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If you weren't coming to SPX before, you are now: this year's edition will sotlight Fantagraphics' 40 year anniversary with a TRUE all-star line-up including: Joe Sacco, Trina Robbins, Daniel Clowes and The Hernandez Brothers, Carol Tyler, Jim Woodring, Drew Friedman and Ed Piskor.

Sometimes it’s better to just give yourself to something rather than to seek out its meaning. Not everything has to have one clear meaning, and in some cases, to bring concrete meaning to a work might mean imposing clarity on something that was not meant to have any. That imposition might actually come off as […]

This collection of short works by Malachi Ward and published by Alternative Comics announces itself with a verbal joke — From Now On is another way of saying the future, after all. Ward’s stories reflect the sensibility of the title, presenting familiar scenarios, but presenting them in an unexpected way that challenges the tropes we’ve embraced […]

In 2010 Grand Prize winner at the Angoulême Comics Festival in France and the Lucca Comics Festival in Italy 5,000 Km Per Second, Italian cartoonist Maneuele Fioe utilizes his strong watercolor skills to offer not the whole of a relationship, but slices, and leaves it up to the readers to fill in the spaces with the parts he […]

This short, spare, poetic, emotionally brutal piece from Cathy G. Johnson and Koyama Press captures the intersection of three lives, and the unlikely self realization that two of them enact on one. The story begins with two punks at a music show exhibiting destructive manners that disrupts the shows and gives them an opportunity for […]

Quiet and brooding, while still warm and with a great delicacy, Barbara Yelin’s Irmina takes the author’s own discovery of her grandmother’s World War II era diaries and letters, and applies the resulting biography to higher philosophical heights that really concern the way any of us encounter the world. Irmina is a young German girl […]

Millennials are often portrayed by the older generation – my own, to be clear – as a generation of victims. Like most cross-generational proclamations, this is a self-righteous pile of bull built from Gen Xers’ and Boomers’ stumbling reading of Millennial discourse, as well as some resentment for our own repression and the ability of […]

It was a fantastic day for artful, intelligent comics when the New York Review of Books added comics to its publishing line. The focus so far is on making obscure graphic novels available again, and the March 22 release of Mark Beyer’s riotous Agony sets an interesting tone for the line. Beyer’s work, which is about the size […]

Immensely talented Russian illustrator Roman Muradov has quickly established himself as one of the most complex cartoonists around, both visually and narratively. In Muradov’s hands, the simplest fable can become a massively abstracted exercise that is usually part giddy, part confounding. If you’ve been alienated from his previous work because of this, The End Of […]

Finnish cartoonist Tommi Musturi’s The Book Of Hope is as mysterious and elusive as the human being it examines. Set in a family cottage following retirement, Musturi settles into his narrator position calmly in order to scribe, without judgment or even much push for clarity, the experience of one man as he inhabits the time […]

Julia Wertz’s Eisner-nominated Drinking At The Movies, originally from 2010 but here with a handsome reissue from Koyama Press, is renowned for its humorous self-deprecating pile-on. At its root is the suggestion that beating yourself up is probably just part of personal growth. And that’s not just meant to make you feel better, but an […]

Nick Drnaso’s fictional world is a particularly joyless one where even coming together doesn’t much help the human condition. It might even make things worse. As depicted in the Drnasoverse, each human has their own internal monologue that other humans are shut out from, and this creates distance, alienation, and confusion. Since one of us […]

Two important links about the late Alvin Buenaventura, the esteemed art comix publisher. His great friends Daniel Clowes has a touching remembrance at The Comics Reporter: Alvin Buenaventura was the most important person in my life outside my immediate family. He was, to me, among many other things, an art representative, a production assistant, an […]

Over the weekend news of Alvin Buenaventura’s passing was confirmed. Buenaventura was 40 and as the publisher of first Buenaventura Press then Pigeon Press was one of the indie publishers who helped change the landscape of comics forever with his passion and devotion to detail, with such Cartoonists as Vanessa Davis, Lisa Hanawalt, Matt Furie and […]

You can go for years reading comics and come upon plenty of bizarre works, but at least understand where these are coming from. It’s more rare to hit on one that are more confounding, the ones that make you ask questions like “Where did this come from?” and “Who would do this?” So it is […]

