Mark D. Nevins (Author of What Happens Now?)

Mark has read Tongues, Vol. 1 by Anders Nilsen	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
[A version of this review was published, in German, in the Swiss comics journal STRAPAZIN] Unfolding Worlds and Words: Anders Nilsen’s TONGUES I bought the first two issues of TONGUES directly from Anders Nilsen at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival a ye ...more
Mar 07, 2026 09:33AM · 2 likes · like · see review
Mark has read The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists by Neil Gaiman (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
[Picking up my reread of the complete Sandman which I started back in the summer of 2024.] The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists feels like the point when Neil Gaiman really starts to figure out what he’s trying to do with this series. The arc pulls tog ...more
Dec 25, 2025 05:25PM · like · see review
Mark has read Ice by Anna Kavan	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Ice is a rare novels that truly earns the descriptor “dreamlike.” Not surreal in any playful or symbolic sense, but governed by the cold, inexorable logic of dreams: events unfold with a grim inevitability that feels completely natural while you’re i ...more
Dec 25, 2025 05:14PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Ice by Anna Kavan. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Ice by Anna Kavan <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mark liked Konstantinos Georgokitsos's review of Ice: "Disturbingly unstable in its narrative, Kavan's delirious end of the world piece is unnerving, yet gripping. Laced with quite violent images of the hunt for an ethereal girl by the - not so innocent as it turns out - narrator, the story disorients wi" Read more of this review »
Dec 25, 2025 05:10PM · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Ice by Anna Kavan. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Ice by Anna Kavan <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mark has read Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey by Edel Rodriguez	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
[A version of this review was published, in German, in the Swiss comics journal STRAPAZIN.] “You say you want a revolution…” sang The Beatles in 1968, essentially asking whether we truly understand the price of social change and comprehend the means o ...more
Dec 21, 2025 02:52PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Worm by Edel Rodriguez. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Worm by Edel Rodriguez <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mark has read The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
For no particular reason I decided to reread the entirety of Sandman. Doing so will allow me to read the few post-official-series books I never got around to (Endless Nights, Nocturne) and even watch the television show I guess. I could even dive int ...more
Nov 29, 2025 07:59AM · 2 likes · like · see review
Mark has read Sabrina by Nick Drnaso	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Despite a title that conjures far lighter associations (teenage witches and Audrey Hepburn), SABRINA unfolds as a stark and unsettling meditation on grief, paranoia, and the corrosive power of digital culture. Its deliberately flat artwork and decept ...more
Nov 28, 2025 12:56PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Sabrina by Nick Drnaso. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Sabrina by Nick Drnaso <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mark has read World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
World War Z stands out from other zombie fiction by treating the apocalypse as a meticulously researched oral history, blending geopolitical detail with human stories. The audiobook performance is outstanding, giving real voice to its chorus of survi ...more
Sep 29, 2025 07:51PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of World War Z by Max Brooks. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — World War Z by Max Brooks <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mark has read For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls captures the brutality and moral weight of the Spanish Civil War with an unflinching eye, while also digging deep into the conflicted psychology of its central character. The novel is powerful in its atmosphere and ...more
Sep 29, 2025 07:45PM · like · see review
Mark has read Rescue Party: A Graphic Anthology of COVID Lockdown (Pantheon Graphic Library) by Gabe Fowler	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
(A version of this review was published, in German, in the Swiss comics journal STRAPAZIN.) During the global pandemic lockdown in 2020, some of us took up painting, others yoga, others sewed masks. Some of us learned to make craft cocktails, some of ...more
Jul 04, 2025 09:58AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Rescue Party by Gabe Fowler. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Rescue Party by Gabe Fowler <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

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[A version of this review was published, in German, in the Swiss comics journal STRAPAZIN]

Unfolding Worlds and Words: Anders Nilsen’s TONGUES

I bought the first two issues of TONGUES directly from Anders Nilsen at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival a ye [A version of this review was published, in German, in the Swiss comics journal STRAPAZIN]

Unfolding Worlds and Words: Anders Nilsen’s TONGUES

I bought the first two issues of TONGUES directly from Anders Nilsen at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival a year or so before the pandemic. TONGUES is no ordinary American format comic book, but a large, beautiful, full-color artifact: closer to an artist’s book, with elaborate design and even die-cut inserts. I was immediately drawn in not only by the aesthetics but also by the story, which drops the reader—disoriented—in medias res: a war-torn landscape somewhere in the Central Asia. The first issue introduces unlikely cast of characters: the mythical Prometheus and the “jailer” eagle that eats his liver, who converse; a young East African girl who seems to carry some cosmic grievance and can speak with birds; a lost American slacker wandering the dusty road with a teddy bear strapped to his back.

