Image: Francisco de la Mora
This month, we enter our second decade of publishing illustrated literature from around the world. From the environment to sexuality to political corruption, the work here tackles pressing themes, crossing national and personal borders to expand our collective social consciousness to global scale. Elettra Stamboulis and Gianluca Costantini map the division of Cyprus. Ilana Zeffren's sly cats observe their owners negotiate social and sexual normativity. Francisco de la Mora and José Luis Pescador Huerta dispatch a desperate victim of climate change to the UN. Daniel Sixte and Sinzo Aanza reveal local corruption and international exploitation in Congo, while the Trantraal Brothers get the truth about South African township life out of the mouths of babes. Monika Szydłowska's young Pole pursues the good life elsewhere, and Naz Tansel boards the bus to a microcosm of Turkish society. Guest editor Dominic Davies offers an illuminating introduction. Elsewhere, we offer a selection of fiction from Poland, guest edited and introduced by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
Comics and Graphic Narratives: A Global Cultural Commons
Comics themselves have a role to play in the construction of a more globally aware social consciousness.
An Endless Green Line
Every town had two soccer teams. A right-wing one and a left-wing one.
Coloureds
I'd wait till he was asleep. Then I'd cut his throat with a knife.
Urban Tails
Where are they? It's late.
Joe
You have not yet realized that you are misunderstanding everything.
Men and Beasts
Listen up—it’s not just General anymore. I’m Marshal General now.
Heniek
Heniek always wanted to leave.
The Minibus
"What do you want us to do, sit on their heads?"
Book Reviews
“Dance on the Volcano” Marie Vieux-Chauvet
Reviewed by Juliet Grames
“Frontier” by Can Xue
Reviewed by Kate Prengel