I Dissent / Cheap Novelties
Issue No. 69
I DISSENT HAMMERS HOME WHY IT’S EASY TO ADMIRE RUTH BADER GINSBURG
I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark
by Debbie Levy (author) and Elizabeth Baddeley (illustrator)
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
2016, 40 pages, 8.5 x 11 x 0.6 inches (hardcover)
I’m going to be upfront here: this book made me cry. As a woman, mother to a daughter, and formerly outspoken little girl in a time and place where “feminism” was was an anachronistic term for bra-burning rather than the badge of pride and call to action it is today, this book made me grateful and proud. I was already an RBG fan – it’s pretty hard not to be – but I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark hammered home all of the reasons why it’s easy to admire the influential Supreme Court Justice through a beautiful, illustrated biography that stresses the importance of standing up for what’s right.
Debbie Levy frames RBG’s story with objections, beginning with her mother, Celia Amster Bader, who sets the tone for the book and for her daughter’s trajectory by encouraging little Ruth to strive for more in life than finding a husband. “Ruth’s mother disagreed,” is the first of many hand-lettered, marquee-like pronouncements that tie together Levy’s text and Elizabeth Baddeley’s visual storytelling. This bold dissention (“Then she protested.” “She resisted. And persisted.” “Ruth really, really disagreed with this!”) in the face of prejudice and sexism allows readers to feel the weight of injustice and the power of speaking up as they straighten their shoulders, square their feet, and shout with Ruth, “I dissent!”
I learned a lot through this book. Who knew that RBG and Antonin Scalia were friends? Or that Justice Ginsburg’s mother was such a driving force in her life? There is also a section for further reading after the story ends, including photos of RBG, information on cases referenced in the story, and a selected bibliography, which serves as a great resource for curious readers who want to learn more. – Mk Smith Despres
CHEAP NOVELTIES – RAW’S JULIUS KNIPL, REAL ESTATE PHOTOGRAPHER, FINALLY FINDS A SUITABLE HOME
Cheap Novelties: The Pleasures of Urban Decay
by Ben Katchor
Drawn and Quarterly
2016, 112 pages, 8.8 x 10.9 x 0.7 inches (hardcover)
Like a lot of bourgeois bohemians in the 1990s, I was a huge fan of the RAW comics anthologies which, among other incredible discoveries, introduced me to the work of Ben Katchor. One might not think that a comic strip about urban architecture, culture, city development and decay, real estate photography, memory, and loss would make very compelling comics, but then you probably haven’t met Katchor’s beloved comic strip character, Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer.
Cheap Novelties: The Pleasures of Urban Decay, a collection of Katchor’s Knipl strips, was originally published in 1991 by RAW/Penguin as a cheap paperback. Twenty-five years later and Drawn & Quarterly finally gives Katchor and Knipl their due in a lovely hardbound, landscape edition of the original RAW strips.
If you’ve ever stared in wonder at the decades-old, sun-bleached product boxes inside of the display window of the only original hardware store left in town, or smelled an old typewriter repair shop, or purused gag gifts and tricks in a magic shop that’s been in the same city location for generations, then you’ll understand some of the lost urban culture that Cheap Novelties so deftly and melancholically evokes. As Julius Knipl is called out on building photography assignements, we see these vanishing haunts through his lens, momenents before they leave the city landscape forever, and we hear Knipl’s thoughts on the loss, reflections on his own rather homely life, and urban trivia – all rendered in a very confident and characterful hand in ink-and-gray marker washes.
Cheap Novelties was one of the series that launched the whole “graphic novel” revolution in comics. After touring the city disappearing beyond Julius Knipl’s lens, you will understand why. – Gareth Branwyn
Books That Belong On Paper first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair. Sign up here to get the issues a week early in your inbox.
06/3/25
