fall firmly on the side of “it doesn’t matter” or “humanity is not a pre-existing necessity for anything,” but The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott certainly falls on the side of advocating for a human component to art.
INDIE VIEW: PAUL AT HOME takes readers behind closed doors
Paul At Home By Michel Rabagliati Drawn and Quarterly Quebecois cartoonist Michel Rabagliati has established a definite tone of the last couple decades that he’s produced his Paul series, but with Paul At Home, he’s disrupted this comforting aspect. We don’t know it at first as the book opens with Paul, in the same friendly art style, fumbling around a grocery store with his shopping list in hand, and buying some cereal for his daughter Rose.
INDIE VIEW: The simple but not simplistic delights of PLANET PARADISE
Planet Paradise By Jesse Lonergan Image Comics Sometimes little charmers sneak up on you. These days, as I look through potential graphic novels to review, it feels like there are a lot of heavy offerings. And when I use the word “heavy” I mean both of the connotations that come to mind — heavy in mood, heavy in physicality. Long books with big ideas, heavy examinations — or just heavy in pages — concerned with deep, personal trauma or wide-reaching intense events. It’s exhausting.
INDIE VIEW: Is PLUTOCRACY: CHRONICLES OF A GLOBAL MONOPOLY actually fiction?
Plutocracy: Chronicles of Global Monopoly By Abraham Martinez NBM Human beings are imperfect creatures and it follows that their creations will be imperfect as well. Even the creations are perfect, they’ll develop flaws because of the imperfect creatures that caretake them and help them endure. Such is the case with political systems.
INDIE VIEW: The powerful smallness of VICTORY POINT
Victory Point By Owen D. Pomery Avery Hill Most people live small lives. By that, I’m not referring to the importance of the lives, but rather the visibility. These lives don’t broadcast or even scream. They don’t attract attention in general. As such, the changes that come to them are often achieved through an unassuming process that doesn’t get noticed and doesn’t hold a press conference that it’s taking place.
INDIE VIEW: A gentle push into politics in OKAY, UNIVERSE
Okay, Universe Written by Valérie Plante Illustrated by Delphie Côté-Lacroix Drawn and Quarterly With the subtitle “Chronicles of a Woman in Politics,” Okay, Universe in some ways inspires dread for the incoming reader — not because of expected quality or anything like that, but for the possibility of the horror stories it might contain.
INDIE VIEW: THOREAU AND ME talks through the end of the world
Thoreau and Me By Cedric Taling SelfMadeHero If you want to feel angsty, we’re at a point in history when you can take your pick of disastrous circumstances to fret over or worse, devote a complete work of fiction to. Since Thoreau and Me was written before the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems a little displacing to read something that doesn’t include that pesky virus in its examination of the possibility of an end to everything.
INDIE VIEW: Life is filled with THE CONTRADICTIONS
The Contradictions By Sophie Yanow Drawn and Quarterly For the past decade or so I’ve noticed a shift where the colloquial word styles of young people had started to sound like they were lifted from rambling, pot-infused blather coming out of their socialist undergrad professors who had lost a fervor for life but still clung to the words they used when they still had it. Solidarity, for instance. Intersectionality. Problematic. Facilitate. Agency. You know what I mean.
INDIE VIEW: THE FLOOD THAT DID COME came just at the right time
The Flood That Did Come By Patrick Wray Avery Hill In the ongoing quest to allow your brain to qualify a new thing you encounter by matching it up in some way with an old thing you are already well acquainted with, Patrick Wray’s The Flood That Did Come has proved noticeably challenging for me.
INDIE VIEW: Is there safety in WOODS?
Woods By Mike Freiheit Birdcage Bottom Books The times, they aren’t so great. You’re either living in terror of a corrupt, fascist president and pandemic that’s shut down the country, or you’re living in a rage because your president is being obstructed by the pedophile liberals and you’re being oppressed by a fake pandemic that’s attempting to destroy America. Either way, the times suck.
INDIE VIEW: Detecting the INVISIBLE DIFFERENCES
Invisible Differences Story by Julie Dachez and Fabienne Vaslet Adaptation and art by Mademoiselle Caroline Translated by Edward Gauvin Oni Press Over the past several years I feel like I’ve seen a small but noticeable increase in comics about what was previously diagnosed as Asperger’s Syndrome but is now part of the larger umbrella diagnosis Autism Spectrum Disorder.
