This season features such marquee names as Alison Bechdel, Peter Kuper, George Takei, and Craig Thompson, alongside not-to-be-missed debuts and discoveries across genres.
Top 10
Black Cohosh
Eagle Valiant Brosi. Drawn & Quarterly, June 17 ($24.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-77046-777-4)
Drawn in a throwback 1970s style, Brosi’s debut graphic memoir recalls his back-to-the-land upbringing in an Appalachian commune, and how his health crises forced his family to interact with the systems they resisted.
Ginseng Roots
Craig Thompson. Pantheon, Apr. 29 ($35, ISBN 978-0-593-70077-8)
The Eisner-winning creator of Blankets revisits his youth spent working alongside his siblings on a Wisconsin ginseng farm, interweaving this personal history with an account of the root’s global migration.
The Girl Who Flew Away
Lee Dean. Iron Circus, Mar. 18 ($28 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-63899-139-7)
Dean’s shimmering comics art “immerses readers in sun-drenched, claustrophobic beauty in this compassionate saga about a young woman’s awakening in the 1970s,” per PW’s starred review.
Insectopolis: A Natural History
Peter Kuper. Norton, May 13 ($35, ISBN 978-1-324-03571-8)
This ambitious work from Eisner winner Kuper tracks entomology’s intersections with history and culture as it follows ants, bees, and cicadas to a library exhibition about their evolution and connection to humans. Also included are profiles of E.O. Wilson, Rachel Carson, and other naturalists.
It Rhymes with Takei
George Takei et al. Top Shelf, June 24 ($29.99, ISBN 978-1-60309-574-7)
Star Trek actor and LGBTQ+ activist Takei tells his life story, including living in the closet during the height of his celebrity, finding love, and coming out in his late 60s.
Precious Rubbish
Kayla E. Fantagraphics, Apr. 8 ($29.99, ISBN 978-1-68396-928-0)
In this bold debut, indie cartoonist Kayla E. tackles her traumatic childhood with a “flawless pastiche of commercial art and design,” according to PW’s starred review. “This four-color atomic bomb of a comic signals the arrival of a formidable talent.”
Spent: A Comic Novel
Alison Bechdel. Mariner, May 20 ($29.99, ISBN 978-0-06-327892-9)
The creator of Fun Home skewers herself, her milieu, and the vagaries of fame in this autofiction about the sudden celebrity of a politically progressive Vermont cartoonist coincidentally named Alison Bechdel.
To Broadway
Maurane Mazars. Abrams ComicArts, May 13 ($25.99, ISBN 978-1-4197-7992-3)
Recalling the fluid style of Jules Feiffer, this debut graphic novel follows a young gay dancer in Berlin who is inspired by a post-WWII romance with an American to chase his heart to Broadway.
Tongues
Anders Nilsen. Pantheon, Mar. 11 ($35, ISBN 978-1-5247-4720-6)
Per PW’s starred review, Ignatz winner Nilsen “brings an expansive post-colonialist perspective to the myth of Prometheus” in this “exhilarating” first volume of his epic series featuring a 13-year-old East African girl on a world-changing mission.
We All Got Something
Lawrence Lindell. Drawn & Quarterly, Apr. 29 ($21.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-77046-773-6)
Lindell follows up Blackward with a “poignant” and “candid” graphic memoir, per PW’s review, about reckoning with PTSD and the healing power of art.
Lit, Boom, Kapow
this season’s roster of graphic novels and nonfiction adapted from prose classics and contemporary bestsellers is headlined by the long-awaited completion of Paul Auster’s New York trilogy.
Animal Pound
Tom King and Peter Gross. Boom, Apr. 1 ($29.99, ISBN 978-1-63796-977-9)
Eisner winner King sets George Orwell’s Animal Farm arc in a cruel city pound, where the incarcerated pets rise up against their jailers, only for one of the revolution’s leaders to turn dictatorial.
The Compleat Angler
Gareth Brookes and Izaak Walton. SelfMadeHero, June 17 ($19.99, ISBN 978-1-914224-27-0)
Brookes’s 17th-century fishing manual—which also meditates on the divides within society and nature—gets illustrated by Walton to highlight contemporary resonances.
