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War

Garth Ennis and Becky Cloonan. Boom! Studios, $17.99 trade paper (112p) ISBN 979-8-89215-732-2

Eisner winners Ennis (the Boys series) and Cloonan (Somna) join forces to sketch a gripping vision of the end of the world. For writer David, his pregnant wife Nikki, and their intellectual New York City circle, war is an abstract concept to debate over drinks—until nuclear bombs fall on London and obliterate the city. As WWIII breaks out, seemingly instigated by Russia, they follow updates on social media, and Nikki becomes enraged when David’s first instinct is to pitch a book about the crisis. War still seems far away until, suddenly, it isn’t. Watching in despair as nations fail and fall, their friend Maggie comments bleakly, “All these millennia of human development, and that’s the best we can do.” Soon the survivors are dealing with radiation sickness, attacks from raiders, and nuclear winter. As usual, Cloonan’s art hooks readers with a glance. The characters, rendered in bold strokes, look and feel painfully human as they face devastation on a massive scale. The script tips into excess at the close, but conveys the urgency of 1980s nuclear-warning specials like The Day After and Threads, or John Bergin’s 1993 graphic novel From Inside. Terrifyingly relevant, it’s a much-needed jolt to the system. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

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Groupies

Helen Mullane and Tula Lotay. Mad Cave, $19.99 trade paper (152p) ISBN 978-1-5458-2126-8

This lush erotic horror from Mullane (Painted) and Eisner winner Lotay (Somna) conjures dark delights out of the rock ’n’ roll world of the late 1960s and early ’70s. During the tarnished later days of the Summer of Love, a tight-knit, glamorous circle of six groupies—Amina, Lisa Storm, Vera Vicious, Morgaine La Fey, Gaia, and Myuuzu—prowl the Sunset Strip. “The rock stars we make love to, soon learn that they are blessed to get with us,” Gaia opines, over rumpled post-coital images of a threesome that includes her sometimes-lover Morgaine; in the next scene, she and Morgaine pull tarot cards and pop pills. When the gang goes on tour with the Moon Show, the hottest new band on the West Coast, they’re thrilled to be at the center of the action, and Lisa falls for sexy, sinister lead singer Si. But the party morphs into a bad scene: groupies start to disappear, and the band turns out to be involved in Satanic shenanigans. Each chapter is told from the viewpoint of a different groupie as she peers through a miasma of sex, drugs, and blood sacrifice. Lotay’s smeared neon colors evoke the psychedelic haze and smoggy Los Angeles sunsets of the era, the painterly art rendering steamy eroticism within warped Satanic Panic tropes. Despite the story’s abrupt ending, horror fans will enjoy this murky nightmare. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

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Flavors of Ash (Ghost Pepper #1)

Ludo Lullabi and Adriano Lucas. Image, $16.99 trade paper (160p) ISBN 978-1-5343-3562-2

Set in a future wasteland of deserts, warlords, and manga-styled robot throwdowns, this inventive series launch from Lullabi (the Transformers series) and Lucas (the Destro series) finds an entrepreneurial spirit starting a food truck. Between lanes of Fury-Road chaos, chef Loloi peddles noodles spiced with an impossibly hot pepper only she can make palatable. Lullabi’s storytelling bridges the everyday business of food service—sourcing peppers; getting hauled into town for repairs; competing with a rival purveyor of provisions—and an epic backstory of a godlike hero turned ruler punching a world-threatening monster into the moon. Mysterious warrior Ash returns from parts unknown to contest that legend, stirring alarm from the powers that be. In a classic samurai story turn, Ash just wants to slurp a bowl of Loloi’s soup but instead must stomp enemy after enemy in a succession of strikingly composed battles. The art is influenced equally by anime and bande desinée, and an episodic stolen-valor plot involving Ash’s old warrior cohort ends up feeling generic. It’s the food-truck thread that steals the show, and serves to humanize Ash. Fans of cozy postapocalyptic fare will want to sample this first course. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

