Reviews and Comments

Looking for ticking biological clocks, a self-described tragicomic, single parents by choice, and memoirs? T this week's pick is Catalogue Baby: A Memoir of Infertility by Myriam Steinberg and illustrated by Christache. Apparently she's currently working on a sequel entitled Stick, Stay, Grow but Catalogue Baby was originally published in 2021 by Page Two Books.

I picked this book up for an online book club that only lasted one month. I've also read and reviewed almost every graphic novel about abortion I've ever heard of and so I guess I need to branch out a bit further.

Content notes for: abortion in the face of down syndrome, a lot of miscarriages, nudity, frank depiction of medical treatments and needles.

The publishers summary is "A deeply moving tragicomic graphic memoir about a single woman’s efforts to conceive in her forties.

A few months after Myriam Steinberg turned forty, she decided she couldn’t wait any longer to become a mother. She made the difficult decision to begin the process of conceiving a child without a partner. With her family and friends to support her, she picked a sperm donor and was on her way.

But Myriam’s journey was far from straightforward. She experienced the soaring highs and devastating lows of becoming pregnant and then losing her babies. She grappled with the best decision to make when choosing donors or opting for a medical procedure. She experienced first-hand the silences, loneliness, and taboos that come with experiences of fetal loss. Unafraid to publicize her experiences, though, she found that, in return, friends and strangers alike started sharing their own fertility stories with her. Although the lack of understanding and language around fetal loss and grief often made it very hard to navigate everyday life, she nonetheless found solace in the community around her who rallied to support her through her journey.

Through it all, Myriam remained hopeful and here she unflinchingly shares her story with wry humour, honesty, and courage. Beautifully illustrated by Christache, Catalogue Baby is one woman’s story of tragedy and beating the odds, and is a resource for all women and couples who are trying to conceive. Catalogue Baby is a compassionate portrait of fertility and infertility that hasn’t been seen before."

Copying that over into my script I'm a bit surprised that the summary jumps straight over the relationship that Steinberg starts the memoir in, and that she tries to make work before moving on to start down the single parent by choice journey. But that's not a huge deal I guess.

Starting off on the writing side of things, Catalogue Baby is a highly personal and vulnerable memoir. A space where there's a lot of diverse judgement from every different kind of person, it's also a very isolating and silencing space. So while I don't think I enjoyed this read (although some reviewers certainly have) I did find it pretty interesting.

A very tightly focused memoir, Steinberg does give credit to the wider community that supported her through this journey to become a single mother by choice.

Other notes to bridge the gap between reviewing a memoir and giving a creator biography. Steinberg lives in vancouver (so this is can-con) and she is Jewish. As a different kind of religious person (namely christian) I really appreciate seeing how religion and religious traditions are woven into people's lives.

Moving along to the artistic side of thing. Christache's cartooning is fairly distinctive and his use of a limited greyscale and pink colour scheme was effective. Working together Steinberg and Christache weave together a hard part of life with blunt matter of fact medical nudity, and fantastical whimsy that personifies biological functions in a way that balances out the grim with the humerious.

Probably not up to either of them, I was a bit surprise that libby forced me to read this ebook in landscape mode. Not the end of the world but not my favourite either.

Christache is another Vancouverite who has done everything from kidergarten art class to teen improv teacher… he's now mostly a freelance illustrator whose goal is "to thrill my clients with playful, beautiful illustrations that capture the mood and narrative of each individual project."

Moving on to the different identities and themes, as I am want to do… As I already mentioned this is a fairly tightly focused memoir so there isn't too much diversity of representation because we are mostly focused on Steinberg.

Bodies and function and failure to function is fairly central to Catalogue Baby and disability does complicate my feelings about this book. Because as I noted in the content notes Steinberg does make the choice part way through her journey to seek an abortion because, after several rounds of genetic testing, the chance of her child not being born with down syndrome is like 1%. I made it a content note because if that's going to be upsetting to anyone they really should not read this memoir. It's not worth it.

