Author: Jessica Baldanzi

Photo by Jill Steinmetz I’ve been a comics fangirl since I was a kid—Betty and Veronica to my big brother’s Spider-Man comics—and Chris Ware and Lynda Barry helped complicate my understanding of the genre when I lived in Chicago and their comics were serialized in New City and The Chicago Reader. I first brought comics into my professional life when I created and taught a course called The Graphic Novel in 2008. I’ve taught that class many times since then, have also given talks about comics to general audiences and scholars alike. Commons Comics began in 2013 as a way for me to learn how to blog and to stay current in the field. It was hosted first by my college, then picked up by The Elkhart Truth, a local newspaper, before I moved it to my own page. I teach English at Goshen College, a small but mighty liberal arts school in the “Michiana” area, east of Chicago on the border of Michigan and Indiana. My specialty in graduate school was twentieth-century and more recent American Literature, but my teaching has brought me into multiple fields. My upper-level courses have ranged from critical theory and gender and popular culture to memoir writing, and my introductory courses from to composition and speech to creative writing. I am now co-editing an essay collection with comics and religion scholar Hussein Rashid about Kamala Khan, the new Ms. Marvel. Look for it on the University Press of Mississippi in the coming year. (Working title: Ms. Marvel in America.)
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R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal Robots

“R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal Robots.” Revised and illustrated by Kateřina Čupová. Trans. from the Czech by Julie Nováková. Written in 1920 by Karel Čapek. Lettering by Damian Duffy. Rosarium. $32.99. December 2024. 264 pages. All ages.

Thanks to Fables Books, 215 South Main Street in downtown Goshen, Indiana, for providing Commons Comics with books to review.

Check Fables out online at www.fablesbooks.com, order over the phone at 574-534-1984, or email them at fablesbooks@gmail.com.

Full disclosure: I contributed to the Backerkit campaign to help Rosarium release this book, and Rosarium’s founder, Bill Campbell, is a friend from college.

Karel Čapek is a foundational voice in the literature of the Czech Republic, but not as well known to most of the rest of the world. His main claim to fame is linguistic: he and his brother coined the word “robota” for his 1921 play, “R.U.R.,” or “Rossum’s Universal Robots.” The many versions and adaptations of this classic dystopian work include a 1922 Broadway production with young Hollywood film star Spencer Tracy, and a 1938 BBC television series, arguably the first science fiction show on television.

To Čapek, robots were not giant, clanking tin cans with monotone voices, but more organic beings. In his original vision, robots were much closer to humans, uncanny replacements for workers increasingly dehumanized by assembly lines and other pressures of mass production:

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“The Talk,” by Darrin Bell

“The Talk.” Written and illustrated by Darrin Bell. Henry Holt. $29.99. June 2023. 352 pages. Teen to adult. (School Library Journal suggests Grade 10. My 7th and 9th graders enjoyed and learned a lot from it.)

Thanks to Fables Books, 215 South Main Street in downtown Goshen, Indiana, for providing Commons Comics with books to review.

Check Fables out online at www.fablesbooks.com, order over the phone at 574-534-1984, or email them at fablesbooks@gmail.com.

Thanks also to my colleague Cynthia Good Kauffman for passing her copy of this book on to me.

From Macmillan Publishers, us.macmillan.com

Before his 2023 graphic memoir “The Talk,” Pulitzer Prize-winner Darrin Bell was known as a political cartoonist more than a memoirist. “The Talk” earned him a new fanbase, as well as multiple best-of-the-year accolades, from “Publisher’s Weekly” to “Time.” The book was so successful, in fact, that Bell’s publisher wanted to extend its reach to another format. Documentary? Fictionalized film? Nope. The audiobook version of “The Talk” was released in August of 2024.

You’re probably thinking what I was thinking when I heard this news: “Audiobook from a comic? How does that even work?” Bell was skeptical, too, he told “Comics Beat,” “until I read the script.” Much like screenplay writers are hired to rework books for film, Macmillan hired a scriptwriter, who turned Bell’s story into, essentially, a radio play.

Darrin Bell with his son, recording his own dialogue from the book. Image from Bell’s Substack, “Disobey in Advance.”

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“Monica,” by Daniel Clowes

“Monica” Written and illustrated by Daniel Clowes. Fantagraphics. $30.00. October 2023. 106 pages. Adult.

Thanks to Fables Books, 215 South Main Street in downtown Goshen, Indiana, for providing Commons Comics with books to review.

Check Fables out online at www.fablesbooks.com, order over the phone at 574-534-1984, or email them at fablesbooks@gmail.com.

A new book by Dan Clowes is always an event. A veteran indie comics artist, Clowes writes, draws, letters, and colors all of his own work by hand, a time-consuming and increasingly rare creative process in this age of digital tools. “Monica” showcases that mastery, especially in illustrating his characters’ faces, where miniscule shifts betray complex emotional storms:

My blog’s homepage has been graced since its inception by an image of Enid Coleslaw, from “Ghost World,” the most beloved of Clowes’s “Eightball” comic book series. It’s about time that I review one of his books. Continue reading ““Monica,” by Daniel Clowes”