RSS Feed
Facebook
Twitter
Top 37 Graphic Novels, Comics & Manga:
March 2024
It’s time to explore extraordinary month of upcoming releases, due from March 2024 onwards. My Top PG Tip is Tessa Hulls’ audacious and fastidious family history and her struggle to make sense of her mother’s and grandmother’s lives, their vulnerability and distance and how they impact on her to this day. Years in the making, it’s a graphic reckoning with history and identity.
Wonderful to see the sublimely warped visual stories by France’s Pierre La Police finally translated - prepare to have your mind blown!
These two touching autobiographies bring frankness and fragility and add to this ever-vibrant genre.
Punk rockers in Spain are brought to vivid, visceral life is this gripping graphic novelisation…
A beautiful biography of the Japanese sculptress from adversity to triumph…
And Stan Mack’s piercing observations of New Yorkers get a welcome compendium, as bitingly true as ever.
These are just a few of my suggestions for you to explore below. I hope you find some new favourites of your own among them!
49 Days
by Agnes Lee
Levine Querido
$24.99 / $18.99
The publisher says:
‘Day 1. Gotta get up. Gotta keep moving. This map – it says I have to cross over here. Wait, what’s that…?’ And so begins a graphic novel story unlike any other: 49 Days. In Buddhist tradition, a person must travel for forty-nine days after they die, before they can fully cross over. Here in this book, readers travel with one Korean American girl, Kit, on her journey, while also spending time with her family and friends left behind. Agnes Lee has captivated readers across the world for years with her illustrations for the New York Times ‘Metropolitan Diary’. Her debut graphic novel is an unforgettable story of death, grief, love, and how we keep moving forward. 352pgs colour hardcover / paperback.
Adversary
by Blue Deliquanti
Silver Sprocket
$15.99
The publisher says:
Minneapolis, 2021. Curtis is newly out, single, and ready to take his life in a different direction. Anton is an enigmatic young man who recognises Curtis from their pre-pandemic lives. One casual drink leads to a charged relationship layered with unspeakable needs. A graphic novella about connection and failure, grief and responsibility, and the effect of world-changing events on the soul of the individual. Originally published as part of the 2022 Shortbox Comics Fair. 80pgs colour paperback.
Club Microbe
by Elise Gravel
Drawn & Quarterly
$17.95
The publisher says:
It’s a germ’s world. We’re just living in it! In Club Microbe, Elise Gravel teaches young readers that germs live all around us―and even inside of us! Guided by Gravel in this formidable introduction to the fascinating world of microorganisms, we learn that some microbes get a bad rep for making us sick, but that most are helpful creatures that allow us to digest food, make cheese, and even enable snowflakes to form in winter. In her signature colourful cartoon style, Gravel describes the invisible work of microorganisms that aid in creating our food, producing oxygen, and keeping our planet alive. She gives us a tour of the heroes and the villains of the microbe world, stopping to marvel at their unique names and wondrous shapes. Following the perennial success of The Mushroom Fan Club and The Bug Club, this latest instalment of the hit science-focused collection will deepen readers’ curiosity for all aspects of the natural world. A whimsical primer on the microscopic life that surrounds us, Club Microbe is sure to pique the interest (and imagination!) of any young scientist. 56pgs colour hardcover.
Degas & Cassatt: A Solitary Dance
by Salva Rubio & Efa
NBM
$24.99
The publisher says:
One of the founders of the Impressionist movement while also one of its most ruthless critics, too bohemian for the bourgeois and too bourgeois for the artists, Edgar Degas was a man of paradoxes. A loner, he only loved one woman without ever courting her, the American painter Mary Cassatt whom we follow closely as well. And it is in the company of the latter that at the twilight of his life, Efa and Rubio open the pages of Degas’s notebooks to try to unravel the mystery of this genius steeped in contradictions. EFA is a pen name for Ricard Fernandez, a Spanish artist who left school at 16 to pursue his dream of being in comics. He has since published quite a few graphic novels and series. He also did the art for the superb Monet and Django (Reinhardt) biographies (NBM). Salva Rubio, is a Spanish writer specialised in history. With a master’s degree in scriptwriting, he has been involved in many documentaries, short and feature length films. He also wrote the Monet and Django (Reinhardt) biographies with Efa (NBM). 96pgs colour hardcover.
Don Coppola
by Amazing Ameziane
Titan Comics
$24.99
The publisher says:
From the creator of Quentin by Tarantino and Muhammad Ali, comes volume 2 of his Cine Trilogy of graphic novels. Based on the lives and films of acclaimed cinema icons, this book focuses on the legendary Francis Ford Coppola of The Godfather fame. Following the story of the man behind the movie, Don Coppola shows the insight behind the critically acclaimed director Francis Ford Coppola and takes a look at both the impact of his movies and his life from a cinematic narrative. Created and illustrated by Amazing Ameziane, Don Coppola is the second instalment in the author’s Cine Trilogy, illustrating the behind-the-scenes stories of some of Hollywood’s biggest hits. 228pgs colour paperback
Evil Eyes Sea
by Özge Samanci
Uncivilized Books
$29.95
The publisher says:
In the run-up to Turkey’s 1995-96 elections, Ece and Meltem are engineering students at Bosphorus University and in financial distress. They fantasise about having the powerful gaze of Medusa and amuse themselves with efforts to move objects with their eyes. They also share a passion for scuba diving as members of the Student Diving Club. While on a diving expedition in the Bosphorus Strait, they witness a freak accident underwater. Did Ece and Meltem’s evil eye cause the accident? Their investigation leads them to a search for truth and a treasure hidden under the Bosphorus. But their hopes of solving their financial troubles become entangled with political corruption, and they must make grim decisions while navigating a climate of chauvinism, patriarchy, religious pressure, and economic instability. The evolving events threaten their friendship, ethical values, and even their lives—as well as the future of their country. Özge Samanci, media artist and graphic novelist, is an associate professor in Northwestern University’s School of Communication. Her interactive installations have been exhibited internationally, including Museu do Amanhã, Siggraph Art Gallery, FILE festival, Currents New Media, The Tech Museum of Innovation, WRO Media Art Biennial, Athens International Festival of Digital Arts and New Media, Piksel Electronic Arts Festival, ISEA among others. Her autobiographical graphic novel Dare to Disappoint (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2015) received international press attention and was positively reviewed in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate along with many other media outlets. Dare to Disappoint has been translated into six languages. Her drawings appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Slate Magazine, The Huffington Post, Airmail, Guernica, The Rumpus. In 2017, she received the Berlin Prize and she was the Holtzbrinck Visual Arts Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. Her other awards are Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Alumni Award (2020) from Georgia Institute of Technology and the Artist Fellowship Award in Media Arts (2023) by the Illinois Arts Council. 270pgs colour hardcover.
Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir
by Tessa Hulls
MCD Books
$40.00
The publisher says:
An astonishing, deeply moving graphic memoir about three generations of Chinese women, exploring love, grief, exile, and identity. In her evocative, genre-defying graphic memoir, Tessa Hulls tells the story of three generations of women in her family: her Chinese grandmother, Sun Yi; her mother, Rose; and herself. Sun Yi was a Shanghai journalist caught in the political crosshairs of the 1949 Communist victory. After eight years of government harassment, she fled to Hong Kong with her daughter. Upon arrival, Sun Yi wrote a bestselling memoir about her persecution and survival, used the proceeds to put Rose in an elite boarding school―and promptly had a breakdown that left her committed to a mental institution. Rose eventually came to the United States on a scholarship and brought Sun Yi to live with her.
Tessa watched her mother care for Sun Yi, both of them struggling under the weight of Sun Yi’s unexamined trauma and mental illness. Vowing to escape her mother’s smothering fear, Tessa left home and traveled to the farthest-flung corners of the globe (Antarctica). But at the age of thirty, it starts to feel less like freedom and more like running away, and she returns home to face the history that shaped her family. Extensively researched and gorgeously rendered, Feeding Ghosts is Hulls’s homecoming, a vivid journey into the beating heart of one family, set against the dark backdrop of Chinese history. By turns fascinating and heartbreaking, inventive and poignant, Feeding Ghosts exposes the fear and trauma that haunt generations, and the love that holds them together. 400pgs B&W hardcover.
A First Time for Everything
by Dan Santat
First Second
$22.99 / $14.99
The publisher says:
A middle-grade graphic memoir based on bestselling author and Caldecott Medalist Dan Santat’s awkward middle school years and the trip to Europe that changed his life. Dan’s always been a good kid. The kind of kid who listens to his teachers, helps his mom with grocery shopping, and stays out of trouble. But being a good kid doesn’t stop him from being bullied and feeling like he’s invisible, which is why Dan has low expectations when his parents send him on a class trip to Europe. At first, he’s right. He’s stuck with the same girls from his middle school who love to make fun of him, and he doesn’t know why his teacher insisted he come on this trip. But as he travels through France, Germany, Switzerland, and England, a series of first experiences begin to change him―first Fanta, first fondue, first time stealing a bike from German punk rockers… and first love. Funny, heartwarming, and poignant, A First Time for Everything is a feel-good coming-of-age memoir based on New York Times bestselling author and Caldecott Medal winner Dan Santat’s awkward middle school years. It celebrates a time that is universally challenging for many of us, but also life-changing as well. 320pgs colour hardcover / paperback.
Full of Myself: A Graphic Memoir about Body Image
by Siobhan Gallagher
Andrews McMeel
$19.99
The publisher says:
Author and illustrator Siobhán Gallagher’s humorous and heartfelt graphic memoir details her journey from being anxious and unhappy to learning to love herself as she is. ‘I’m proud of the person I’ve become because I fought to become her.’ At the age of 30, Siobhán Gallagher looks back on her teenage self: struggling with anxiety and diet culture, desperate to become a beautiful, savvy, and slim adult. As an actual adult, she realises she hasn’t turned out the way she’d imagined, but through the hard work of self-reflection—cut with plenty of humour—Gallagher brings readers along on her journey to self-acceptance and self-love. Through witty comics and striking illustrations, Full of Myself is a highly relatable story of the awkward, imperfect, and hilariously honest teenage best friend readers will wish they had had—and the awkward, imperfect, and hilariously honest woman she becomes. 336pgs colour paperback.
GLEEM
by Freddy Carrasco
Drawn & Quarterly
$22.95
The publisher says:
Enter a future of defiant vitality in GLEEM. Imbued with cyberpunk attitude and in the rebellious tradition of Afrofuturism, GLEEM is drawn with a fierce momentum hurtling towards a future world. Carrasco’s distinct cinematic style layers detailed panels and spreads, creating a multiplicity of perspectives, at once dizzying and hypnotic. Vignettes unspool in proximity to our own social realities and expand into the outer layers of possibility. Whether in the club or a robot repair workshop, the characters in these three interconnected stories burst across frames until they practically step off the page. A boy becomes bored at church with his grandmother until he tries a psychedelic drug. A group of friends are told that they need a rare battery if they want any chance of reviving their friend. Street style and cybernetics meet and burst into riotous dancing. Kindness and violence might not be as distant from each other as we think. GLEEM unsettles with a confidence that could make you believe in anything. Freddy Carrasco is a Dominican-born artist from Toronto, Canada. His multidisciplinary practice encompasses comics, illustration, painting, sculpture, and music. He is currently living in Tokyo, working on his first solo exhibition and the follow up to the award-winning graphic novel GLEEM. 216pgs B&W with part-colour paperback.