On a similar note I don't think it's terribly useful for me to point my critique at cogs in this ableist and capitalist machine that Steinberg and I live in. Please feel free to stop here if you think you might find what I am about to say upsetting. I'm going on a bit of a tangent.

While I was very much raised to be pro-life I am now 1000 and 10 percent pro choice. Doesn't matter if it's a hard choice or an easy choice I do ultimately think it's up to the pregnant person what they are going to do with their body throughout their entire pregnancy.

That said, zooming out, I want to live in a society where it doesn't matter to anyone if they find out their fetus will likely have a not terminal disability such as down syndrome because the stigma and fear are gone and people have everything they need to raise children with a diversity of needs. Not to mention a world in which disabled people are able to get married and not lose their supports and don't face societal barriers to having and raising their own children. Assuming marriage continues to be the thing.

But of course circling back to the grim world I am currently living in. A place of ever increasing eugenics and fascism… I would also encourage people who may sometime in the future be faced with a choice like this is that there is actually no way to guarantee that your child will not be disabled. Screening tests don't catch anything close to everything genetically speaking, births can become complicated, and after that there are even more ways for them to hurt themselves, cancers, viruses and accidents. Eventually we are all either less then fully able bodied or dead.

Even in Catalogue Baby Steinberg's rabbit becomes unexpectedly disabled and we do briefly follow Steinberg's relationship with her rabbit and the long road of recovery they faced around that time.

Class is touched on a bit more then usual. Not like in a proper class analysis sort of way but Steinberg is fairly up front about how financially supportive her parents were of this journey.

Gender felt perhaps somewhat surprisingly low key considering how gendered pregnancy spaces often are or maybe I'm just conveniently forgetting parts? Your milage will certainly vary if you highly gender certain kinds of reproductive organs. I forget if there was any overt mention of non women getting pregnant though.

And while being a single parent by choice is a bit off target for heterosexual reproduction ideals. I did keep having the slightly disappointing realization that Steinberg is actually not queer? Ok, before you rage comment (although honestly, that does feed the algorithm) disappointed is way too strong a word. I was just slightly surprised every time I remembered that. It was also because the style of the comic art also just reminded me of a few queer comics I've read over the years.

Place didn't feel super explored. Like I knew she lived in Vancouver and I think that part of her fertility treatment might have been covered by the provincial healthcare but certainly not a chunk of it. Which is sadly not unusual up here.

Looking at our social construct of race, as I already mentioned Stenberg is Jewish and that does play a part in some spiritual stuff that was woven into the memoir. But I think that's about it as far as I remember.

Wrapping things up… As I already said I wouldn't say this was an enjoyable read. Some people certainly felt a much deeper connection with the material, I just got a lot of second hand stress from all the hard choices and disappointing results throughout.

Looking for giant mechs, military action, red heads, and science fiction?

I picked this book up several months ago now because at the time Trump had just been reelected and immediately started talking about absorbing Canada and more then one person in my life suggested I pick it up. of course at this point, finally putting fingers to keyboard, Trump's comments continue and now he's sending the marines into LA to subdue civilians. What does the future hold? Who knows... although certainly not the scenarios in this book. But more on that later.

Content notes for blood and guts, mass civilian casualties, harm to animals, nudity and prison camps. Image doesn't rate their comics but there is a lot of blood and guts. Also consider if you want to see so called canada being bombed before picking up this book.

The publisher's summary is "Set one hundred years in our future, WE STAND ON GUARD follows a heroic band of Canadian civilians turned freedom fighters who must defend their homeland from invasion by a technologically superior opponent... the United States of America."

But before we dive into the writing side of things I did want to comment on my feelings on the title. For people not in the know, the book opens with a page of text rendition of Oh Canada, which is our national anthem. Being an anti-patriot I don't like it. Which is not a huge deal when it comes to a random american comic but it is a phrase that some people use to signal they are not a conservative but they also love so called canada or whatever. There was a brief period where I didn't think about this phrase at all for a while and then I saw a random sticker out in the wild with a canadian flag and we stand on guard and my initial reaction was to say f that because I assumed it was anti immigrant bs. Was I wrong? I'm assuming so at this point but I can't understand how people can find it anything but threatening.

