Beelzebub's library

  Soupy Leaves Home, is a classic historical adventure. I used to listen to books that were like this graphic novel on book on tape all the time. As children, I and my siblings loved learning about how people lived back in the olden times, and the various hijinks they experienced. This book is a little more adult than what we might listen to, but I don’t think it’s any more disturbing than To Kill A Mockingbird.             The story is about a teenage girl, who adopts the term Soupy after disguising herself as a man and leaving her abusive father and helpless aunt, to become a hobo. She befriends a kind, wise old man named Remy, who teaches her how to survive a life on the run.             The narrative is enjoyable, with a lot of introspection and character building moments. The characters of Remy and the other...

For those of you who do not know, there is a webcomic series called “Deep Dark Fears”, where people submit anxieties they have or weird or traumatic ideas and fears that they had as children. It’s a great comic for anyone who has anxiety and invasive thoughts, and I used to especially love them because to me they embodied a mindset that I found it hard to come by.             I love the idea of paranoid delusion. I have loved it since 2014, when I would spend all day listening to creepy-pasta’s on YouTube, in the mostly empty apartment where my family was living at the time. I was already very misanthropic at the time and to me, this view of the world, as being uncertain and filled with dark things that we can’t notice, was very enticing.             I’m not as paranoid as I think I once was, but I still suffer from a lot of the same anxieties and issues and I feel this...

“Leap days” by Ian Bennett and “Anya’s Ghost” by Vera Brosgol Since these two graphic novels are somewhat similar and neither is particularly long, I figured reviewing them together would make sense. Both take place in high school and they are both coming of age stories. They also both involve a high schooler befriending a supernatural force who allows them to cheat in school. LEAP DAYS We’ll start with Leap Days since it’s the relatively less emotionally charged of the two.             I was surprised by this book. When it opens, it’s pretty grim. Being more realistic, it depicts the crushing boredom of school and the frustration of a sense that you are wasting your time and not really learning anything. The protagonist’s name is Jake and he drifts through the day, unknown by everyone and uninterested in everything. The only thing that snaps him out of the malaise aside from eventually getting to go home and go to sl...

Graphic novel: Noir/Thriller/Horror, Contains Gore, Obscenity, Adult implications, and Disturbing imagery. This review contains spoilers When I was very young, I got a fungal infection in my ear from prolonged exposure to water. I have had trouble with congestion in my ears since that point. Usually, it’s not too bad, but sometimes it can feel very irritating.             Silverfish by David Lapham is a graphic novel that takes advantage of our paranoia regarding our ears. You think it’s disgusting to think about earwigs crawling into your ears? It’s about ten times worse when its hundreds of tiny fish (which resemble viperfish) crawling to your brain.            (The above is a Viperfish, in case you were unaware)   Silverfish is neither about hundreds of tiny viperfish nor about a man with a fish head, as would be indicated by the drawing on the back of the book. It’s not ...

This review has a number of minor spoilers. “Everything has Teeth”  is a wonderful graphic novel. While I’m not sure it’s worth the rather  high  price ,  I do find that multiple read-throughs give you all  the little  details  throughout.  The script is very good, the narration sharp and witty,  getting the point but still leaving depth. The story is about the childhood of a woman, a childhood in which she found herself obsessed with morbid incidents, but most of all, sharks. This ties in with the art, which depicts everything except for sea life in a black and white cartoon style. Then, all the various sharks and the other sea beasts which show up in the book, are photo-realistic, becoming a stark contrast to the rest of the wor ld. The book is minimal with its use of color, which make the red of blood all the more alarming. As said, the story is told by a woman, about her childhood .  The book is interesti...