Tahneer 2025
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The Emphemerata: Shaping the Exquisite Nature of Grief by Carol Tyler
Is there a right way to experience, or express, grief? Autobiographical cartoonist Carol Tyler’s latest heavyweight, crammed with inky, wild visuals and loopy prose, does not seek simple answers. Hurting from the deaths of her mother, sister and father, Tyler does not try to tell readers how they might feel in similar circumstances. Instead, she implores others to pay careful attention, not just to grief but also to the life that goes on as grief does. Brimming with gorgeous, meandering images and prose, this book showcases a highly skilled artist at the top of her game.
— Tahneer Oksman, book critic, comics and graphic novels -
Muybridge by Guy DeLisle
Our world seems to be transforming at a quicker pace than ever, largely due to new and emergent technologies. Like many other people, I’ve taken an increased interest in looking back at the histories of older innovations. Enter this splendid graphic biography of the “father of motion pictures,” Eadweard Muybridge, by the great biographical and travelogue cartoonist Guy Delisle. Muybridge is best known for his 12-panel series of photographs depicting a galloping horse at full speed. This detailed, thoughtful comics biography – which includes reproductions of Muybridge’s groundbreaking photographs – tells a comprehensive story of a man possessed by the possibilities of photographic invention.
— Tahneer Oksman, book critic, comics and graphic novels -
Spent: A Comic Novel by Alison Bechdel
Best known for her graphic memoir Fun Home, Alison Bechdel has created a new “comic novel,” part self-parody, part ornate diatribe, that tracks a character in midlife (with the author’s same name) living with her partner on a goat farm in Vermont. The book’s cast of characters go about their lives against the backdrop of an exhausting cultural and political landscape. Sound familiar? Underneath the missives, jokes and Marxian headlines, the warmth of Bechdel’s storytelling is undeniable, and comforting. In an era calling for reinvention, Bechdel has produced her own inimitable genre.
— Tahneer Oksman, book critic, comics and graphic novels -
This Might Surprise You: A Breast Cancer Story by Hayley Gullen
At 37 years old, with a busy work life and young child in tow, Hayley Gullen wakes in terrible pain, soon to be diagnosed with breast cancer. Entering treatment is, as she later realizes, “the start of a story.” Integrating humor into her earnest, sweet line drawings, Gullen joins other powerful graphic memoirists grappling with the topic, including Marisa Acocella Marchetto with Cancer Vixen and Jennifer Hayden with The Story of My Tits. Through art and openness, Gullen forges her way from feeling like a statistic to expressing herself as more than a body in crisis. -
Remember Us to Life: A Graphic Memoir by Joanna Rubin Dranger
“I don’t understand how these stories could interest anyone outside the family,” author and artist Joanna Rubin Dranger exclaims in a moment of uncertainty. This statement ironically turns up toward the end of a book scrupulously detailing her family story. Part memoir, part historical investigation, Remember Us to Life is about much more than one family; it sheds light on what happened to many Jews in the purportedly politically neutral Sweden during World War II, and after. This text-heavy, mostly black-and-white memoir, composed in simple but powerful images reminiscent of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, offers a rare, immersive look into an oft-untold history.
— Tahneer Oksman, book critic, comics and graphic novels -
Photographic Memory: William Henry Jackson and the American West by Bill Griffith
Notable underground-era cartoonist and Zippy creator Bill Griffith turns his attention to his namesake in this serious, deeply researched biography told in sharply attentive black-and-white comics. Griffith’s great-grandfather, William Henry Jackson, was best known as the official photographer on the 1870 government survey of Yellowstone, with photographs that led to the establishment of the first national park. Griffith builds on a vast archive – including letters, diaries and a published autobiography – to painstakingly detail the 90 years of this adventurous illustrator, adventurer and photographer’s life, including brushes along the way with the likes of Ansel Adams, Thomas Nast, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Richard F. Outcault.
— Tahneer Oksman, book critic, comics and gr
The Weight by Melissa Mendes
This quiet, powerful volume, clocking in at almost 600 pages, collects mini comics that Melissa Mendes has been creating since 2015. Drawn simply but delicately, in black-and-white, symmetrically tiered comics, the story follows Edie, a spirited girl born on a rural farm in the 1930s. After barely surviving her father’s domestic abuse, she eventually comes to live with her loving grandparents, but the cycle seems to start anew when, at 17, she finds herself pregnant. In this immersive, atmospheric work, Mendes expertly captures the beauty and pain of growing up in the countryside, alongside the rhythms of the natural world.
— Tahneer Oksman, book critic, comics and graphic novels
Patchwork: A Graphic Biography of Jane Austen by Kate Evans
How do you take the life and work of one of the most popular novelists to ever walk the earth and make them new? Graphic biographer Kate Evans gives a fresh, revealing look at Jane Austen in the 250th anniversary year of the author’s birth. Combining images and words, historiography and fiction, imagination and research, Evans chronologically moves through Austen’s quiet but impactful life, adding fresh context and subtle humor to the story of an author famous for casting her observant eye on the British upper class. For Austen lovers and others, this graphic biography is a welcome addition.
— Tahneer Oksman, book critic, comics and graphic novels
Breadcrumbs: Coming of Age in Post-Soviet Poland by Kasia Babis
There aren’t many English-language comics set in Poland, so I was eager to dive into this graphic memoir about a young woman coming of age there after the fall of the USSR. Kasia Babis lays out the constraints of young people living through political and economic instability, particularly as related to the aftermath of communism and the stronghold of the Catholic Church. She and her girlfriends grapple with bodily autonomy and strained gender dynamics. Built of snapshots drawn in gray scale, with deft flashes of red, this memoir powerfully recounts Babis’ unique journey of finding her place through storytelling and activism.
— Tahneer Oksman, book critic, comics and graphic novels
