good comics I read lately: Time Zone J

Time Zone J by Julie Doucet (2022): It'd be hard to overstate what a big deal Doucet was to indie comics readers in the '90s, including me, and it was a bummer (but understandable) that the unrewardingness of the field led her to give it up for a long time. This wild book isn't a return to the kind of things she used to do but it's unmistakably hers and I love it. It's definitely comics, even though it has no familiar layout cues and starts out looking like just an especially good sketchbook until a narrative thread starts emerging from Doucet's many faces that wend their way through the riot of images—she doesn't ever literally depict the story she's telling, only her internal process of reliving it. Great at evoking stormy youth seen through older sadder eyes, while the energy and beauty of all the tangential stuff on every page, and the sharpness of the writing, make it clear that she's as strong as ever.