By Zack Quaintance — Nib #5 Animals is a tough book to review. While there is a unified theme — animals — it is a broad one, and it enables a wide variety of work from the roughly three dozen creators involved. This inherently makes it difficult to discuss the quality of the individual pieces, but I can describe the holistic reading experience I had with the entirety of the anthology, and I can — enthusiastically — note that that reading experience was quite good, adding that journalism done via this medium is so rare that whenever I come across some of this quality, it tends to linger with me for days (and days...and days).

Yes, there is actual reporting involved with some of the pieces in Nib #5 Animals, be it in the form of an interview, a rendering of a reader letter, a comic that incorporates the ideas of Charles Darwin — the list goes on. In addition, there are a number of creators in this anthology that turn a journalistic lens inward to produce memoir pieces based on their own experiences with animals, as well as the feelings those experiences engendered with them. 

The end result is somewhat of a mosaic, a mosaic that when taken with a 20,000-foot view gives one the impression of united theme that is not just about animals, but about mankind’s relationship with animals, our treatment of animals (which is at times rendered with an unflinching degree of truth and culpability in these stories), and the way our relationships with animals can (at their best) enrich the human experience. 

Stylistically, it’s a bit harder still to write about the work in Nib #5 Animals, so varied are the aesthetic choices deployed to realize these pieces. It would be more than bit trite to say there’s something for everyone in the style choices here, but the aesthetics are varied, hemming just a bit toward the most dominant small press aesthetic of the moment, which bears for obvious reasons the strong influence of recent breakout cartoonists like Raina Telgemeir. Personally, I found Caged Lives — the story of Guantanamo Bay prisoners forging bonds with animals — and Stealing Rainbows — an expose about illegal parrot capture and sale in North America — to be among the strongest pieces, but I’m sure ten other reviewers will have ten other choices as favorites, given the high level of work here throughout.

So, would you enjoy Nib #5 Animals? Well, do you enjoy small press comics? Do you enjoy honest introspection interspersed with vital reporting? Have you ever picked up a literary magazine and wished someone would create comics with that sort of sensibility and high-art ambition? I certainly do and have, and as such, I enjoyed Nib #5 Animals quite a bit, so much so that as I wrap up this review, I find myself curious and excited to learn the theme for the next issue. 

Nib #5 Animals
Cartoonists: Julia Bernhard, Andy Warner, Sarah Glidden, Tom Humberstone, Elizabeth Haidle, Mey Rude & Sage Coffey, Lilian Min & Diane Zhou, Matt Lubchansky, Meg O’Shea, Mady G, Molly Brooks, Kristel Bugayong, Sarah Mirk & Gerardo Alba, Mansoor Adayfi & Kane Lynch, Arwen Donahue, Laura Athayde, Mike Centeno, Dorian Alexander & Levi Hastings w/Sara Mirk, Ruben Bolling, Gemma Correll, Ben Passmore, Lauren Weinstein, Lucy Knisley, Michael Kupperman, Chelsea Sanders, Brian McFadden, Joey Alison Sayers, Matt Furie, and Delta Vasquez
Publisher: First Look Pictures
Price: $14.95
Solicit: In the Amazon, pink dolphins leap through muddy waters. In Guantanamo Bay, a prisoner finds solace in caring for an iguana. In Venezuela, a man rethinks the macho legacy of bullfighting. In the Animals issue of The Nib, two dozen stellar comics artists from around the world illustrate their interwoven relationships with creatures big and small.

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.