The Kwong brothers (Indigo) spin up a relentless action-adventure fantasy. Years after Zhehe City broke a peace treaty and destroyed neighboring Aye-Shan City, a shaman named Ling aims to set things right by finding the only person who is able to rebuild what’s been lost—the “City Builder” of Aye-Shan. It turns out that the City Builder has died, but his grandson, Ocean, joins Ling on a quest to find the city’s guardian beast, accompanied by the children of the last survivors. As they make their way across a wasteland studded with twisted rock formations and crumbling stone ruins, the Holy Mother of Zhehe sends her army to annihilate them—and wipe out all memory of Aye-Shan. “Can history be rewritten so casually?” Ling wonders. The script moves too quickly for readers to catch up to its worldbuilding, but it’s peppered with choice fantastical details, such as Ocean’s use of different musical instruments to bend the elements to his will. The lush, mostly black-and-white art lands like a cross between fantasy manga like Berserk and vintage Metal Hurant comics. Though the frenetic pace can be frustrating, it’s a bold burst of imagination. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this soulful comics anthology co-edited by Latinx comics scholar Aldama (Tales from la Vida) and children’s book author Sánchez (Scruffy and the Egg), Latinx creators celebrate the communal powers of food and sports, while also pointing to societal forces that attempt to diminish these touchstones of identity. The first section, “Cocinas,” focuses on culturally significant meals. Jorge Garza’s “Elotera” recounts his father’s humiliation in a 1950s school lunchroom when he’s ridiculed for eating an “exotic” brown-bag lunch of tacos. Conversely, Jaime Crespo’s “Quesadillas” presents a sweet childhood memory of eating homemade quesadillas for breakfast on chilly mornings, and Rosie Murillo fondly recalls in “Caldo de Pollo” how her mother would serve Mexican chicken soup when she was recovering from illness. In the second section, “Sports Y Locura,” standout pieces include Javier Solórzano’s “Nuestra Nucha,” which explains the importance of lucha libre wrestling to the working class; and Julio Anita’s “The Beautiful Game,” with art by Pablo Leon, which reconciles his love for soccer with conflict over cheering for the U.S. team in the World Cup after Trump comes to power. The quality of the art ranges, and not every story sticks the landing. Still, it’s a joyful mosaic of diverse comics storytelling. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink

This dynamic and Afrofuturistic anthology reimagines one of the world’s first Black superheroes from the pages of All Negro Comics. Prefacing the volume with a reproduction of the original 1947 “Lion Man” comic by Orrin C. Evans and George Evans Jr., artist David Brame (Parable of the Talents) draws updated vignettes featuring the African superhero scripted by comics veterans Jennings (Kindred), Bill Campbell (The Day the Klan Came to Town), and Zimbabwean writer Yvette Lisa Ndlovu (Drinking from Graveyard Wells). In Jennings’s “The Lion Outside,” Lion Man and his sidekick Bubba protect the portal to the dreamworld city of Leonopolis from Blut Sandro, his archnemesis. Campbell and Ndlovu spin up a fictionalized West African country plagued by a pandemic, dictatorship, and violent rebellion in “The Nation,” where Lion Man’s a secret agent helping a doctor to develop a cure. In “The Tower,” by Jennings, a scientist in the future enters “the dreamscape” via a “neural link” helmet, taking on the identity of Lion Man, to save children that Blut Sangro has imprisoned through self-hatred and self-doubt. The art playfully combines nods to classic newsprint dots with neon-inflected fight scenes to complement these fast-paced if occasionally rushed adventures. This satisfying entertainment lends fresh life to Black comics history. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink

Krokus (Loud & Smart) memorializes his recently deceased father with dry humor and affection in this winning graphic narrative. At the funeral—which features a parade of family friends drawn as animals (birds, turtles, bears) with colorful stories about his dad—Alex sees his father’s ghost, who begins to follow him around. Alex is drawn as a raccoon, while his dad is an owl. The two hang out in diners, stroll along the beach, play mini golf, and talk about life and death. Some chats are profound—Alex comes out to his father as bisexual, to which his dad responds, “I know... you wrote about it in your comics”—and others less so: “Don’t tell your mother,” Dad confides, “but I met god and she’s smokin hot!” Between these encounters, Alex asks his living relatives about grief and ghosts, learning family stories along the way. Eventually he and his brother Gerard set out on a road trip to Arizona, where their father owned a plot of land, in the hope of finding some kind of closure. Krokus’ simple and colorful art contrasts with book’s understated tone, which can be summed up by Alex’s observation, “Grief sure can be a doozy huh?” Readers who have known the poignancy of loss will appreciate this. Agent: Edward Maxwell, Transatlantic Agency. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink

A pair of lost souls trip the light fantastic in this dimension-spanning, over-earnest graphic novel from debut author Quinn and artist Chisholm (Miles Davis and the Search for the Sound). Two young women are convinced the visions and synesthesia flooding their senses when they listen to music are signs of impending madness rather than what they actually are: signals that they’re the tools of battling godlike beings. Melody, a homeless emo teen quickly losing her grip on reality, and Ada, a record-store owner with the same issue, find common cause in trying to grasp how their psychic breaks are related to music. But the script keeps postponing the explanation, as the two flit between cross-dimensional realities (“Melody found a thread in the discordance” after a “thundering voice that burst with ethereal energy” tells her to run from a steampunk-styled pursuer). Other sections contain capsule portraits of cultural figures in an alternate history who so closely resemble real people (Miles Davis, Elvis Presley, Patti Smith, Andy Warhol) that the point of the conceit seems muddled. Though the plot underwhelms, Chisholm’s art is appropriately fantastic and storybook-like, overflowing with giddy colors and trippy transitions. The overall effect resembles an arcane concept album. (July)

