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Top 27 Graphic Novels, Comics & Manga:

May 2024


Good to have you joining me here to take a look through the brightest upcoming comics, graphic novels and manga in English. Among my PG Tips, this French best-seller conveys clearly the issues and urgency of our escalating climate crisis.

In assorted mixed media and expansive sequences, Aidan Koch recharges the expressivity of the medium as few others.

Two compelling true life accounts in graphic memoir form reveal Indonesia and Taiwan…

The genius of Bosch is explored by one of the most gifted painters from American underground comix…

And the English-language debut of Miroslav Sekulic-Struja is long overdue, a visionary narrator and artist. These and other titles are here to intrigue and entice you. Enjoy and see you here for next month!



All My Bicycles
by Powerpaola, translated by Andrea Rosenberg
Fantagraphics
$19.99

The publisher says:
In this nonlinear graphic memoir, Powerpaola uses bicycles she’s owned as a vehicle to explore the world, her relationships, her memories ― and herself. “A bicycle is a machine that you power yourself. You decide where you want to go,” writes cartoonist Powerpaola, as the guiding principle of this graphic memoir. All My Bicycles is a story that never really begins, existing all at once in Paola’s memory. The book illustrates Powerpaola’s relationships through her many bicycles: in fragments, it takes her back to her great loves and losses, friendships, and disappointments. In remembering a bicycle, a manhole, an alligator, or a necklace, Powerpaola reflects upon these items in her consciousness without finding a concrete solution. Paola’s memories arrive abruptly and leave just as fast, creating a pathway through herself she can only find in moving forward. All My Bicycles is a glimpse into how exploring these fleeting tangible moments ― of physical objects, of traveling and seeing a new city, of even the end of a relationship ― is an exploration of self. Powerpaola is a Colombian Ecuadorian cartoonist and visual artist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She authored the graphic memoir Virus Tropical (2011), which became a movie in 2017 and received critical acclaim worldwide. Por Dentro (2012), Diario (2013), qp (2013), Todo Va a Estar Bien (2015), and Nos vamos (2016) followed. Her work deals with themes of sexuality, feminism, family, and personal identity. She was a member of the international collective Chicks on Comics and No Tan Parecidos and published Las Ciudades que Somos (2018) and Tierra Larga (2019) with them, respectively. 108pgs colour paperback.


The Boy from Clearwater: Book 2
by Yu Pei-yun & Zhou Jian-xin, translated by Lin King
Levine Querido
$25.99 / $19.99

The publisher says:
After his imprisonment in Green Island, Kun-lin struggles to pick up where he left off ten years earlier. He reconnects with his childhood crush Kimiko and finds work as an editor, jumping from publisher to publisher until finally settling at an advertising company. But when manhua publishing becomes victim to censorship, and many of his friends lose their jobs, Kun-lin takes matters into his own hands. He starts a children’s magazine, Prince, for a group of unemployed artists and his old inmates who cannot find work anywhere else. Kun-lin’s life finally seems to be looking up… but how long will this last? Forty years later, Kun-lin serves as a volunteer at the White Terror Memorial Park, promoting human rights education. There, he meets Yu Pei-yun, a young college professor who provides him with an opportunity to reminisce on his past and how he picked himself up after grappling with bankruptcy and depression. With the end of martial law, Kun-lin and other former New-Lifers felt compelled to mobilise to rehabilitate fellow White Terror victims, forcing him to face his past head-on. While navigating his changing homeland, he must conciliate all parts of himself––the victim and the saviour, the patriot and the rebel, a father to the future generation and a son to the old Taiwan––before he can bury the ghosts of his past. 356pgs colour hardcover / paperback.


Delights: A Story of Hieronymus Bosch
by Guy Colwell
Fantagraphics
$29.99

The publisher says:
In Guy Colwell’s first full graphic novel in over 30 years, we see one painter, Colwell himself, consider another, Hieronymus Bosch, and the story behind the latter’s most notable work told in sequential panels. The known details of Bosch’s life, and the commissioning of his enormous triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights, are scant. Colwell takes the facts of Bosch’s time and setting and constructs a tale of a man and artist torn equally among piety, creativity, and commerce In Colwell’s version of Jheronimus van Aken (Bosch’s real name), he is an artist paid well by local dukes to paint a vision of the world before the fall, but will the religious leaders of his village see it as celebrating God’s creation, or fatally corrupted by sensuality? And what of the increasing numbers of young models needed to depict pre-apple innocence? This imaginatively conceived graphic biography is Colwell’s crowning achievement in a cartooning career, begun in the underground comix movement of the 1970s, and marked by risk-taking and political engagement. His drawing, rendering, and storytelling has never been as self-assured as in Delights. 168pgs colour hardcover.


