Nothing constrains Eric Kostiuk Williams. His cartooning is never less than near-infinitely adapatable, fluid, mercurial — maybe literally, as his forms, figures, even structures seem liquid at room temperature, ever in a state of joyous flux, refusing to define themselves and embracing the joyous possibilities of being whatever their whims allow them to be.

His late-2018 Retrofit/Big Planet Release, Our Wretched Town Hall — a collection of short stories and illustrations — is my third exposure to his work, following on from Babybel Wax Bodysuit and Condo Heartbreak Disco, and certainly continues the pattern of no real pattern, as each vibrantly-colored panel promising an almost entirely different visual experience to the one before it. Here, though, the “quick hits” succession of strips combine to form something of an overarching statement that says : we are whatever we wish to be in any given moment, and “permanence” is only what…

Regular readers around here are used to seeing me looking at old friend Brian Canini’s works in my Weekly Reading Round-Up columns — short-form works like his tending to lend themselves well to one- or two-paragraph “capsule reviews” (such as the one that’ll be soon forthcoming for the newest issue of his ongoing Plastic People series) — but sometimes even the most modest mini can be well-served by a full-length examination, and his latest, Two Stories, definitely fits that bill.

I’ve always dug Canini’s minimalist cartooning style that utilizes a little to say a lot, his economic imagery drawing the eye precisely where it needs to go with just enough by way of “bells and whistles” to make things interesting though not nearly enough to make them cluttered, but even more than that it’s his thematic versatility that impresses me, and the apparent ease with which he can adapt…

It used to be said that the inane sitcom Seinfeld was “a show about nothing,” which was no doubt true, but Brazilian cartoonist Julia Balthazar has a much better idea — her new comic Vows (or, as it’s known in its native Portuguese, Juras) is about everything and nothing simultaneously.

We have Laura Lannes to thank for this extraordinary little book making its way to American audiences by way of her recently-launched Pacote imprint, which is releasing four comics from Brazil in the next four months, each Riso-printed with exacting care by Carta Monir’s Diskette Press, and if subsequent releases are this good, then we’ve got a whole lot to look forward to. But I suppose we needn’t get too far ahead of ourselves yet when there’s still this one to talk about, am I right?

A family gathering is the setting for Balthazar’s story, but in so…