Rescue party! A graphic anthology of COVID lockdown

When Fowler temporarily closed his Brooklyn comics arts bookstore, Desert Island, in 2020 to wait out the Covid lockdown, he also put out a call: "Who wants to make something?" The result is this varied, hopeful anthology of 140 one-page comics, drawn by artists from around the world and culled from 250-plus submissions first serialized on Instagram. In an introduction, comics scholar Hillary Chute calls it "a lifeboat... profoundly democratic and conspicuously positive." Those qualities are borne out in three sections divided by theme--"Shipwrecked," "Lost at Sea," and "Rescued"--which all ripple with the low-grade panic common to the period, but also convey the hope for a better world. Mike Taylor's colorfully chaotic entry declares "there should be no going back to normal," while Brian Gillespie sees a future where "we protect the environment and throw chill parties." Elsewhere, a grimly conspiratorial comic by Nick Forker imagines a future not "controlled by a small cabal who prey" on the marginalized. The pages are full of eclectic, frenetic drawings, shot through with a yearning for getting to "the other side." This volume may unlock unwelcome memories, but rather than enshrine a moment in time by forcing it into sensible shape, Fowler embraces 2020's chaos. It's a valuable time capsule for comics scholars and a treasure for art comics collectors. Agent: Chad Luibl, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (July)

Editor and comic-shop owner Fowler curates a collection of more than 140 nine-panel-grid comic strips created during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic by a variety of artists responding to his call to envision the utopia waiting on the other side of quarantine. The foreword and introduction explain how Fowler, quarantining in a rural Connecticut cabin after shuttering his Brooklyn storefront, posted to the shop's Instagram account a call to make art with the purpose of buoying a beleaguered populace. Though overwhelmingly North American and European and always in English, responses came from around the globe: three-by-three grids of left-to-right sequential art, whimsical, sentimental, psychedelic, and sometimes all three at once. Many of the works collected here express a longing for physical touch, a yearning for reunions with friends and lovers and even the casual physicality of busy bars and bustling sidewalks. Others celebrate the slowing down that accompanied quarantine, savoring simple pleasures and walks in nature and the idea that an earth ravaged by industry was healing through the deceleration or even cessation of human activity. Many depict transcendent journeys through the cosmos and/or planes of existence, encountering more than a few ghosts and cosmic entities. Pets feature prominently, with one small pup teleporting from his couch to an alien world where he snatches mutated coronaviruses from the air like they were spiky tennis balls, chomping and chewing the plague into submission. The most poignant feel grimly optimistic, seeing the quarantine as an opportunity to reset oppression and inequality ("Normal wasn't working for most of us"). Vividly expressed through linework with occasional collage, these individual accounts of a shared event strum the cord that connects us. Our current fraught postquarantine moment haunts the pages, and time will tell if it is unfinished business or missed opportunity. An invaluable time capsule and an arresting expression of the human condition. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.