Reviewed on 07/25/2025 | Details & Permalink

Sweater (Puppy Knight!: Den of Deception) collects his quirky comic book series about the adventures of stoners Noah and Calla as they crash and burn their way through life. Noah reluctantly works in a sandwich shop and otherwise spends his time loafing, dealing with his willful cat Garth and, in one story, getting hopelessly lost for days playing a gory video game called Runequest. In another episode, he is infuriated that a burger joint won’t allow him to order at their drive-through window without a car. He refuses to accept defeat, declaring, “Compromise is the first stop on the long road to hell.” Meanwhile, Calla is a shameless freeloader (“If you don’t work and can’t pay rent,” she asks Noah, “then where am I going to live?”). But Noah puts up with her for the companionship and the fun of getting into trouble together. Sweater’s cartoony visuals demonstrate an impressive eye for detail; he’s especially adept at capturing panoramic views of bustling streets, restaurants, and clothing stores. The saga of these strangely endearing characters is ready-made for fans of burnout humor. (July)

Reviewed on 07/25/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this probing memoir, Pixin (Let’s Not Talk Anymore) recalls her days as an impressionable young art student falling under the insidious sway of a charismatic instructor. Opening the narrative in the present day, Pixin meets with old classmates to discuss their art school days. Most of the characters are drawn like anthropomorphic animals—Pixin’s a rabbit, others are birds. They commiserate about a particularly problematic instructor, TL, who’s drawn like a short stack of red blobs. Pixin initially found him supportive; he paid more attention to his students than other teachers, with a “non-judgmental vibe” that “gave us permission to be vulnerable.” But she was still discovering who she was as an artist and uneasily navigating relationships with boyfriends and her parents. In that vulnerability, she slowly lost her confidence as TL ranted about pandering artists who “use their butts & poop for art” and encouraged her to withdraw from others and remain loyal only to his small circle. As Pixin laments, “Little did I know, I was slowly giving up bits of myself.” Eventually TL’s advances become too glaring to ignore, and she cuts him off. Pixin’s cheerful colors and childlike style aptly capture the naivete of her characters and lend whimsy to the dark subject matter. Readers will find this cautionary tale about the creep of cultlike behavior tough to shake. (July)

Reviewed on 07/25/2025 | Details & Permalink

Journalist Lackman and artist Pinson debut with a beguiling biography of Maria Lani (1895–1954), who managed to con her way into fame if not fortune in 1930s Europe. Born Maria Geleniewicz in a deeply antisemitic region of Poland, she lives through the gradual demise of her family due to pogroms, violence, bankruptcy, and other calamities. When she meets career con man Max Abramowicz, the pair scheme to exploit Maria’s natural charm and beauty, attempting to woo German director Max Reinhardt into making her a star. The plan fails, but in 1928 they travel to Paris claiming she’s a rising actor, where artist Jean Cocteau falls under Maria’s spell and has her sit for him. With Cocteau’s help she poses for 50 portraits by legendary artists like Bonnard, Chagall, Matisse, and Soutine. Subsequently, “all of Paris develop[s] Maria-mania,” and a group show of the portraits becomes a gallery sensation. Abramowicz hatches a scheme to steal the art, but as Paris falls to the Nazis, Lani’s fortunes fall precipitously. Lackman’s elegiac narrative pairs beautifully with Pinson’s heavily crosshatched drawings, which twist into grotesquery in scenes of bigotry and bloodshed. This tale of ambition, art, and deception sheds light on a fascinating figure and her era. (June)

Reviewed on 07/25/2025 | Details & Permalink

The spectacular first volume of Dahm’s long-running webcomic ushers readers into an instantly immersive fantasy world. In the year “855 of the Blue Age,” a girl named Vattu is born into a nomadic tribe of diminutive, musical people called “fluters.” As Vattu grows up, she develops a contentious relationship with Vanni, a boy shunned for being disabled but who eventually becomes the tribe’s priest. Then soldiers from the militaristic, Rome-like Empire of Sahta conquer the fluters’ territory and take Vattu as a slave, sending her on a journey beyond her people’s hunting grounds and “almost to the edge of the world.” In bold brushstrokes and rich, organic colors, Dahm creates a fully realized world of competing intelligent species, sweeping vistas, labyrinthine cities, and tantalizing details like the faceless warrior War-Man and enormous animal skeletons half-buried in the earth. The first volume is packed with adventure, but also enough mystery and worldbuilding that the story’s horizon seems to stretch on forever. This epic deserves a place on the shelf next to Jeff Smith’s Bone series. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 07/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

Veteran artist McMillan debuts with a quirky career-spanning collection of his surreal 1970s comics that showcases his restless creative energy and outside-the-box ethos. Throughout, he explicitly eschews commercial considerations: “I don’t have to become an artist like everyone else. Once you call yourself something... there you go! Into the dumper!” In his autofiction strips, McMillan similarly presents an innate aversion to the status quo (and a particular passion for mountain climbing). In one episode, he recalls his 1956 stint in the army, when he used a weekend pass to board a random bus with the goal of “intentional disorientation,” thus establishing a penchant for the “absolute pleasure of... existential fog” and making it thereafter a “lifelong priority.” In the arch and cartoony “Close Calls I Have Known,” he narrowly escapes a terrier running after his bike, getting caught peeping into a girl’s window, and the dreadful fate of taking an assistant manager position in an office. Intermittent photos of his sculptures showcase more of his playful whimsy. The scrawled lines of his early underground comix evolve into stylized and topsy-turvy perspectives in the 1990s and beyond, but his affinity for surrealism remains. Adventurous readers will enjoy the wit and weirdness of McMillan’s phantasmagorical funhouse. (July)

Reviewed on 07/18/2025 | Details & Permalink