Devour
by Jazmine Joyner & Anthony Pugh
Abrams ComicArts / MegaScope
$24.99

The publisher says:
In this horror graphic novel from award-winning writer Jazmine Joyner and illustrator Anthony Pugh, American Gods meets Get Out in a dark retelling of the West African legend of Anansi the Spider. In the Deep South, something evil waits in the darkness… Devour tells the story of the Turner family, who move to Alabama to care for their ailing matriarch, Vassie, when she begins suffering from dementia. But Vassie isn’t just any old lady; she’s the last of a line of powerful root women who have been caring for the community since her ancestors were first captured and enslaved by white plantation owners. Patsy, the eldest daughter in the family, is immediately suspicious; the locals’ fear and superstition of her grandmother leads Patsy to take a closer look at the Turner family home, and what she finds is beyond her wildest nightmares. In a magical room beneath the house, Patsy discovers the source of her family’s legendary skills: the Ghanaian spider god Anansi. Driven mad by the suffering of the enslaved Africans who worshipped him, Anansi was eventually captured and contained by Patsy’s ancestors. As Patsy learns about her family’s culture and dark past, she also realises what’s really happening to Vassie; Anansi is eating Vassie’s memories. With their legacy and the god’s imprisonment in the balance, Patsy and her brother, Demetrius, will have to take up their grandmother’s mantle—while she can still remember who they are. Devour is a terrifying new fable that delivers thrills and chills in equal measure. 208pgs colour hardcover.


The Field
by Dave Lapp
Conundrum Press
$30.00

The publisher says:
Dave Lapp’s new memoir unpacks a long, hazy 1970s summer and reveals that when we look beyond nostalgia, childhood is complicated—and rarely innocent. Dave’s on the verge of summer vacation and change is on the horizon. Developers have begun digging up a field on the edges of Dave’s universally familiar small town, presenting endless nooks and crannies for Dave and his fearless friend Edward to explore. Over the course of the summer, while the town’s adults remain focused on their fractured marriages and neighbourly resentments, the children are allowed to run wild in the field, collecting caterpillars and tadpoles, catching field mice (which they smuggle home), and nursing a curious fascination with Dave’s mother’s matches and their potential for disaster. As the summer meanders on, Edward brings a new friend into the circle. But John’s got a mean streak that’s strong enough to flip Dave’s world–and his place in it—upside down. In The Field, Ignatz-nominated creator Dave Lapp examines a time when kids stayed out until the streetlights came on—and exposes the dangers, foibles, and wildness of childhood in the 1970s. 540pgs B&W paperback. 540pgs B&W paperback.

“This might be the best story about childhood that I’ve ever read (or heard). It’s a masterpiece.” —Chester Brown 



The Flavors of Iraq: Impressions of My Vanished Homeland
by Feurat Alani & Léonard Cohen, translated by Kendra Boileau
Graphic Mundi / PSU Press
$19.95

The publisher says:
1989. My first trip to Iraq. The taste of apricot. “Never say Saddam’s name.” The Western media largely glossed over the immense human suffering that occurred in Iraq during the embargo of the 1990s and the Iraq War. With this innovative and award-winning graphic novel, French-Iraqi journalist Feurat Alani sets that record straight. The Flavors of Iraq unfolds as a series of one thousand tweets. In them, Alani describes his experiences in Iraq from 1989, when he traveled from France to meet his extended family in Iraq for the first time, to 2011, when the last Americans pulled out of the country. Alani recounts the vivid impressions this place made on him as a child―its wondrous colours, tastes, and smells. And he documents the sounds, silences, and smells of a war in which hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians lost their lives. Illustrated by the striking art of Léonard Cohen and with a foreword by Ross Caputi, a former US Marine who served in Iraq from 2003 to 2006, The Flavors of Iraq tells a poetic and powerful story of an oppressed population, an illegal war, and a country that no longer exists. Foreword by Ross Caputi. 176pgs colour paperback.


