A quiet end to February, as the spring and summer convention seasons wait in the wings for the annual deluge of publication announcements and associated folderol, however, in the meantime, alongside this week’s links, below, there are leaves starting to bud on the trees outside, so the relative quiet should be enjoyed while it still lasts.
Excalibur.
— Matías Bergara (@matiasbergara.bsky.social) 2026-02-11T22:16:16.192Z
This week’s reviews.
TCJ
• Shaenon Garrity reviews the net good of Conversations with Lynn Johnston, edited by Jeff McLaughlin — “In her interviews, Johnston comes off as sharp-witted and charismatic, much as Cathy Guisewite always did in her appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and almost too modest. She’s quick to argue that she received the Rueben Award too soon, due to the fallout from a campaign against then-upstart Jim Davis, though she often adds that Charles Schulz made her feel better about her win by confiding that he voted for her.”
• Richard Pound reviews the unconventional delights of Bill Griffith's Photographic Memory: William Henry Jackson and The American West — “As in his earlier books (and, of course, the Zippy strip itself), Griffith pops up intermittently as both narrator and character, an active participant in the story he’s telling, while a complex web of self-referential strands links each book in the series to the others, and to his broader work as a whole. From muffler men and circus side shows to vintage diners and Paris in the 1890s, there’s always some familiar detail lurking in the background to remind attentive readers that they’re wandering through his own particular psychic landscape.”
AIPT
• Collier Jennings reviews the narrative promise of DC’s New History of the DC Universe: The Dakota Incident #1.
• David Brooke reviews the inventive appeal of Jordan Morris, Ruairí Coleman, et al’s Predator: Bloodshed #1.
• Lily Abreu reviews the lackluster start of Sherri L. Smith, Gabriele Bagnoli, et al’s Disney Villains: Ursula #1.
• Landon Kuhlmann reviews the emotional weight of Yoon Ha Lee, Minkyu Jung, et al’s Doom’s Division.
• Alex Schlesinger reviews the compelling villainy of Steve Foxe, Luca Maresca, Kyle Hotz, et al’s Superior Avengers.
• Joe Jones reviews the monumental crescendo of Kieron Gillen, Caspar Wijngaard, et al’s The Power Fantasy #16.
• George Loftus reviews the formulaic fun of Wyatt Kennedy, Jo Mi-Gyeong, et al’s Murder Drones #1.
• Colin Moon reviews the emotional resonance of Roman Muradov’s All the Living.
• Chris Coplan reviews the dazzling experimentation of Dave Chisholm’s Is Ted OK? #1.
• Ryan Sonneville reviews the meaningful developments of Deniz Camp, Cody Ziglar, Jonas Scharf, et al’s Ultimate Incursion.
The Beat
• Jared Bird reviews the pulpy adventuring of Dave Stevens, John Layman, Jacob Edgar, et al’s The Rocketeer: The Island #1.
• Tim Rooney reviews the surreal horror of Dave Chisholm’s Is Ted OK? #1.
• Jordan Jennings reviews the delightful weirdness of James Tynion IV, Michael Avon Oeming, et al’s Red Book #4; and the grounded approach of Benjamin Percy, José Luis Soares, et al’s The Punisher #1.
• Zack Quaintance reviews the excellent execution of Jeremy Adams, Montos, et al’s Green Lantern #32; and the detailed cityscapes of Bérénice Motais de Narbonne's Metadoggoz, translated by Montana Kane.
Broken Frontier
• Swati Nair reviews the visual weaving of Joanna Rubin Dranger’s Remember Us to Life.
• Lydia Turner reviews the engrossing horror of Shintaro Kago’s Brain Damage, translated by Zack Davisson.
• Andy Oliver has reviews of:
• The otherworldly sadness of Dix’s The Idris File.
• The playful vibrancy of Mel Gale’s A Fragile Obsession - Colossive Cartographies #69.
• The masterful selection of Oni Press' Cruel Universe, Volume II #7.
• The vibrant immediacy of Skai Campbell's Hog Hog: A Hedgehog Anthology.
Comics Grinder
Henry Chamberlain reviews the charming escapism of Olivia Cuartero-Briggs, Roberta Ingranata, et al’s The College Try.
From Cover to Cover
Scott Cederlund reviews the everyday reflections of Keigo Shinzo’s Hirayasumi, Volume 7.