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Chicken Heart

Morgan Boecher. Street Noise, $23.99 trade paper (260p) ISBN 978-1-9514-9144-4

Boecher’s tenderhearted graphic novel debut follows a stand-up comedian to his aunt’s funeral at Chicken Heart Love, the commune she founded. Jackie Locklear hasn’t spoken to his trans aunt Sheila in over a decade, ever since their family “disowned her after this one Thanksgiving,” but he unexpectedly gets an invitation from her found family, “the Chicken Hearters,” to speak at her memorial (she died by suicide). Jackie has also been considering a gender transition, and jokes about it in his stand-up set, quipping that he doesn’t want to “fight raccoons” while dumpster-diving “for a whole new wardrobe.” Secretly, however, Jackie admits that he’s a trans man: “I wince in pain every time someone calls me a ‘she.’ ” At Chicken Heart, “a place for misfits,” Jackie faces the commune’s complicated grief, his regrets around his estrangement from Sheila, and his “crushing loneliness”—particularly after he hooks up with the commune’s bard, Will (“Oh, stupid heart,” Jackie says to himself). Blending bubbly dialogue and moments of introspection, Boecher depicts how an interdependent community must carry on in the wake of its founder’s suicide. The thick, simple linework and three-color palette ground the proceedings, with a few whimsical flourishes, and emotions hold the spotlight. By turns sad and joyous, this is a moving treatise on the many meanings of love and loss. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

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The Woodchipper

Joe Ollmann. Drawn & Quarterly, $25 trade paper (216p) ISBN 978-1-77046-823-8

Nothing comes easy for the denizens of Hamilton, Ontario, in these wry, bruising, and mordantly funny stories from Ollmann (Fictional Father). In “Nestled All Snug,” a toppled pile of boxes traps a bookstore employee in a dingy staff bathroom. In “Meat,” a security guard at a meat-packing facility falls in with a band of animal rights activists. Elsewhere, a hapless landlord’s short-term rental catches the attention of a murder podcast in “The Late Checkout,” and a husband gets caught in an anxious interior monologue while washing dishes as his partner’s faculty party drags on past midnight in “The Thought That Counts.” The title story finds a city maintenance worker paralyzed by PTSD after a close brush with a woodchipper. In these close-call episodes, catastrophe is averted but exposes the precariousness of everyday life. Captured in blunt, agitated lines that nod to Lynda Barry, Ollmann’s mostly blue-collar figures wear their strain openly—all sweaty brows, exhausted eyes, and frayed nerves. Ollmann doesn’t trade in schadenfreude, however. His characters narrate their ordeals with self-deprecating frankness, steering out of occasional skids into misanthropy to marvel at the absurdity of predicaments that should, by rights, flatten them. These unsentimental stories withhold tidy resolution, leaving their protagonists upright if not unscathed as the world carries on unfazed. Fans of Peter Bagge or Ed Brubaker’s A Complete Lowlife will get it—as will anyone who’s ever felt the floor drop out from under them. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

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Daredevil: Cold Day in Hell

Charles Soule and Steve McNiven. Marvel, $22 (128p) ISBN 978-1-302-96831-1

The blind lawyer turned vigilante superhero fights his final battle in this potent Daredevil tale from returning series writer Soule (One Billion Genies) and artist McNiven (Old Man Logan). In a bleak future beyond the current Marvel universe, an elderly Matt Murdock has lost his extrasensory crime-fighting powers (“just an average Joe,” he calls himself), and the rest of the superheroes are dead, gone, or depowered. Then Murdock’s otherworldly radar skills are accidentally reactivated by a dirty bomb. Tasked by a dying Captain America with rescuing Tyra, a mysterious new mutant whose name and brilliant powers hint she might be the daughter of Daredevil allies Cloak and Dagger, Daredevil races against the clock to stop his old enemy Bullseye as his powers begin to fade again. Soule’s narrative is peppered with guest appearances by former Marvel heroes including Elektra and Punisher, and the stark, swift story suits Murdock’s acutely painful and personal crusade. McNiven’s art recalls Frank Miller’s notable run on the series, blending the energetic stunts of Miller’s 1980s comics with his scratchy inks in The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Marvel has produced several speculative “last story” tales for its heroes; this proves one of the best yet. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

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The Short Years

Alison McCreesh. Conundrum, $20 trade paper (200p) ISBN 978-1-77262-121-1

McCreesh follows her sweeping Eisner-nominated travelogue Degrees of Separation with an intimate and gently amusing collection of one-page vignettes about child-rearing. The cartoons document seven years of McCreesh and her husband “living with small people,” specifically son Riel and daughters Sam and Dominique (who is born midway through the book), plus two dogs. The family is tight-knit, the kids fascinated by their own existence and one another’s—in bed at night, Riel comments with puzzlement that he didn’t see Sam’s conception, and concludes, “Maybe I was at daycare, so that’s why I missed it.” Their observations are a kid-typical mix of cute (“You can hear feelings in songs”) and disturbing (“Is there anyone you know who didn’t become dead?”). Many scenes receive wry titles like “The case of the terrible 9 year old roommate” or “The case of the 3-year-old who was very much 3 years old.” McCreesh’s vibrant, squiggly line lends knowing charm to familiar parental tragicomedies: toilet training, spontaneous undressing, tantrums, and weird questions galore. It’s a light and sweet palate cleanser, full of moments families will recognize. (May)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