A Cure for Chaos
Mencius and C.C. Tsai, trans. by Brian Bruya. Princeton Univ., Apr. 1 ($22.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-691-17981-0)
The tenets, moral instruction, and thought experiments of fourth-century BCE Chinese philosopher Mencius are rendered in tidy comics by the Taiwanese cartoonist of The Ways of Zen.
The Curse of Monte Cristo
David Dabel et al. Andrews McMeel, Apr. 15 ($18.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5248-9243-2)
Alexandre Dumas’s classic novel gets another comic adaptation, this time with supernatural twists and the count recast as Black idealist Edmond Dantès, caught up in the Haitian revolution.
Parable of the Talents
Octavia E. Butler et al. Abrams ComicArts, Apr. 22 ($25.99, ISBN 978-1-4197-4948-3)
Damian Duffy, John Jennings, and David Brame follow up their Afrofuturist graphic adaptation of Parable of the Sower, now turning focus to Lauren Olamina’s daughter, Asha Vere, as she attempts to fulfill her mother’s legacy.
Paul Auster’s the New York Trilogy: City of Glass, Ghosts, the Locked Room
Paul Auster et al. Pantheon, Apr. 8 ($35, ISBN 978-0-553- 38764-3)
Auster’s literary mystery trilogy gets adapted by cartoonists Paul Karasik, Lorenzo Mattotti, and David Mazzucchelli. Included is the seminal 1994 graphic novel City of Glass, which PW’s review called “stunning” and “a masterful addition to the growing library of serious comics works.”
The Red Badge of Courage
Stephen Crane and Steve Cuzor. Abrams ComicArts, May 13 ($25.99, ISBN 978-1-4197-7989-3; $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-4197-7990-9)
The horrors of the Civil War are depicted through the eyes of a young soldier on the front lines in this graphic adaptation of Crane’s 1894 novel.
Wicked
Gregory Maguire and Scott Hampton. Morrow, Mar. 11 ($25.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-06-339107-9)
Just in time to ride the hype of the film, the reimagined origin story for the green villainess of Oz gets its first graphic adaptation.
A Wizard of Earthsea
Ursula K. Le Guin and Fred Fordham. Clarion, Mar. 11 ($26.99, ISBN 978-0-06-328576-7)
Fordham follows up his graphic adaptation of Brave New World with Le Guin’s classic fantasy tales of the sorcerer Ged, who cheats death and slays dragons. Ages 13 and up.
The Writer
Ben Berkowitz et al. Dark Horse, Apr. 22 ($19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5067-4461-2)
Tales of Jewish folklore are retold through the cartoon characters of a Jewish comics artist who must navigate a cursed universe
populated with demons and Nazis.
Whodunit
Mayhem, murder, and jaded gumshoes—complete with retro fedoras—are trending, as evidenced by spring’s wicked lineup of sci-fi, gothic horror, and wise-guy takes on the whodunit.
Dimwood
Richard Corben. Dark Horse, June 10 ($39.99, ISBN 978-1-5067-3998-4)
A woman who has lost parts of her memory returns to her childhood home of Dimwood Mansion, where she searches through its secrets floor by floor to understand why so many people she loved have disappeared—or died.
Gilt Frame
Matt Kindt and Margie Kraft Kindt. Dark Horse, Mar. 4 ($29.99, ISBN 978-1-5067-4594-7)
Orphan Sam and his antiques-loving auntie travel the world solving crimes. When they stumble on a terrible murder scene in France, they jump on the case—hoping to best their rival on the Paris police force.
The Girl Called Cthulhu (Minky Woodcock #3)
Cynthia Von Buhler. Titan Comics, May 27 ($24.99, ISBN 978-1-78774-329-8)
The sexy, slinky detective Minky returns in a WWII-era occult scene mystery in which Aleister Crowley hires her to defend him from a murder accusation—and she ends up in the drink with H.P. Lovecraft’s sea creature.
Model Five Murder
Tan Juan Gee. Silver Sprocket, June 25 ($15.99 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-88620-070-6)
On the space station Tansang Loop, cyborgs and androids live and work alongside humans. When a “model five” detective is murdered, another cyborg in his class takes up his final case.
The Murder Next Door: A Graphic Memoir
Hugh D’Andrade. Street Noise, Feb. 4 ($20.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-951491-35-2)
Though it starts with a dead body, and culminates with the killer’s reveal, this is far from a traditional true crime procedural, according to PW’s review, which describes the graphic memoir as “an empathetic look at the lifelong journey of finding bright amidst the dark.”
Muted
Miranda Mundt. Ten Speed Graphic, July 8 ($29.99, ISBN 978-0-593-83679-8; $22.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-593-83679-8)
This witchy coming-of-age tale circles around the mysterious deaths of the mother and sister of wayward Camille of the
magical Severin clan, who returns to the Louisiana mansion where she lost them.
One for Sorrow
Jamie McKelvie. Dstlry, May 20 ($30, ISBN 978-1-962265-06-5)
The cocreator of the Wicked + the Divine series steps out on his own for this graphic novel set in 1900s England, where a mystic and a disgraced detective team up to stop a murderer targeting London’s criminal gangs.
Perfect Crime Party
Edited by Kel McDonald. Iron Circus, July 8 ($30 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-63899-150-2)
This comics anthology collects tales of misdeeds, misadventures, and mystery from the likes of David Brothers, Amy Chase, Ryan Estrada, Cat Ferris, Van Jensen, and Jeff Smith.
Prodigy: Slaves of Mars
Mark Millar and Stefano Landini. Dark Horse, Apr. 29 ($19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5067-4489-6)
The mystery genre jets to space in this sci-fi tale where a bored billionaire solves cases for kicks—but his greatest obsession is his own father’s murder, and what it has to do with a threat from planet Mars.
Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business
Raymond Chandler, Arvind Ethan David, and Ilias Kyriazis. Pantheon, May 20 ($29, ISBN 978-0-553-38759-9)
L.A. detective Philip Marlowe gets the comics treatment in this graphic novel, which brings rich patrons, dazzling dames, suckered sons, and other side characters to stalk through panels and gutters.
Rifters
Brian Posehn, Chris Johnson, and Joe Trohman. Image, Apr. 29 ($16.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5343-8760-7)
In this futuristic mystery, Fenton and Geller are buddy cops who hop through temporal space to stop miscreants who misuse time travel.
Sam and Twitch Case Files
Todd McFarlane and Szymon Kudranski. Image, Apr. 29 ($9.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5343-9319-6)
The trench coat–wearing detectives from McFarlane’s Spawn universe return in a new arc where each case leads to another grisly crime scene.
String
Paul Tobin Carlos Javier Olivares, and Sara Colella. Mad Cave, May 20 ($17.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-960578-83-9)
A psychic with a very specific ability—to see a thread that attaches either lovers to their beloved, or murderers to their victims—suddenly sees she has her own, but doesn’t know if she’s about to be killed or destined to do the deed.
Super Goofs
There’s perennial chatter that comics fans are hitting superhero fatigue, but more ironic takes on the genre are soaring this season.
Barfly
Patton Oswalt et al. Dark Horse, Apr. 1 ($19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5067-4432-2)
A mutant fly named $#!%eater buzzes gloomily about the Lower Lair bar ever since he lost his crime boss. Collaborators Kyle Starks and Ryan Browne get this bug swatted off his barstool in a side story from Oswalt’s Minor Threats series.
The Domain
Chip Zdarsky, Rachael Stott, and Eren Angiolini. Image, Mar. 25 ($16.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5343-6416-5)
In a story spun out of the Eisner-winning Public Domain series, three buddies hijack super powers, but they’re rights-managed, so only one of the trio can load up at a time.
Einstein & the Immortal (Redcoat #1)
Geoff Johns et al. Image, Mar. 18 ($14.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5343-7318-1)
A rascally British soldier gets turned immortal in the American Revolution by the mystical secret society called the Founding Fathers (Washington and Hancock were in on it).
He Lost His Keys in Space
Luke Milton and Lizzy Lang. Black Panel, June 24 ($24.99, ISBN 978-1-990521-39-3)
Spaceman ambassador Vega Ulysses can’t return to Earth because he’s misplaced his keys among the stars, and rallies a motley crew to help.
The Holy Roller
Andy Samberg, Joe Trohman, and Rick Remender. Image, Mar. 25 ($19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5343-9732-3)
Pro bowler Levi Coen returns to his childhood town that’s been overrun by fascists and fights Nazis by throwing strikes—right in their faces.
The Horizon Experiment
Edited by Pornsak Pichetshote. Image, Apr. 29 ($16.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5343-3700-8)
This anthology including Tananarive Due and Sabir Pirzada upends expectations by swapping the race, background, and motivations of classic heroes and villains. Entries feature a Chinese superspy modeled after James Bond and an Indiana Jones type who returns artifacts to Indigenous cultures.
Lester of the Lesser Gods
Eric Powell, Lucky Yates, and Gideon Kendall. Albatross Funnybooks, Mar. 11 ($24.99, ISBN 978-1-5067-4453-7)
The illegitimate son of the Nordic god Odin is a live-action role playernamed Lester who must avenge humanity against Will Frye the Technomancer Guy.
Living Hell
Caitlin Yarsky. Dark Horse, July 8 ($19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5067-4387-5)
A reluctant demon turns his back on evil to embrace family life with a wife and kids. But when a bounty hunter emerges from the underworld, he’s forced to join the chase for other demons among humans.
The Pedestrian
Joey Esposito and Sean Gorman. Magma Comix, Feb. 11 ($19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-963547-06-1)
A rapidly walking vigilante gets frequently thwarted by his careful adherence to traffic signs in what PW’s review calls a “promising departure from the superhero norm.”
Return to New York (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1)
Jason Aaron et al. IDW, June 24 ($19.99 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-88724-306-1)
The turtles are back in this series opener that finds them in disparate locations: Raphael’s in jail, Michelangelo’s in Japan, Leo’s backpacking to the Ganges, and Donatello’s trapped in a terrible zoo for mutants.
Santos Sisters
Greg & Fake. Fantagraphics, Mar. 11 ($24.99, ISBN 979-8-8750-0051-5)
The Santos sisters’ chill life in Laguna, Calif., gets upended by medallions that transform them into masked acrobatic gunslingers.
Skate or Die
Louie Joyce. IDW, Apr. 29 ($17.99 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-88724-186-9)
When Varan, a kaiju in the Godzilla universe, starts marching on Australia, it’s up to a bunch of punk skateboarders to save the nation.
The Toxic Avenger
Matt Bors and Fred Harper. Ahoy, Apr. 1 ($17.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-952090-39-4)
Bors resurrects the 1980s gross-out character, whose strength, size, and terrible deformations are due to a toxic waste bath, for a tale set in today’s climate change anxiety era.
Adult Comics & Graphic Novels Longlist
23rd St.
The Harrowing Game by Antoine Revoy (May 27, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-250-24831-2; $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-250-24832-9). Souls of dead folks gather for an annual storytelling contest, where the most terrifying tale wins, and three ghosts (a girl, a boy, and an old woman) are pitted in a particularly brutal war of the imagination.
Saint Catherine by Anna Meyer (Apr. 29, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-250-82272-7; $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-250-36437-1). Young professional Catherine has mostly shaken off the superstitions of her Irish American Catholic upbringing, but the
very first time she misses Sunday mass,
she’s possessed by a demon, forcing her to turn to DIY exorcisms.
Abrams ComicArts
From Above: An (Info)graphic Novel by Martin Panchaud, trans. by Allison M. Charette (July 8, $25.99, ISBN 978-1-4197-7666-3), views the movements of its characters as if they’re dots on a data plot, as the wildly changing fortunes of one misfit teen get mapped out and analyzed.
Alien
Dark Magic by Peter Milligan and Fred Van Lente (Feb. 4, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-962201-45-2). This entry in the reboot of the Valiant universe’s Road to Resurgence series finds Punk Mambo thrown into the raucous Punk Witch Project in a super-
natural London.
Andrews McMeel
I Hated You in High School by Kathleen Gros (Apr. 15, $18.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5248-8953-1). When a down-on-her-luck barista visits her hometown, she finds out her parents have a new tenant—a girl who happens to be her former high school nemesis, and is about to become her unexpected crush.
Avery Hill
Second Shift by Kit Anderson (July 5, $18.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-917355-20-9). Birdie is one of a handful of employees watching comets in the space station Terracorp, with only virtual reality to keep the drudgery at bay. When she treks out of bounds, her sense of reality fractures.
Avon
Les Normaux by Janine Janssen and S. Al Sabado (Feb. 11, $30, ISBN 978-0-06-342984-0; $21 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-06-341467-9). Set in a fantastical version of France that “literalizes the magic of a Parisian romance,” per PW’s review, this webtoon-to-book chronicles the gentle misadventures of demisexual Sébastien and his vampire-supermodel boyfriend, Elia.
Black Dog & Leventhal
The Novel Life of Jane Austen: A Graphic Biography by Janine Barchas and Isabel Greenberg (Apr. 29, $28, ISBN 978-0-7624-8937-4) finds Austen scholar Barchas pairing up with bestselling cartoonist Greenberg for a narrative portrait of the 19th-century author full of period details and insights into how Austin’s personal life was reflected in her classic characters.
Black Panel
Disconnect by Magnus Merklin (Apr. 22, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-990521-37-9). When the remaining two bandmates reunite a year after the third in their rock trio dies, they discover—and decide to record—one of his unfinished songs.
Boom! Studios
Minor Arcana by Jeff Lemire (Mar. 25, $17.99 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-89215-176-4). The jaded daughter of a dime store psychic returns to her childhood home when her mother falls ill and discovers that what she thought were tarot tricks are grounded in real magic.
Celadon
You Can Never Die: A Graphic Memoir by Harry Bliss (Apr. 29, $32, ISBN 978-1-250-88368-1). New Yorker cartoonist Bliss transforms gag comics about his relationship with his dog, Penny, into a graphic memoir that covers growing up, family drama, love and relationships, and mortality. 50,000-copy announced first printing.
Chronicle
Mama Needs a Minute! A Candid, Funny, All-Too-Relatable Comic Memoir about Surviving Motherhood by Mary Catherine Starr (Mar. 11, $24.95, ISBN 978-1-7972-2686-6) expands on Starr’s popular, feminism-infused Instagram comics for a graphic memoir on the absurdities and indignities of motherhood.
Conundrum
Salt Green Death by Katarina Thorsen (May 20, $30 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-77262-106-8) mines archival documents for a graphic history about a young man who was institutionalized in Canada in 1948 following a suicide attempt and endured horrific treatments at psychiatric hospitals.
Dark Horse
Kill All Immortals by Zack Kaplan et al. (Apr. 29, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5067-4100-0). A billionaire family of Nordic bankers who seem to pull the strings of global politics are, as it turns out, immortal Vikings. Trouble arises when the only
daughter starts a mutiny.
DC
The Boy Wonder by Juni Ba (Feb. 11, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-7995-0032-2) reimagines the story of Batman’s sidekick like a classic fable, where Robin grows up as a young prince in a clan led by his grandfather, Ra’s al Ghul, and discovers he’s destined to join up with the Dark Knight among a series of adopted sons.
Douglas & McIntyre
The Mother: A Graphic Memoir by Rachel Deutsch (Apr. 22, $18.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-77162-432-9) chronicles the New Yorker cartoonist’s conflicted desire to become a parent but not lose her sense of self—or her marriage—in the process.
Drawn & Quarterly
Checked Out by Katie Fricas (May 20, $27.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-77046-781-1) stars a queer New York City librarian slash aspiring cartoonist, who is on the hunt for love—and lore about carrier pigeons, the subject of her WWI-era graphic novel in progress.
Muybridge by Guy Delisle, trans. by Helge Dascher and Rob Aspinall (Apr. 29, $24.95, ISBN 978-1-77046-772-9). The Angoulême award-winner documents the life of 1870s photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who
on assignment by a railroad baron to capture the speed of running horses, invented time-lapse photography.
There’s No Time Like the Present by Paul B. Rainey (Apr. 1, $24.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-77046-756-9). In a reality where time travel is briefly available, people peek into the future and either learn to live the banal fates in store for them or seek to change their destiny, with varied consequences.
Dstlry Media
Time Waits by Chip Zdarsky and David Brothers (Mar. 25, $30, ISBN 978-1-962265-16-4). A time traveler from the future escapes the orbit of evil forces that sent him back to the 2020s, and falls in love with a small-town law woman, which puts her in harms way from the assassins coming to
collect him.
Fantagraphics
Life Drawing: A Love and Rockets Collection by Jaime Hernandez (Feb. 25, $24.99, ISBN 979-8-8750-0049-2) collects a decade’s worth of tales featuring the quasi–love triangle between Tonta, Maggie, and Ray—Maggie’s husband and Tonta’s teacher/object of infatuation.
Season of the Roses by Chloé Wary, trans. by Jenna Allen (Mar. 25, $29.99, ISBN 979-8-8750-0042-3), stars the teen captain of a Parisian soccer team who must beat their male counterparts when the booster club threatens to defund them.
Fantoons
Ella Fitzgerald by Ngozi Nwadiogbu (Feb. 18, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-970047-29-5) documents the jazz musician’s career and life against the backdrop of racism and segregation, from her debut at the Apollo to her harmonies with Duke Ellington.
Gallery
Cry When the Baby Cries by Becky Barnicoat (Mar. 18, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-66804-801-6) expands into a graphic memoir Barnicoat’s “Shouts & Murmurs” piece from the New Yorker about the seemingly impossible demands of contemporary parenting advice.
Graphic Mundi
Heartcore by Štěpánka Jislová, trans. by Martha Kuhlman (May 13, $29.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-63779-090-8), unpacks the author’s pattern of dysfunctional romantic relationships, asking fundamental questions about the constraints of gender roles and the science of attraction
and commitment.
Gungnir
Existence Equation: What Is the Price of the Stars? by Matthew Medney and Don Macnab-Stark (July 15, $22.99, ISBN 978-1-962594-06-6). In the technologically advanced society of 2293, adolescents must choose at age 18 whether to forgo their humanity and become an android space explorer, or stay a person, mortal and earthbound.
Haymarket
Trouble! at Coal Creek by Austin Sauerbrei (June 3, $29.95 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-88890-376-6) presents a graphic history of the 1891 Coal Creek War, an uprising that united immigrant miners and Black prisoners loaned out for heavy labor in Tennessee’s coal mines.
Headshell
Def Leppard’s Hysteria by Phil Collen, Eliot Rahal, and Alex Schlitz (July 29, $24.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-63849-238-2). The rockers spin a fictional tale in which indie band Darkside gets their break by way of a mystical, cursed guitar, only to see their fortunes turn right before they join Def Leppard on stage. 75,000-copy announced first printing.
IDW
The Exorcism at 1600 Penn by Hannah Rose May and Vanesa Del Rey (July 15, $21.99 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-88724-317-7). The first woman to be elected president juggles uniting a fractured nation, parenting her two teenagers, and fighting a demonic entity that’s invaded the White House.
Image
Grommets by Rick Remender, Brian Posehn, and Brett Parson (Mar. 25, $16.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5343-6648-0), celebrates the friendship of two skateboarders in the 1980s California suburbs, who escape their difficult homes to ride together.
Iron Circus
Foothold: Rigsby Wi by S.E. Case (Mar. 4, $15 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-63899-141-0) centers on a group of girl friends in the early aughts in small-town Wisconsin, whose bonds are tested when two of them decide to attend the homecoming dance together.
Living the Line
The Rabagoo Race by Garresh (July 8, $15 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-961581-06-7). The Scottish cartoonist imagines a deadly boat race where captains battle sea monsters and conniving opponents as hundreds of ships are winnowed down to the final three contenders.
Mad Cave Studios
Prairie Gods by Shane Connery Volk (May 13, $17.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-960578-81-5). The little prairie town of Broadacres plays host to an overflow of supernatural showdowns—like a driver’s race against the devil—and a variety of quirky locals.
Magma Comix
Gemini Blues (Greaser #1) by Darick Robertson and Stephen B. Jones (Mar. 11, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-963547-05-4). Buddy, an everyman who repairs alien vessels in a roadside desert garage on the outskirts of a hermetically sealed Las Vegas, gets into trouble when a biker gang rides up to his shop.
Marvel Universe
Iron Man by Spencer Ackerman and Julius Ohta (June 24, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-302-95881-7). Weapon master Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, gets a reboot courtesy of Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Ackerman. This time around, multinational corporations and capitalism are the evil forces Iron Man battles, when his company Stark Unlimited goes on the bidding block.
NBM
Surrounded: America’s First School for Black Girls, 1832 by Wilfred Lupano and Stéphane Fert, trans. by Montana Kane
(Feb. 11, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-68112-348-6). More than 30 years before the abolition of slavery, a modest school for girls in Connecticut began enrolling and educating young Black women.
This graphic account follows how the ensuing racist backlash took
its director Prudence Crandall all the way to the Supreme Court.
New York Review Comics
Misery of Love by Yvan Alagbé, trans. by Donald Nicholson-Smith (May 13, $27.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-68137-918-0), examines
the trauma of France’s racist colonial legacy in Africa through the memories of a Black French woman whose family reunites at her grandfather’s funeral.