INDIE VIEW: VISION can be deceiving
Vision By Julia Gfrörer Fantagraphics This latest release from New Hampshire-based cartoonist Julia Gfrörer‘s Vision hearkens back to novels of romance and darkness like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, with perhaps a bit of Rebecca mixed in, but it uses a possibly supernatural element for something more mysterious and less corporeal than the obvious, fashioning a tale of repression and desperate desire. Eleanor is, by society’s view, a spinster.
INDIE VIEW: SUMMER SPIRIT is a harbinger of change
Summer Spirit By Elizabeth Holleville Translated by Amy Evans-Hill NoBrow Press Over the past decade or so, ghosts have really become a staple in comics aimed at girl readers of the middle school and high school demographic, appearing in books like Anya’s Ghost, Friends With Boys, even Raina Telgemeier’s Ghosts, among many others.
INDIE VIEW: You can't avoid THE UNKNOWN
The Unknown By Anna Sommer Translated by Helge Dascher Conundrum Press There are many ways that people allow themselves to become victims of what they believe is fate and the probably the most common is inaction. In The Unknown, German cartoonist Anna Sommer portrays the drama that can swirl around that dynamic as she follows the situations of two women, Helen and Vicky, as they follow separate paths in which inaction plays a role.
INDIE VIEW: Gipi proposes ONE STORY for us all
One Story By Gipi Translated by Jamie Richards Fantagraphics How many old folks out there? I mean at least in your 50s. Have you ever had a conversation with someone 25 years younger where you realize that the years do make a difference?
INDIE VIEW: In THE MARCHENOIR LIBRARY less is infinitely more
The Marchenoir Library By A. Degen Secret Acres The Marchenoir Library is an unusual graphic novel in that its story is not linear in a typical way — in fact, its story is not so much what’s on the page as what’s in the mind of the reader. In this respect, it’s a very personal book. More to the point, it inspires personal feelings in each reader that makes the experience of reading it singular in a way many books are not. It is designed that way.
INDIE VIEW: LANGOSH AND PEPPI FUGITIVE DAYS wanders through the Post-Soviet maze
Langosh and Peppi: Fugitive Days By Veronica Post Conundrum Press There’s an allure to former Iron Curtain countries that is hard to put into words, but it has something to do with their strange existence as old cultures inside interrupted countries, constantly the victim of oppressive outside forces that have forced the people to quickly adapt while doing what they can to hold onto who they are and what came before them.
INDIE VIEW: WINDOWS ON THE WORLD offers a view of America's invisible people
Windows on the World Written by Robert Mailer Anderson and Zack Anderson Illustrated by Jon Sack Fantagraphics In many ways there’s never been a beginning and America has always been a place where the other is demoralized and discarded socially and economically while being charged with keeping the nation running through backbreaking work, demeaning work. At the same time, 9-11 seems like the beginning of the current iteration of American repression of the other.
INDIE VIEW: BIX blends jazz and despair
Bix By Scott Chantler Gallery 13 Among the jazz musicians who have endured to be placed in that form of legendary status that transcends the community of jazz enthusiasts and bursts into the wider world, Bix Beiderbecke is not typically included.
INDIE VIEW: THE DAUGHTERS OF YS
The Daughters of Ys Written by M.T. Anderson Illustrated by Jo Rioux First Second Books The city of Ys is part of Breton folklore that may be familiar to some modern audiences as the focus of one of the stories in Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow or the focus of Joanna Newsom’s album Ys, but it dates back much further in the darkness of history after Christianity appeared but still as it struggled to contain paganism.
INDIE VIEW: I KNOW YOU RIDER explores reproducing and not
I Know You Rider By Leslie Stein Drawn and Quarterly One of the aspects of Leslie Stein’s work that sets her apart from other autobiographical cartoonists is the visual one. Her art is unlike any other in the comics field across the board, but especially when it comes to autobiography. She rejects strict panels in favor of sequential moments laid out on a page with no framing at all, instead allowing each part of the sequence share the page itself as background.
INDIE VIEW: A GIFT FOR A GHOST is ethereal poetry
A Gift For A Ghost By Borja Gonzalez Translated by Lee Douglas Abrams From the moment I finished A Gift For A Ghost I knew it was different from most other graphic novels I read for one simple reason — I immediately went back and reread it. That’s the kind of mystery that Spanish cartoonist Borja Gonzalez’s first book-sized comics work inspires.
