This month's issue of Booklist reviewed two recent releases by Fantagraphics creators, excerpted below:
The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln by Noah Van Sciver
Lincoln’s forlorn early years as a struggling lawyer and neophyte politician are sympathetically depicted in this graphic novel. Arriving in Springfield in 1837, the 28-year-old Lincoln starts a law practice . . . and becomes engaged to Mary Todd against her wealthy family’s wishes. But following a series of setbacks—his legal practice collapses, his debts accumulate . . . the melancholia, insecurity, and loneliness that had long plagued Lincoln spiral into a life-threatening nervous breakdown. Lincoln’s struggles to overcome the crippling depression he calls “the hypo” and . . . his career back on track are no less heroic than the political courage he would display as president during the Civil War. Van Sciver’s heavily crosshatched drawing style, a bit reminiscent of early Crumb with a touch of Chester Brown, is well suited for the material, conveying a slight awkwardness that mirrors Lincoln’s personal discomfort and a rough-hewn, old-fashioned quality reflecting the story’s era. —Gordon Flagg
The Crackle of the Frost by Jorge Zentner and Lorenzo Mattotti
With his strong coloration and curvy figuration, Mattotti can galvanize less-than-extraordinary scripts. . . He works his magic again on fiction writer turned psychotherapist Zentner’s text, the case history of a psychological breakdown. When Alice tells him she wants to have a baby with him, Samuel starts hearing “the noise”—which Mattotti, without cue from Zentner, strikingly depicts as manta ray . . . and drives her away. A year passes; she sends a note; he leaves to find her. Injured in bizarre circumstances en route and vastly delayed by recuperation, he finally proceeds to find Alice. . . The legend-like tales Samuel tells amid his travails provide Oriental fodder for Mattotti’s imagination, but, visually alluding to Cezanne, Chagall, Munch, Picasso, Botero, and others, the artist already dazzles us by employing so much modern Western art to make Samuel’s story come alive. —Ray Olson