Megan Kelso has proved herself a master of the cartoon short story with Squirrel Mother (2006, currently in its 2nd printing), and serial (with her New York Times Funny Pages comic, Watergate Sue). With Artichoke Tales, Kelso expands her range (and her page count) by creating a family saga spanning three generations and an entire continent. Artichoke Tales is a 176-page coming -of-age story about a young girl named Brigitte whose family is caught between the two warring sides of a civil war between people who have artichoke leaves instead of hair. Influenced in equal parts by Little House on the Prairie, The Thorn Birds, Dharma Bums, and Cold Mountain, Kelso weaves a moving story about family amidst war. Kelso's visual storytelling, uniquely combining delicate line-work with rhythmic, musical page compositions, creates a dramatic tension between intimate, ruminative character studies and the unflinching depiction of the consequences of war and carnage, lending cohesion and resonance to a generational epic.