Novelist Kraus (The Autumnal) and artist Dani (The Low, Low Wood) serve up a provocative and unsettling superhero horror story. For generations, the Molson family has tended Athanasia Cemetery, resting place for fallen members of the Dynamic Guild, Venture City’s protectors. After her younger sister’s death in a grim boneyard accident, Forrest Molson has dropped out of high school, developed a pill addiction, and upset her father with rants about the family’s exploitation by would-be gods. Forrest gets a taste of power when she discovers—and, in squirm-inducing and psychedelic-styled panels, ingests—a green goo oozing up from the graves. Her new super-abilities are unpredictable, the goo is addictive, and her efforts to right the everyday wrongs the guild ignores prove harrowing. The narrative holds to Forest’s angsty street-level perspective as she alienates family, friends, and crushes but connects with creepy goo-fed bird pets. Kraus finds fresh angles on grief, vigilantism, and comic-book science, while Dani’s art—inky black-and-white with splashes of green—conjures dread among spare streets and snowed-over tombstones, even if some of the gothic grimness wears thin. Still, horror fans will find this smart and unpredictable. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

The Rickard sisters (No Surrender) adapt Holdsworth’s 1925 novel, a rediscovered socialist and feminist classic, into a lavishly illustrated period epic with incendiary political fervor. Sisters Rachel and Hester Martin toil in a Lancashire textile factory, struggling to survive like their mother and grandmother before them: “Four women who’ve slaved since childhood, for nowt,” Rachel notes. Hester is forced to break off her relationship with the loving but poor Jack Baines and marry wealthy yarn merchant Mr. Sanderson, while Rachel becomes a union organizer and human rights crusader. Throughout their changes in fortune—which include mill fires, strikes, police brutality, a diphtheria epidemic, and shocking family secrets—both sisters remain dedicated to freedom. Rachel reads Marx and declares, “I can feel my mind expanding... as fast as my stomach shrinks,” while Hester rails against the subordinate position of women: “So long as we go on breeding.... We are the slaves of the slaves, or the slaves of the bosses.” In jewel-like tones, the Rickards bring the early 20th-century setting to life, from grimy factories and back alleys to the lavish Arts and Crafts décor of Sanderson’s mansion. Both a thrilling historical drama and a timeless call for social justice, this spirited volume surges with revolutionary passion. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

Drawing connections between abortion, forced sterilization, colonization, and assisted reproductive techniques across the globe and dating back to antiquity, this nimble debut from journalist Casillas and illustrator Garay makes a strong case that restricting abortion access has little to do with the rights of the unborn, and everything to do with control and eugenics. The account opens with representations of abortion in pop culture then breaks down medical terms and procedures before tracing the history of abortion restrictions. Among other insights, the authors note that women have long used medicinal plants to end unwanted pregnancies, that the colonial era ushered in new regulations on abortion as governments legislated in favor of increasing the population, and that enslaved women in early 19th-century America had lower birth rates than free women, which concerned those exploiting them. Relatively unrestricted and affordable access to abortion is, the authors argue, a painfully precarious phenomenon. Three “A Brief History of Abortion” chapters provide global context, explaining, for example, that abortion on demand was decriminalized in North Korea in 1950, whereas New Zealand didn’t allow unrestricted abortion until 2020. The authors convey a vast breadth of information with impressive clarity, utilizing bold black-and-white line drawings of representative characters with splashes of a pink spray-paint effect, nodding to the guerilla nature of grassroots action. This cogent and persuasive graphic primer hits home. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