George Sand: True Genius, True Woman
by Séverine Vidal & Kim Consigny
SelfMadeHero
£18.99 / $22.99

The publisher says:
A graphic biography of female novelist George Sand, whose life and work championed women’s rights, gender expression, and sexual liberation. George Sand: True Genius, True Woman is a scrupulously researched and tenderly revealing biography of one of the great pioneering figures of 19th-century French literature. Born in 1804—at a time when women were deprived of their civil rights (along with minors, criminals, and the insane)—Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin grew up to defy those norms, both in her life and her writing. Adopting the gender-neutral pen name George Sand, and in a career lasting over forty years as a novelist and playwright, she is best remembered today for the affairs and friendships she enjoyed with men: the composer Chopin; the painter Delacroix; the novelist Balzac. But this moving biographical portrait, written by award-winner Séverine Vidal and illustrated by Kim Consigny, restores her to the centre stage she always commanded in her lifetime. Not just as the daring, scandalously cross-dressing, bisexual, cigarette-smoking divorcée novelist, but as the brilliant chronicler of her changing time—and therefore of ours. 344pgs colour paperback.


Good: From the Amazon Jungle to Suburbia and Back
by David Good & FLuX
NBM
$24.99

The publisher says:
This is the story of the incredible journey of David Good, the son of an American anthropologist father, and indigenous Yanomami mother who calls the Amazon rainforest her home. Overlapping the story of what David’s mother’s early years were like being raised in the rainforest, the book follows David from childhood to adulthood as he searches for identity, love, acceptance, and the one thing truly missing from his life, his mother. Growing up in a predominantly white population of the US without a mother or a deeper connection to his South American roots, David struggles with issues of identity and relationships. His and his mother’s stories intertwine in a heartbreakingly beautiful climax when they are reunited in the jungle. Beautifully illustrated and co-authored by award winning artist and storyteller, FLuX, Good is a vivid and breathtaking visualisation of a highly unusual life’s journey. 216pgs B&W hardcover.


Hotelitor: Luxury-Class Defense and Hospitality Unit
by Graphic Universe / Lerner Books
$16.99

The publisher says:
Take a trip aboard Hotelitor: the finest hospitality craft in its colony, equipped with jet feet, a hyperspace engine, and single, double, and adjoining rooms. When a giant alien attacks the ship, Hotelitor‘s surviving guests and staff find themselves stranded in deep space. There, 18-year-old intern Anna Greene must take charge. Alongside her fellow entry-level service workers, she’ll try to control the chaos while rival factions emerge, wealthy VIPs seize hotel resources, and the musician-in-residence develops a literal cult following. As Anna and her friends search for a way home, shocking discoveries about Hotelitor‘s owners await them―if another giant alien doesn’t smash the crew first. 144pgs colour paperback.


Hurricane Nancy
by Nancy Burton, edited by Alex Dueben
Fantagraphics
$30.00

The publisher says:
This book is a retrospective of underground comix artist Nancy Burton, a significant and under-appreciated artist in the history of comics, as well as a first-person account of a fascinating moment in counter cultural America. Nancy Burton was among the earliest underground cartoonists, creating comic strips that appeared in The East Village Other (“Gentle’s Tripout”) and Gothic Blimp Works (“Busy Boxes”) in 1966. Under the pen names “Panzika” and “Nancy Kalish” and most importantly, “Hurricane Nancy,” she contributed to many notable underground comix including It Ain’t Me, Babe. Drawing on abstract expressionism, art nouveau and formline art, working in parallel to the psychedelic art movement and outsider artists like Consuelo “Chelo” Amezcua, Burton’s comics feature birds and people, dreamlike landscapes, and psychedelic imagery that grows darker as the 1960s come to a close, reflecting the darkening mood of the era and her uniquely personal vision of the world. Burton stopped making art in the early 1970s and seemed to disappear, having met few cartoonists during her short tenure but making an impression on many with her unique psychedelic approach. In 2009 she began drawing again, posting artwork online without explanation and though many aspects of her work had changed, it remained indelibly her own. Hurricane Nancy is the first collection of Burton’s work ever published and reprints many of her comics and drawings from that politically tumultuous and creatively fecund period of American culture in addition to her more recent work. In an exclusive interview, Burton talks about her travels and influences, the origins of her pen names, close encounters with Timothy Leary and the Grateful Dead, the Monterey Pop Festival and the Summer of Love, and explains for the first time why she not just abandoned comics in the early ‘70s, but stopped making art entirely. 112pgs colour paperback.