Goiter
by Josh Pettinger
Floating World Comics
$25.00
The publisher says:
Goiter is the first collection of short stories by Josh Pettinger. It explores the strange and unnerving experience of being a person. Goiter features a traveling ventriloquist accused of a horrible crime, the romantic adventures of a floating head fighting an interdimensional war, and a dystopian epic set in a distant-future online retail warehouse. Josh Pettinger is an English cartoonist based out of Los Angeles. He has self-published his Goiter Comics series and the one-shot Warm Television featuring his chunkhead protagonist, Tedward. In 2023 he collaborated with Simon Hanselmann on the Werewolf Jones & Sons Deluxe Summer Fun Annual (Fantagraphics). 224pgs colour paperback.
Harry Dickson Vol. 1: Mysterion
by Jean Ray, Luana Vergari, Doug Headline & Onofrio Catacchio
Cinebook
$16.95
The publisher says:
Famous investigator Harry Dickson is just back in London after some well-deserved holidays, and already Scotland Yard are seeking his help again, for there are very strange events afoot. A famous heiress and writer, Delphina Cruikshank, has vanished from a locked house. The corpse of an executed murderer has disappeared … while the doctor who was autopsying him was murdered. And Mysterion, Miss Cruikshank’s new character, may not be entirely fictional. Italian scriptwriter Luana Vergari graduated from the Rome school of comics and, after the publication of her series Galope comme le vent, is making a name for herself in France. Doug Headline – aka Tristan Jean Manchette – is a Renaissance man: journalist, scriptwriter, writer, director, translator and publisher – he founded comics publishing company Zenda. An illustrator, teacher and artist, Onofrio Catachhio worked for Marvel, among others, and is the author of a biography of Jackson Pollock, Pollock Confidential. 64pgs colour paperback.
Itaewon Class Vol. 1
by Jin Kwang
Ize Press
$20.00
The publisher says:
Itaewon is a hotspot of freedom and cutting-edge trends like no other place in Korea. But even within this melting pot of colourful lives, few have a story like Saeroyi’s! He runs a bar with an unlikely crew of misfits as diverse as the neighbourhood it’s in. His goal—grow it into a franchise big enough to take on Jangga Group, a titan in the dining industry owned by the ruthless Jang family who killed his father. They come at Saeroyi with every dirty trick in the book, but he’s about to teach them—money can buy power and status, but not real class! 280pgs colour paperback.
Judessey: A Graphic Novel of the Holocaust
by Shay Charka
Wicked Son
$16.00
The publisher says:
The journey of a Jewish partisan during the Holocaust. The Holocaust is an event greater than the sum of the survivor testimonies and the stories of its six million victims. It is an event beyond the capacity of the human brain to contain. It deserves to be described not only in testimonies and documentation, but in legends. Judessey depicts the journey of Leon, a Jewish professor from Poland who finds himself in the midst of World War II, who strives to find his way home while battling the monsters of Europe. An epic tale of a Jewish partisan whose family is taken away by the Nazis, this graphic novella shares a new way of engaging with the Holocaust. Judessey expresses the biggest trauma of our time through dialogue with The Odyssey, which has inspired so many human journeys. Shay Charka is an illustrator for various renowned Hebrew authors and a wide range of publishing houses. He publishes weekly cartoons, caricatures, and illustrations in Makor Rishon, an Israeli magazine, and has published twenty comics books and graphic novels—two of which have been translated into English and published abroad. Charka’s comics albums are mainly inspired from Judaism and Jewish sources, as well as from daily life in Israel. He was the 2019 Animix Notable, an international animation, comics, and cartoon festival held in Israel. Shay Charka also lectures on visual language to a variety of audiences at national and private institutions, museums, festivals, educational bodies, and cultural centres in Israel and abroad. 128pgs colour paperback.
Legalization Nation
by Box Brown
Floating World Comics
$26.00
The publisher says:
New York Times-bestseller and Eisner Award-winner Brian Box Brown returns with a collection of his weekly comic strip which focuses on the ins and outs of cannabis legalization. Legalization Nation collects the last three years’ worth of strips and is considered by many in cannabis circles to be the true conscience of the cannabis world. 154pgs colour hardcover.
Masters of the Nefarious: Mollusk Rampage
by Pierre La Police, translated by Luke Burns
New York Review Books
$24.95
The publisher says:
Two supernatural crime fighters and their Rorschach-blotted best friend stumble into a plot involving UFOs, giant mollusks, and the Maluku Islands in this vivid, madcap adventure by a contemporary French artist. A tsunami slams into the Maluku islands. Giant mollusks wreak havoc. An ominous, quadrilateral UFO appears in the night sky. And a mysterious villain watches and waits in the shadows… Twin paranormal investigators, Montgomery and Chris, and their best friend, Fongor, are on the case, delving into this unduly complicated and possibly nefarious plot. They’re the only ones who can unravel the mystery, but they might not—especially if they can’t stay on task. Between journeys to Uganda, primordial Earth, and the pants store, and confrontations with ghosts frozen in ice cubes, baby turtles, and an army of small, sinister men, the trio will be tested like never before as they search for clues, answers, and a good all-you-can-eat buffet spot. Finally in English, Pierre La Police’s Masters of the Nefarious is one of his funniest and most irreverent comics, an unpredictable adventure pastiche that will leave you laughing to the final explosive face- (and pants-)off. Pierre La Police is a pseudonymous Paris-based artist who originated in the underground arts scene and began publishing his work in the 1990s. His comics feature, Les Praticiens de l’Infernal, ran in the French cultural magazine Les Inrockuptibles from 1994 to 1996. He works across several art forms, from comics to animation to video installations. 176pgs colour paperback.