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Martyr Loser King

Saul Williams and Morgan Sorne. 23rd Street, $29.99 (336p) ISBN 978-1-62672-199-9

This dense and incantatory fable from musician and poet Williams ((US) a.) and multimedia artist Sorne melds political critique, spirituality, and Afro-mythology with cyberpunk imagery. In the East African country of Burundi, the land and people are ravaged. Matalusa’s brother is killed by a soldier while mining a resource called coltan. He flees and meets Elohel, a one-armed man who understands coltan’s properties. They build a home in a graveyard of technology that the ore once powered, and encounter a girl named Memory who’s guided by a bird only she can communicate with. Slowly more refugees with unique backstories find their way to the camp. When a cosmic being called Neptune joins, the technology comes to life, and the art transitions from black-and-white to neon. Ultimately, the heroes find that #martyrloserking trends worldwide as a global tech breach is reported. As the rest of the world reacts to the hack in various ways, the people of Martyrloserkingdom philosophize about art, music, poetry, and how to use the power they now hold. While lyrical ambition overwhelms narrative clarity at times, the spirit of this work is infectious. It’s a graphic poem of resistance wonderfully told through Afrofuturistic flare. Agent: (for Williams) Charlotte Gusay, Charlotte Gusay Agency. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

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Everything in Color: A Love Story

Stephanie Stalvey. 23rd St, $29.99 (528p) ISBN 978-1-250-34780-0

In her luminous debut, Stalvey meditates on her separation from fundamentalist Christianity and how she found love despite questioning her faith. Born into a “lineage of preachers and teachers,” young Stephanie and her sister grow up so conservative that they’re discouraged from looking at “unnecessarily graphic” Bible illustrations. Sermons about sin and sacrifice lead Stephanie to self-harm at an early age (pinching herself, she speaks to Jesus: “This pain is nothing... compared to what I deserve”), and her family considers corporal punishment essential to correct children’s inborn sinfulness. “Everything was either black or white,” Stephanie reflects, and the art literalizes this in monochrome anecdotes from her youth. In the present day, rendered in full color, adult Stephanie is married with a young son, teaching art, and deciding whether she wants to return to church. Her perspective changed, as fundamentalist parents often fear, in college. Though she initially steeled herself against “dangerous ideas coming from a secular professor,” she started to ask questions in her Bible study group, and her romance with gentle seminary student James made her doubt the harsh, punitive version of love she was raised in. Stalvey’s sensual, organic art is especially striking in the full-color passages. She devotes pages to richly symbolic compositions of saints, devils, wolves, and nature. Readers of Craig Thompson’s Blankets will fall for this nuanced self-portrait. Agent: Amelia Appel, Triada US. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

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Bytchcraft

Aaron Reese and Lema Carril. Mad Cave, $17.99 trade paper (136p) ISBN 978-1-960578-65-5

A queer coven fight to save their fellow wytchfolk from a celestial force in this fresh and edgy debut by the late Reese and Spanish cartoonist Carril. Adriyel, a divination wytch; Michele, a green wytch; and Em, a necromancer, all spellcasters of color, accidently plunge New York City into a lasting eclipse. Their spectral matriarch, known as MTHR, proclaims this a “dark omen,” which draws the unwelcome attention of religious leader Lady Genevieve, who launches a psychic attack that slays local wytches, and gathers their blood for rituals to ensure her ascendancy. The coven embark on a quest to stop her, which involves traveling to various realms where they recover weapons and guidance needed to triumph over Genevieve. Twists and turns lead to sacrifices, losses, and a climactic battle. The expansive and ambitious worldbuilding includes delightful details like a night out in a supernatural nightclub complete with Minotaur bouncer, a star-crossed romance with a rival coven called the Gorgons, and a powerful black unicorn. Carril’s dynamic art mixes stylish contemporary fashion with colorful mysticism. It adds up to an alluring portrait of found family that will leave readers wondering what Reese might have done next. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

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