Eisner nominee Flogny debuts with a striking blend of queer romance and hard-nosed crime drama. Jules Tivoli, a savvy young Italian immigrant, rises from underpaid shop flunky in 1938 Chicago to respected mob operator via his secret romance with Adam, a hunky but ruthless kingpin. After things go terribly awry with their Midwest organization, the pair hastily relocate to New York City. There, Adam’s machinations enable Jules to infiltrate a powerful East Coast mob family. “Adam had faith in me, and I had faith in us,” Jules recalls. But Jules’s friendship with charismatic fellow enforcer Eufrasio eventually leads to suspicions and deadly betrayals, putting everyone’s life at risk. Despite their love for one another, the calculating Jules and hard-hearted Adam remain largely unsympathetic antiheroes-in-lust (Jules, for example, is brisk and businesslike about inflicting damage on business owners who are tardy with their weekly protection payments). Flogny’s elegant artwork, though, goes down smooth as silk. She evokes the 1930s and ’40s in choice background details and tailored dress, while tastefully suggesting violence rather than depicting graphic bloodshed (though she never soft-pedals her characters’ dark deeds). Her figures move gracefully through the chaos. Fans of crime and romance will enjoy this lavender-hued riff on Goodfellas. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

This artful and thought-provoking graphic biography from Evans (Threads) stitches a postcolonial layer into the narrative by examining the fabrics worn by Jane Austen and her contemporaries. Inspired by a patchwork coverlet that Jane “meticulously folded and painstakingly stitched,” the title also alludes to the “threadbare” letters and manuscripts from which historians reconstruct her life. The seventh child in a family clinging precariously to the upper class, Jane bounces between boarding schools while attempting to nurture her creative impulses, which her father supports. Her mother relocates the family to Bath in hopes of landing husbands for Jane and her younger sister, Cassandra. Though Jane remains unmarried, “her spirits soar” (Evans implies she had at least one secret romance). But “there are other voices in these fabrics, if we choose to hear them”—so begins the “Interlude,” which visits the fabrics’ origins. In colonial India, impoverished women weave fine Dhaka muslin; cotton is picked by enslaved Black Americans and spun by children in the north of England working 14 hours a day. The voices of these workers live on in song lyrics that adorn pages illustrated by intricate embroidery woven between colorful, caricature-filled comics art. The question “Where is the line between imagination and reality, when a legal fiction can... condemn people to be properties?” echoes through the final biography section, as Jane’s fate rests on the whims of male family members. Evans pointedly and beautifully illuminates the seams of this quilted narrative. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

British cartoonist Sparks’s twisty debut makes up for shaky art with an offbeat puzzle plot that blends science, history, and English folklore. Lorelei, a geology student, travels to the eccentric village of Chorksbury to work on her thesis on “palindenites,” a rare and little-studied star-shaped fossil. With her roommate, Eddie, and their cat, Raisin, in tow, she learns that 19th-century polymath Havius Corus, the last prominent palindenite researcher, believed that the fossils contained the secrets of the universe and left clues to his work hidden around town. “God, I hope it’s not like The Da Vinci Code,” Lorelei groans, but she and Eddie soon throw themselves into the game, exploring village landmarks to uncover cryptic carvings and mosaics, a secret tunnel revealed Indiana Jones–style, a circle of standing stones, and more. They’re pursued by Dr. Lowena Marley, an architecture expert who threatens to beat them to a breakthrough. The simplistic black-and-white art, with snarky dialogue in an intrusive typed font, has quirky immediacy but falls short of capturing the wonders of Chorksbury. Still, readers who enjoy scientific mysteries will gladly overlook the rough edges of this unpolished gem. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

The ambitious sophomore release by Eisner-nominated cartoonist Otero (Mothballs) follows three Argentinean witches across history and explores the roles of women, religion, race, and sexuality in a society that casts out misfits. The mysterious women arrive in Buenos Aires in 1786 as passengers on a conquistador’s ship. They establish themselves as property owners and protectors of numerous children whom they collect over the years. Each chapter examines the trio from a unique angle. In “The Good Old Times,” set in the present day, a man curious about the sexual rituals they perform on other men finds himself in a trance, “like a rag doll.” Rewinding to the 18th century, “Walicho” finds an Indigenous mother seeking the women’s protection, as they draw on her sacred knowledge. Other pieces see the witches’ grown children trying to separate themselves from the women’s reach. Otero’s spell-casters function as symbols for history’s harsh opinions of powerful, unattached women, but they are complicated and unheroic, and their vengeful deeds give rise to a non-gendered critique of authoritarian structures. Otero’s exaggerated forms (elongated and playful shapes for human, natural, and architectural figures) and unique page layouts give the work a modern yet eerie feel, with a palette of pinks, reds, and purples. The comic maintains an aura of mystery, and lands as a fresh take on ancient ideas. It’s a wild ride. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

