Artichoke Tales - Tapa dura

The surface cuteness of Kelso's clear-line artwork masks strong, dangerous undercurrents that tug the reader under with heart-stopping suddenness.

Kelso has sharp powers of observation, and many of her characters have a blank-eyed innocence that serves as a counterpunch to the acuity of the narratives.

Kelso perfectly marries words and images, telling stories of longing and casual cruelty with a mastery perfectly suited to the comics medium.

[S]urprising and wonderful... Kelso's ligne claire artwork is consistently sweet and airy... The approach provides a likable surface for a story with much darker and stickier depths, about a land whose cultural heritage is rotting away in the aftermath of a civil war.--Douglas Wolk

Kelso uses a warm, inviting style of soft colors and rounded, almost pillowy characters to explore the mysteries of people and relationships... Kelso's stories invite contemplation.

A fantastical study in a Civil War, this exquisite graphic novel shows how wide-spread political conflict tears at the very fibers of our families and ourselves... [I]ts mastery is in seeming transcendent but revealing immense pain beneath every battle and rejection.--Chris Estey ""Most Rocking Comix 2010" "

Artichoke Tales by Megan Kelso is a strange, other-worldly story about birth and death, coming of age, dealing with war, finding love, accepting tragedy. ... The simple, comic-strip-like illustrations in teal and white express movement beautifully with a minimum of lines.--Mary Louise Ruehr

Artichoke Tales is by any definition a remarkable book... This is a beautiful book, at times a heartbreaking book. One feels the precision and thought behind every word, every line, all of it edited down and arranged to a spareness that is paradoxically lush and textured.--Jared Gardner

Megan Kelso has proved herself a master of the cartoon short story with Squirrel Mother (2006, currently in its 2nd printing), and serial (with her New York Times Funny Pages comic, Watergate Sue). With Artichoke Tales, Kelso expands her range (and her page count) by creating a family saga spanning three generations and an entire continent. Artichoke Tales is a 176-page coming -of-age story about a young girl named Brigitte whose family is caught between the two warring sides of a civil war between people who have artichoke leaves instead of hair. Influenced in equal parts by Little House on the Prairie, The Thorn Birds, Dharma Bums, and Cold Mountain, Kelso weaves a moving story about family amidst war. Kelso's visual storytelling, uniquely combining delicate line-work with rhythmic, musical page compositions, creates a dramatic tension between intimate, ruminative character studies and the unflinching depiction of the consequences of war and carnage, lending cohesion and resonance to a generational epic.