Infinite Wheatpaste Vol.1: Catalytic Conversions
by L. Pidge
Avery Hill Publishing
£16.99 / $22.99

The publisher says:
An epic graphic novel adventure through space and time. Experience a universe-spanning sci-fi adventure in Infinite Wheatpaste. Relationships . . . androids . . . car repair . . . time travel . . . gods― these interconnected stories set on the edges of human experience share the moments of the little bits of life that feel less than real. Abby and Lilah are a couple drifting apart. Jeff is a flaming star. Soe is a perpetually late college student and the goddess next door. Casimir is a man with a past, and Abe is his future, maybe everyone’s future. Otis is a grief-stricken robot on a road to enlightenment. Groob is fun-loving and the salt of the earth. Some are slowly making their way to each other, but some are breaking apart.  Pidge is an artist, educator, and creator, illustrator, and letterer of her Ignatz Award nominated comic, Infinite Wheatpaste. She resides in a quiet mountain town in the Colorado Rockies with her spouse and colourist, Professor Chase Hutchison. Pidge’s other published works include contributions to Heavy Rotation and Fast Times in Comic Book Editing alongside various micropress anthologies. She is currently working on more IWP and Skylarks, an all-ages mystery. When she isn’t drawing or teaching middle schoolers, she can be found knitting and snowboarding. 280pgs colour paperback.


Ken Parker: The Breath and the Dream: Masterpiece Edition
by Giancarlo Berardi & Ivo Milazzo
Epicenter
$17.99

The publisher says:
For the first time ever in English, a work of the acclaimed Italian duo, Berardi & Milazzo. This poetic, one-off graphic novel of a man and nature in all of its seasons, coloured with Milazzo’s breathtaking watercolour, is also our precursor to the Ken Parker western series. Originally published in 1991 by Editori del Grifo in their series La Nuova Mongolfiera. As one reviewer noted: ‘Ken is immersed in nature, during the four different seasons of the year, and interacts with animals and Crow Indians whose language he does not know. Four silent stories, because words are useless. And where they would be useful, sign language intervenes to allow communication between Ken and the Indians. The ecological theme, one of the most important of the entire saga, is dominant: nature is sometimes represented with poetic tones, sometimes also in its most violent manifestations.’ 104pgs colour paperback.


Khiêm: Our Journey Through The Motherlands
by Yasmine & Djibril Morissette Phan
Fairsquare
$29.99

The publisher says:
All their lives, Yasmine and Djibril Morissette Phan have heard of their mother’s old country, Vietnam. But it was more a far distant land with lots of folklore more than a real place in their mind. Too often, immigrants bring fragments of their culture with them, pass them on to their seeds, but the reality remains sketchy to those descendants. Yasmine and Djibril decided to reconnect with their mother’s ancestral home and confront themselves with the realities of Vietnam. What they found will leave them change forever. Khiem is a poignant story about the past, the present and the future. About generations. A journey about reconnecting with your own roots.  200pgs colour paperback.


Korgi: The Complete Tale
by Christian Slade
IDW / Top Shelf Productions
$39.99

The publisher says:
The beloved wordless fantasy graphic novel is now collected in a single epic volume! Fall in love with the wondrous world of Korgi Hollow, packed with thrills, laughs, and exquisitely illustrated animal magic. One of the most adorable comics of our time now arrives in a bookshelf edition for all time. When day breaks in their woodland village, Ivy and her corgi pup, Sprout, have no idea that they’ll soon be swept up in an astonishing adventure! Soon they’ll journey across land, sea, and air, from past to present and beyond, to learn more about themselves, escape the forces of evil, and uncover the ancient mysteries behind their magical world. The sumptuously detailed pen-and-ink drawings of former Disney animator Christian Slade make every page a joy to behold, using the power of “silent comics” to bring every moment wordlessly to life for readers of all ages. What’s more, this deluxe softcover collection includes not only all five Korgi graphic novels but also every bonus short story previously exclusive to comic books. The result is a complete fantasy epic that is truly timeless. 584pgs B&W paperback.


