Sam Leith Sam Leith

The serious business of graphic novels

This year’s ‘comic books’ tackle such weighty subjects as the plight of the Dene people, psychotherapy, human prehistory and Trump’s America

From Welcome to the New World by Jake Halpern and Michael Sloan. Credit: Jake Halpern/Michael Sloan 
issue 12 December 2020

One of the running jokes about ‘serious’ graphic novels is that so many seem to consist, one way and another, of comics about how lonely, miserable and socially inept comic book creators are. Adrian Tomine leans into the trend, but with great charm, in The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist (Faber, £16.99).

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