DINING WITH MERMAIDS

Despite the gargantuan crowds and packed panels at last week’s New York Comic Con, reading comics remains an intimate experience. Greenpoint’s Word bookstore is bringing things back to a human scale with its Graphic Novel Night, featuring Fred Chao, Ryan Dunlavey, Grady Hendrix, and Mark Siegel. The authors’ recent comics, likewise, keep the action close: In Siegel’s Sailor Twain, a riverboat captain discovers a mermaid in the Hudson; Dunlavey and Hendrix’s Dirt Candy combines a vegetarian cookbook with a biography of a local cuisine hot spot; and Chao’s kinetic Johnny Hiro is about a Brooklyn busboy who fights giant monsters and samurai businessmen.

Tue., Oct. 30, 7 p.m., 2012