Rea Irvin’s The Smythes is a prestige hardcover from New York Review Comics reprinting a Sunday comic from the 1930s. Although I didn’t finish all the reprinted comic strips, which were much of a similarity, I found the historical information surrounding them fascinating. Rea Irvin is best known for creating Eustace Tilley, the snob with the butterfly who was on the first cover of The New Yorker and has become the mascot of the magazine. Irvin’s art style, appeal, and [...]

In Creaky Acres, by Calista Brill and Nilah Magruder, Nora is upset at having to move. She’ll miss her riding lessons and her friends at the barn where she boards her horse. She’s a dressage champion, but her parents are moving her out to the country, where things are a bit more casual. And they don’t care much about competition events. The new riding school, Creaky Acres, has possums everywhere and a ragtag group of riders. Nora doesn’t fit in, [...]

This chunky biography by José-Louis Bocquet and Catel Muller (translated by Edward Gauvin) from SelfMadeHero tells the life of Alice Guy, the first female filmmaker. At the end of the 1800s, she was writing, directing, and producing movies. She had her own production company in the US in 1912! And yet few have ever heard of her. Alice Guy: First Lady of Film covers from 1873 to 1968, the full span of her life, in an immensely welcoming, readable style. [...]

Sherlockians make the best recommendations. I saw this mentioned in a fan group and as soon as I heard the concept, I knew I’d enjoy it. Green Manor is a translated French comic, published by Cinebook Espresso, about an English club in the late 1800s where men gather to talk over vengeance and murder, or even to commit same. It’s a Victorian gentleman’s murder club. The series has two volumes, Assassins and Gentleman and The Inconvenience of Being Dead. (The [...]