Medea
by Blandine Le Callet & Nancy Peña, translated by Montana Kane
Dark Horse
$29.99
The publisher says:
Who was Medea, really? Beyond the hearsay, exaggerations, and distortions inflicted by time, this is Medea’s story in her own voice, from the luxuriant gardens of her childhood in Colchis to the mysterious island from which she gives her final confession. An intoxicating graphic novel reimagining the story of one of the biggest female figures in ancient Greek mythology, for fans of Lore Olympus and Circe. The legendary sorceress from Greek myth has been cast as many things—a caring mother and a passionate lover who was thwarted by her desires; an independent woman vilified for refusing the tyranny of men; a barbarian who sowed confusion in the regimented world of the Greeks; a formidable witch, mistress of occult forces. Simply put, she was precisely what some would call a monster. And yet, there is so much more to Medea… This provocative tale is created by writer Blandine Le Callet and artist Nancy Peña, with an English translation by Montana Kane. Originally published in French by Éditions Casterman. 320pgs colour paperback.
Milk Without Honey
by Hanna Harms, translated by Ahmedzai Kemp
Flint / Street Noise Books
£17.99 / $21.99
The publisher says:
We could live in a paradise where insects, especially bees, pollinate fragrant oceans of flowers whose fruits we harvest. Instead, patio wastelands and utilitarian lawns are now displacing flower gardens, and agriculture is dominated by monocultures. Pesticides and climate change are also causing insect mortality, with dramatic consequences for the global ecosystem. If this carries on unchecked, honey will be just one of the many foodstuffs no longer available to us – unless we learn to honour our innate connection with nature before it’s too late. Milk Without Honey is a poignant and provocative graphic novel about the plight of the bees in which illustrator Hanna Harms inspires not only reflection but also action. Hanna Harms is an illustrator and comic book author. She graduated from the Münster School of Design with one semester at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and is currently studying for a Masters in Illustration at the HAW in Hamburg. She is co-editor and author of the comiczine Sonder and her project Milch ohne Honig was awarded the Ginco Award in the category ‘Best Non Fiction Comic’ in 2020. With a foreword by Sarah Wyndham Lewis. 112pgs two-colour hardcover.
Monkey Peak Vol. 1
by Akihiro Kumeta
Antarctic Press / Phase 6
$24.99
The publisher says:
The Hit Survival Horror Manga! Man vs. Nature and Unnatural Terror! After a public scandal at the Fujitani Pharmaceutical Company, the new CEO takes 44 of the employees on a mountain-climbing/camping trip as a team-building exercise. But the corporate group finds itself in bad company, faced with dangers far deadlier than negative publicity. Antarctic Press and Phase 6 team up to bring you this hit horror manga series. Originally serialised as 120 chapters in Manga Goraku from September 2, 2016 to October 18, 2019 and republished in 12 volumes. 224pgs B&W paperback.
Nadia and the Nomobots: Collected Edition
by Diego Agrimbau & Juan Manuel Tumburus
Opus Comics / Incendium
$19.99
The publisher says:
In Sileo City, emotions are literally sold in the streets. Humankind toils for the coldly sentient robot community, called “Nomobots”, producing Emopills designed to satisfy the automata’s craving for sensations. Jimmy, a Nomobot, rescues Nadia, a female human, from an Emopill factory. Soon Jimmy finds out that humans are much more than the total sums of their emotions. An intriguing cyberpunk tale of social complexities, moral dilemmas, and plot twists. 128pgs colour paperback.
Night at the Belfry
by /Xavier Saxon
Dark Horse
$22.99
The publisher says:
James Ransom is seventy-four, and a far cry from the tough young boxer he remembers from the eighties. Sick of growing increasingly powerless and reliant on others in his old age, James reconnects with a former trainer and hatches a possibly-fatal plan to regain the control he believes he’s lost. But is he in over his head? James will quickly learn whether or not he lives up to the towering identity he’s spent four decades constructing for himself. Originally published in 2022 by Comixology Originals. 128pgs colour paperback.
Osamu Dazai’s The Setting Sun: The Manga Edition
by Osamu Dazai & Cocco Kashiwaya
Tuttle Publishing
$14.99
The publisher says:
A classic of Japanese literature, brought to life in manga for the first time. This is the first manga edition in English of The Setting Sun, Osamu Dazai’s classic novel, often considered his masterpiece. Set in the aftermath of World War II, this is the story of Kazuko, a strong-willed young woman from an aristocratic family that has fallen into poverty since the war. The book follows Kazuko’s journey as she and her family struggle to survive and adapt to the harsh new conditions. In addition to having to move from Tokyo to the countryside, where she is forced to work in the fields to support the family, she has to deal with a difficult divorce, the birth of a stillborn child, and the return of her drug-addicted brother from the war. This gripping and inspiring portrait of one woman’s determination to survive in a society that is in the grip of a social and moral crisis tells one story in a fast-changing world, with universal themes that resonates with readers today. After Soseki Natsume, Osamu Dazai is Japan’s most popular writer. Dazai is enjoying a surge in interest among young people today thanks to the success of the manga, anime and film series Bungo Stray Dogs, whose protagonist, a detective named Osamu Dazai, is based on the real-life author. 192pgs B&W paperback.
