At this year’s CAKE (Chicago’s Alternative Comix Expo) I picked up lots of books, but the one that stayed with me the most was Joshua Cotter’s Skyscrapers of the Midwest. The black and white graphic novel follows the lives of a pair of brother cats growing up in the midwest and delicately plays out the transition from childhood to adulthood with seamless shifts between fantasy and reality that are at once touching and disturbing.  There’s a loving nostalgia for the past evoked with each obsessively hatched and cross-hatched line, but also a dark current running beneath the shifting dreamscapes.  I’m definitely looking forward to picking up his other books.  Here’s his website: jwcotter.tumblr.com and an interview of his on the Comics Journal .