| CARVIEW |
The Shadow Planet by Gianluca Pagliarani (art) & Giovanni Barbieri (script). Image, 2025. 9781534331761. 96pp. Publisher’s Rating: M / Mature. Includes some bonus material in the back, including thumbnails and other art.
This graphic novel is a throwback to monster movies of the 1980s or earlier, and I enjoyed it as such. It even has a few bad jokes. The back says it’s Lovecraftian, but I’m not sure I agree. If you liked John Carpenter’s The Thing and wish the original Lost In Space was more gory, stop reading and find a copy.
The book opens with a blood-soaked sex scene, and soon we’re on a Federation starship with a crew of six that’s received a call for help. It’s from a ship that was reported destroyed thirty years before. Four of the crew take a shuttle to the planet’s surface to investigate. They find a very freaked out survivor who says her father massacred the rest of her family. It’s not too long before there’s a murder and alien monsters. It gets weird in ways that are predictable and fun to read.
At the heart of the story is Sgt. Vargo, an Alain Delon lookalike who always has a cigarette in his mouth. (The main characters are inspired by famous actors of the past, according to the notes at the end of the book, but I couldn’t identify any of the others offhand.)
My favorite thing: the Batmobile-inspired rover is badass.
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Not On Display by Zelba. Translation by Alice Yang. Helvetiq, 2025. 9783039640843. 114pp. plus an Afterward by Zelba, an essay titled “The Nude In Art” by Fabrice Douar, and more.
This is part of the amazing Musée du Louvre graphic novels series published in France by Futuropolis, many of which are available in English and other languages. https://www.futuropolis.fr/collection/musee-du-louvre/ I’ve read most of them and this is by far my favorite.
In the opening pages of the book, a man and his father, at the front of the security line at the Louvre, take off all of their clothes before entering the museum. They’re not the only men who have to disrobe (though women and kids can leave their clothes on). What?!
Six months earlier, a cleaning lady out for a smoke with a coworker explains how much she loves the “ladies” in the galleries she cleans. The works of art feel like friends to her. She says can actually hear them talking, and that they’re sick of how they’ve been treated. She promises to pass their message on to the museum’s director, that the nude sculptures of women had enough with the “unwanted touching and obscene comments from men…” and that they’re planning a rebellion.
The cleaning lady is fired. And then the trouble at the museum begins! (It quickly expands a bit to include the nude women in paintings, too.)
The story walks a fine line between serious and entertaining. My favorite characters are the President-Director and his sister, who functions as his Executive Secretary, because they have a secret that keeps the museum running. As at the Louvre itself, though, the statues are really the stars of the story. Zelba’s illustrations and dialogue make some works of art more compelling than ever. Worth noting: the book has a perfect ending.
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Model Five Murder: a sci-fi noir by Tan Juan Gee. Silver Sprocket, 2025. 9788886200706. 64pp. Includes a few pages of bonus content at the end about process and the history of the book.This graphic novella has a great opening: Io is on a spacewalk at a refueling depot when she comes across a body floating nearby. Weirder, it has the same face she does; it’s also a Rohm Model Five cyborg. She returns to Tasang Loop, a huge space station and home to millions, though there are very few Model Fives living there. That last fact turns out to be central to the mystery she stumbles into.
I love Tan’s art — it takes inspiration from manga, particularly in its use of screen tones, but it’s shading and subtle use of color really makes it stand out. This is a short, enjoyable mystery from a Singaporean creator.
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Ew, It’s Beautiful: A False Knees Comic Collection by Joshua Barkman. Andrews McMeel, 2025. 9781524897642. 140pp.I love the birds in Barkman’s comics. They confirm my opinion that crows are the best. (Pigeons, you’re a close second!)
As soon as I read this book I recommended it to three people. And I’m still going. It’s fabulous.
You can read all the comics at https://falseknees.com (Be sure to read Life After Life, which is a short graphic novel about birds. Looks like Barkman does one every November!)
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Welcome to the Maynard by James Robinson, art by J. Bone. Dark Horse, 2025. 9781506744919. Contains #1 – 4 of the series.
Pip starts working as a bellhop at the Maynard, a fancy hotel for the magic community. It’s all secret and invisible to mortal eyes. This creates a problem with Pip’s girlfriend, who figures out Pip has been lying about working at a regular hotel. But Pip can’t give it up. And it’s not just the wizards, magical beings, and fabulous coworkers. Pip is secretly in-training with Sam, the hotel’s house detective, and they’re trying to catch a thief who has been stealing an incredibly odd array of items from the hotel (and then escaping in a marvlous, magical way, of course).
Pip is wonderful and easy to root for, but I loved the wizard Hamilton Cape as soon as he made his entrance. He’s more Liberace than not, and he has an amazing sense of style.
Robinson (Starman! Scarlet Witch) and J. Bone (Alison Dare, Mutant Texas) previously teamed up on Image Comics’ The Saviors, which I somehow missed. Check out the superhero illustrations on J. Bone’s Instagram and enjoy at the sense of nostalgia his inking creates.
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