INDIE VIEW: PORTRAIT OF A DRUNK is a soused nightmare of absurd cruelty
Portrait of a Drunk By Olivier Schrauwen, Florent Ruppert, and Jérôme Mulot Fantagraphics Like a Robert Louis Stevenson novel gone horribly wrong, Portrait of a Drunk dives headfirst into swashbuckling adventure, but with a focus on the wrong character in that adventure, the dive turns out to be into an empty swimming pool and the head cracked and concussed. But that’s the point of Olivier Schrauwen and collaborators Florent Ruppert and Jérôme Mulot.
INDIE VIEW: THE THIRD POPULATION demystifies mental healthcare
The Third Population Written by Aurélien Ducoudray Illustrated by Jeff Pourquié Translated by Kendra Boileau Penn State University Press Graphic Medicine In my experience, most comics that tackle the subject of mental health come at it from a personal place, most often the first person. The people who work with the mentally ill, typically the therapists, are less well-represented as are sometimes the difficult processes by which people are cared for and worked with.
INDIE VIEW: GERARD is maximum Depardieu
Gerard: Five Years with Depardieu By Mathieu Sapin Europe Comics Is there an American equivalent for Gerard Depardieu? For sure there are men who equal him in his big mouth or body size or ego or unpredictability or charisma or his fame, but all of that rolled into one? Doubtful. And even then this person would need to be imbued with a certain Gerard-Depardieuness that you can’t even begin to qualify.
INDIE VIEW: Reality crumbles in THE ROUGH PEARL
-Advertisement- The Rough Pearl By Kevin Mutch Fantagraphics If you look at the natural world as structured through a multitude of power struggles, one thing leaps out at you that is different from the human condition — the creatures in those power struggles tend to work with what they have. In other words, predators use their strengths and those being hunted use their skills. Weakness is accepted as part of the structure, but not necessarily as a death sentence.
INDIE VIEW: In ALTITUDE growing up happens in dangerous terrain
-Advertisement- Altitude Written by Olivier Bocquet Written and Illustrated by Jean-Marc Rochette Translated by Edward Gauvin SelfMadeHero I was recently standing at a local landmark called Witt’s Ledge, the cliff atop a former quarry looking down 1100 feet and thinking what a nightmare it would be to climb. Down below, it looked even worse. That’s with the knowledge that people have used it to train for rock climbing and once in the 1970s, someone did fall off the top of it and instantly died.
The Black Death: A Timeline of the Gruesome Pandemic
Nearly 700 years after the Black Death swept through Europe, it still haunts the world as the worst-case scenario for an epidemic. Called the Great Mortality as it caused its devastation, this second great pandemic of Bubonic Plague became known as the Black Death in the late 17th Century. Modern genetic analysis suggests that the Bubonic plague was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis or Y. pestis.
INDIE VIEW: 'Not a Place to Visit' asserts that we are the world
-Advertisement- Not a Place to Visit By T. Edward Bak Floating World Comics It’s one of those fortuitous intellectual coincidences that I sat down to read and review T. Edward Bak’s Not a Place to Visit during the Covid-19 pandemic. Not that the book has anything to do with the spread of that disease or any disease really, but my reading of it coincided with Kyle Harper’s article “Coronavirus Is Accelerating History Past the Breaking Point” in Foreign Policy crossing my screen.
INDIE VIEW: The ART LIFE revealed
Art Life By Catherine Ocelot Translated by Aleshia Jensen Conundrum Press Catherine Ocelot is trying to figure things out. You could say that about anyone, of course, but what Ocelot is delving into are the concerns of an artist, which is actually part of the creative process. Questioning, searching, these are components of the work to be done.
INDIE VIEW: SIBERIAN HAIKU creates magic from nightmares
Siberian Haiku Written by Jurga Vile Illustrated by Lina Itagaki SelfMadeHero Starting in 1941, Lithuanians endured the first of nearly three dozen mass deportations by order of the Soviet government, which occupied Lithuania. Over an 11 year period 130,000 people — mostly women and children — were sent to Siberia and placed in labor camps where they provided what was essentially slave labor and suffered abuse and hardship.
