Easysticks – by Annie Jo Cain

The author loses his job, his girlfriend, his apartment, his grandma and then the twin towers in New York. He gets a bus pass and heads out for a loop around the country.

I liked the somewhat heavy artwork and the continuous story was compelling. The author turned into somewhat of an annoying jerk while drinking and I found myself enjoying the book a little less because of it. Everyone he met on the trip was pretty likeable, though, so I ended up with mostly positive feelings about this one.

Flying Lincoln

Originally uploaded by jocainster.

Right now the cat’s favorite thing to do is bring his ’snake’ (pull strings from cardboard envelopes) to be thrown in the air so he can leap up and catch it, while twisting and turning as much as he can.

He grabs it, lands and then brings it right back for another go.

What could be better than a travel memoir and graphic novel in one? At times it seemed a little clunky, with dialog clearly only meant to inform the reader almost to the point of being a lecture. I really liked the artwork and would love to see more from Josh Neufeld.

The author explains in the beginning that the book was originally written as an informatonal and inspirational pamphlet to hand out to other teenage single moms. There isn’t much detail or depth to the story, but it was enjoyable to read.

This memoir had an interesting structure, with some chapters written in comic form and authored by one sibling while the other chapters were straight up text and written by another sibling. The execution was lacking and I ended up just feeling disappointed. I didn’t care for the old-school comic art from the brother and the sister’s writing was too sentimental to be original or engaging.

Hopefully this book writing approach will be attempted by more talented authors because I still think a hybrid comic/traditional work has great potential.