But focusing in on the book at hand and the apparently award winning writing... I don't like it much either. Although that's not entirely Vaughan's fault as the feelings I have, closing this book come from a multitude of directions. But I will try and outline them as best I can to try and be as fair as possible.

Firstly, as with all of my reviews, no matter when the original work was written I am reading the book now and it's a bit silly to completely ignore that context. And at this point in time I am the most concerned I have ever been about the possibility of so called canada being militarily invaded by the so called united states. Is this concern warranted? Canadians I talk to are overall more concerned about this then the americans I talk to. Did the creative team ever think this would be a possibility when they wrote this story?

In a Comics Beat interview from 2016 Brian K Vaughan said "Despite the sci-fi premise, we wanted the book to tackle asymmetrical warfare in a relatively realistic way, and you can't have guerrilla combat without significant losses on all sides... Niko Henrichon and I had already done an allegory about noncombatant victims of war with Pride of Baghdad, but now I wanted to write about actual violent resistance against a country I love, in a way that would hopefully be relatable to anyone, regardless of nationality. Steve and I never wanted this to be boring 'commentary,' but underneath the pulp and giant robot guts, it’s definitely political."

And while I do think it's important to break the exceptionalism bubble white canadians in particular have been living in that they could never be on the receiving end of the kind of military violence that the united states has inflicted across the globe. I really wish they had toned down all the cliches and stereotypes. I mean, I get they were trying to be pulpy, but now we have the gory death of civilians in Ottawa, victims of a pre-emptive strike, in a cartoon. In the context of 2025 the juxtaposition just doesn't sit well with me, if it ever would have. But maybe I'm being too serious. It's hard to tell.

And there are futuristic dystopias older then We Stand On Guard that people still point to as scarily relevant. Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and the Talents comes most prominently to mind. Certainly less pulpy, but still very sci-fi.

But maybe Vaughan and the team needed the cliches and absurdity of pulp in order to talk about the idea of so called america invading so called canada for their water. It's a really dark topic and being faced with the reality of it, for better or worse with no giant robots in sight, is harrowing.

I am also skeptical that canadians could mount any kind of gorilla resistance but again, in my experience, most people do need a certain level of heroic rose tinted glasses to face dystopian realities.

My initial bio of Vaughan can be found in my review of the first volume of [[Y_ The Last Man Volume 01 Review]]. Link in the cards.

Looking at the art side of thing this book does credit both an artist and a colorist so I'll try and highlight these two angles well.

Continuing with the critical vibes let's start with the colors first because the colors of this book really rendered it pretty flat looking in my humble opinion. This seems to be a combination of the grey distinct lack of saturation overall and that while there are some examples of line and color being used to offer detail and depth, the complete lack of both for many elements of the book rendered it very disassociated. The guts in particular felt very cartoonish and flat. Is this a coping mechanism? Is this supposed to make it stand out? I just found it very hard to take seriously in any sense of the word.

Colorist Matt Hollingsworth is apparently technically new to the channel. Because while he did help launch Preacher Volume One. A book I've now read twice, i don't currently have a live review for it.

Initially born in California, Hollingsworth has apparently lived in Croatia since 2006 with his wife and son. He's also apparently done a little bit of everything from writing to drawing to texture painting in the film industry, and last but not least brewing beer. Perhaps unsurprisingly Hollingsworth opens the about section on his website with the fact that he is neurodivergent.

But looking at all other parts visual... Professional and serviceable certainly. The page layouts are varied but easy to follow. The character designs felt pretty basic, but in a way that played well with how each person is an archetype without descending into total cartoonery. Perhaps because of my own particular background I did take issue with the character design of Amber, the character we follow the most closely throughout. A child who survives the pre-emptive strike with her brother, despite all the fleeing and hiding and living on the lamb she apparently grows up to be a curvy hour glass red head without a single scar. Of course all the women we see in We Stand on Guard are cut from the same cookie cutter mold, but with Amber it just felt they took a few more turns to up the idealization meter. She is not a real person.