Out of Left Field
by Jonah Newman
Andrews McMeel
$21.99 / $16.99
The publisher says:
A nerdy gay teenager jumps headfirst into the bro-y world of high school baseball in this semi-autobiographical LGBTQ+ graphic novel. Ninth grader Jonah is not a jock. On the contrary, he loves history class and nerdy movies, and his athletic ineptitude verges on tragic. So what’s he doing signing up for the baseball team? Could it have something to do with the cute shortstop, Elliot? For the rest of high school, Jonah faces challenges on and off the baseball field, from heteronormative social pressure to thrilling romance. Realising who his real friends are, he figures out what really matters and finally recognises and embraces his gay identity. Based on debut author-illustrator Jonah Newman’s coming-of-age experiences, Out of Left Field is a big-hearted and funny YA graphic novel about learning to be yourself. 304pgs colour paperback.
Polar Vortex: A Family Memoir
by Denise Dorrance
The Experiment / New River
$19.95 / £18.99
The publisher says:
For fans of Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, a poignant, stirring graphic memoir―both heartbreaking and darkly funny―that perfectly captures the grief, nostalgia, and chaos of traveling home to care for an elderly parent in crisis. What do you do when your mother can’t remember who you are? You catch the first flight from your adopted home of London to your original hometown of Cedar Rapids, lowa, where she’s hospitalized, injured, and struggling with the swirling disorientation of dementia. You take responsibility for finding her new (and, perhaps, final) home―although insurance is running out and you might have to finally patch up your bitter relationship with your sister. And you try not to think about death, lurking around every corner . . . or the coming polar vortex, growing closer and closer as snowflakes swirl ever faster outside. With cinematic illustrations and moving yet humorous prose, award-winning author and cartoonist Denise Dorrance shares the two most haywire months of her life: the phone call after her mother is discovered lying confused on the living room floor, the mingled shock and familiarity of a harsh Midwestern midwinter, the attempt to settle her homesick mother into a care facility, the limiting and limitless inanities of the US health care system, and the impossible decisions about what comes next. Incorporating vintage postcards, photographs, and letters, Dorrance brilliantly captures the sadness, frustration, and gallows humour of suddenly having to care for an ageing parent and facing the moment of transition between life as you’ve long known it and life as it must become. 256pgs colour paperback.
Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family
by Jordan Mechner
First Second
$29.99
The publisher says:
In this intergenerational graphic memoir, renowned video game designer Jordan Mechner traces his family’s journey through war, Nazi occupation, and everyday marital strife. 1914: A teenage romantic heads to the enlistment office when his idyllic life in a Jewish enclave of the Austro-Hungarian Empire is shattered by World War I. 1938: A seven-year-old refugee begins a desperate odyssey through France, struggling to outrun the rapidly expanding Nazi regime and reunite with his family on the other side of the Atlantic. 2015: The creator of a world-famous video game franchise weighs the costs of uprooting his family and moving to France as the cracks in his marriage begin to grow. Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner calls on the voices of his father and grandfather to weave a powerful story about the enduring challenge of holding a family together in the face of an ever-changing world. 320pgs colour hardcover.
Rompepistas
by Rose Codina, based on the novel by Kiko Amat
Ablaze
$24.99
The publisher says:
In her first graphic novel, Rosa Codina adapts Kiko Amat’s coming-of-age novel about the wild years of adolescence. Rompepistas is seventeen years old. He’s a punk, he lives on the outskirts of Barcelona, and he does everything for the music: Generation X, The Clash, The Jam, Las Duelistas… That last one’s his own group, where he plays the guitar and bellows into the microphone. It’s all about playing to keep the sadness at bay and to never cry again. When you start playing, everything changes. All the shit clears up. Rosa Codina was born the same year, 1987, in which the story of Rompepistas takes place. She made the book in Ordal, a town in Alto Penedés, in the province of Barcelona, surrounded by vineyards and mountains. Although people there spend their lives in the vineyard, Rosa decided to stand out and directed her steps towards comics and illustration, ignoring with very good judgment all the voices that advised against drawing as a way of life. 232pgs B&W paperback.
The Russian Detective
by Carol Adlam
Jonathan Cape
£20.00
The publisher says:
In this stunning reimagining of a nineteenth-century Russian crime thriller from the world of Dostoevsky, Carol Adlam presents Charlie Fox, stunt journalist, magician, liar and thief, who reluctantly returns to her hometown of Nowheregrad to investigate the murder of Elena Ruslanova, daughter of a fabulously wealthy glass manufacturer. In Nowheregrad Charlie finds herself caught up in a multi-layered story that is told through the richly varied visual devices of the time. With the unwitting assistance of her lover, Netochka, Charlie unravels the mystery of the Bobrov family, only to face the truth about herself. Exquisitely drawn and compellingly told, Adlam’s complex, elegant narrative brings to life the lost legacies of early crime fiction and the first women journalists and detectives. Carol Adlam holds a PhD in Russian and an MA in Illustration from the Cambridge School of Art. She won a World Illustration Award in 2018, and was shortlisted in both 2016 and 2015. 112pgs colour hardcover.
Ruth Asawa: An Artist Takes Shape
by Sam Nakahira
Getty Publications
$19.95
The publisher says:
Brave, unconventional, and determined, Ruth Asawa let nothing stop her from living a life intertwined with art. Renowned for her innovative wire sculptures, Japanese American artist Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) was a teenager in Southern California when Japan bombed Pearl Harbour and the United States entered World War II. Japanese Americans on the West Coast were forced into camps. Asawa’s family had to abandon their farm, her father was incarcerated, and she and the rest of her family were sent to a detention centre in California, and later to a concentration camp in Arkansas. Asawa nurtured her dreams of becoming an artist while imprisoned and eventually made her way to the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina. This graphic biography by Sam Nakahira, developed in consultation with Asawa’s younger daughter, Addie Lanier, chronicles the genesis of Asawa as an artist—from the horror of Pearl Harbor to her transformative education at Black Mountain College to building her life in San Francisco, where she would further develop and refine her groundbreaking sculpture. Asawa never sought fame, preferring to work on her own terms: for her, art and life were one. Using lively illustrations and a dozen photographs of Asawa’s artwork, Ruth Asawa: An Artist Takes Shape is a graphic retelling of her young adult years and demonstrates the transformative power of making art. 112pgs colour hardcover.
Tillie Walden, Eisner Award-winning cartoonist and illustrator, says:
“A tender and thoughtful rendering of an important artist’s life. Sam Nakahira uses the power and beauty of comics to its fullest to immerse you in the mind and genius of Ruth Asawa. As soon as I finished it, I wanted to read it again!”
Safer Places
by Kit Anderson
Avery Hill
$19.99
The publisher says:
From road trips to doctors’ offices to the mysterious spaces under the house, Kit Anderson’s short stories explore the secrets and magic typically unseen in everyday life. A walk through the forest, a family move, a day in a normal life – Anderson’s depictions of these ordinary moments transform them with a double-take, revealing the strangeness, surreality, and transformation within. With powerful and personal emotional writing and art, thoughtfully combining magic and life as we all know it – these stories establish Kit Anderson as a presence in short comics-format fiction. Kit Anderson (she/her) is a cartoonist and comics editor from Boulder, Colorado living near Zürich. 208pgs colour paperback.
So Long Sad Love
by Mirion Malle, translated by Aleshia Jensen
Drawn & Quarterly
$24.95
The publisher says:
No matter how wrong relationships can be, there’s nothing quite like getting them right. Every guy’s been a creep at one point or another. That’s just the way it is. Or at least, that’s what Cleo tells herself once she finds out her boyfriend might not be the man she thought he was. Is it possible to keep loving someone you’re not sure you can trust? More to the point, should you? Once the fabric of Cleo’s relationship rips at the seams, the life she had built with him―abroad and away from those closest to her―unravels right before her eyes. Yet, letting it fall to pieces as she walks away is only half the story. So Long Sad Love swaps out the wobbly transition of weaving a new existence into being post-heartbreak for the surprising effortlessness and simplicity of a life already rebuilt. Cleo not only rediscovers her identity as an artist but uncovers her capacity to find love where she has always been most at home: with other women. Mirion Malle dares to tell a story with a happier ending in a stunning, full-colour follow-up to the multi-award nominated This is How I Disappear. Translated by Governor General Literary Award nominee Aleshia Jensen, So Long Sad Love unabashedly skips to the good part and shines a light on just how rewarding following your bliss can be. 212pgs colour paperback.
Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies: The Collected Conceits, Delusions, and Hijinks of New Yorkers from 1974 to 1995
by Stan Mack
Fantagraphics Underground
$50.00
The publisher says:
A gigantic collection of Stan Mack’s seminal comic strip that ran in the Village Voice from 1974 to 1995. Sketchbook in hand, Stan Mack haunted the New York City environs, watching, listening, overhearing, and interviewing its inhabitants. He drew a comic strip every week based on what he saw and heard, famously using verbatim dialogue for his graphic dramatisations. A mixture of humour, spontaneity, serendipity, and weirdness, Mack’s comic strip snapshots caught New Yorkers ― whether it is an extortionist calligrapher, a baby evading arrest at her first protest, a stroll up Broadway with a ferret, an evening with a male liberationist, or an unlucky-in-love dolphin trainer ― being who they are in all their unguarded and uninhibited glory. This collection includes a foreword by CNN journalist Jake Tapper (The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor) and an afterword by Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle). 336pgs B&W hardcover.
Suffrage Song: The Haunted History of Gender, Race and Voting Rights in the U.S.
by Caitlin Cass
Fantagraphics
$34.99
The publisher says:
New Yorker contributing cartoonist Caitlin Cass traces the fight for suffrage in the U.S. from the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This intersectional history of women and voting rights chronicles the suffrage movement’s triumphs, setbacks, and problematic aspects. “She put in her work, but there’s so much left to do.” Begun in the Antebellum era, the song of suffrage was a rallying cry across the nation that would persist over a century. Capturing the spirit of this refrain, New Yorker contributing cartoonist Caitlin Cass pens a sweeping history of women’s suffrage in the U.S. ― a kaleidoscopic story akin to a triumphant and mournful protest song that spans decades and echoes into the present. In Suffrage Song, Cass takes a critical, intersectional approach to the movement’s history ― celebrating the pivotal, hard-fought battles for voting rights while also laying bare the racist compromises suffrage leaders made along the way. She explores the multigenerational arc of the movement, humanising key historical figures from the early days of the suffrage fight (Susan B. Anthony, Frances Watkins Harper), to the dawn of the “New Women” (Alice Paul, Mary Church Terrell), to the Civil Rights era (Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker). Additionally, this book sheds light on less chronicled figures such as Zitkala-Ša and Mabel Ping Hua-Lee, whose stories reveal the complex racial dynamics that haunt this history. Impeccably researched and rendered in an engaging and accessible comics style, Suffrage Song is sure to spark discussion on the vital issue of voting rights that continues to resonate today. 264pgs colour hardcover.