Lunar Boy
by Jes & Chin Wibowo
Harper Alley
$24.99 / $15.99

The publisher says:
For fans of The Witch Boy and Squished, Lunar Boy is a must-have heartwarming coming-of-age graphic novel about a young boy from the moon who discovers a home in the most unlikely places, from debut twin creators Jes and Cin Wibowo. Indu, a boy from the moon, feels like he doesn’t belong. He hasn’t since he and his adoptive mom disembarked from their spaceship—their home—to live on Earth with their new blended family. The kids at school think he’s weird, he has a crush on his pen pal who might not like him back, and his stepfamily doesn’t seem to know what to do with him. Worst of all, Indu can’t even talk to his mom about how he’s feeling because she’s so busy. In a moment of loneliness, Indu calls out to the moon, begging them to take him back. And against all odds, the moon hears him and agrees to bring him home on the first day of the New Year. But as the promised day draws nearer, Indu finds friendship in unlikely places and discovers that home is more than where you come from. And when the moon calls again, Indu must decide: Is he willing to give up what he’s just found? Jes and CIn Wibowo are Chinese Indonesian twins born in Jakarta. As Third Culture Kids, they spent their early childhood years moving back and forth between the US and Indonesia. The two both graduated with a BFA and eventually an MFA in sequential arts from Savannah College of Art and Design. They’re currently based in Jakarta, eating comfort food and being perpetually culture-shocked wherever they go. 240pgs


The Lost Worlds of George Metzger
by George Metzger, edited by Patrick Rosenkranz
Fantagraphics
$50.00

The publisher says:
George Metzger’s comics stand out for their captivating combination of high fantasy and science fiction, his astonishingly prescient views of climate change and political chicanery—and, just when you need it, the right touch of whimsy and imaginative insight. Explore a feudal landscape in roaring, rumbling, steam-powered vehicles as the mysterious Moondog offers hope to a fallen civilisation desperate for a new renaissance. Swoop and soar the skies in anachronistic airships and personal flyers in Mu, the land that never was. Hitchhike away from urban strife and get back to nature by homesteading with the hippies….It’s all here in this anthology of George Metzger’s most iconic (and idiosyncratic) comics creations, including two never-before-seen stories rediscovered after missing for decades! George Metzger began publishing his cautionary fables of utopias, apocalypses, and climate upheavals in fanzines in 1966 and was soon appearing in such seminal underground publications as Yellow Dog and Gothic Blimp Works. His first solo comic book, Moondog (1969), established him as a true comix visionary. More issues of Moondog followed, and he launched Truckin’, a series celebrating life on the road. In 1978, he published Mu: The Land That Never Was, his epic about the fate of a lost continent. He has contributed other tales of wonder and whimsey to numerous publications, including Heavy Metal. In 2016, Fantagraphics Books re-issued his pioneering graphic novel, Beyond Time and Again. He continues to write and draw from his home in British Columbia. 320pgs colour & B&W paperback.


Maple Terrace
by Noah Van Sciver
Uncivilized Books
$24.95

The publisher says:
From a multiple-award-winning cartoonist, Noah Van Sciver, comes Maple Terrace, a new autobiographical graphic novel. Based on the author’s childhood, Maple Terrace unfolds a tale of big money comic-collecting craze of the early 90s as seen from the ground floor. In a time when superheroes were oversized, adorned with massive guns, and countless pouches, comic books were currency! Young investors struggled to collect every cover gimmick under the sun—embossed-metallic ink-holographic foil—hoping they someday would pay for their college education. Brutally hilarious, Maple Terrace shines a light on the strange intersection between poverty and speculative comic book craze of the 90s. 120pgs colour hardcover.


