Squire - July/August 2025 Edition of Devin's Chicago Comics Book Club Digest
Also, Some Thoughts on World Building in Fantasy
Hello, everyone! Between summer schedules and Chicago weather, nobody was able to make it to the meeting this month. I had to warn a new member not to drive out from the suburbs, because I would have felt bad if they’d traveled all that way to get stuck talking to just me. Lol Hopefully, next month will see attendance pick back up again.
In this issue: What We’re Reading - About What We’ve Read - Shameless Self-Promotion - Some Thoughts on World Building in Fantasy
I really enjoyed Squire! I thought the setting of the climax was a bit of a cliche, but I loved the characters so much that I didn’t mind. Doruk was easily my favorite character, and I hope this comic gets a large gay fanbase because I want to see him on t-shirts at Bear Pride. XD A friend in New York who had recommended this book to me described the whole comic as “lovely.” I thought he meant the colors, which were very rich, but he also meant the designs and the relationships. The back matter provided a lot of insight into the creation of the book, including the fashion and architecture. I traded DMs with someone who found some of the lettering distracting because it didn’t always line up to the intended speaker. I hadn’t noticed this, but I can see this becoming an impossible-to-ignore quirk. The tails of the word balloons had a unique design that were very eye catching. The ending was open enough that I thought a sequel might be possible if the creators want to revisit the characters, but the consequences of their actions would be difficult to depict. (I’m trying hard to avoid spoilers again.) The setting is expansive enough that another volume set in this world could happen (and would be welcome).
Our next meeting will be Wednesday, August 20 to discuss Hostage.
What We're Reading
August 20 - Hostage by Guy Delisle
September 17 - Gaytheist/Growing Up and Getting Out by Lonnie Mann
October 15 - Trese, Volume 1: Murder on Balete Drive by Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo
November 19 - Ginseng Roots: A Memoir by Craig Thompson
December 17 - Holiday break (tentative)
January 21, 2026 - Berlin by Jason Lutes (tentative)
Next month’s selection is once again absent on hoopla, but there should be enough physical copies available from the library. The selections for the next couple of months after that will have more digital availability. Our plan for the end of the year of skipping a month for the holidays to read an enormous graphic novel in January is still up in the air, but I’m hoping to have at least a quorum for next month so we can make a final decision.
About What We’ve Read
Squire was the winner in the Best Children’s or Young Adult Book category at the 2022 Harvey Awards and the winner at the 2022 New England Book Awards in the Young Adult category. It was listed as one of the Best Canadian Comics of 2022 by the CBC and was nominated for the Red Maple Award in 2024 by the Ontario Library Association’s Forest of Reading program.
Nadia Shammas and Sara Alfageeh spoke to The Comics Journal about Squire. You can learn more about Squire and Sara Alfageeh’s other work at her website.
The latest NEWS digest is available here. The next NEWS digest will be posted in two weeks on Friday, August 8.
Shameless Self-Promotion
Prism: An Anthology of Tomorrow was fully funded! Thank you to anyone who contributed or spread the word in any way, I really appreciate it. If you weren’t able to, I completely understand. If you missed the campaign, I have good news. Preorders are available until August 1! It’s not too late to secure yourself a copy.
I’ve seen the digital proof, and there’s a lot of great stuff in here. My short story with art by Wren Rios fits in really well with all the comics and poetry. I can’t wait to show off my physical edition when it arrives!
The next anthology I’m in, Rise of the Flightless, is now in the middle of its campaign! This is the “penguins versus robots” book I’ve been teasing for a bit. My comic is a four-page Biker Mice from Mars homage with art by Ryan “Dougal” Devine and letters by Luke W. Henderson, who also edited the whole thing. Pricing starts at only $1 and it’s to help raise money for the Antarctic Science Foundation. It will only be available in the United States for now.
Geek Collective’s Archetypes #2 is off to the printer! It’s gonna be 104 pages total, and four of those pages will be the comic I wrote with art by David Escobar and letters by Buddy Beaudoin.
