THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2026! From an international perspective graphic biographies can introduce us to figures either contemporary or historical that we may be unfamiliar with. That, in turn, can lead to us investigating their lives further and everything that may reveal. Moses Coady, for example, was a name unknown to this British reviewer before I started reading Donald Calabrese’s Coady from Conundrum Press. But Calabrese’s approach gives the reader more than simply a biographical record. It also asks important questions about how we perceive our pasts.
Moses Coady (1882-1959) was a Roman Catholic priest and social reformer whose work as part of the Antigonish Movement was concerned with improving the socio-economic living conditions of rural communities in Canada through the first half of the 20th century. A leading part of the co-operative movement of the era his influence would go on to spread far beyond those he worked with directly.
Calabrese’s approach to his subject here is twofold. He moves back and forth across timeframes in an almost meta way as we observe Coady’s life over the years and are given frequent insights into his own mindset and activism. At the same time, in a more contemporary era, grad student Kody Finnegan attempts to separate the realities of the man from the legends that have grown around him. Calabrese also gives extra thematic consideration to radical progressivism historically in contrast to modern times.
As the book progresses then we also see Kody struggling to find the true Coady as she too begins to struggle in her personal life and with her own demons. Calabrese uses a number of tricks to pull off both the mythologising of Coady and the travails of Kody, including visual metaphor, exaggerated shifts in perspective, dream sequences and the constant interspersing of increasingly desperate pages from Kody’s dissertation.
Calabrese’s research allows us to see a very human side to Coady and his questioning nature while the reader is left wondering to what degree Kody is also a stand-in for Calabrese himself. Coady is a multi-layered and very different take on comics biography that invites us not just to consider and celebrate its subject but also to think about the way in which we consider him and the pasts that shape us.
Donald Calabrese (W/A) • Conundrum Press, $20.00
Review by Andy Oliver
Conundrum Press and Donald Calabrese are at Booth 2 in the 2000 AD Hall at Thought Bubble.
Thought Bubble 2026 runs from November 9th-15th with the convention weekend taking place on the 14th-15th. More details on the Thought Bubble site here.
Read all our Thought Bubble 2026 coverage so far in one place here.
Poster art by Núria Tamarit