Tender
by Beth Hetland
Fantagraphics
$19.99
The publisher says:
A psychological thriller about a woman obsessed with her vision for a picture-perfect, curated life. Carolanne wanted a perfect wedding, a perfect husband, a perfect family. She carefully performs her own roles (gal pal, bestie, girlfriend, wife, and expectant mother) and manipulates those around her to try and get the results she wants. Her desire to control the uncontrollable ultimately becomes her undoing. When things don’t go her way, she exerts dominance over the one thing she does have total control over: her body; until that “betrays” her. After suffering a horrible loss, Carolanne spirals into a literal, all-consuming delusion causing her body to produce symptoms of a hysterical pregnancy ― as a result of her slicing off bits of her own flesh and eating them. Chicago cartoonist and educator Beth Hetland’s graphic novel debut is a brilliant psychological thriller that tears down the wall of a genre ― body horror ― so often identified with male creators. Heady and visceral, Tender uses horrific tropes to confront women’s societal expectations of self-sacrifice despite those traditional roles often coming at the expense of female sexuality and empowerment. 162pgs colour hardcover.
The Atlas Comics Library No. 2: Venus
by Bill Everett & Werner Roth
Fantagraphics
$49.99
The publisher says:
The Goddess of Love…and SF horror: The eagerly anticipated single volume collecting the 10 rare issues of the overstuffed Venus comics! In the late 1940s, the first half of the Venus series from Marvel Comics predecessors Timely and Atlas Comics was published as a lighthearted romance comic about the goddess Venus taking a job on Earth at a beauty magazine. Never a company to miss a trend, Atlas began introducing more science fiction elements in the 1950s, and eventually turned Venus’ dating adventures into a straight-out horror anthology. Collected here, 70 years later and for the first time ever, is that swift-changing second half of the 19-issue run. Future Marvel stars Bill Everett (seven issues) and Werner Roth (three issues) take Venus to heights of four-colour weirdness and pre-Code horror ghastliness. Everett in particular is given free rein and seizes the opportunity: writing, drawing, and lettering twenty ghoulish and goofy masterpieces, including classics like “Hangman’s House,” “The Day Venus Vanished,” “The House of Terror,” “The Sealed Spectors,” Tidal Wave of Terror,” and the phantasmagorical “Cartoonist’s Calamity!” These stories showcase the brilliant draftsmanship and storytelling of Everett, one of the giants of the 1940s and ‘50’s comic book industry. His slick, fluid line rendered at Timely/Atlas, from his seminal god-child Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, to the atomic age Marvel Boy, is some of the finest pre-Code horror this side of E.C.‘s Graham Ingels. Bill Everett (1917-1973) was an American comic book writer-artist best known for creating Namor the Sub-Mariner as well as co-creating Zombie and Daredevil with writer Stan Lee for Marvel Comics. He was allegedly a descendant of the childless poet William Blake and of Richard Everett, founder of Dedham, Massachusetts. Series editor Dr. Michael J. Vassallo assisted in the compilation of the first volume of Venus for Marvel 13 years ago, and Fantagraphics is delighted to publish the horror half as the second title in The Fantagraphics Atlas Comics Library. 280pgs colour hardcover.
The Gulf
by Adam de Souza
Tundra Books
$20.99 / $12.99
The publisher says:
Staring down the final days of high school, a group of friends run away from home in order to join a commune in this YA graphic novel for ages 14 and up. Stand by Me meets Catcher in the Rye by way of Skim. Ever since Oli found a pamphlet for a remote island commune as a kid, it’s all she can think about. Now that she’s nearing the end of high school, feeling frustrated with the mounting pressure to choose a career and follow a path she has no interest in, the desire to escape it all has been steadily increasing. Everything comes to a head when Oli’s relationship with her best friend goes south and she claps back at a school bully with more than just words. Oli flees to find the commune on a Gulf Island off the coast of Vancouver, taking with her Milo, who can’t help but hide his feelings behind the safety of a video camera, and Alvin, a shy teen who sees more than he lets on. Behind them trails Liam, Oli’s ex-best-friend and sometimes love interest, who wants to apologise for the way things went down. All four are grappling with a world that cannot be changed . . . and simply trying to find their place in it. This YA anti-coming-of-age road trip adventure, by talented up-and-coming comic artist Adam de Souza, captures at once the angst and humour of being a teen during a time of great transition. 240pgs colour hardcover / paperback.
The Last Queen
by Jean-Marc Rochette
SelfMadeHero
$25.99
The publisher says:
Award-winning Snowpiercer co-creator Jean-Marc Rochette tells the story of a bear who inspires a French sculptor’s greatest work in this graphic novel. An epic, emotional tale, The Last Queen follows Édouard Roux, a veteran of World War I whose face is left disfigured from fighting in the trenches. Édouard takes refuge in the studio of animal sculptor Jeanne Sauvage, who gives him a new face in the form of a prosthetic mask. The pair embark on an intense romantic relationship. She introduces him to the artistic community of Montmartre, Paris, and Édouard shows her the majestic mountains of his homeland, the Vercors Massif. He tells her the story of the last queen to live in the region, a bear he saw killed as a child. In the heart of the Cirque d’Archiane valley, he reveals to Jeanne an amazing piece of art, seen by few others, which inspires her to create the masterpiece that will make her famous… 240pgs colour hardcover.
The Mushroom Knight
by Oliver Bly
Mad Cave Studios
$19.99
The publisher says:
An adolescent girl searches the deep dark woods for her missing dog, entangling her destiny with a chivalrous mushroom faerie on a mystical quest to protect the biome from catastrophic ruin. The Mushroom Knight follows the adventures of Gowlitrot the Gardener, a sentient bipedal fungus created by a race of woodland gnomes called Gödels, as he investigates and unearths a deadly conspiracy that reveals the true nature of himself and the devastation humans have wrought upon the global biosystem that he has sworn to protect. Oliver Bly is an animator, cartoonist, tin whistler, archer, and mycology enthusiast living in Olympia, WA. The Mushroom Knight is his first graphic novel work. 112pgs colour paperback.