House to Astonish
Paul O’Brien has capsule reviews of Marvel Comics’ X-Men #25, Uncanny X-Men #24, Wolverine #16, Generation X-23 #1, and Wolverine: Weapons of Armageddon #1.
Yatta-tachi
• Stephanie Liu reviews the cutesy hijinks of Sal Jiang’s Ayaka Is in Love with Hiroko! Volume 1, translated by Katie Kimura.
• AJ Mack reviews the exciting return of Yukiru Sugisaki’s D.N.Angel New Edition Volume 1, translated by Alethea Nibley and Athena Nibley.
Fish Ride.
— Jesse Lonergan (@jesselonergan.bsky.social) 2026-02-24T00:47:28.417Z
This week’s interviews.
TCJ
Ana Woulfe interviews Diane DiMassa about Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist, the New Haven music scene, performance art seating considerations, and anger as a drug — “I came into therapy after a horrible run of drugs and alcohol. I grew up in really intense anger and screaming and yelling, so I didn't know that my anger was abnormal. Even to this day, I see like the crazy person get outta their car. They're in the road rage. That's me. Still sometimes it's my biggest challenge, behind the wheel.”
AIPT
Chris Hassan speaks with Ryan Stegman about X-Men Annual, the collaborative origins of the book, skirting the Marvel Method, and X-career highlights.
David Brooke talks to Steve Orlando about Sorcerer Supreme, the life and times of Scarlet Witch and Vision, and magic as metaphor.
The Beat
• E.B. Hutchins chats with Kel McDonald about The City Between, interactions between technology and the supernatural, and prose influences.
• Ricardo Serrano Denis speaks with Stephen Bissette about Tyrant, fostering a lifelong obsession with terrible lizards, and the financial realities of the previous direct market distribution implosion.
Charleston City Paper
Steve Stegelin talks to Caroline Cash about Nancy and PeePeePooPoo, offset apprenticeships, art world job realities, and daily strip scheduling.
Fanbase Press
Barbra Dillon interviews:
- Morgan Boecher about Chicken Heart and getting the story right.
- Rantz Hoseley about California Screaming and MacArthur Park history.
- Rob Jones about Kate Carter Adventures and changing creative processes.
- Luke McKoy about Fortune and future plans for the comic.
- Sydney Halpern and Trygve Faste about Infected for Science and the research that went into the book.
GraphicMemoir
Jonathan Sandler speaks with Katriona Chapman about The Pass, the complex characters to be found in the restaurant business, and working with Fantagraphics on the book.
ICv2
Milton Griepp interviews Viz Media’s Sarah Anderson about distribution changes and market disruption, and strong sales for more thoughtful titles.
Radio Prague International
Ruth Fraňková talks to the Czech Academy of Comics’ Pavel Kořínek about Branko Jelinek’s big wins at this year’s Muriel Awards for Oskar Ed: My Best Friend.
Solrad
Sommer Browning interviews Francesca Lyn about fitting the editorial process to the project, researching an upcoming book on the underground railroad, and SPX organisation.
Happy 3rd anniversary to us! With a new year, we have a BIG announcement 📢: we are now incorporated as a nonprofit organization and are changing our name to CARTOONISTS UNITED! Full changes will be rolled out by late summer.Read here for the full statement: cartoonist.coop/journal/cart...
— Cartoonist Cooperative (@cartoonist.coop) 2026-02-25T18:20:09.046Z
This week’s features and longreads.
• Here at TCJ, Chris Anthony Diaz presents a photobook of conventions, signings, and exhibitions from across the Bay Area in 2025 — “In the form of these photographs, here is my yearbook and visual love letter to Indie Comics 2025. It's dedicated to those who showed up and obliged me for a moment to stand for my camera and be immortalized in Indie Comics history. Here is to those who attended and to those who didn't, but who still might be curious what it was like to have been there.”
• Also for TCJ, Kaoru Kumi writes on the alleged tracing of a photograph posted by X (formerly Twitter) user @tiyk_tbr by artist Hisashi Eguchi, for a promotional poster, without seeking the subject’s permission, and the place of this controversy in Eguchi’s wider body of work and manga swipe file history — “What distinguished Eguchi from Otomo was the way he absorbed the aesthetics of girls’ fashion magazines. That fusion — Otomo’s discipline mixed with Seventeen and Non-no — created a tension between absurd humor and Pop Art sophistication. By the mid-1980s, his drawings were inching away from slapstick and toward fine-art sensibility.”