Nobrow Press’ 17 x 23 series highlights accomplished smaller works in a pleasing package that speaks to graphic novel consumers who might not seek out short comics stories. Two recent releases are particularly success in the way they take story forms of old and present them through a modern lens, making traditional lessons applicable to […]

Given the recent tragic events in Paris, Vincent Mahé’s absolutely stunning 750 Years In Paris is a sprawling reminder that this is not the first time darkness has been cast over that city, and it’s likely not the last. Paris has been home to bloodshed and destruction, as well as a site of rebuilding and […]

Please note the "FIGHT!" title is a joke—Tony is a wonderful human being, and we're just having a good old fashioned argument, like friends do. But this is the internet and we must ratchet up the appearance of conflict so.... Read the rest of this post

R. Sikoryak is the talented cartoonist behind a bevy of conceptual comics that use the strictures of a particular style — say Charlie Brown and Peanuts, or Little Lulu — to retell classics of literature — say, Kafka’s Metamorphosis or Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. (Some of these were collected in Masterpiece Comics from D&Q a […]

This weekend it's Comic Arts Brooklyn in Williamsburg and here's a look at the books that will be debuting. Thanks to all the contributing publishers and cartoonists for supplying the info and lightening our wallets. Because there were so many new and exciting books I'm splitting this into two parts. Look for part two tomorrow!

  If I were in London I would DEFINITELY be going to the  Safari Festival, the one day CAF run by Breakdown Press and devoted to “the new wave of alternative and art comics from the UK and beyond. Taking place over one Saturday at the end of August, the festival is an opportunity for […]

At home in the warmer months, recovering from neck surgery, cartoonist Lauren Weinstein gifts us with Flower Voyeur, a slice of the circle of life comic that ‘s very appropriate as we heda for the dog days of August. Weinstein’s Carriers, about learning she and her husband might pass cystic fibrosis on to their child, […]

Girl in Dior has been getting great press worldwide for its depiction of one of the most influential premiere collections in fashion history, but there are a couple of classic superhero connections as well.

Sixty-eight year old fashion spoiler alert!

As Girl in Dior aptly depicts, the designer’s debut collection split the fashion world. For some, the longer length of the skirts in Christian Dior’s first collection in 1947 was a step backward, but what ultimately won the day was a sense that Dior had tapped into deeper, more vital currents in the post-war West. Besides changing the course of fashion for a generation and, along the way, mentoring his successor in innovation, Yves Saint Laurent, Dior inspired a description that immediately became synonymous with his designs and, over time, any revolutionary break from existing style: the New Look.

Girl in Dior beautifully depicts the entry of this phrase into the fashion lexicon. After noting the presence of legendary Harper’s Bazaar editor Carmel Snow in the front row, author Annie Goetzinger lavishly recreates the moment when, following the show, Snow uttered the phrase that solidified Dior’s place in fashion history.

If you’re reading this site, though, chances are that you’re already thinking that the New Look sounds mighty familiar.

It was, of course, the name famously — and not coincidentally — given to the modernization of Batman's appearance in 1964.

But that wasn’t the first time Dior’s New Look appeared in Batman comics – there’s also a reference contemporaneous with Dior’s early work.

Dior’s New Look garnered a lot of press in the U.S., from the revolutionary collections in the late ’40s to the Dior-mania of the subsequent decade and more. For our purposes, two articles in particular stand out: a January 1948 New York Times piece headlined “New Look to Stay, Expert Asserts” and Life Magazine‘s coverage of Dior’s latest “New Look” collection in February 1948.

To see how such stories influenced comics, we can turn to the June 1948 of Batman, which re-tells Batman’s origin and includes his epic encounter with his father’s murderer, Joe Chill. However, that’s not the only story in this book, which deserves a digital restoration in full on Comixology (hint, hint).

The landmark Batman #47 actually opens with a Catwoman story called “Fashions in Crime.” The tale begins with Catwoman breaking out of jail, only to hear herself mocked by other women as she walks down the street while wearing her civilian clothes:

“Hmmph! She’s wearing a short skirt! She doesn’t have the NEW LOOK!”