Zippy the Pinhead creator Griffith (Three Rocks) presents a sprightly graphic biography of his great-grandfather, photographer William Henry Jackson, who died in 1942. Griffith, who was shocked to see one of his great-grandfather’s pictures in his high school textbook as a teenager in the 1950s, replays Jackson’s life through an imagined conversation between an elderly Jackson and a visiting friend. The Eisner winner’s trademark cross-hatching neatly fits the narrative’s largely 19th-century setting. Self-taught in the nascent art of photography, Civil War veteran Jackson first specialized in portraits. He wandered the frontier for years, working for railroads that paid him to shoot the sights of the West as it opened to tourism and settlement. Jackson’s signature achievement—taking the first photographs of Yellowstone, which helped convince Congress to protect it as parkland—is detailed along with images from the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings, Korea, and Afghanistan. Aside from an idiosyncratic nod to Yogi Bear (and a jokey suggestion that a 1904 Jackson photograph from Coney Island captured “a distant relative of Zippy”), Griffith plays this story straight; occasionally it can feel dutiful. Still, it’s an immersive and thoughtful examination of an innovative American artist. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

Metropolis director Rintaro goes behind the scenes of the golden age of anime in his expansive and impassioned debut manga. Born in 1941, Rintaro is captivated by movies from an early age, particularly the first animated “manga film” he sees in a temple converted to a theater: “How is that possible? Drawings that move?” Despite discouragement from adults who warn him against chasing his dreams in Japan’s struggling postwar economy, he finds work as a teenager at some of the country’s earliest animation studios: first Toei, “founded to become the Walt Disney of the East,” then Osamu Tezuka’s Mushi Productions. Later, he works on anime adaptations with manga artists Leiji Matsumoto and Katsuhiro Otomo and launches his own studio, Argos. Rintaro’s crisp, lively art evokes period detail and clearly unpacks the ins and outs of animation. He excels at capturing human movement, including movement through time—with an amusing flourish, he draws himself aging and adopting the fashions of the decades. Some aspects of his personal life remain discreet (he manages to get married and divorced mostly off-panel), but a through line is his fraught relationship with his father, a barber who once dreamed of going into the movies himself. This meticulous portrait of a life in animation glows with love of the art form. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

This sweetly melancholy debut fantasy from And the Witch Went into the Forest webcomics artist Sanho transports readers to a charming bakery that serves the recently deceased. As the intro explains, souls need baked goods to safely cross the plains of Purgatory, thus “the final present for those departing is achingly sweet.” At Breath’s End, the boundary between life and death, baker Margot and her assistant, Miro (a classic ghost draped in a sheet), consult with the loved ones of the departed and create perfectly matched funeral cakes for their final journey. In the two stories in this volume, their clients include a sickly teenager befriended by an aspiring mystery writer and a vampire trucker whose night-shift schedule made it hard for her to spend time with her daughter. The characters’ gentle adventures take place in a world both familiar and populated by supernatural beings, anthropomorphic characters, giant plants, and fantastic devices like the kitchen appliance Margot uses to add sound as flavoring to cakes. Sanho’s elegant, flowing linework, tinted with spot color in shades of pink and red, has a storybook feel with touches of classic shojo manga. The characters have delicately drawn faces, and the food looks delectable. It adds up to a cozy and slightly bittersweet treat. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink