The Woods (The Woods #1)

Tynion and Dialynas (the Wynd series) reteam to launch a tense, high-concept graphic novel series. Students attending Milwaukee’s Bay Point Preparatory High School are navigating evergreen teenage challenges—Sanami Ota listens to Karen Jacobs’s college anxieties, Calder MaCready streaks past student council president Maria Ramirez, Principal Beaumont argues with several teens—when all 452 students and 64 faculty members are inexplicably transported to a hostile alien moon. There, the new arrivals struggle to survive among carnivorous extraterrestrial predators and other abducted groups while attempting to build new societies. As science-minded Bay Point teen Adrian Roth leads the charge in unraveling the mystery of their capture, sensitively written subplots explore the intersectionally diverse characters’ backstories: gentle Ben Stone wrestles with coming out as gay to his demanding father while harboring feelings for Adrian, who is straight, and Sanami, a skilled survivalist raised off the grid, must bridge the cultural gap with conventionally raised Karen, who may hold the key to their rescue. Claustrophobic artwork in otherworldly purples and greens renders an exceptionally eerie alien world, amplifying narrative tension and the characters’ feelings of disorientation in a story that deftly fuses science fiction, survival adventure, and adolescent drama. Ages 14–up. (May)