As the women go on to ridicule her for not reading the latest fashion magazines, Catwoman makes the painful realization that “since [she’s] been in prison, the style has changed.” But this also gives her an entrepreneurial idea: she creates her own fashion magazine, Damsel, along with a Damsel fashion TV program.

Months later Damsel is the hottest media empire in the fashion world, and the scene shifts to an older socialite, who, wearing an elaborate hat, notes that Catwoman-turned-Damsel-publisher-Madame-Moderne’s latest designer favorite is “a gown by Millie Karnalee.” Karnalee’s name seems odd, but at the time it would have made sense as a pun on the popular American designer Hattie Carnegie, the subject of the January 1948 New York Times piece. Carnegie, besides, ahem, adapting (i.e. copying) Dior’s “New Look” at a lower price for the U.S. market, also made a point of condemning the predilection of younger women not to wear hats.

And despite a nifty later scene wear Batman cracks the case thanks to his encyclopedic knowledge of fashion illustration technique, that’s where the story begins to diverge from the world of Girl in Dior.

Apparently the writers weren’t aware of the free samples and ample cashflow that would have been accrued to the publisher of the world’s hottest fashion magazine, because Catwoman proceeds to use her newfound high-society access to steal clothes and rob women at an exclusive fashion show. Not surprisingly, the scene at Catwoman’s show is rather different from the more modest Parisian runways of the time — in true 1940s Batman fashion, it features “giant needles … scissors … thimbles … and a huge sewing machine!”

Girl in Dior might not end with a fight on oversized designer props, but it is nonetheless a most enlightening read. I could go on, but I’ll leave that to an actual reviewer – ceci n’est pas une critique de Jeune fille en Dior.

It’s time for our annual look at some of the comics coming out for this weekend’s MoCCA Festival, being held this year at Center 548, is located at 548 W. 22nd Street, just off the Westside Highway, with programming at the High Line Hotel on West 20th Street and 10th Avenue.

And here’s the books we got information on. This is just a teeny tiny smattering of the new stuff available — but scroll down for signings from Fantagraphics, NBM and more. And scroll around Tumblr for more more more, especially the MoCCA Festival tumblr.

Jeremy Nguyen:

I’m debuting a 20 page collection of my webcomic “Stranger Than Bushwick”, which is currently being serialized on Bushwick Daily. This collection explores a lot of New York by way of Brooklyn, millennial lifestyles, and hot-button issues like catcalling and gentrification.

Minneapolis based 2D Cloud is an experimental comics publisher that’s looking to grow in 2015. They’ve added Blaise Larmee as Marketing Director and Melissa Carraher as Publicist. Larmee is, of course, a cartoonist of some repute himself. In the past they’ve put out acclaimed works by Anna Bongiovanni, Mark Connery and Noah van Sciver.

“We’re threading an expanding universe,” said 2D Cloud founder Raighne Hogan in a statement. “We’re publishing more books this year than the last five years combined, and looking to 2016 and beyond, our ambitions are equally sizable.”

They’re kicking things off with three new books, all “exploring adult themes around sex and cultural taboos.”

Andy Burkholder’s Qviet a “provocative collection of a multi-year series that takes a fearless look at the abstractions of sex, of seeing, and the fluid relations between the two. ”

Blaise Larmee’s 3 Books “comprises three separate, intertwining works, including the highly anticipated Ice Cream Kisses, and features a mix of media: intimate Skype video sessions, bleed-through drawings and monochrome paintings.”

Émilie Gleason’s Salz & Pfeffer “brings to life a pageant of abduction, damnation, hell, brainwashing, fart jail, magical kingdoms, and murderous machinations across a set of evocative pencil drawings.”

These three books will be out in the summer, but later in the year 2D Cloud will release graphic novels by Meghan Hogan, Justin Skarhus and Raighne Hogan, Gina Wynbrandt, and MariNaomi, and later on books by Anna Bongiovanni, Austin English, Blaise Larmee, and Lauren Monger.

I had an advance peek at Salz & Pfeffer, and it’s a rollicking adventure in surrealism. 2D Cloud’s books aren’t for everyone, or maybe even casual readers, but they are evocative and boundary pushing, and for people who want to see how far comics can go, they are well worth a look. If you want to check them out, they have a pretty healthy webcomics section up here.