The Phantom Scientist
by Robin Cousin, coloured by Carine Klonowski & translated by Edward Gauvin
MIT Press
$22.95
The publisher says:
A mind-bending graphic novel that teases devious thrills from the mysteries of systems theory. An isolated institute laid out in a Fibonacci sequence, hidden deep in the forest. Twenty-four labs. Twenty-four researchers. Until one of them disappears… When physicist Stéphane Douasy arrives to occupy the vacant twenty-fourth lab at the Institute for the Study of Complex and Dynamic Systems, an ominous problem rises in his wake: what has happened to his missing neighbour in Building F? When Stéphane’s neighbours, a discouraged linguist and a computer scientist bent on predicting the future, discover that the missing researcher may have solved the P versus NP problem—a coup in computer science with revolutionary implications for everything from mathematics to philosophy—before vanishing, things turn stranger still, and even more menacing. Solving the mystery of the Institute and its devolution into mayhem and violence every seventh year quickly shifts from being an intellectual exercise to a matter of life and death. The Phantom Scientist is part thriller, part mystery, part systems theory—and all enthralling. The tale slyly draws together linguistics, biology, astrophysics, and robotics in a mind-bending puzzle that will thrill and inform readers. Originally published in French by Edition Flblb in 2013. 128pgs colour hardcover.
Tomorrow the Birds
by Osamu Tezuka
Ablaze
$14.99
The publisher says:
A classic collection from Osamu Tezuka, the Godfather of Manga, now in English! Originally published between 1971 and 1975, this collection of short stories depicts an Earth in which birds become the planet’s dominant species. It started with several minor but unusual attacks by birds against humans, more a nuisance than anything. However, as birds capable of harnessing fire began to appear, using it to set fire to people’s homes, things began to escalate. Eventually, a highly intelligent leader of the birds emerges to begin negotiations with humankind on behalf of his people… What force jump-started the birds’ wild jump in evolution? And what will be the fate of humans in this new world order? 324pgs B&W paperback.
Viscera Objectica
by Yugo Limbo
Silver Sprocket
$14.99
The publisher says:
A humble tailor is very skilled at his work, but finds the complex patchwork of love painful to stitch together. One day, he visits a farmers market and is drawn to a beautiful puppet, whose vendor utters only: “His name is Theu.” Though the puppet is inanimate, the tailor inexplicably falls for Theu, day by day finding that patchwork of love no longer painful. Viscera Objectica is a graphic novella that explores the depth of feeling that develops between man and object, lover and loved. 72pgs colour paperback.
The Werewolf at Dusk
by David Small
Liveright
$25.00
The publisher says:
Long celebrated as a modern master of graphic literature, David Small has elicited in his work comparisons to Stan Lee and even Alfred Hitchcock. His internationally acclaimed graphic memoir, Stitches, told the story of a childhood in disarray. The Werewolf at Dusk, appearing nearly fifteen years later, turned its attention to the twilight of life and to ageing, gracefully or otherwise. Eerily striking and mesmerising, the three stories in this collection are linked, as Small writes, by the dread of things internal. In the title story, an adaptation of Lincoln Michel’s classic short piece, the dread is that of a man who has reached senility with something repellant in his nature. He—an impotent werewolf, no longer able to hunt—confronts the terror of obsolescence. What do I even look like now, he wonders, when the full moon draws out the wolf inside me? The spectre of old age also haunts the semiautobiographical story “A Walk in the Old City.” Brain matter cascades and spiders loom as a psychoanalyst, self-assured in his practice, wanders along empty streets, reality warping into the irrational with the insouciance of a dream. In the final story, a reinterpretation of Jean Ferry’s The Tiger in Vogue, this dreamscape gives way to the ominous environs of Berlin in the 1920s. When a peaceful evening at the music hall is interrupted by a garish surprise act, only the protagonist seems to notice. Yet he, too, is transfixed by the performance, watching as a little man with a moustache, pale skin, and tired eyes wills a tiger into submission. With its sharp lines and vibrant blues and oranges, the artwork recalls Edvard Munch’s anguished The Scream, likewise capturing the moment—the dread—before disaster. As fluid as Japanese manga and rife with unsettling imagery, The Werewolf at Dusk is a testament to the singular dark genius of David Small. 192pgs B&W hardcover.
Winnie the Pooh
by A.A. Milne & Travis Dandro
Drawn & Quarterly
$29.95
The publisher says:
The beloved children’s classic appears as a graphic novel for the first time. PEN Graphic Novel Award winner Travis Dandro takes a left turn from his detailed autobiography and returns with the charming tales of Winnie the Pooh. In 2015, the A. A. Milne childrens’ classic, long since viewed as the benchmark for intelligent and whimsical storytelling, slipped into the public domain. The beloved series now gets the comics treatment from a gifted artist at the peak of his cartooning prowess. Dandro expands the world of Hundred Acre Wood in all directions, creating stunning full-page tableaus where Pooh and everybody’s favourite characters―Piglet, Eeyore, Tigger, and of course, Christopher Robin―to romp, argue, fail, and love. Indebted to the unforgettable pen-and-ink drawings of E. H. Shephard, this addition to the canon of timeless literature for all ages encompasses all of Winnie-the-Pooh’s original adventures, alongside a brand-new story from Dandro created exclusively for this volume. 220pgs B&W hardcover.