Over the past six or seven years, Nilsen has published five more issues of TONGUES, along with a supplement. Longtime readers accustomed to his minimalist and predominantly black-and-white work will be surprised not only by the lush, radiant color here but also by the highly detailed, occasionally baroque page design. Like much of his work, including BIG QUESTIONS, TONGUES is slow, allusive, elusive, and philosophical—though without the trappings of academic philosophy.

All seven volumes have now been collected in a handsome hardcover that preserves the intricate design of the original magazines. (Kudos to Pantheon for going all-in on production.) The core narrative, comprising several interwoven strands, is not difficult to follow, yet it resists easy conclusions: the reader is invited to assemble deeper meaning from fragments offered sparingly. Apparent binaries recur throughout: technology and nature, mechanism and organism, language and meaning, humanity and divinity, war and peace, kindness and violence, the mundane and the bizarre. Nothing resolves neatly.

Going back to his earliest minicomics, decades ago, I’ve always been fascinated by Nilsen’s work. He ceaselessly experiments with the very nature of comics and graphic storytelling—how stories unfold, how pages function—yet in a subtle, non-showy way. His work aligns him with English-language formalists like Chris Ware and Richard McGuire, or earlier innovators like Winsor McCay and Lyonel Feininger, but with a different temperament and intentionality, more philosophical than aesthetic. The intellectual inquiry is mirrored in the graphic structure: layered, recursive, and unconstrained by linear causality.

This collected edition is pointedly titled “Volume One.” By its end, it is clear we have only glimpsed the surface of a vast inquiry into meaning, mythologies, and the arc of human history—from early humanity in East Africa to our present global strife and ideological conflict. Nilsen handles it all with a light touch and a cartooning style that is deeply … pleasurable. Given the long, slow cadence of TONGUES’ serial publication, I find myself waiting for what comes next with Promethean patience—counting the days. ...more

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The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists
by Neil Gaiman (Goodreads Author)

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[Picking up my reread of the complete Sandman which I started back in the summer of 2024.]

The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists feels like the point when Neil Gaiman really starts to figure out what he’s trying to do with this series. The arc pulls tog ...more

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Ice
by Anna Kavan

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Ice is a rare novels that truly earns the descriptor “dreamlike.” Not surreal in any playful or symbolic sense, but governed by the cold, inexorable logic of dreams: events unfold with a grim inevitability that feels completely natural while you’re i ...more

Mark liked Konstantinos Georgokitsos's review of Ice:

"Disturbingly unstable in its narrative, Kavan's delirious end of the world piece is unnerving, yet gripping. Laced with quite violent images of the hunt for an ethereal girl by the - not so innocent as it turns out - narrator, the story disorients wi" Read more of this review »

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Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey
by Edel Rodriguez

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[A version of this review was published, in German, in the Swiss comics journal STRAPAZIN.]

“You say you want a revolution…” sang The Beatles in 1968, essentially asking whether we truly understand the price of social change and comprehend the means o [A version of this review was published, in German, in the Swiss comics journal STRAPAZIN.]

“You say you want a revolution…” sang The Beatles in 1968, essentially asking whether we truly understand the price of social change and comprehend the means of achieving it. Edel Rodriguez’s Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey can be seen as a reply to that question: an extraordinary memoir of what happens after the revolution succeeds.

In January 1959, a decade before “Revolution” hit the charts, Fidel Castro and his rebels overthrew Fulgencio Batista’s corrupt government in Havana, Cuba. What came after was a different kind of tyranny: a communist regime built on surveillance, fear, and enforced equality. Rodriguez—one of today’s most recognizable illustrators and political cartoonists—was born into a country remade by revolution, where individual freedom had been erased in the name of ideology. Worm is both personal history and historical document, demonstrating how the promise of revolution can curdle into oppression and denial of basic human freedoms.

