No One Else

by R. Kikuo Johnson

Overview

A death throws a family's life into turmoil in one of the most anticipated graphic novel releases of 2021. 

2023 Whiting Award Winner in Fiction

2022 LA Times Book Prize WINNER, Graphic Novel/Comics

2022 Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize Honor Book

In this graphic novel, Charlene is a divorced mom, has a young son named Brandon, and works full-time as a nurse while also caring for her infirm father. She is barely holding their lives together when tragedy strikes and leaves Charlene and Brandon on their own. Charlene, who has put everyone but herself first for years, sees it as an opportunity for a new start of sorts. That is, at least, until her easy-come, easy-go brother, Robbie — a well-intentioned but unserious semi-professional musician — rolls back into town after a long absence. Brandon, a good kid who aches for life to return to normal, focuses his grief on his cat, Batman, who hasn't been seen for a few days since he ran into the sugar cane fields that lie on the edge of their housing tract.

No One Else is a graphic novel of great tender truth, as Charlene, Brandon, and Robbie learn to navigate life day to day with their plans, fears, and desires. Gorgeously drawn and set in the author's hometown on the Hawaiian island of Maui, it is the long-awaited follow up to Johnson's acclaimed debut graphic novel, Night Fisher, and a mature work of literary fiction that is certain to be one of the most talked-about books of the year.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683964797
Publisher:	Fantagraphics Books
Publication date:	11/09/2021
Pages:	104
Sales rank:	1,084,336
Product dimensions:	12.60(w) x 16.30(h) x 6.90(d)

About the Author

R. Kikuo Johnson was born in 1981 in Maui, Hawaii. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and is an illustrator, educator, and graphic novelist based in Brooklyn. His bold, graphic, comic-styled illustrations have appeared on multiple covers of The New Yorker, book covers, and the acclaimed children’s book, The Shark King (Toon Books, 2012).

Editorial Reviews

★ 09/06/2021

In two-tone panels punctuated by spare dialogue and splashes of sunset orange, Johnson (Night Fisher) tells an achingly realistic story of a Hawaiian family reeling in grief. Charlene, a busy single mother and ER nurse, takes care of her elderly father, until his mortal fall down the stairs. After she tips into an obsessive depression (the tidy family home filling with bags of garbage and stacked up mail) and ignores her young son, Brandon, her freewheeling, globe-trotting musician brother Robbie intervenes. Between alerting relatives to his father’s death, trying to pick up groceries with Charlene’s overdrawn credit card, and smoking pot, Robbie tries to comfort Brandon. “Part of being a man is standing up to do the thing no one else wants to do,” he opines. Robbie eventually takes his own advice, but first he and Charlene have to push past their old familial roles as the responsible one and the runaway. Set in Maui, where burning sugar cane fields choke Brandon’s dreams, the graphic novella’s splintered world is populated with striking, evolving images that symbolize the characters’ changing emotional landscape: their dad’s old fishing boat, big-jawed agricultural equipment, the urn containing his ashes. A subplot about the missing family cat, Batman, provides the final note and a poetic reminder that neither family nor identity is fixed. Johnson’s careful style conveys big emotions and family dynamics in concise scenes. It’s a beautiful example of a short comic containing multitudes. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"No One Else might be one of the most subtle, poignant books about grief I’ve experienced."

AIPT

"A meditative and melancholy story that’s nevertheless bristling with energy and dry humor — one that lingers long after the first read."

Bomb Magazine

"This is a sophisticated, modern and artful look at the pressures of work and family."

Youth Services Book Review

"Johnson draws with a confident bravado that is particularly impressive … and his narrative skills are equally assured."

Booklist

"I’ve read it four times, and find fresh connections and details with each round."

The New York Times Book Review

"Johnson’s dreamlike vignettes capture a family in the aftermath of loss, during a time of transition and, possibly, renewal, as they live through moments that are at once quotidian and monumental."

The New Yorker

"No One Else skyrockets [Johnson] to the upper pantheon of cartoonists making literary fiction thanks to his skillful use of the medium, his deep insight into its characters, and his restraint in telling their stories — which pushes the reader close to them, to see them with clarity and compassion. If Anton Chekhov was making comics today, they might read like No One Else."

The Comics Journal

"No One Else sparks an emotional fire with subtlety and grace."

The AV Club

★ 06/01/2021

Charlene is a single mother who's so busy caring for her young son Brandon and her father that she barely has time for anything else. When her father suddenly dies, she throws herself so wholeheartedly into preparing to apply to medical school that Brandon is basically left to care for himself. He becomes consumed with locating his missing cat, Batman, who he worries may have fled into a sugar cane field near their neighborhood on Maui. Meanwhile, Charlene's brother Robbie, a traveling musician who has returned home after falling out with his father years earlier, struggles to connect with his family and old friends. Robbie's easygoing demeanor is slowly revealed to be a mask for seething resentment, but as his sister's home falls into disarray and his nephew's obsession with Batman becomes increasingly troubling, he takes it upon himself to help his family process their grief and move on with their lives. VERDICT As he tracks a few days in the course of his characters' lives, Johnson (Night Fisher) avoids the easy cliches typically deployed in tales that depict the grieving process; he eschews even catharsis in favor of conveying raw emotion with brutal realism.

Library Journal