I’d probably need all my fingers and toes to count the graphic novels that didn’t live up to their hype (Watchmen, Black Hole, Ghost World, Jimmy Corrigan. . . just to name a few). However Jillian and Mariko Tamaki’s This One Summer, doesn’t just live up to the hype, it blows the hype out of the water because the hype could never, ever live up to this beautiful and touching graphic novel.

Pre-teen Rose and her parents spend every summer at a cottage in Awago. They’ve been doing this so long, Rose has a summer friend, Windy. Windy just a year(ish) younger than Rose, but they are great summer buddies. There is a sameness to their summers, a sort of childish monotony that rings true. They explore the small beach town together, swim endlessly, and buy candy from the corner store.

Unique to this summer is that Rose is starting to discover her interest in boys, especially the clerk at that corner store where they buy Twizzlers and rent horror movies much too mature for them. In fact, Rose is starting to pay attention to the emotional lives of people around her and she notices that things aren’t so great between her parents. Mom’s going through some heavy fertility-related funk and dad is frustrated at his inability to comfort her.

Boy howdy, did I love reading this one. The art is gorgeous — done in all blue. But, what I loved so much about this book and what is captured so beautifully in the art and in the story is that 18ish-month difference in the ages of Rose and Windy. Both girls are on the precipice of adolescence, but Rose is a little closer and you can see it in her self-consciousness, in her interest in the boy at the store, and in her concern for people around her and how their emotions impact her life.

Windy, however, is still joyfully childish — unconcerned about what people will think of her or what they are feeling. Windy is still of that age where everything she likes is the best thing ever regardless of what others think.

I cannot think of another book that so accurately and wonderfully captures this age.

Reading this one is a lot like those lazy, unending summer days when you’re eleven or twelve. The days blend together, the time stretches out endlessly with a few emotional highs and lows. This one is just glorious. So languid and beautiful.

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I’ve been needing something to hold me over between trades of Saga, one of the best comic book series I’ve read in a loooooonnnnnggg time (really, since Fables decided to get really kind of boring).

Enter into my life Rat Queens vol. 1: Sass & Sorcery. When reading descriptions of this new series I kept seeing references to Dungeons & Dragons and Lord of the Rings, things that make me shudder in horror. In the Pop Culture Sorting System in my head, those two get shoved into the “Shakespeare/RenFest” bucket of things I don’t care about at all. Games of Thrones lives there too, along with most anything that features a dragon or a dungeon. Look, I can’t care about everything. I’m okay with this.

Anyway, the Rat Queens kicked over that bucket, grabbed me by chin, and shouted “You will love us” right into my face. They were right, I do love them. What is not to love? They are a quartet of ass-kicking, hearty-partying mercenaries who take no shit. The queens have apt descriptions from the book cover, “Hannah the Rockabilly Elven Mage, Violet the Hipster Dwarven Fighter, Dee the Atheist Human Cleric, and Betty the Hippy Smidgen Thief.” What that doesn’t tell you this these women are also different races & body shapes, which is a breath of fresh air when it comes to comicbook ladies. It’s nice to see realistic breasts in a superhero-esque woman.

So in “Sass & Sorcery” the queens are wrecking havoc in a town called Palisade fucking & drugging their way through the village. When the book opens the Queens are being sprung from jail and are sent on a quest to kill a giant. It seems all the “merc” gangs in town have been sent on quests to rid the surrounding area of menaces. Things don’t go as planned, and soon the Queens find out there’s a bigger plan afoot.

The rest of the volume sets up that mystery while introducing us to the queens, giving us tasty bits of each of their background and slowly revealing their personalities.

It is so much fun.

What I liked so much is that I never had that floaty, WTF feeling I often get when I start a new series in a world I am unfamiliar with. From page 1, I was on solid ground with the Rat Queens, the art and the writing made it perfectly clear what kind of world we were in and what kind of characters we were dealing with. So nice.

Even better is that each of the queens has a distinct personality and depending on the page, a different one was my absolute favorite. As I finished the book Dee and Betty were duking it out for the #1 spot in my heart. I’m sure that will change as soon as I read Volume 2 which I already want so bad I can hardly stand it.

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I get that this collection by Chip Zdarsky & Matt Fraction Sex Criminals Vol 1: One Weird Trick is supposed to be a “bawdy sex comedy.” Still. . . isn’t most comedy a hair-trigger away from tragedy? Built upon sad truths?

The premise here is that librarian Suzie stops time when she has an orgasm. This puzzles the young girl the first time it happens as a teen in the bathtub. She searches for information on what in the hell is going on, but comes up empty. As an adult, she hooks up with Jon at a party and discovers that he ALSO has time-stopping orgasms. What a happy hook-up, right?

I mean can you even imagine? In my head I’d think finding someone else like me after feeling so alone most of my life would be this life-altering, wholly emotional experience.

Instead, it’s mostly played out as a fun coincidence, like when you meet someone who shares your birthday.

The duo continue to hook up and slowly build a relationship, until one day they decide to use their powers for good & evil. Suzie is a librarian and her small library is about to be foreclosed on by the big, evil bank Jon works for as an assistant.

See where this is going? Time-stopping orgasms always leads to bank robbing. It feels kind of obvious.