Rodriguez renders post-revolutionary Cuba in a bold art style that recalls Lynd Ward, Käthe Kollwitz, or even at times—ironically—the graphic power of Soviet propaganda. His page layouts flow beautifully, slowing or quickening the reader’s pace to match the emotions being expressed. The linework is thick, declarative, and emotionally charged, often evoking the black-and-white moral landscape imposed soughtby Castro’s government. “We were living in a country disconnected from the world,” Rodriguez writes, “like an island prison”—a line that sits at the center of the book’s visual and emotional gravity.

Worm is a powerful family memoir of growing up in a system where the state sought to replace the family. “[Children] were being raised by the revolution, by Castro’s decisions about what was good for them, not by what their families wanted.” The result was a generation schooled in obedience and fear. Rationing led to hunger; ideology led to persecution. Rodriguez’s family’s eventual escape during the 1980 Mariel boatlift—after brutal harassment by Castro loyalists who beat them and called them “worms” (gusanos) for choosing a different life—is drawn with gripping immediacy, each panel taut with risk and desperation.

Later in his graphic novel, Rodriguez recounts his return to Cuba 14 years after he left, where he finds not the paradise promised by socialism, but decay, scarcity, and despair: “The Big Lie,” as he calls it. His perspective as an American citizen, looking back on the revolution from a country defined by its own challenges and contradictions, gives Worm a powerful double vision, both an indictment and a lament.

Worm is not only one of the finest comics memoirs I’ve read—on par with Spiegelman’s Maus or Satrapi’s Persepolis—but also a cautionary tale about power, politics, and the human costs of unrestrained ideology. Revolutions may start with righteous anger, but they often end with the silencing of voices like Rodriguez’s.

“You say you want a revolution?” Be careful what you wish for. ...more

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The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes
by Neil Gaiman (Goodreads Author)

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For no particular reason I decided to reread the entirety of Sandman. Doing so will allow me to read the few post-official-series books I never got around to (Endless Nights, Nocturne) and even watch the television show I guess. I could even dive int For no particular reason I decided to reread the entirety of Sandman. Doing so will allow me to read the few post-official-series books I never got around to (Endless Nights, Nocturne) and even watch the television show I guess. I could even dive into all of the follow up spin-off series but no promises. (Though I would be interested in any opinions or recommendations on those.)

Context: I read Sandman straight through as it was originally coming out in comic form and have never really gone back to it. (I actually jumped on board around issue six or seven so was happy that they quickly put together this collection of the first eight issues since those early issues were very difficult to find.)

It's incredible to realize that this series started way back in the late 1980s. I'm looking forward to re-reading it as a single whole--including to see how well it holds up more than three decades later, and whether or not it truly deserves all of the incredible praise it has garnered. I certainly enjoyed it when it was coming out but never really felt it was the artistic pinnacle many comics fans claimed it to be. (Indeed, my favorite Vertigo series is still and will probably always be Milligan and Bachalo's Shade.)

This first volume is, unsurprisingly, a complete dog's breakfast. Gaiman had not yet written many comics, and while he is deeply versed in fantasy, folklore, and mythology he doesn't really appear to know what he's doing yet. Additionally, he's probably trying to please his editors who don't understand the idea of something truly out of convention for mainstream comics; in doing so he tries to weave in a fair bit of the DC universe (both characters and storylines) which doesn't quite work but is interesting in hindsight.

Given that I know where this series will go eventually it's intriguing to see little bits and threads of things that will become main themes and narratives in the later volumes – – and can't help but wonder how much Gaiman himself really knew at this point about where he would be going. I think what I admire most is his curiosity and willingness to just throw a bunch of interesting stuff on the table and trust in his own deep knowledge and narrative intuition to make something of it. All, of course, on a monthly deadline and collaborating with an artist in a different geographical location, long before the internet and file sharing.

If I were going to turn somebody new onto Sandman I might actually suggest they skip this first volume. It's not essential and the artwork is highly variable. Better maybe to start with volume two A Doll's House, where Gaiman starts to really sink his teeth into a more cohesive narrative. (Then again, there are a couple of key points, although almost hidden, in this first volume that will play a role later. But I wonder for a casual reader if it really matters.)

