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).

Graphic novels:

Campbell, Eddie: The Black Diamond Detective Agency
(I found it a tad confusing, I think more from my having read it in three parts and forgetting people's names than from any flaw in the writing. Well-illustrated; the first few pages in particular are beautifully paced; if you read it, you'll see what I mean. First Second).

Kochalka, James: Quit Your Job
(wow, but I liked that more than I thought I would. It's the cat calling the guy, "Daddy," I think, very sweet and a little affecting. This is not one of those comics where everybody is a jerk! By the way, the cover claims there's an intro by Jeff Smith, and there isn't. There's not even anything on the copyright page to indicate that the publication was supposed to have a Smith intro. Weird).

Morse, Scott: Soulwind Book 1: The Kid From Planet Earth
(what a change from Magic Pickle! Morse demonstrates an nice range of black-and-white art styles in the different narratives, which by the way, are fairly engaging. I'd like to read more of this. Oni Press).

Doherty, Catherine: Can of Worms
(I bet thirty years ago, nobody would have been interested in publishing a B&W autobiographical graphic account of Doherty's childhood discovery that she was adopted, and subsequent search for her birth mother. I'm glad I'm alive and reading comics in a decade when this not only exists, but exists in a field full of similar things. It's just cool).

Bourne, Malcome, writer, Mike Allred, artist: Tales of Ordinary Madness.

Jason: Tell Me Something.

Jeffrey, Gary & Kate Petty, writers, Sam Hadley, illustrator: Julius Caesar: The Life of a Roman General
(I realize that this is the origin of the phrase, and yet I can never read the phrase "cross the Rubicon" without a little thrill running down my spine, because it reminds me of John Adams' line in the musical 1776: "They want me quit; they say, "John, give up the fight! / Still, to England, I say: "Good night: forever, good night!" / For I have crossed the Rubicon / Let the bridge be burned behind me / Come what may, come what may--commitment!" He's singing about the choice to continue supporting the movement for independence from England, even when it looks like the independence faction in Congress is losing, and the actual battle is going so badly that Congress will shortly be in danger from British troops.

It's a reference to Caesar's historical choice to move his army across the river Rubicon into Roman territory, which will make him a traitor to Rome, unless he can win the subsequent battle and capture the city; the line is also a reference to an imaginary conversation John had earlier with his wife Abigail (all such conversations are drawn heavily from the many amazing, beautiful, and very literate letters exchanged between the real John and Abigail during the years they spent apart from each other), in which she reminds him that he's always said that there are only two kinds of people of worth in the world--those who have commitment, and those who require the commitment of others. It's a fantastic scene, and solidified my early and enduring crush on John Adams as portrayed by William Daniels.

Anyway, this an okay history-themed non-fiction graphic novel about the life of Caesar, but the real gist of all this is that you should totally check out the movie version of the musical 1776, which is a wonderful, wonderful, fairly historically accurate account of the writing of the Declaration of Independence, in which several of the Founding Fathers sing and dance).