If there’s one nominal “positive” to come from the current COVID-19 pandemic, it’s the fact that I’m getting a good chance to catch up on stuff I should have read, like, ages ago — although “read” isn’t exactly the word for Jess Rullifson’s Characters : Fifty Portraits Of Contemporary Cartoonists, a handsome full-color mini that was part of publisher Robyn Chapman’s 2014 Kickstarter for her Paper Rocket Mini Comics imprint and is a collection of portraiture done for a gallery show collected herein between two covers. Yes, I really am that late to the party.

That being said, wordless as the bulk of this particular ‘zine may be, it’s nevertheless a difficult item to review without resorting to some serious “inside baseball”-type referencing.  This is a nice-looking publication, to be sure, and Rullifson’s illustrations are well-rendered, emotive, and expressionistic — all very good things — but the project itself…