And of course Gaiman realized this himself as he set off on Dolls House. There is in that second volume a sort of preface: a prose retelling of the first eight issues stripping them down to a single and more cohesive narrative that creates a more comprehensible foundation for what is to come.

So, maybe (?) skip this first volume unless you are a completist or doing a rereading, and head right into volume two. ...more

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Sabrina
by Nick Drnaso

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Despite a title that conjures far lighter associations (teenage witches and Audrey Hepburn), SABRINA unfolds as a stark and unsettling meditation on grief, paranoia, and the corrosive power of digital culture. Its deliberately flat artwork and decept ...more

Mark has read

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
by Max Brooks (Goodreads Author)

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World War Z stands out from other zombie fiction by treating the apocalypse as a meticulously researched oral history, blending geopolitical detail with human stories. The audiobook performance is outstanding, giving real voice to its chorus of survi ...more

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For Whom the Bell Tolls
by Ernest Hemingway

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Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls captures the brutality and moral weight of the Spanish Civil War with an unflinching eye, while also digging deep into the conflicted psychology of its central character. The novel is powerful in its atmosphere and ...more

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Rescue Party: A Graphic Anthology of COVID Lockdown (Pantheon Graphic Library)
by Gabe Fowler

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(A version of this review was published, in German, in the Swiss comics journal STRAPAZIN.)

During the global pandemic lockdown in 2020, some of us took up painting, others yoga, others sewed masks. Some of us learned to make craft cocktails, some of (A version of this review was published, in German, in the Swiss comics journal STRAPAZIN.)

During the global pandemic lockdown in 2020, some of us took up painting, others yoga, others sewed masks. Some of us learned to make craft cocktails, some of us drank too much, some unlucky ones suffered severe loneliness and the loss of people they loved. (I lost my mother and a good friend.) Our family made a watched at least one movie every day after Zoom School.

Gabe Fowler, proprietor of the legendary Brooklyn comics shop Desert Island, moved to an isolated cabin in the woods of New England (presumably an actual desert island was too difficult to get to) and sent out requests for original comics about the pandemic. (“We all need something positive to think about, and a lot of us have time on our hands. Who wants to make something?”) The result is the magical and magnificent anthology Rescue Party: A Graphic Anthology of COVID Lockdown, a collection of what could be imagined as one-page messages for bottles to be sent out into the strangely transformed world of Covid-19.

Some Strapazin readers may recall Comix 2000 which, prior to Rescue Party, must have been the most celebrated “occasional comics anthology”—“occasional” as in “meant to mark an event.” Comix 2000 was a two-thousand-page black-and-white collection of silent comics from around the world, pulled together to celebrate the turn of the millennium. Rescue Party is a more modest 150 or so pages, and while it doesn’t feature submissions from quite as many countries, it is in wildly vibrant full color—paints, crayons, collages, computer artwork, and who knows what other media—essentially a different medium from the way most comics from the last century were presented.

Rescue Party is also a book chock full of optimism. Fowler’s guidelines were simple: submissions were to be a single page in a classic 9-panel grid and should share hopes and dreams for a return to “normal life” post-pandemic. The results (or at least the 150 or so Fowler curated from more than 250 submissions from more than 50 countries) overflow with positivity, kindness, and caring. The pandemic brought out the worst in many people—from pettiness to selfishness to meanness—exacerbated by a mass migration to the generally toxic medium of social media, but there’s none of that here. Indeed, while Fowler’s request went out via Instagram, few of these stories even mention the internet. And the result not a Facebook group or website, but a celebration of our humanity through that most human and humane medium, the book.

Rescue Party is also a time capsule of the state of comics at the 1/5 marker of the 21st Century. I consider myself comics-literate, yet I’d only even heard of three of the 140 contributors. In fact, many of the contributors are previously unpublished amateurs. That shows how comics have become a truly universal medium and how good Desert Island is at finding new talent.

In one of the text sections in the book, Fowler observes that Covid put us “together in our isolation.” Nobody alive had every experienced anything like what the entire world crashed into. God willing, none of us ever will again—but if we do, Rescue Party can serve as an inspiration to tap into the creativity and compassion our fickle species is capable of. ...more

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