Cartoonists bring visual art to the memoir genre
“A Fire Story,” by Brian Fies, Abrams, 160 pages, $24.99
One troubling night in October 2017, Brian Fies, a longtime Northern California resident, could see the orange glow emanating from one town over. He and his wife packed their belongings in a car and fled. Within several hours, their house was gone.
Over the following days, Fies scrounged up enough pens and paper to create a “fire story” webcomic that quickly went viral. The Eisner-winning cartoonist’s starkly artful comic was one of the first vivid eyewitness accounts of the 2017 California wildfires, which left 44 people dead and displaced thousands. Fies expands on that comic elegantly in “A Fire Story,” a full-length graphic novel that shifts between his own tragedy and the larger picture of how the blaze devastated his Santa Rosa community.
Fies previously mined real life for his acclaimed graphic novel “Mom’s Cancer.” In “Fire Story,” the veteran cartoonist again displays a gift for pacing. Subtly and gradually, “Fire Story” lures the reader into his trauma, till one feels as keenly vulnerable as its victims.
“Short & Skinny,” by Mark Tatulli, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 256 pages, $12.99
Mark Tatulli is best known for his syndicated comic strips, including the popular “Lio,” his dialoguefree comic of kid-friendly horrors. But with “Short & Skinny,” Tatulli delves directly into his own junior high years as an undersized student constantly trying to navigate school bullies.
Fortunately, young Mark is not short on friends or hobbies, including cartooning and beginner filmmaking, freshly inspired by a new 1977 film, “Star Wars.” Mark spends the school year trying to bulk up, through a series of mail-order scams he finds in “crazy ads in my comic books.” And when not hopelessly seeking muscle, he tries to muster up enough courage to go up to the girl he can’t stop thinking about.
“Short & Skinny” is long on charm and winning vulnerability. This graphic novel of middle school self-discovery deserves to be discovered by many grade-school readers.
“I Was Their American Dream,” by Malaka Gharib, Clarkson Potter, 160 pages, $16.99
Malaka Gharib, a Washington-based NPR journalist, has long drawn her own comics, but “American Dream” marks her graphicnovel debut. Here she shares her journey of discovering who she is.
In “Dream,” we learn that her Muslim father resides in his native Egypt and that her mother’s family emigrated from the Philippines. Gharib was raised by the latter in Southern California, growing up Catholic and multilingual while continuously fascinated by white-dominated pop culture. Gharib, who founded the food zine the Runcible Spoon, finds sensory richness in describing her passion for “big clouds of fluffy rice” and “that salty, crispy rectangle of Spam.” Such fare provides familiar comfort as she wrestles with her young sense of self in different settings, including Syracuse University, where “everyone was mostly white.”
Gharib strikes an adroit balance between her internal questions and external realities. Some of “Dream’s” most appealing scenes involve her travel abroad — so much so that a fan of this debut might wish that Gharib has an illustrated travelogue in her future. HARDCOVER NONFICTION 1. “Comfort Food Shortcuts: An ‘In the Kitchen with David’ Cookbook from QVC’s Resident Foodie” by David Venable (Ballantine) 2. “Unfreedom of the Press” by Mark R. Levin (Threshold)
3. “The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West” by David McCullough (Simon & Schuster) 4. “Becoming” by Michelle Obama (Crown) 5. “Girl, Stop Apologizing: A Shame-Free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals” by Rachel Hollis (HarperCollins Leadership)
6. “Three Women” by Lisa Taddeo (Avid Reader)
7. “Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.” by Brene Brown (Random House)
8. “The Life of a Wannabe Mogul: Mental Disarray” by Bella Thorne (Rare Bird) 9. “American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump” by Tim Alberta (Harper) 10. “Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court” by Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino (Regnery)