Kamio and Nakahara (Last Inning) reunite for a brisk crime thriller with a soft heart and streetwise charm. Former gangster Hachiya “Bare Knuckle Fighter” Ken has barely stepped out of prison when trouble finds him in the form of Aoi Hana, the nine-year-old daughter of the man he just served time for killing. Cute but pushy, Aoi thinks Ken can help with finding her mother, who abandoned her. With an assist from dirty cop Natsuki Momoka and a pair of mysterious keys, they just might succeed. But the yakuza are on the same trail, and in no time Ken gets wrapped up in a web of criminal alliances, political conspiracies, and old grudges. Nakahara’s rubbery facial expressions, reminiscent of Naoki Urasawa, lend personality to the fast-paced action. There’s a bit too much plot to cram into one volume, but the characters are well developed. Aoi hides the pain of losing her family beneath a bossy facade and Ken struggles to rise out of the underworld while still issuing threats like, “I’ll make you feel the weight of my life with my fists!!” It’s a swift and satisfying thrill ride. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 11/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

French cartoonist and picture book illustrator Chalvin delivers a dark and witty parable of how authoritarians seize control. When a power-hungry crow named Korbak descends upon the pigeon populace, he clocks their passivity (“It really is a miracle the species has survived”) and uses manipulation and threats to establish dominance. Early on, he brutally kills one hapless member of the flock who dares to contradict him, and the rest quickly fall in line. An egalitarian-minded gull tries to intervene, but the pigeons show little capacity or even desire to think for themselves. She eventually manages to talk them into holding an election and runs against Korbak. Unfortunately, the pigeons prefer Korbak’s paternalistic sloganeering (“Vote for Tranquility”) over the gull’s mission statements promising “radical change.” “It’ll be total chaos,” Korbak says of the gull’s efforts at establishing democracy. “They don’t want us to ask them what they want!” Chalvin’s elegant black-and-white charcoal-style drawings perfectly match the minimalist story line, while the inherent humor of his cartoony anthropomorphic characters and quippy dialogue helps this bleak allegory go down easily. The result is just pointed enough to draw blood. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 11/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

Prejean’s essential work of moral literature, first published in 1993, receives a suitably stirring graphic adaptation scripted by Vines, her longtime collaborator, with Kenyan-born Swedish artist Grünewald. A member of the Sisters of St. Joseph in New Orleans, Prejean accepted an invitation in 1982 to correspond with a convicted murderer on death row. Through prison visits with Elmo Patrick Sonnier, she sees his innate humanity and is left torn between her distaste of legalized killing by a government “which can’t be trusted to collect taxes equitably, much less decide which of its citizens to kill,” the horror of his crime, and her compassion for the victims and their families. She also documents her unnerving encounters with recalcitrant inmate Robert Lee Willie. Prejean strives to grant both men grace in their last moments, and takes political and legal action to end what she comes to view as an amoral system. Vines weaves in mini-dissertations in graphic essay form on the death penalty’s racial and class inequities. The ephemeral, sometimes sketchbook-like art includes striking color spots and fanciful touches (birds and other creatures occasionally deliver some of the text) that occasionally distract, but the central narrative remains strongly argued and generously told. This is poised to bring Prejean’s classic to a new readership. Agent: Julia Masnik, Watkins Loomis. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 11/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

Mustard (Child X) pairs a heady script with Filomena’s introspective paintings in this gloomy-mythic tale set in a bleak futuristic version of Los Angeles and styled after Shaun Tan’s The Arrival. Growing up in a melting pot of refugees, sex workers, and gangs, young Johnny James feels lonely and rejected. As he sleeps on a cockroach-infested floor, regularly witnesses attempted murders, and eats his meals next to corpses, he turns to art for relief. He’s shown having “lost himself drawing” when left alone all day (his parents couldn’t afford school fees) in a sweltering “box” of an apartment, “burning up in the searing heat of the Long Drought.” The saving grace is that Johnny finds art all around him: on gang members’ tattooed faces (“beautiful and terrifying at the same time”), in the “lush darkness” of someone playing violin in the distance, and in his dreams. Tapping into this “genius” sparks a supernatural power: he levitates, brings rains to quench the drought, and saves a young girl from a violent fate. Filomena’s imaginative art, which recalls Eric Drooker, paints a haunting backdrop, but the sometimes didactic script can feel choppy, and the climax is particularly disjointed. Though visually striking, this doesn’t quite land the profound moments to match the art. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 11/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

