by Ray Fawkes
There is a comic book store in the neighborhood of Oakland that is more-or-less the halfway point in my commute to work via bus – in fact I change buses there, with usually about 25 minutes to spare. During these cold winter months I’d rather not languish at a bus stop in the evening, so I often end up in Phantom of the Attic. (This has been somewhat problematic re: the state of my wallet.)
I’ve mostly picked up things I went in looking for, such as Saga and Lumberjanes and Ms. Marvel, but with hundreds of other comics to look at, of course I eventually discovered something on my own.
And Ray Fawkes‘ Intersect is something marvelous. The 3rd issue was on the rack and I was drawn to the artwork instantly. Messy, chaotic watercolors careened across the pages, contained by only the hint of panels. The action looked intense, haunted. The “story so far” blurb sent me running to dig up the first issue.
In the city of Tetrid, a horrifying metamorphosis has taken hold of the people and place. Jason and Ali, once lovers, now share a body, in painful flux from one person to the other. Their friend “the Kid” is emerging backwards from the body of a comatose man. The phenomenon that has swept through the city effects each person differently, turning some into animals or morphing them into inanimate objects. The Kid and Ali are intent on fleeing, but Jason, when he inhabits the body, is pulled to investigate what is happening and why. Meanwhile they are being hunted by a ravenous creature called Lucky, and it’s howls pursue them across the pages.
Issue #1 spits you right into the middle of it all, and you are left scrambling to comprehend what is happening, just like the characters themselves. The artwork is incredibly effective in establishing the mood and setting of the story. They seem like reflections or mirror-caught things, and they tumble and jumble, unsettling, fascinating.
Issues #2 and 3 carry on the strange plummet into the unknown. Ali/Jason and the Kid race through the city, struggling to adapt to whatever is happening to their bodies at the moment, acting on impulses that don’t seem to be their own, hunted by Lucky, and all the time another voice interjects – something that they don’t seem to hear, a part of the narrative that is for the reader and yet is tangled into the phenomenon that is consuming the city. Intersect is kind of a horrible ride, a dizzying, chilling, psychological drama that left me staggering and confused and totally down for more torture. Bring on Issue #4!
(Ray Fawkes has written for Constantine and Batman: Eternal, but I’m much more interested in checking out his other solo projects, such as One Soul and The Spectral Engine.)
The last book I read in 2014 was 
Most of the famous Beat personalities were kind of terrible guys, so it was a welcome relief to hear from the women – the wives, daughters, and fellow poets/artists – who were a vibrant and powerful, but often ignored, part of the Beat movement.
From #8:
Here’s one of those random discoveries I mentioned in my last post. I don’t know why I noticed it, or why I was skimming through the B’s in the fiction stacks at the library in the first place. This “pathbreaking graphic novel from the 1960s” by an Italian author, in it’s pretty NYRB packaging, was definitely coming home with me though.--trans.-into-English-by-Marina-Harss-(NYRB--2009).jpg){kind=spacer}
Anytime the story runs the risk of flying out of control the narration of the child, Hazel, draws everything back in with such amazing, often amusing deftness, that I was left with my jaw hanging more often than not. Fiona Staples’ artwork is gorgeous, and it more-or-less floored me on every page. Her colors glow, her characters are beautiful (or beautifully grotesque) and the worlds she makes are lavishly, ridiculously detailed. The character development, the diversity, the sunburst of imaginative storytelling that is contained in this series…!
While I wait for more Saga to come out, at least I can read 
I’ve actually read 22 comic books so far this year (out of 27 books in total, heh) which has been great fun. I checked out the new 
I love the random discoveries that I make, totally independent of blog reviews or friends’ recommendations, or my never ending “threads” – the books that just tumble into my life while I’m poking through the library stacks for something else entirely. 
Above the Dreamless Dead: World War I in Poetry and Comics
Matt Baker, who was famous during the golden age of comic books (1940s/’50s) for his gloriously well-drawn ladies, was a quiet, cheerful man who dressed fantastically and worked hard – and was respected across the board, despite being a black man in an industry composed almost entirely of white males.
As for Jackie Ormes, she was a tiny little lady who penned several different comic strips during the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s for the big African American newspapers of the day – the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender. Her strips were known for humorously documenting daily African American life, and commenting on the politics of the day with biting insight. Her very well dressed, attractive heroins spoke their minds and met with success, in direct contrast to the way African Americans were depicted in the cartoons of white newspapers.
Conveniently, a friend had left the first two volumes of 
The amount of research that went into the books is astronomical. Piskor (a Pittsburgh native, incidentally) charts the managers and recording labels that set the cornerstones for the industry, follows the making of the 
what we have here is a failure to communicate 