It’s so wild to me that I’m going to have multiple comics published this year in addition to my own self-published projects. Thank you for all your support on my creative journey! I’m so grateful to everyone who reads this newsletter.
The first anthology to publish a comic I wrote, CyberSync, is available for purchase. It’s gone into a second printing!
Some Thoughts on World Building in Fantasy
I used to think I wasn’t a big fantasy fan. I remember liking DragonLance books in high school, but as an adult I found fantasy impenetrable. At first, I thought I avoided fantasy for the same reason other people have avoided inviting me to Renaissance fairs. As someone who once studied Medieval and Renaissance literature, I’m assumed to be a pedantic scold about certain things.
Upon further examination of my reading, I noticed plenty of fantasy novels. I’m a huge fan of N. K. Jemisin and Nalo Hopkinson! I realized it wasn’t fantasy itself that I didn’t enjoy, but the works held up as its paragons: hefty, multi-volume sagas with maps in the front and fake timelines and family trees in the back. So many interminable lists of names! Knights, kings, dwarves, elves, none of whom ever factor into the narrative, enough to make the Book of Numbers blush.
I’ve read The Faerie Queen and Le Morte d’Arthur and that was enough for me. But they inspired J. R. R. Tolkien, who probably thought of the fourteenth century as “the good old days.” He’s seen as the great-grandfather of modern fantasy, but I think we can do better than constantly copying a sanctimonious racist with no sense of narrative pacing. (Yeah, I said it!)
I don’t have the time or space to write about the questionable and often hostile depictions of racial and ethnic minorities in fantasy. That could be a separate, book-length essay on its own. For now, I’ll just point out the phrase “men of the West” is inherently good to two groups of people with significant overlap.
Being beholden to a quasi-medieval European world often becomes a crutch and leads to a certain amount of homogeneity. There was a surprising amount of variety among the fashions, speech, and decorations across the centuries that are typically categorized as medieval Europe! But everyone in your typical fantasy novel lives in a castle with similar floor plans and wears the same armor and flowing gowns. One of the biggest pet peeves I’ve seen among scholars is that the sets and costumes of House of the Dragon are nearly identical to those from Game of Thrones despite being set 400 years apart.
One of the lowest-effort fantasy books I’ve ever read had a map in its inside front cover that was basically Europe but with the sharp edges rounded off (literally) and the place names slightly altered. When a “French” character started singing “Alouette,” a Quebecois song from the eighteenth century, I stopped reading.
Part of the reason I enjoyed Squire so much is that I was relieved to open a book labeled “fantasy” and not find a map I’d have to refer to throughout the reading experience. There’s a confidence in its storytelling and in the reader’s ability to intuit things about the world that we don’t need a history of the Ornu or the Bayt-Sajji Empire. As a bonus, I’ve started reading about the Achaemenid and Parthian Empires. (I made a pledge to myself that whenever I had a conversation about Westeros, I would read up on an empire I didn’t learn about in school. If I can cite facts about Aegon Targaryen, I can learn a few about Mansa Musa.)
There are so many rich and storied settings even among lesser-known European nations. It’s not all France and England! Eastern and Central Europe are full of possibilities! I understand wanting to avoid the chance of getting stuff wrong in trying to adapt an African or Asian empire to a fantasy setting and causing some offense, but some research and a sensitivity reader or two can go a long way.
And if you’re really hesitant, start from scratch! Throw out all your research, maps, and family trees and be free. Not sure if the geography of your world makes sense? Maybe physics works differently in your setting now! Not sure how your culture evolved? Make it so that neither do your characters! Do whatever you want and however you want to do it.
In closing, I’ll direct readers to this essay by
that was posted over at this morning in what I can only call a perfect coincidence. There’s lots of great advice in there about how to create a rich, character-driven setting without letting world building become intimidating.Thanks for reading! Feel free to share any thoughts or comments below. What are some of your favorite fantasy comics and why? Please subscribe if you haven’t already. Take care of each other. Make sure to be here next month for Hostage by Guy Delisle!
Oh yeah- "Alouette" is Canadian. So much so that in plural form it's the name of Montreal's Canadian Football League franchise.