EDEN and THE WRONG PLACE reviewed by The Boston Globe

My favorite is Brecht Evens’s “The Wrong Place,” an exhilaratingly sensual book about jealousy and desire among a group of hip, young urban adults and the leader of the pack, Robbie, a very elusive life of the party. Evens is a Flemish watercolorist who populates his pages with distinctive characters such as the mercurial, magnetic Robbie; his stand-in host, Gary, a Hendrix fan; and Waldo, a schlub whose sad story becomes part of the Robbie myth. The look of Evens’s illustrations is reminiscent of watercolor wash; figures seem to melt into one another. This fizzy little novel is all about buzz, gossip, sex, and having fun. It’s so busy and exuberant you wish you could join the party.

Two graphic novels dwell in fantasy: Pablo Holmberg’s delightful, minimalist “Eden” and Charles Burns’s queasy, creepy “X’ed Out.” Holmberg’s little book is decidedly nonlinear: This whimsical medieval folktale consists of a series of four-panel comic strips, each of which depicts a comic king and his queen and other characters in specific situations. The logic of “Eden” is not continuous but rather dreamlike. It is a charming book that leaves a sweet, surreal aftertaste. Burns’s first book since the epic, disquieting “Black Hole” is a kind of horror-show homage to the French comic “Tin Tin.” In it, teenager Doug, suffering from a head injury, follows his cat, Inky, through a hole in the wall, entering a universe populated by noseless thugs and monocular reptiles. Flashbacks and dreams alternate as Doug tries to remember what happened to him. This is the first installment of what Burns intends to be a three-part work. It’s scary and tantalizing and whets the appetite for the next unsettling piece.