Staff Pick of the Week 12/28/17

• Comic: The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
• Staff Member: Julie

This painful first autobiographic work by Thi Bui has been praised all year and I'll continue to do just that right here. Bui draws a very stark and detailed look into her parents' union in Vietnam and their eventual departure to the U.S. with their children in the 1970s. The Vietnam War was beyond catastrophic for everyone involved but here we get a chance to see the Vietnamese side struggling to make sense of it while desperately seeking refuge.

Bui's storytelling wavers between timelines throughout the story, but with no confusion and a tight sense of what kind of story she wants to unfold. She weaves her parents' story, her early upbringing, and her current relationship with her family into one book that pays great attention to each part.  It is so exceptional that she is able to convey an entire family’s output of experiences into a beautifully rendered graphic novel. This book is a must read for anyone curious about the immigration, war, refugees, or just family dramas.

This comic has been out for some time this year, but if you haven't gotten the chance to read it yet, I highly recommend checking my favorite non-fiction book of the year.

Staff Pick of the Week

• Comic: There's Nothing There by Patrick Kindlon and Maria Llovet
• Staff Member: Liz

The plot of Patrick Kindlon and Maria Llovet’s There’s Nothing There is familiar. Filthy rich, Kardashian-esque Reno is famous for being famous. Her life is filled with social media, parties, fake friends, and general debauchery. She doesn’t even blink at the prospect of an orgy, which turns out, actually, to be a bit of a problem; her cycnical nonchalance keeps her from realizing that she’s stumbled into a demonic, ritual orgy instead of your average, garden-variety orgy. As a result, she ends up cursed, the prey of a demon that will erase her very existence if it ever catches her. I don’t want to give away too much but what follows is a horror story that’s deeply rooted in our and image-obsessed culture. 

There’s Nothing There is scary and beautiful, a rumination on fame and social media and the constant visibility that both demand as much as a demonic horror story. Patrick Kindlon and Maria Llovet pull of both with ease, though. Llovet’s art, especially, provides a throughline, representing the grotesquery of celebrity with always stylish but almost impressionistic art. It seems constantly in motion, never settling into any image too comfortably. Reno’s fame is similar. No matter how glamorous on the outside, at its core, it’s a constant struggle to maintain attention.

There’s Nothing There was one of my favorite comics of this year, and in my opinion, it was seriously under-read. The collected paperback comes out today from Black Mask Studios. 

Tillie Walden's SPINNING window display

Thanks to the ace art talents of Comix Experience champions Emma Munger and Julie Fiveash, the most stunning and moving book of the year has a stunning (and moving!) window display!