Marshal Bass Vol. 1
by Darko Macan & Igor Kordey
Ablaze
$19.99

The publisher says:
From the creative team behind Cable: The End and Soldier X comes a tale extrapolated from the life of the first Black Deputy US Marshal! Set in the tumultuous aftermath of the American Civil War, River Bass is drawn into a career path he’d never expected: law enforcement. While he accepts the badge with an eye towards equality and justice, will the cruelty of the world allow him these ideals? Marshal Bass Vol. 1 contains three stories. First, when a Black gang earns the attention of the US Marshal Service, River Bass is recruited by Colonel Helena to infiltrate their ranks. While trying to keep his cover and accomplish his mission, he’s confronted by the reality of the gang members’ individual circumstances, goals, and outcomes, all weighed against his future as a US Marshal. Next, an investigation of a serial murderer goes awry when Marshal Bass confronts more killers than he bargained for…a whole family of killers, in fact! Further, while trying to escape desperate circumstances, he finds himself drawn to the daughter of the murderous clan. Then, when one of their daughters runs off with a young man, Bass is pressed by his wife to find her and bring her home, but the job becomes more complicated when the man in question becomes a murderer. Further, this man without a name may have greater ties to Bass than initially assumed… 168pgs colour paperback.


Moonray: Echoes of Ascension
by Brandom Graham & Xurxo G. Penalta
Living the Line
$35.00

The publisher says:
In a post-human world, the Miium warrior Adam is now separated from his companions and explores his strange world. Pursued by an alien Hive cult, he’s chased through an undertown of malformed half-men and a living sentient city. Written and drawn by Eisner and Diamond Gem award-winning author and artist Brandon Graham (Prophet, King City, Rain Like Hammers) and featuring artist Xurxo G. Penalta, Moonray presents a mind-altering new dawn for a distant sci-fi future unlike any other. This next step in the bold graphic odyssey continues the Moonray saga, from comic book to video game and beyond. Introduction by filmmaker and illustrator Sylvain Despretz. 160pgs colour hardcover.


Of Dust and Blood: The Battle at Little Big Horn
by Jim Berry & Val Mayerik
NBM
$17.99

The publisher says:
This thrilling tale details the day of The Battle at The Little Big Horn through the eyes of Greenhaw, a 7th Cavalry scout on one side of the battlefield, and Slowhawk, a young Lakota warrior on the other. Featuring appearances of Sitting Bull, G.A. Custer, and Crazy Horse, as well as generous portions of meticulously researched history on every page, the book’s art has been lauded as tremendously beautiful—each page worthy of hanging on the wall as a solo piece. Jim Berry is a storyteller living in Portland, Oregon, who has worked as a newspaper photographer, film artist, and freelancer. Val Mayerik worked for Marvel Comics for more than 20 years on projects such as Conan the Barbarian and Spider-Man, and he was co-creator of fan-favourite Howard the Duck. He then moved on to advertising, working as a storyboard and concept artist for many large agencies and his clients have included Nike, Microsoft, Coca Cola, Miller Beer, Sony, and Southern Comfort, to name a few. In the past ten years, he has turned his attention to gallery work. 48pgs colour hardcover.


Petar & Liza
by Fantagraphics
$39.99

The publisher says:
When Petar returns home to civilian life after his two-year conscription in the ex-Yugoslavian army, he finds himself adrift. Even amidst the most raucous, late-night parties, he feels detached from it all, like a ghost haunting the living. But a serendipitous encounter with Liza, a dancer with a joie de vivre about her, brings a flood of vibrant colour into his gray life. Their lyrical romance forms an oasis in a bleak world, until his inner demons start to reveal themselves. A heartfelt character study, this graphic novel paints the portrait of a complex protagonist often at odds with himself. At times, Petar writes soulful, life-affirming poetry, while at others he falls into spells of depression and self-destruction. Petar & Liza is a work of meticulous expressionism that reflects Miroslav Sekulic-Struja’s vivid artistic vision. In dazzling gouache, Sekulic-Struja conjures an earthy, street-level view of humanity, bringing to life bohemian environs of dive bars, back rooms, and crowded cityscapes. He paints a world in darkness and turmoil, in which rays of sunshine occasionally peek through. Miroslav Sekulic-Struja is a self-taught painter, illustrator, and novelist, whose rich and profound works seek to chronicle the underrepresented struggles of a generation lost to war. He is best known for his Pelote trilogy, which tells the Dickensian story of orphans in wartime. In 2010, his graphic novel The Man Who Bought a Smile received the Young Talent Award from the Angoulême International Comics Festival. 176pgs colour hardcover.