Oni
Night People by Barry Gifford et al (Mar. 11, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-63715-614-8). Lost Highway screenwriter Gifford teams up with
comics writer Chris Condon and artists Brian Level, Alexandre Tefenkgi, Artyom, and Marco Finnegan for a quartet of psychological horror comics set in the Deep South, taking on everything from religious fanaticism to murder.
PM Press
Anarchy in the Big Easy: A History of Revolt, Rebellion, and Resurgence by Max Cafard and Vulpes (Mar. 11, $16.95 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-88744-100-9) documents the history of anarchist radicalism in New Orleans, covering enslaved people’s uprisings, labor strikes, post-Katrina protests, and the recent destruction of Confederate monuments.
Pow Pow
The Mongoose by Joana Mosi (May 13, $22.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-2-925114-47-5). Julia and her brother Joel are living together in their grandmother’s home—overwhelmed by grief but unwilling to talk about their loss—when Julia becomes fixated on tracking down a mongoose that got loose in the garden.
Rosarium
The Adventures of Lion Man by John Jennings et al. (May 6, $12.95 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-9866146-7-0), recasts Orrin C. Evans’s 1947 Black superhero in a spy tale torn from the pages of All Negro Comics, with a script by Zimbabwean writer Yvette Lisa Ndlovu and art by Bill Campbell, Damian Duffy, and David Brame.
Silver Sprocket
The Confessional by Paige Hender (Mar. 19, $29.99, ISBN 979-8-88620-061-4). In 1920s New Orleans, young vampire Cora strikes
up an affair with a Catholic priest, who discovers her supernatural identity and proposes an unholy compromise.
Storm King
The Amusement Park by George A. Romero, Jeff Whitehead, and Ryan Carr (May 20, $21.99 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-9887285-7-3), adapts Romero’s 1975 film about abused elderly people riding a horrific roller coaster that symbolizes an indifferent society.
Street Noise
Everything Is Fine, I’ll Just Work Harder: Confessions of a Former Badass by Cara Gormally (Apr. 1, $19.99 trade paper,
ISBN 978-1-951491-37-6). Queer cartoonist Gormally’s graphic memoir debut documents how their busy life gets frozen in place when the person who raped them years ago contacts them over social media—and won’t quit trying to “friend” them.
Ten Speed Graphic
Remember Us to Life: A Graphic Memoir by Joanna Rubin Dranger, trans. by Maura Tavares (Apr. 8, $40, ISBN 978-0-593-83690-3). Winner of the Nordic Council Literature prize, this hybrid work combines comics art, photos, and archival documents to recount the history of Dranger’s displaced and murdered Jewish ancestors, as well as the complicity of the Swedish
government’s neutral stance in WWII.
Thames & Hudson
Huxley by Ben Mauro (June 24, $35 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-500-29843-5). A special effects director on Elysium and other films, Mauro turns to comics with a postapocalyptic vision of Earth run by AI-created clones protected by high-tech armored soldiers, where a robot named Huxley might prove the key to humanity’s salvation.
Timber
Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance by Denali Sai Nalamalapu (May 13, $21.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-64326-523-0) assembles six profiles of activism based on interviews with protesters against the Appalachian Mountain Valley Pipeline, including
a teacher, a nurse, a “seed keeper,” and a grandmother who chains herself to her car to save her family’s farm.
Top Shelf
Midnight School (Shadowplay #1) by Sam Fonseca (Feb. 11, $24.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-60309-548-8). The Brazilian cartoonist’s debut sets a horror story in a school where depraved teachers lecture students wearing torture devices, as a team of youngsters seek to break free.
Vault Comics
Something Crawled Out: The Complete Series by Son M. and Madcursed (Mar. 4, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-63849-228-3). Eddie’s a deadbeat in a Midwest nowhere, working the night shift at a rest stop and sleeping her days away—until her sister goes missing, she gets pulled into the investigation of a series of disappearances and murders, and finds evil residing close to home.
White Lion
Harry Styles: A Graphic Biography by Filippo Zambello (Apr. 15, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-83600-106-5) examines the life and career of musician and actor Styles, including his romances and the ways in which his fashion choices push gender norms, through the lens of queer activism.