Completely new to the channel artist and co-creator Steve Skroce has apparently done (among many other things) an incredible amount of work with the Wachowskis including storyboarding for the Matrix, V for Vendetta (which I've also reviewed), Speed Racer, Ninja Assassin, Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending in addition to co-creating and drawing Doc Frankenstein, a comic which is written by the Wachowskis as well. And in an interesting twist, Skroce is of Croatian descent but lives in Canada.

And last but not least Fonografiks is credited with lettering and design. According to canny comic con Fonograpfiks equals Steven Finch.

Looking at the themes, intersecting identities and elements I like to examine in each book I review:

Place is probably the thing most central to the premise of We Stand on Guard.

Class seems like it comes in second I suppose although obviously taking place in a time of war and mostly dealing with combatants, which is not the usual framing for my understanding of class war.

Race is probably third, though it was not really explored much. Citizenship is the major characteristic of our characters, followed by cultures. Although they do seem to limit themselves to cultural archetypes that they feel like they can get away with. So the Black characters escape largely unscathed, but we have an Indigenous and Québécois characters TM lol.

Similarly, while this comic seems to be restricting itself to just two genders there is a fair amount of both archetypes present. And there's one gay man. Which takes me to the stupidest part of We Stand on Guard. Namely the part where we get an eyeful of adult Amber naked (from behind) in the shower. Next frame a large Coywolf named Hungry scares her out of the shower and right into the view of his owner Les LePage, much to Amber's embarrassment as she scrambles to cover herself with a small piece of fabric. But he's no creep, he's gay and just checking her for any signs that she's been bugged.

Of course this sort of none consensual nudity in comics is one of the first things that I decided to confront when I started this channel. Because I think it's really weird to create female characters who generally don't want to get naked for a variety of reasons and find a way to get her naked either for just the audience (why is the internal monologue exposition happening in the shower or the bedroom?) or for both the audience and some (generally male) character. Like sure, conflict is great for a story, but you could also just make female characters who are actually not embarrassed by people seeing them naked and/or otherwise in a scenario where they have consented for the other characters in the scene to see them naked.

Fairly predictably, everyone in the book is seen as perfectly able bodied or dead (at least as far as I remember). There is practically no body shape diversity, especially when it comes to the ladies. Insert eye roll here.

Wrapping things up I'm just going to go for it. I didn't like this book so one star it is. Is it the worst book ever, no. Would I have been less bothered by this book if I didn't feel america might invade canada, maybe. Do I continue to question Brian K Vaughan's feminist credentials, yes. But I realize I'm in the minority with that one.

Looking for dark mystery, intro to dracula, kid lit and pets as main characters?

This week's pick is Bunnicula: The Graphic Novel, by James Howe and Andrew Donkin with illustrations by Stephen Gilpin. This adaptation was published by Athenium books for Young Readers in 2022.

I had to pick up this book as soon as I realized it existed because I was raised on Bunnicula and the subsequent series. Something I apparently had been taking for granted; I was frankly shocked by how many millennials in my life now had never even heard of it!

Content notes for horror tropes and scary/ominous situations? The publisher suggests this book for kids aged 8-12.

Flipping Bunnicula over the publisher describes it thusly "Beware the hare! Harold the dog and Chester the cat must find out the truth about the newest pet in the Monroe household - a suspicious-looking bunny with unusual habits... and fangs! Could this innocent-seeming rabbit actually be a vampire?"

Diving right in. I am very biased but I find the writing in Bunnicula to be truly delightful. As an adult I see the metaphorical stakes as incredibly small (who even cares if the bunny sucks the juice out of vegetables?) but it hardly matters because Harold the dog's skepticism vs Chester the cat's obsession just pulled me right back in and I feel like this dynamic makes it the perfect introduction for kids to dracula lore.