These linked vignettes by Vila (Milky Way) capture in astringent detail the backbiting and resentments triggered by the Covid pandemic. Across a dozen stories set in the Italian suburb of Padua, the cartoonist follows a loose network of 20-somethings—roommates and neighbors, frenemies and exes—who navigate interpersonal turbulence in the pressure cooker environment. In one entry, husky Fabio’s stealth purchase of a bag of Twinkies becomes a cruel running joke on a camping trip with his girlfriend’s friends. In another, Irene unleashes her lockdown rage on a jogger flouting quarantine restrictions outside her window. While climate anxiety and the war in Ukraine rumble in the background, Vila zeroes in on micro-indignities and transgressions: forgotten masks, faked negative Covid tests, cranky pod-politics. Characters slide into one another’s stories, if only in passing conversation, as Vila maps a tangled social web. Later episodes tilt toward the speculative, imagining a fresh crisis on the heels of lockdown. A versatile stylist, Vila pivots from impersonal, tightly gridded sequences to harshly lit close-ups that revel in the pores, stubble, and ruddy complexions of his characters’ all-too-human features. The result is a claustrophobic tableau of petty grievances and global catastrophe that’s unsparing, sardonic, and painfully recognizable. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 11/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

For this entry in the Absolute line, which reimagines the backstory for classic heroes, Camp (the Ultimates series) and Rodriguez (the Defenders series) offer a fresh and resonant take on Martian Manhunter, the perennial Justice Leaguer. FBI agent John Jones shares a mind with a green entity with one ruby eye. The alien’s “Martian Vision” reveals the thoughts and feelings of everyone around him in tendrils of swirling, psychedelic smoke. “Breathe in, BREATHE IN,” exhorts the Martian, whom John glimpses in myriad forms emerging from the background of page designs. The playful storytelling dazzles, as the Martian’s mercurial appearances prove a continual pleasure and surprise—while the familiar plot of a hero overwhelmed by humanity’s needs is enlivened by Rodriguez’s kaleidoscopic urban smoke-scapes. (Many pages would look great displayed on head-shop walls.) John acclimates to his dual-mind state, relying on Martian insights to solve crimes and bring to an end active-shooter standoffs. Along the way, he endures both a heat wave viscerally captured in Rodriguez’s scalding yellows and a blackout that finds citizens’ shadows encouraging wrongdoing. Unorthodox layouts force readers to untangle layers of reality, and it’s a joy. Comics fans whose bottom line is beauty and spirited formal invention will relish this celebration of the narrative freedoms offered by the form. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 11/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

