Episode 244: Reviews of Nothing Lasts Forever, What Is a Glacier?,and Revenger and the Fog - a podcast by Stergios Botzakis & Derek Royal

from 2017-06-14T13:42:45

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This week the Two Guys with PhDs review three recent releases, two of which are autobiographical in nature. They begin with Sina Grace's Nothing Lasts Forever (Image Comics). This follows a couple of other autobiographical works from Grace including Not My Bag (2012) and Self-Obsessed (2015), but this latest work has a looser feel to it. Written in diary form when the author was suffering from a rare esophageal condition, the book reveals Grace's struggles with his health, his romantic/sexual relationships, and his art. Indeed, as both Andy and Derek point out, it's his emphasis on the latter, along with the pencil art, that makes this such an intimate text.

Next, the guys turn to What Is a Glacier?, a short autobiographical piece from Sophie Yanow (Retrofit/Big Planet Comics). In this work, the author uses a trip to Iceland, and a visitation to a glacier, to explore the nature of life changes, feelings of uncertainty, and grief over loss. In terms of the latter, Yanow deftly associates the end of a relationship with our treatment of the environment, contextualizing climate change in dire, yet not completely hopeless, terms.

After that Derek and Andy look at a completely different kind of comic. Charles Forsman's Revenger and the Fog (Bergen Street Press) is the follow-up (and prequel) to his first Revenger volume, Children of the Damned. Originally appearing as four-issue miniseries, and including a one-shot, Revenger and the Fog is a 1970s-/1980s-inspired action narrative of a vigilante, Reggie (AKA, Revenger), enacting retribution against the victimized. In this case, the victims are other members of her team, The Fog, specifically her lover Jenny (AKA, Dynarat). There's a lot of extreme violence in this story, along with a premise that is sure to gross you out. But as the guys point out, Forsman's over-the-top handling of his subject matter adds a touch of humor that helps to mitigate the discomfort.

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