April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers

Graphic novels/comics:

Kanan, Nabiel: Lost Girl
(so memorable, I've already forgotten what it was about).

Gurewitch, Nicholas: The Perry Bible Fellowship: The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories
(that's quite an imagination Gurewitch has).

Kochalka, James: Monkey vs. Robot.

Giardino, Vittorio: No Pasaran! vol. 2
(the more I read of this, the more I dig it. He's got a really spare style, so it takes some time to get used to the characters, but it kind of crawls up under your skin, the bright, crisp, colorful art, the beauty of landscape and the well-rendered details of houses, cars, trains, airplanes, military uniforms...I know zilch about the Spanish Civil War, so I'm going to need to read up on it).

Benson, John, editor, Dana Dutch (presumed) author, Matt Baker, artist, et al: Romance Without Tears: '50s Love Comics--With a Twist!
(Fantagraphics. The stories are not really "with a twist," like those romance comics with the text rewritten to snark the original stories. This is a collection of actual romance comics published by Archer St. John in the 50s, presumably written by Dana Dutch and mainly illustrated by Matt Baker; however, as there are no surviving records proving Dutch wrote the scripts, we can't be entirely sure all of these are Dutch's work, and the collection is copyrighted by Benson. In the introduction, Benson explains that the older romance comics of the fifties featured surprisingly liberated and self-possessed heroines, far more so than their counterparts in the 1960s, which are notorious for the "tear-stained faces" of their covers. These 50's comics are still conservative about sex and marriage--sex outside of marriage is presented as disastrous, shameful, and rare, and this is not historically true of what actual people did in the 1950's. That said, Benson's observations about the nature of the heroines and their actions in these comics is borne out by the texts--the collection is just chock full of young women who learn by experience, make decisions for themselves (and sometimes make mistakes), cry infrequently and briefly, and who have the kinds of relationships with their boyfriends, parents, siblings, and friends that support mature growth. Well worth checking out).

Simmonds, Posy: Gemma Bovary
(On the subject of good stories involving romance and well-written women--this is fucking brilliant in every regard, and oh so clever. I highly recommend it).