CHU is an inventive and visually stunning comic, thanks to the vibrant and expressive art by Dan Boultwood. The story unfolds briskly, packed with unexpected twists and turns that will keep me engaged from start to finish. Prepare for a hilarious and gory adventure featuring memorable characters, with Saffron Chu leading as a non-nonsense anti-heroine armed with snarky wit.

I enjoyed this story.  It was a personal exploration of a nine-year-old boy named Nathan finding a way to escape from the real-world issues of bullies and his older brother dying from cancer.

There is some significant symbolism, and the world is an allegory for how young minds deal with trauma and change.

The dynamics between humans and fae races are exciting, and seeing how one of the main characters, Cinder, tries to navigate his place between both worlds is.  It is an excellent allegory to those who struggle to find their family and, in the end, gives the reader permission to recognize that our family is who loves us and allows us to grow.

I stumbled upon this one in the library's adult section, among the other graphic novels that touch on adult themes.

This one is about how recently separated conjoined twins can continue their lives separate from each other.

This was a fun and daring read with plenty of adult humor that parents can enjoy—mainly focusing on the amazon purchasing consumer culture prevalent in global north communities.

There is also a sense of tapping into the international espionage action reminiscent of James Bond and other campy spy movies.

It is an entertaining and heartwarming story with humor and great panel layouts that give the reader a sense of the cinematic.  Judd Winick wrote and illustrated the story, and I look forward to reading another installment.

What I love about this system is that the rules provide enough narrative freedom for the player, while still keeping it within a defined system that would appeal both to seasoned players that like a little ‘crunch’ in their game; whilst making it easy for first-time players to tabletop to enjoy.

The main plot of this African Science Fiction story starts with four alien races splitting up the earth into their own territories. Parallels to colonialism are the message and allow the reader to be educated on our world history. The presumption of the colonizers being welcomed along with the clash of technologies allows for the beginnings of a compelling story.

This is a middle-grade graphic novel series, but Siegel can tell a story that I believe is more well written than many adult fantasy epics that try to evoke a similar level of world-building. Others do it at the expense of character development, but Siegel weaves both internal and external conflicts for the heroes in a way that seems natural.

It was a fun read and one thing that Caleb is good at too is making sure the title is reflecting what the story is about. Issue one gives the reader a taste of where the overall story is going while throwing in an engaging origin story of the main character along with the origin story of the world he has created.

I backed Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos’ Kickstarter a couple of months ago, ‘Zine100: How Not to Be Colonized By Outreach Programs’. It was a fun and educational mini-zine that was handmade by Stephanie. Her passion and experience in community-based health advocacy are apparent and appreciated in the booklet. She tackles a challenging subject that is also not widely known with an approachable and accessible narrative and art style.

Frankly, I was very impressed by the quality of the story. I immediately connected with the characters and found the story’s backdrop of Eastern Africa engaging. Beserat is great at instilling some cultural-specific terms and actions that serve as a nod to his Ethiopian audience and as a cross-cultural educational piece for an uninitiated western audience.

Also the book boasts four different illustrators and they do a great job in capturing the fantastical science fiction and magical world that Siegel created. The colors and the character designs, along with the landscapes helped with the story immersion.

The description of the book is as follows:

Planet Jurassica is under siege. The sinister space pirates have raided the Imperial palace and stolen the famous Jewels of Jurassica. This looks like a job for . . . Captain Raptor!. . . hero of a thousand space missions; champion of truth, justice, and dinosaurs in space throughout the galaxy. If anyone can track down those marauding space pirates, it's Captain Raptor and the fearless crew of the Megatooth!

I have always loved Neil Gaiman’s stories. They possess an accessible amount of horror and whimsy while making incredibly niche settings easy to understand by any reader. There is no level of condensation to his narrative, and this book is a great example of it.

The story turned out to be a melancholy post-apocalyptic world where the three protagonists wandered around a destroyed world for food.

For me, it read like an episode of the show instead of a self-contained story.

Nostalgia abound! Much like other branching novel books, this is written in a second-person point of view. How this is different than other books, this is also mainly a solo roleplaying game. The reader first creates the character statistics. I love how this particular branching novel roleplaying adventure makes it extremely portable and accessible anywhere.

I really appreciated Khouri’s artwork, with its heavy linework. This book also shows how important color is to a story, for mood and setting. The entire book was presented in a warm palette of yellows and oranges, which insinuated to me, a planet with a different type of sun.

This past week I read ‘Aster and the Accidental Magic’ by Thom Pico and Karensac. What a fun book. Thom and Karensac created a great world for the protagonist, Aster to explore. I really love this type of youth-oriented graphic novel genre that has characters interacting with their day-to-day magical surroundings.

It is exciting to see the writer and the artist world build together and seemingly work so well as to play on each other’s creative strengths.

I mentioned on my Instagram that this book had some innovative storytelling through mapping and engineering designs, which I found interesting. Ying also sets up a grand backstory that is hinted at in the book, allowing the reader to feel satisfied while wanting to explore this world more.