• Finally for TCJ this week, Ilan Manouach writes on the cancellation of this year's Angoulême International Comics Festival, following a boycott by publishers and creators over the management of the event by 9eArt+, and the ever-shifting power dynamics between creators/publishers/events - “What makes this moment particularly potent is how it inverts traditional power dynamics without creators having to sacrifice all they have. For decades, festivals have operated on the assumption that artists need them more than they need artists. Creators travel vast distances, pay their own expenses, and donate their time to sign autographs and pose for photos—all in service of “exposure” and the nebulous promise of career advancement.”
• For Publisher’s Weekly, Shaenon K. Garrity surveys the growing Western market for mature manga, speaking with people at Fantagraphics, Kodansha, Seven Seas, Drawn & Quarterly, Dark Horse, Titan, and Viz; and Heidi MacDonald rounds up the industry moving and shaking that was to be found at this year’s ComicsPRO event.
• Another perspective on the manga market, as Richard Handjaja covers recent sales stagnation in the domestic manga market for ICv2, with readership dilution looming, as big name titles come to an end.
• Over at The Beat, Arpad Okay returns with more Critical Thinking, covering some recent academic writing on comics, this edition examining Glenn Fleishman's How Comics Are Made: A Visual History from the Drawing Board to the Printed Page, comics labor and the history of the shift to a comics industry, and the overtly political nature of changes in comics making processes and what got/gets to be depicted in mainstream usage of these.
• For Shelfdust, Tom Shapira reminds us that one must always holler Yo Joe! To support the troops of Larry Hama and Marie Severin’s GI Joe #28, and all other issues preceding and succeeding that entry into the canon/cannon.
• More Mindless Ones musings, as the latest newsletter sees continued appreciation of Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta’s Absolute Batman and considerations given to shifting superhero political spectrums in the ongoing Late Stage Capitalist paradigm shift.
• From the world of open-access academia, for Corps & Psychisme, Dr. Mezdaout Wassima presents a paper on Roland Barthes’ conception of the death of the author and the extent to which it can be applied to Algerian graphic novels.
• For Library & Information Science, Book Studies, Jade Smith shares a snapshot of graphic novel collections in libraries, and how these are perceived, in terms of their value, in an age of book bans and challenges.
• For Humanities, Joseph J. Darowski writes on the evolution of Marvel Comics’ X-Men titles, and the ways in which ongoing character development and symbolic metaphors explicitly centre empathy and tolerance as heroic acts.
• Mike Peterson rounds up the week’s editorial beat, over at The Daily Cartoonist, as you would really struggle to find a more imperfect State of the Union build-up and execution, plus ça change.
wotta schmuck
— Beatrix Urkowitz ~ (@bmfu.net) 2026-02-09T21:25:55.263Z
This week’s audio/visual delights.
• Katie Skelly and Sally Madden return with some Thick Lines for 2026, as consideration is given to Shary Flenniken’s Trots and Bonnie and the changing social mores of readers of darkly comic comics across the decades, as well as the mathematical conundrum of how many times is too many times for Ludacris’ Sex Room.
• Austin English hosted two recent meetings of the New York Comics and Picture-Story Symposium, as Carol Tyler spoke about The Ephemerata: Shaping the Exquisite Nature of Grief and trying to make sure the meaning of images aren’t lost to the reader’s interpretation, and Angela Fanche and Katie Lane spoke about Bernadette and editing the comics anthology series.
• From last year, making its way to the Library of Congress’ YouTube channel, comes the 11th Annual SPX Lecture, which hosted a talk from Paul Karasik on methods used while teaching comics to students of any discipline.
• Some recent interviews from the ethereal realm of comics podcasts, as David Harper spoke with Chris Condon about the pithily named The Peril of the Brutal Dark: An Ezra Cain Mystery and promotional gimmicks, and 2000 AD’s Molch-R concluded a career-spanning interview series with John Wagner and spoke with writer/director Ben Wheatley about Judge Dee and writing for screen and page.
worm-in-a-rock god
— pseudonym jones (@pseudonymjones.bsky.social) 2026-02-09T23:38:39.400Z
The links are done for another week. Will the this week’s links machine survive through the ongoing RAM price apocalypse? We can only hope.
Close-ups on the new shirt designs! www.cathygjohn.net/store?catego...
— Cathy G. Johnson🏴 (@cathygjohn.bsky.social) 2026-02-23T14:56:03.710Z
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