An extremely silly premise, executed perfectly. The main character is a former feared Yakuza, who has chosen a different path. Now married to a woman with a busy career, "Tacchan" has become a househusband, spending his days packing extremely cute bento boxes, smart shopping with grocery store coupons, taking on DIY home improvement projects and occasionally babysitting neighbors children. Most people are terrified of him, and former enemies are still frequently hanging around town, but Tacchan is singularly focused on his domestic goals. Love the art style, definitely plan to read more!

I got this from the library expecting to just check out the vegetarian recipes, but I got sucked it and read the whole thing! Each chapter opens with a beautiful watercolor painting, a short comic on the author's relationship with a specific dish, and then a wide variety of brightly colored and clearly drawn recipes. There are soups, noodle dishes, a seafood section, a meat and poultry section, six recipes for different types of kimchi, porridges, snacks, cocktails, rice cakes and Korean fusion. Many cookbooks try to be food-blog-type-memoirs at the same time, with mixed success. This book balanced the perfect amount of memories and cultural information to recipes. I finished reading it and immediately wanted to cook something!

This is the best book I have ever read about death and grief. When she was 19 years old, the author's mother died of cancer. Now, at 30, the author writes the book she wishes she could have read about loving someone, watching them fall sicker and sicker, die, and then what comes next. The immediate things: a funeral, sitting shiva, going back to her sophomore year of college. But also the much later things- the grief and memories that still resurface at surprising moments even a decade later. Turning the age her mother was when the author was born- contemplating living to ages her mother never reached. I didn't cry once in 2020 as far as I can remember- if ever there was a year for tears, it was 2020, but crying has never been a way I regularly express emotions. But I cried through reading the last third of this book, despite the fact that I am lucky enough to have both my parents still living. This seems a poignant time and horribly relevant for a book of death and grief to be published. But I am so so glad that this book was released and I hope everyone who reads it (now, or in 10 years, or whenever they can stomach a book about grief) finds comfort here and can laugh and cry about it as much as I did.

Madang is a cartoonist and new father who moves to the countryside with his wife and young son. He's excited to live in a quiet little town where they have space for a garden and a chicken coop, but he is constantly having to drive back into Seoul to care for his parents, whose health is rapidly declining. Madang loves his mother and strives to recreate many of the healthy, home-cooked meals she made in his childhood for his own son. He has a much more challenging relationship with his father, an abusive alcoholic who he had cut out of his life earlier, but now pities. At home, Madang's world is full of new life, growth, busy days, creative pursuits- while his parent's days are empty, and they both seem to have lost a will to live. Madang and his brother struggle to pay the mounting hospital bills and mentally prepare to lose one or both of their parents within the year. The cold, uncomfortable hospital halls are a stark contrast to the richly drawn, detailed nature scenes. I liked how the artist placed with scale- when he feels overwhelmed, he often shrinks down to a few inches high while his problems loom over him.

A re-told fairytale from early Britain. Like many fairytales, the characters are somewhat one dimensional- there is an ailing and worthless king who married a fairy woman who died young, and now has two daughters. The older rejects the extravagant life of the city of Ys to live simply in the country side, befriending hermits and fishermen. The younger studies her mother's books of spells and takes on the terrible contract needed to fuel Ys's magic- which involves seducing and murdering men. But what happens when a payment is missed, and the bill collector comes? For me the art hit harder than the story here, but oh is the art wonderful. Done in a mix of traditional and digital media, the characters are expressive, the ocean rough and lively, the landscapes beautiful, the moody lighting of the corridors and towers of Ys exquisite. I want to see more by this illustrator!

It's fantastic to see this long running webcomic reach it's satisfying conclusion! This is probably the longest (or maybe even only...?) webcomic I've followed from start to finish. It's delightful to see the art style, which was already good at the beginning, evolve to where in reached in the. Sexy sci-fi at it's best.

Ronia is the daughter of Matt the robber, and she lives in a stone keep high on a hilltop in Matt's forest. The night she was born a lightning strike broke the keep into two halves, with a terrible gulf between them. One lean season when Ronia is 9 or 10, a gang of rival robbers move in to the other half of the keep- including another child, Birk, is the same age as Ronia. They begin encountering each other in the forest and after they each save the other's life more than once, they become fast friends. But the woods are full of harpies, trolls, and sheriff's men. If the two gangs of robbers can't figure out how to set aside their differences, neither of them will last the long winters yet to come. This is one of my absolute favorites from childhood, but I had never read it before as an adult. It stands the test of time!