Chris Ware, author of Building Stories, says:
“Unpredictable and as strange as life itself, every single picture in Miroslav Sekulic-Struja’s Petar & Liza is an exquisite, beautiful painting―all of which, amazingly, add up to an exquisite, beautiful, emotionally moving and poetically written portrait of an artist, a love story and, finally, a whole generation. I was stunned by it. His work, and this book, feel like a miracle to me.”


The Puerto Rican War: A Graphic History
by John Vasquez Mejias 
Union Square & Co.
$20.00

The publisher says:
Rendered in gorgeously carved wood blocks and buffeted with historical supplemental material, John Vasquez Mejias’s The Puerto Rican War tells the story of the the 1950 insurrection on the island that resulted in 38 deaths and a failed assassination attempt against President Harry S. Truman. Told as a fable, in which the leaders of the movement are visited by the ghosts of Michael Collins and Gandhi, this book showcases an important and often overlooked moment in American history and a historical touchstone for the Puerto Rican independence movement. John Vasquez Mejias is a visual artist and high school art teacher in the Bronx. He regularly produces zines, comics, and performs hand-crafted puppet shows and theater events based on The Puerto Rican War and other subjects. The self-published version of The Puerto Rican War is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Library. 112pgs B&W hardcover.


Robot Archie and The Time Machine
by E. George Cowan & Ted Kearon
Rebellion / 2000AD
£16.99 / $19.99

The publisher says:
Originally built by Professor C.R. Ritchie, the mechanical being known as Robot Archie was employed to battle injustices around the world, particularly in the jungles of Africa and South America. The automated action hero has worked with the Professor to create’The Castle’ - a fully-functioning time machine! Together with the Professor’s nephew, Ted Ritchie and his best friend Ken Dale, Archie is ready to embark on a journey through time that will bring him into conflicts with medieval knights and a terrifying, dystopian future where aliens have conquered the Earth! 144pgs B&W paperback.


Second Hand Love
by Yamada Murasaki, translated by Ryan Holmberg
Drawn & Quarterly
$24.95

The publisher says:
In the end, we’re all the same we just want to be smothered like babies against another human’s beating heart. Through a cracked door, heartsick Emi hears a playful growl. Cautiously, she lets her lover in a wolf of a man wielding a bouquet of roses. His shoulders must have been four inches wider than mine. As I stood behind him, I fantasised about the broadness of his chest and the thickness of his neck…and about becoming his mistress once again. And so their story goes. For a young woman interested in love without the hassle of a traditional relationship, an affair with someone else s spoiled husband is just what she ordered until it’s time to move on. Then there’s Yuko: with even less time for married men’s shenanigans, she turns her attention to her ageing father and the guilt of adultery that has gnawed at his heart for years. Her mother is long dead, yet her memory is enshrined for eternity in their both father s and daughter’s mirrored indiscretions. Drawn soon after the critically-acclaimed Talk to My Back, the two stories in Second Hand Love mark the triumphant return of Yamada Murasaki, one of literary manga’s most respected feminist voices. Translated by noted historian Ryan Holmberg, this edition includes an interview with the artist from the height of her career in 1985, where her wit and wisdom are on shimmering display. 228pgs B&W paperback.


Spiral & Other Stories
by Aidan Koch
New York Review Comics
$24.95

The publisher says:
A delicate, dreamlike, and lushly detailed comics collection by a contemporary artist whose work explores the enmeshment of the human and non-human worlds. For years, Aidan Koch’s comics have been pushing the boundaries of the medium, helping reimagine what a comic can look like, and the kinds of stories it can tell. Koch has been living and working in the desert of California, turning her focus toward the ways humans and the natural world converge. Spiral and Other Stories is a triumph of that continuing process. Using watercolours, pencils, crayons, charcoals, and collage, Koch builds worlds of dense detail and vast open spaces, urgent scrawled text and long silences, telling a series of stories about people and the places they inhabit. Characters yearn for each other, even as they’re pulled toward different lives. Rivers dance together and then diverge as they make their way to see the sea. With an accompanying essay by the author and critic Nicole Rudick, who explores Koch’s craft and her move into environmentally focused comics, Spiral and Other Stories is a showcase of Koch’s mastery of the form of comics, as a medium that can contain astonishing forms and tell new stories for our uncertain times. 192pgs colour paperback.