Obviously it's been a hot minute since I was originally read Bunnicula so I'm not exactly sure what changes were made in this update/adaption. That said, Harold does do some research on a family computer... which I suspect was not in the original. That said, they still do a lot of reading research so I suspect updates were fairly minimal. I actually feel like they should have done a lot more, but I'll outline that a bit more later.

Looking at the writing team: Bunnicula was original created by both Deborah and James Howe. Sadly, Deborah is only credited at the start of the series (originally published in 1979) because she died of cancer at the age of 31 in 1978. Deborah and James met while attending Boston University, and they eventually married and moved to New York City for their acting careers. They wrote Bunnicula and Teddy Bear's Scrapbook while Deborah was receiving treatment for ameloblastoma at St. Vincent's Hospital, which would eventually lead James into a prolific writing career spanning picture books to young adult lit.

Doing research into this review was all the excuse I needed to pick up two of his other picture books, Brontorina and Tyrone O'Saurus Dreams. Picture books that both turned out to be about dinosaurs fulfilling their dreams of becoming dancers. If you're in the market for picture books I would recommend.

Since the death of Deborah, James apparently has been married, had a kid, wrote The Misfits and came out as gay, got divorced and eventually got married once again in 2011 to longtime partner Mark Davis. Not to mention, the about section on Howe's website also serves up a delightful amount of pet pictures!

Co-author Andrew Donkin is apparently no stranger to working on graphic adaptions, and has helped adapt a number of works by Eoin Colfer including Artamis Fowl, Illegal and The Supernaturalist. According to his website "He happily believes he is the only writer alive to have written for the characters of Batman, Superman, Doctor Who, and Artemis Fowl." He seems to be from the opposite side of the pond from me, but he never identifies his home base so who knows.

Looking at the art. As usual the thing that gets the most critiques in the reviews that I perused although I don't really feel like I got a strong indication why. As someone who enjoys certain eras of vertigo art, I appreciated the fact that the line quality felt like a bit of a call back to the really scratchy and jagged hatching of horror comics of yore. Although the color scheme was a bit too one note to really pay complete homage. Although I suspect people would have liked that even less? I don't know...

Illustrator Stephen Gilpin has (among many other things) also worked on a number of Artemis Fowl adaptations and currently lives in Kansas with "wife Jen, some kids, pets and chickens." He's won the 2010 Abilene ISD Mockingbird Award, the 2015 Comstock-Gag Read Aloud Book Award, and the Bill Martin Jr. Picture Book Award of 2009. Stephen was also nominated for the 2010 Ignatz award for Outstanding Online Comic.

Looking at the intersections, identities and themes that I like to talk about in each of my reviews:

A story about a seemingly white seemingly heterosexual couple, their two presumably cis sons and three male pets is certainly not the most diverse cast, and all those seemings and presumablies speak to the fact that the identities of our characters are not explored in any way. As it goes sometimes. Class, place and ability/disability are similarly unexplored.

And this is where I kind of feel like some updating would have been nice. Because if none of these aspects of identity seem to really impact the story all that much (beyond the fact that this family does not appear to have an economic care in the world) why not mix it up a bit. I'm not saying I have anything personally against James Howe, Bunnicula makes a lot of sense to me in the context of when it was written and who wrote it, but I do think this is the danger of reinvigorating nostalgic IPs and not just letting the old stuff continue to exist and fund new and more diverse stuff. But that is much bigger picture then just Bunnicula.

Focusing back on the book at hand, all that isn't to say that Bunnicula isn't othered. The closest analogy to vampirism in my experience is disability. And excluding people because of physical differences is certainly not something you want to teach children. I hope the fact Chester is the only one who seems truly convinced that Bunnicula is a problem, and is rendered a rather comical character for it, balances things out. But perhaps my enjoyment of classic vampire tropes is rendering me deluded.

Wrapping things up, I did want to also point back to my review of The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids Graphic Novels Volumes 1-3 as they have a similar introduce children to horror tropes vibe, although certainly significantly brighter in tone I suppose and skewed ever so slightly younger.

Trying to be somewhat clear headed I would say that Bunnicula is good and thus rate it three out of five stars.