Monica Friedman

Monica Friedman has a Dewey Decimal tattoo, a master's degree in creative writing, and 270° of floor to ceiling bookshelves in her home office. She left a lucrative career crafting web content for search engine optimization to throw her life away on starving artistry and has never been happier. Her passions include childhood literacy, dark chocolate, and macro photography, and she has been known to lecture strangers about race/class/gender/sexuality until her audience's eyes glaze over and they wander away. Monica lives with 1 husband, 2 stepkids, and a terrible cat in the dry heat of Tucson, Arizona. You can read short reviews of every book she's read since December 2006 at Dragon's Library and check out her original words and pictures on QWERTYvsDvorak.com. Twitter: @QWERTYvsDvorak

No Context Given: A Super-Powerful Non-Living Football Player

This week's edition of No Context Given.

The “Joke” of THE KILLING JOKE

The Joke in Batman: The Killing Joke: the codependency of Batman and the Joker, the nature of reality, and what it takes to get Bats to crack a smile.

Lupin, Queen of the Night

  I used to get the strangest sense of being watched, just be soaking in the hot tub and sense quiet, ...

How Mirka Got Her Sword: Yarn, Yelling, and Yiddish in Hereville

Here’s an example of perfect symmetry in a graphic novel. Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword (words and images by Barry Deutsch, ...

Trapped in a Bad Situation? Let’s talk MELODY.

We’ve all been there: in a bad situation of our own making, feeling trapped but refusing to see that we’ve ...

No Context Given: Sister Claire Visits Atlantis

Under the sea, fluffiness is less of an asset. Sister Claire by Yamino and Ash

No Context Given: Going the Distance

General Pete, lead singer/songwriter of western Canada’s premier rap-metal novelty band, fails to pick up any of the five female fans ...

Let’s Talk about Childhood Sexuality with Alan Moore

In chapter 22 of Alan Moore’s Lost Girls, around the point at which the story moves from simply taboo to extreme, ...

No Context Given: Worst. Tea Party. Ever.

Alice didn’t know how good she had it. The Imp Lands #1 by Justin Hillgrove  

And Now for Something Completely Surreal: THE IMP LANDS 1 and 2

I’ve always been taken by the striking artwork of Justin Hillgrove, whose whimsical paintings, which often play with or combine ...