54 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ AUGUST 5, 2019
Review_FICTION
wash. The human characters appear as
blobby, Keith Haring–like figures, while
the busy streets, apartment interiors, and
crowded skylines are drawn with jittery
detail and personality. Multipage spreads
of people and animals lost among clouds,
smog, park corners, and broken glass
suggest the chaos of a city struggling to
survive. Nickerson’s study thoughtfully
considers the connections between people,
places, and artistic expression. (Sept.)Forgotten Queen, Vol. 1
Tini Howard and Amilcar Pinna. Valiant, $9.99
trade paper (112p) ISBN 978-1-68215-324-6
Howard (the Assassinistas series) intro-
duces a fierce new female lead in Vexana
the War-Monger, an acid-tongued,
immortal mystic with a deadly gift, who
wreaks havoc from ancient Mongolia to
the present day. But what starts as a sor-
cerer’s origin narrative strays into a tragic
failed romance, and never quite strikes
the right balance to keep readers invested.
Vexana, a mysterious Sumerian woman,
gains favor with
Genghis Khan
by wielding her
powers to
ignite homi-
cidal bloodlust
in his warriors,
spurring mortal
combat between
fellow soldiers
and even Cain
and Abel. But
when she falls for a female heir of Khan
(“Of all the chaos the War-Monger had
sown... there was no match for the chaos
she felt when she fell in love”), it sets off a
centuries long conflict. A present-day, ill-
fated deep-sea research mission, tracking
desert artifacts in the ocean, raises up the
War-Monger, but that plot leads nowhere,
and clichéd alternating timelines and a
subplot involving Vlad the Impaler spin
in too many other directions. Pinna (the
Generation X series) wonderfully renders
all the vivid bloodlust and fury. But,
while this dark character study will appeal
to fans of swords and sorcery and the
Valiant universe looking for more diverse
and queer-friendly casts, it’s too flawed to
hold out for a second volume to solve its
plot issues. (Sept.)and doodles of
everyday life—
on death, art,
childhood,
growing up,
relationships
between humans
and animals, and
more. A descrip-
tion of the art
class Roberts teaches leads to memories of
her own high school days, which lead to a
trip to the Body Worlds exhibition of pre-
served corpses, which remind Roberts of
eating dried squid, and so on. Meanwhile,
Roberts gradually finds her equilibrium
after being diagnosed with MS. The stream-
of-consciousness storytelling and preoccu-
pation with mundane details—cooking,
driving, going through the routines of
childcare, pondering questions such as
“What makes me cry?”—recall pioneering
autobio zine-ster John Porcellino. But
Roberts’s stark, distanced visual style and
abrupt humor is all her own. Her narrative
threads seem constantly in danger of
fraying into nothing before looping back
to repeating images, themes, and the
occasional gut punch. Roberts defines her
philosophy: “the world is precious and its
detail is remarkable”; her graphic memoir
embodies that attentive spirit. (Sept.)Creation
Sylvia Nickerson. Drawn & Quarterly, $21.95
trade paper (192p) ISBN 978-1-77046-377-6
Nickerson chronicles her life as an artist
and single mother in Hamilton, an aging
industrial city and “the armpit of Ontario,”
with honesty and imagination. Alternating
between self-examination and social engage-
ment, she searches for direction, as does the
city, which suffers simultaneous decay and
gentrification as its population of blue-collar
workers, transients, and starving artists
is pushed out to make way for wealthier
residents. The death of Nancy, a local
homeless woman, becomes a focal point
for Hamilton’s identity crisis. Meanwhile,
Nickerson juggles dealing with her parents’
failing health, raising her young son, and
remaining active in the local art scene.
While hosting visitors to her art studio,
she worries that “I’ve turned into a baby
cooing, babbling, brainless, child-centric
bore.” Nickerson’s art depicts city life in
impressionistic black-and-white inkComics
Frogcatchers
Jeff Lemire. Gallery 13, $19.99 (96p)
ISBN 978-1-982-10737-6
Eisner Award–winner Lemire (Sweet
Tooth) hooks the reader with a mystery in
this slim, dreamy fable in which a man
wakes up in a hotel room with no memory
of how he got there. This scene is preceded
by a seemingly unconnected one of a boy
catching frogs, who sees an IV drip in the
water, which segues into a series of strange
images that include a chest X-ray. Together,
these passages telegraph, rather unsubtly,
the crux of the
narrative. The
man’s subse-
quent encoun-
ters with the
frog-catching
boy at the hotel
and his attempts
at avoiding the
dreaded Frog
King provide
more clues. The
man and the boy dodge the agents of the
Frog King, enter his forbidden chamber,
and escape out the window. Lemire’s
scratchy lines and bursts of color in the
“real world” add a visceral quality to this
meditation on coping with mortality.
The book’s puzzle structure points rather
obviously to the pay-off; but more affecting
is how Lemire simply depicts the man
coming to terms with regrets and his fate.
This cathartic reverie is carried off with
striking visual themes, if sometimes with
a heavy hand. Agent: Charlie Olsen, InkWell
Management. (Sept.)Rat Time
Keiler Roberts. Koyama, $12 trade paper
(124p) ISBN 978-1-927668-70-2
Ignatz Award–winner Roberts (Chlorine
Gardens) continues to gently guide readers
on meandering, illuminating rambles
through the quotidian in this newest auto-
biographical installment. The narrative
loosely encompasses “the time when we
had rats”—pets that Roberts’s daughter,
Xia, acquires while the family adjusts to
seismic shifts in their lives. But that con-
struct is the springboard for Roberts to
ruminate—via sketched-out memories