London-based cartoonist Gullen faces cancer with a determined grin in her roughly drawn but spirited graphic memoir debut. After a painful lump on her breast turns out to be malignant, she finds herself on the NHS conveyor belt through chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgery. “Why do I have a cancer welcome pack???” her bushy-haired avatar recoils, peering over an oversized surgical mask rectangle. With snarky humor, she juggles cancer treatment with raising her daughter, Rosie, who she takes to play dates and the park between hospital appointments; picking out “Fashion During Chemo”; and asking sex advice columnist Dan Savage if bondage is still safe (“If I can’t have sushi, at least let me have some light BDSM”). She compares entering treatment to becoming a mother: “Once you’re in, there’s no going back.... But I chose parenthood. I didn’t choose this.” Strength and support comes through human connections with doctors, fellow patients, and her Quaker worship group. Gullen’s sparse, naive art isn’t always up to the task of dramatizing her experiences, but she livens up the pages by literalizing ideas (she envisions a vacuum biopsy sucking up her breast like a vacuum cleaner) and through simple but effective visuals like the word PAIN radiating from her body when something goes wrong. Readers navigating medical hardship will appreciate the chummy humor on display here. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 11/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this cheeky and sweetly sex-positive tell-all, debut author Yoshioka shares candid anecdotes from her time as a behind-the-scenes staffer at a male escort service. Referred to the Honey Time agency by a friend, Sono is initially shocked but soon acclimates to the raunchy talk and businesslike bustle around the office. She makes friends with her no-nonsense female coworker Saori and gets to know the escorts, mostly good-natured guys who like to satisfy women (as they point out, the money isn’t all that great). Full penetrative sex is illegal, but Sono helps the escorts practice happy-ending massages and is told that “hot perverts tend to rise to the top of the rankings!” She also learns that good sex work, like good sex, is about empathy and communication. “What exactly are we selling here for 90 minutes at 15,000 yen?” she asks herself, and the answer turns out to be different for every client, whether it’s a married woman who hopes satisfying her husband’s desire for a threesome will paper over her marital problems or a 28-year-old virgin with self-esteem issues. Yachinatsu’s cute, flirty artwork brings the characters to bubbly life and is equally adept at steamy eroticism and flustered comedy. There’s more than enough sultry fun here to keep readers laughing, gasping, and turning pages. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 11/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

A giant knot of dogs hovers over the city of Business Park in this exuberant, Pynchonesque satire from Huffman (Cover Not Final). The absurdist tale of corporate overreach opens with a power couple’s meet-cute at a heated city council meeting (convened in the Town Hall-Taco Bell) and races through their nuptials to their inexplicable invention of the Hypermutt. Designed seemingly only to foil logic and a corporate board “scared of the vision,” a dog that folds in on itself and “becomes all dogs,” until it is “the idea of a dog,” this genetically volatile, multiheaded creature subsumes every canine it encounters, until the “writhing mass” blots out Florida in satellite images. Megacorporations—themselves the mongrel products of unlikely mergers—monetize catastrophe with protective domes and “support prongs” to hold up a sky that’s become a “thick blanket of dog.” Huffman layers in fresh intrigues: a kidnapping, ESP research, even an interlude set in a feudal past. The result is breathlessly discursive, coherent page-to-page but perplexing as a whole. Like Pynchon, Huffman has a flair for character names—Caressa Vignette, Vernon Smilth, Councilman Burg—but it’s his stylized, almost baroquely cartoony figures that steal the show. His cubist spin on mid-century comics illustration syncs lithe linework and ingenious use of negative space to the frenzied pace of the story. The result is a deliriously inventive send-up of corporate hubris. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 11/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

Former The Nib editors Mirk (Guantanamo Voices) and Harris (Be Gay, Do Comics) deliver a handy-dandy how-to for aspiring and established creators of fact-based comics. The various types of graphic nonfiction are helpfully broken down: graphic journalism, history comics, personal essay, etc. Each chapter offers spot-on tips and advice on topics including time management, research, and interviewing subjects, including that “all sources are fallible” and to “think about whether your sources represent the diverse reality of the world.” There’s also plenty of space devoted to the nuts and bolts of drawing, layout, and page design. Among their nuggets of wisdom, Mirk and Harris urge artists to use visual metaphors to jazz things up: “Just because it’s nonfiction doesn’t mean it isn’t creative... push yourself not to be literal.” Interviews and sidebars include an expansive array of expert viewpoints from more than a dozen accomplished creators, including Thi Bui, Malaka Gharib, Sarah Glidden, Maia Kobabe, Joe Sacco, Whit Taylor, and Josh Trujillo. Harris’s appealing—and not-overly-literal—drawings keep the proceedings lively. Full of sound advice and brimming over with energy, humor, and passion, this will make an indispensable addition to the bookshelves of comics creatives of all stripes. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 11/21/2025 | Details & Permalink