Writer Jim Harrison is to letters what Woody Allen is to film. If that seems a stretch, consider: both are prolific, releasing a new work (or more) yearly. Both were born during the Depression, two years apart, both in December. Both mix drama and comedy into something that’s entertaining as…

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Walter Mosely’s meditation on his first memories in The New York Times is a detailed account of awakening consciousness. Mosely, at the age of three — the year most likely is 1955  –  opens his eyes in front of the television in his parents’ home. He is suddenly flooded with images and…

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Craig Thompson of Blankets fame asks a silly question in the introduction to Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba’s Daytripper:  “Does Art Enhance Our Lives Or Distract From It?” Then he makes what might be an unpopular decision between fantasy and reality comics. (And shouldn’t that be, “Our Life”?)

“The Superhero,” he says,…

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The Gaza Flotilla Raid in May that left nine dead and dozens wounded has already faded into the background of oil-soaked news. While in Seattle earlier this month, the Rabbit witnessed attempts at keeping the issue alive: dueling protests on the University of Washington campus in which both bullhorned sides…

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The best thing about The Best American Series’ The Best American Comics is that it reminds us of comics we enjoyed a couple years ago. Anyone who stays half-way current  with alternative comics and graphic novels will have seen a good portion of what’s in each edition of this four-year…

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It’s fitting–or maybe ironic– that Fahrenheit 451,  favorite of high school librarians everywhere, has been turned into a graphic novel. About half-way through Ray Bradbury’s familiar story of a world where books are put to the torch, Fire Captain Beatty tells the story’s wavering central character, Guy Montag, how books…

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The Rabbit loved superheroes as a kid but seldom identified with them. It took growing up to do that. I was well into my 20s before I realized that every mild-mannered male had a secret identity, if not a colorful leotard with or without the requisite “S.”

I was somewhere in…

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We’re preparing for first publication elsewhere (newsprint lives!) a review of the Harvey Pekar-Paul Buhle collaboration The Beats: A Graphic History (Hill and Wang, hardback, $22) . Our love for all things Beat made its arrival an event, especially after Pekar’s honest and enlightening history of the SDS . (Frankly, we found the…

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At what point does sexual obsession become sexual addiction? In Francis Levy’s can’t-get-enough novel Erotomania it comes right around page 84 when the story’s compulsive over-extender and the object of his desire start seeing a therapist. Before the clinical appraisal, sex merely dominates the lovers’ time, causing structural damage to their apartment…

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Comics are the perfect vehicle for memoir, both fictional and…well, is there any other kind? Ames and Haspiel’s The Alcoholic takes full advantage of illustration’s ability for aggrandizement and visual parody. Cartoonist Haspiel (American Splendor) draws Ames’ sodden narrative with stylistic humor and consitent exaggeration. “A.” has razor-sharp features (that nose!) and…

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