Things seem to go really well until the glowing, white-clad sex police show up. So there’s that. The volume pretty much ends when the police show up, so most of it is premise setting, which is why I want to cut it a little slack. Sometimes it takes awhile to find the storytelling groove and the premise is clever enough for me to be curious where they take it.

Mostly, I’m hoping they raise the emotional stakes in Volume 2. Right now it’s all very shallow. There doesn’t seem to be any danger, physical or emotional, for Jon or Suzie. Things go really well for them, everything is easy and there are no complications. I want things to get fraught. I need more than the sexy premise to pull me through this series. Plus, the art feels a little smeary, like the characters’ features aren’t quite fully-developed yet.

Right now the Volume feels a little one-note, haha orgasms! I hope it can grow beyond this junior high locker-room way it treats its material and develop a more mature storyline.

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This has nothing to do with Bryan Lee O’Malley’s fabulous new standalone graphic novel Seconds. I only mention it because I wanted to refer you to that time when Christa & I went Pilgrim-crazy back in the summer of 2010.

It’s been four long years waiting for O’Malley’s follow-up to Scott. Holding Seconds in your hand, it’s lovely 3/4 book jacket you immediately know this book is going to be worth the wait. It’s a full color, beauty with heft (physical, emotional) and humor.

Seconds introduces us to Katie a successful chef and co-owner of a popular restaurant called Seconds. Katie’s got one foot in her twenties — she’s soon to turn thirty — and one foot out of the door of Seconds and on the threshold of a new restaurant, her very own. She’s not happy at all with her place on the Earth at the moment. This is only exacerbated when she spies The EX-BF in a Seconds’ booth with a hottie.

Katie and a coworker do something fun and careless, and it leaves one of the servers scarred for life. Literally. Katie goes home full of remorse and guilt. After a restless night of sleep she finds a paranormal pal sitting on her dresser. This pal offers Katie an otherworldly chance. Write down your regret, eat a mushroom, go to sleep, and wake to a whole new world with the problem solved.

Easy peasy, right?

Of course not. Like so many of us, Katie finds that what she thinks is her problem and what her actual problem is are not the same thing. She wields this new mystical power carelessly and it is awesome. Nobody wants a responsible magic-mushroom eater, do they?`

When she gets in over her head, she befriends Hazel the scarred coworker who knows a little bit about the mystic. A little bit of knowledge doesn’t exactly help Katie and we follow her through trying to unravel the mess she’s made. Basically this a book about a woman on the verge of 30 dealing with all the asshole things she did in her twenties. Oh, Sister, I’ve been there.

I chewed through this one in a few hours even though I kept telling myself to slow down, I just couldn’t. It probably deserves a re-read as soon as I get it back. Much like Scott Pilgrim, this is one of those books I’m passing around with breathless anticipation because I need someone to talk about it with.

The art is quite similar to the Scott Pilgrim books, but in full color which makes it even more fun to eat up with your eyes. Best of all, there are a few Scott Easter Eggs in the pages which eagle-eyed readers will enjoy. I know they made me cackle with glee.

Boy, I missed Bryan Lee O’Malley much more than I realized. It’s good to have him back.

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Brian K. Vaughn is one of those comicbook writers whose name I cannot speak without emitting a dreamy sigh after it. This is similar to the way I said “Fonzie” when I was ten. I may have to start sighing after I say the name Fiona Staples too, because she’s responsible for the fantastically dreamy art that accompanies Saga Volume 1.

Oftentimes when you start reading a new comicbook series there seems to be a lot of WTFness as you get your feet under you trying to figure out the rules of this new world you’ve entered. There was absolutely no WTF-period in Saga at all. From page one you are grounded and from there the story is off like a shot.

The story opens with Alana giving birth to Marko’s daughter in the back of a garage while he assists her. Their “oh she has your wing buds” and “oh she has her father’s horns” is interrupted by some sort of ambush. Within moments of giving birth the couple is on the run. See, they’re from opposite sides of a galactic war and it seems the planet they are on doesn’t take kindly to fraternizing with the enemy.

As Alana and Marko search for a safe place we get to know bounty-hunter-like Freelancers and Prince Robot IV who seems human from the neck down but instead of a head he has a sort of tv-screen/monitor. We also get to know about Horrors and ghosts and a little bit about this endless war.

We learn that Alana’s will stop at nothing to protect her new family, even using violence. Marko’s a bit more of a softy and wants to stick to his word and be honorable. As the two head for the Rocketship Forest, they pick up a spooky babysitter for their daughter who appears as a pink ghost who is missing half her body.

It’s hard to explain but amazing to read. I can’t remember the last time I have been so instantly captivated by a new series. Perhaps it was Brian K. Vaughn’s Y: The Last Man, about what happens on Earth when all the men suddenly die.

While the story in Y: The Last Man is fantastic, the art in Saga is amazing. So amazing, in fact, that I’m totally coveting Alana’s bluish-greenish black hair style. It is awesome. Probably the best comicbook heroine hair since Ramona Flowers. And that’s saying a lot.

Saga Volume 1 is so good that I went in search of the next single issue (rather than wait for the next six or seven issues to be collected into a paperback), and was absolutely crushed to realize it hasn’t been released yet. Damn.

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