Zahra's Paradise
Amir and Kahlil (Roaring Brook/First Second)
An Iranian blogger goes missing and his family enters a hellish twilight zone of obfuscation in a story that captures the uncertainty of living under religious dogma.
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Day Tripper
Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon (DC/Vertigo)
Using a series of important events in the life of one man, this stunning work repeatedly uses his death at the end of each of these events to propel the readers into a new and illuminating excursion through another aspect of the man's life.
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Hark! A Vagrant!
Kate Beaton (Drawn & Quarterly)
Jane Austen, the Great Gatsby, and Napoleon are all satirized with a knowing line in this very funny collection from the acclaimed Web comic.
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The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media
Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld (Norton)
Host of NPR's On the Media, Gladstone uses a cartoon persona to take the reader on a thoughtful and entertaining excursion through the history of the media from ancient Rome to the rise of digital technology.
PW review
Love and Rockets: New Stories #4
Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez (Fantagraphics)
Even in a long career of masterpieces, Jaime's story about missed opportunities for happiness is a revelation, while Gilbert continues to cement his place as the Jorodowsky of comics with a vampire tale.
Infinite Kung Fu
Kagan McLeod (Top Shelf)
The traditional martial arts saga gets a lively comics updating with this tale of Lei Kung, who must defeat the heads of the emperor's five armies to free a land.
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Finder: Voice
Carla Speed McNeil (Dark Horse)
In this epic work of science fiction, Rachel Grosvenor, an outcast in a world ruled by a complex network of clans, looks to find a place for herself by attempting to join a very exclusive clan.
Big Questions
Anders Nilsen (Drawn & Quarterly)
A massive meditation on the meaning of life unfolds as a flock of cartoon birds deal with the questions raised when an unexploded bomb lands among them.
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Farm 54
Galit & Gilad Seliktar (Fanfare Ponent Mon)
Created by a brother and sister team, these three haunting, semiautobiographical stories follow a young Israeli girl as she grows up in the 1980s and later during her military service in the occupied territories.
Habibi
Craig Thompson (Pantheon)
Two escaped slaves find themselves prisoners of others' desires in a sea of Islamic-inspired calligraphy and lines in this lyrical fantasy.
PW review
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