Lately I’ve been trying to read as many of the Eisner nominations as possible. And while I dug Ichiro and thought Sammy Harkham’s Everything Together was pretty good, nothing has hit me like Unterzakhn.
In Unterzakhn, Leela Corman tells the story of two Jewish sisters at the turn of the 20th century, flashing backwards and forwards through time to try and capture those little life-changing moments that end up adding up to your sum as a human being.
I thought the art was gorgeous and the pacing phenomenal. It’s just the story of life, but it was just as tense and thrilling as superheroes avoiding explosions in the depths of space. And when it ended, I felt like a ton of bricks had dropped in my stomach.
So today, being New Comic Book day and all, I recommend that if you’ve got a small week of people in tights punching each other, you pick up Unterzakhn on your way out.