The Outsider

Reviews Tom Shapira | September 29, 2026 It’s hard doing stories about William Shakespeare. That was my main thought leaving Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet. When you present one of the greatest writers in the English language you almost set yourself to fail — whatever words you put in his mouth are going to be compared to the words he put in other people’s mouths. With that being said … Do I need to tell you about Bernard “Bernie” Krigstein? You are reading The Comics Journal, which makes me assume this is as useless a gesture as explaining Napoleon to a French person. In brief: one of the best to ever do it. Comics, I mean. An artist so ahead of the curve most people today are still catching up to his tail lights. In a way it's even more impressive than Shakespeare, who got to try his hand in both high art (poetry) and popular public art (theatre). Krigstein worked in comics when the field was (at best) a dirty word. And he lent his pencils and brushes to hacks of the lowest orders — editors who didn’t care, writers working to crunch time, inkers who couldn’t keep up with him and an industry that simply didn’t understand how he could even think in terms like "art." Talented artists working b...