Tom’s Bar
by Giancarlo Berardi & Ivo Milazzo
Epicenter
$14.99

The publisher says:
Tom’s Bar, set in the 1940’s in Chicago, is an expressive grey-tone coloured, emotionally resonating masterwork by Berardi & Milazzo, that has a feel of an old Hollywood noirs, not only by its themes, but also by the way the “camera” moves in the story, as well as the rhythm of the story, which is often dictated by the sounds of blues and jazz that fill the spaces. A French review states: ‘Tom Steele, an old Prohibition gangster, becomes the manager of a seedy bar straight out of an Edward Hopper painting. Tom already belongs to the past, he looks at his contemporaries with an indulgent eye, but devoid of illusions. The old wolf has traveled too much to let the kids, journalists, petty crooks, and high rollers tell him about it.’  Nedeljko Bajalica on https://www.lospaziobianco.it/giancarlo-berardi-e-ivo-milazzo-toms-bar/Lo Spazio Bianco comments: ‘The four stories featuring Tommy Steele are the best this great couple from Italian comics has managed to create in their post-Ken Parker period. Four short stories, which can be read in a relatively short time but nevertheless seem to last an eternity.’ 54pgs B&W paperback.


Traces of Madness: A Graphic Memoir
by Fernando Balius & Mario Pellejer
Graphic Mundi / PSU Press
$19.95

The publisher says:
I want to share my story to understand what is happening to me. Fernando Balius was a perfectly ordinary, if misunderstood, young adult―until he started hearing voices. In Traces of Madness, Fernando describes what it feels like, both mentally and physically, to lose your grip on reality. His life spins out of control when the voices he hears inside his head, depicted in the narrative as a monster, work to destroy his self-esteem and, worse, urge him to hurt himself. Various psychiatric diagnoses and prescribed medications do more harm than good, prompting Fernando to question whether stifling his voices is truly the right path for him. Throughout his experiences, he finds that his connections with others lend him the strength to survive. Mario Pellejer’s moving illustrations bring Nando’s remarkable story to life. This raw and uniquely hopeful graphic memoir shows the power of community and understanding and encourages us all to push back in solidarity against the pervasive stigma surrounding mental illness. Fernando Balius is a philosopher and a contingent worker. He has taken part in various social movements over the last two decades, about the same amount of time that he has been considering the relationship between madness and society. His favourite place to think is on a bike. Mario Pellejer describes himself as a “graphic storyteller” rather than an illustrator. He uses simple drawings full of symbolism to tell genuine stories as a way of contributing something of value to the world. 128pgs colour paperback.


World Without End: An Illustrated Guide to the Climate Crisis
by Jean-Marc Jancovici & Christophe Blain
Particular Books / Zando
£25.00 / $35.00

The publisher says:
Is this the end of the world? Perhaps not. In this eye-opening, hopeful and hugely entertaining bestseller, a climate expert takes a leading graphic novelist on a journey to understand the profound changes that our planet is undergoing. The scientist, Jean-Marc Jancovici, walks us through just about everything: from the innermost workings of our minds to toothbrushes, office jobs, and oil; ancient history and modern geopolitics; economics and ecology; the unfolding climate crisis and its consequences for us all. As he describes the world we live in - a world whose future is deeply uncertain - the artist, Christophe Blain, listens and draws. Coming face to face with global warming, the unlikely duo - along with Mother Nature, Pop Eye and Jiminy Cricket, among others - create a picture of what the solution to our predicament actually looks like. Yes, we have a fossil-fuel problem, but simply switching to renewable energy won’t fix it. We can and must rethink everything: our energy supply, our economies and our whole world. They leave us with an inspiring vision of the future in which food, education, housing, transport and communities - in other words, all of us - work together and, with a few technological fixes, succeed in creating a world without end. 196pgs colour hardcover.

Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis, says:
“Masterful and unforgettable… A testament to the power of the graphic novel.”

Posted: February 24, 2024

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1001 Comics  You Must Read Before You Die edited by Paul Gravett





Comics Art by Paul Gravett from Tate Publishing

Comics Unmasked by Paul Gravett and John Harris Dunning from The British Library