Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened, edited by Jason Rodriguez, gathers stories by 16 comic book artists and writers inspired by old postcards Rodriguez dug out of bins in antique shops. The cryptic messages scribbled onto the backs of the cards ( I was in town today. Hope you were not in a fight last night ) leave their true meaning open to interpretation, and the device makes for some really inventive storytelling. Tic-Tac-Bang-Bang, by Stuart Moore and Michael Gaydos, is a peek at the dangerous lives of tic-tac-toe hustlers in the early 1900s. Time, by Tom Beland, follows an old man looking back on a lifelong romance from the cafe where it began. And Homesick, by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Micah Farritor, is a gorgeous, slightly abstracted view of a dreamlife in Paris gone hollow and drab. Like the rest of the titles reviewed here, Postcards travels far and wide but ends up getting you right where you live.
Valiant Women is a vital and engrossing attempt to correct the record and rightfully celebrate the achievements of female veterans of World War II.
