by Eden
I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly (writer) and J. M. Ken Niimura (artist) definitely feels very personal and I am happy to be a bit charitable because of that. It’s compassionate toward its characters and the mix of fantasy danger and real-world trauma works to an extent. I just feel like it all comes together in too obvious of a way.
Too much of The Coldest City feels like it was conceived as a screenplay and then changed into a comic to make it an easier pitch to Hollywood. Johnston has good ideas here but the twists and turns don’t offer anything unexpected.
Kim W. Andersson brings all the heightened emotions without many nuances to Alena. It doesn’t need nuance, particularly, though. This is going to be a story that ends badly because that’s how all these stories end.
It needs to be made clear that Phoebe Gloeckner’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl is not actually a graphic novel. It’s a prose novel that happens to have some illustrations and some pages of comics. That won’t stop people from referring to it as a “graphic novel” though.
Lou is preteen (and then teen) girl who is exploring the ups and downs of adolescence — first crushes, mood swings, new and old friendships. Her mother, who had Lou when she was young, is also dealing with her book deadline while she’d rather be playing video games and crushing on the new neighbor in the building.