REVIEW: Old Man Winter & Other Sordid Tales

I’ve been trying to figure out what exactly needs to be said about this book, the result of a 2009 Xeric grant. It’s a series of very competently-told tales that touch on a number of subjects that the reader is likely to be very familiar with, from the way that aging affects one’s interactions with the world to the way that animals are treated, a subject that must be very close to creator J.T. Yost. On the plus side, it’s obvious that Yost has a very firm grasp of what he’s doing: the pacing in even the briefest of pieces is very tight, and I really enjoyed the autobiographical chapter concerning a prank from his youth, which had a slightly rough edge to the art that made it feel more personal.

Negatives? Well, three stories about animal welfare in a single book sort of blunt the impact of each one, especially as the book’s best piece, “Roadtrip” is a fine example of wordless comics storytelling to get a message across, but the reader might honestly be a bit tired of the issue by the time they get to it. Also, that cover. That cover is awful. You can’t tell what the title of the book is and while I’m normally all about minimal color palettes, that particular shade of pink is…certainly something.

You can view pages from the book on Yost’s site or order it from Birdcage Bottom Books.