INDIE VIEW: X-RAY ROBOT #1 is exactly the comic we need at the end of a hell of a week
X-Ray Robot #1 Written and Illustrated by Michael Allred Colored by Laura Allred Lettered by Nate Piekos Dark Horse Comics I had a plan for what I was going to review originally, but it’s been a hell of a week. I imagine when I say that, most people reading this a nodding. Hell of a week.
INDIE VIEW: MISS ENDICOTT is a bright light in dark London
Miss Endicott Part 1 Written by Jean-Christophe Derrien Illustrated by Xavier Fourquemin Translated by Jerome Sincantin Europe Comics In Miss Endicott Part 1, following the death of her mother, Prudence Endicott makes her way to London to take over her mother’s secret job – Conciliator. It’s not clear what that means exactly, especially since Prudence takes a job as a nanny for a young boy who is being cared for only by a butler and a cook — his parents are on a mysterious mission somewhere else.
INDIE VIEW: NICNEVIN AND THE BLOODY QUEEN features folk horror & teen tropes
Nicnevin and the Bloody Queen Written by Helen Mullane Illustrated by Dom Reardon Colored by Lee Loughridge Lettered by Robin Jones Humanoids Folk horror, as a genre, has largely existed below a wavelength that registers with a critical mass of people, and that’s probably partly because the aspects of a work that make it folk horror can sometimes be obscure unless you are very in tune with them.
INDIE VIEW: THE HARROWING OF HELL brings back that old time religion
The Harrowing of Hell By Evan Dahm Iron Circus Comics What you read in the Bible is not the entire story of Jesus. That’s the result of multiple efforts starting around the 2nd Century to create approved lists of Christian texts for worship, which eventually led to the 15th Century consolidation of these lists among the churches to create the Bible as we know it.
INDIE VIEW: THE BOOK OF FORKS runs circles around most world-building
The Book of Forks By Rob Davis SelfMadeHero Taken at face value as you read the series, it’s hard to know exactly what to make of The Motherless Oven Trilogy. Rob Davis has crafted a curious adventure that might be described as falling into the genre of dystopian fiction, but that does his story a bit of a disservice.
INDIE VIEW: Russell, Pace, & Kirk's SECOND COMING critiques religion with the same kindness it advocates for
Second Coming Written by Mark Russell Illustrated by Richard Pace and Leonard Kirk Colored by Andy Troy Lettered by Rob Steen Covers illustrated by Amanda Conner Ahoy Comics “I wanted to show people something inside themselves worth believing in,” Jesus says at one point in Second Coming. “How to be the cure for each other’s pain. But all I did was make them feel better about being the source of the misery.” Don’t feel so bad, Jesus. Mark Russell is here to argue for you, not against you.
INDIE VIEW: 'The Ballad of the Salty Sea' offers solid, reliable Corto Maltese thrills
Corto Maltese: The Ballad of the Salty Sea By Hugo Pratt Translated by Dean Mullaney and Simone Castaldi IDW/EuroComics Though I had known about Corto Maltese for years, I had only ever sat down and read one of Hugo Pratt’s Maltese books upon its reissue of The Ballad of the Salty Sea in 2012 from Rizzoli. I thoroughly enjoyed it and appreciated the old fashioned aspects of the characters and plots, but admit that it was encumbered by some production values.
INDIE VIEW: 'Familiar Face' is a warped kaleidoscopic mirror to our own reality
Familiar Face By Michael DeForge Drawn and Quarterly “The only constant is change.” Heraclitus of Ephesus said that. I looked it up. Actually, I’m not quite clear that he said those exact words. I’m not sure that that’s not just a paraphrase of his actual sentence. But you get the idea.
INDIE VIEW: 'Lupus' is a science fiction epic of the human heart
Lupus By Frederik Peeters Translated by Edward Gauvin Top Shelf Productions It’s hard to believe that is was nearly two decades ago that Swiss cartoonist Frederik Peeters made a splash with Blue Pills, a memoir about his HIV positive partner and her son, which had been released to high acclaim in Europe, but that’s probably because I didn’t read it until its 2008 English-language release.
INDIE VIEW: 'River: Stories of Old Anapra' has an impact bigger than its page count
River: Stories of Old Anapra By Dave Ortega Radiator Comics Dave Ortega has already proven his ability to transform family history into compelling and tender comics with his regular title Dias De Consuelo, which covers the story of his grandmother’s family in Mexico in 1914.
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