Every couple of months, I like to do a Funny Book Review Revue in the book section. This week's book section wasn't big enough for all the comics we've gotten in the last month or so, though, and so I'm going to review the excess here on Slog.

Rutu Modan is an Israeli cartoonist who published a great comic called Exit Wounds a couple years back. Exit Wounds was about a young Israeli man whose father may or may not have died in a terrorist bombing, and it was especially delightful for its ambiguity: For whatever reason, comics haven't really gotten too good of a handle on good old fashioned literary sense of obfuscation. Dan Clowes and Chris Ware have fiddled with it, but none have really excelled at it in the way that Modan has.

Jamilti and Other Stories is Modan's second work published in America, and it's not as satisfying as Exit Wounds, but it retains that same sense of ambiguity. The stories are widely uneven. Some of the stories are too meandering: One, about a murderer named the panty killer, never seems to end. But a couple of them, including one story about a plane crash told entirely in splash panels, and the last story involving a sad singer/songwriter meeting his biggest fan, are really wonderful short stories that could probably stand with some of the best short fiction published by print magazines this year.

At twenty bucks, Jamilti is perhaps a little too much money for three good short stories and four so-so ones, but it's perfect to take out from the library. One day in the near future, Modan will produce a comic that will stand with the best of the field. It's always nice to be able to catch someone like that when they're on the way up.