80 anticipated YA and adult graphic novels for Fall 2023

Autumn marks a busy publishing season as October opens with more than half of the titles from The Beat’s list of anticipated YA and adult graphic novels for Fall 2023. History, memoir, coming-of-age and slice-of-life stories top our list of titles, with plenty of romance and humor to add to the mix.

Look for the long-awaited and groundbreaking fiction by Daniel Clowes (GHOST WORLD, PATIENCE) and Bill Watterson (CALVIN AND HOBBBES) and a powerful graphic memoir from Amy Kurzweil (FLYING COUCH). Veteran young adult storytellers Faith Erin Hicks (THE NAMELESS CITY, RIDE ON), Hope Larson (A WRINKLE IN TIME, KNIFE’S EDGE) and Tillie Walden (CLEMENTINE, ON A SUNBEAM) return with new titles that explore first love, friendship and survival. Nora Krug (BELONGING: A GERMAN RECKONS WITH HISTORY AND HOME), Marcelino Truong (SUCH A LOVELY LITTLE WAR), former Drawn & Quarterly publisher CHRIS OLIVEROS, OLIVIER KUGLER and DON BROWN (THE UNWANTED: STORIES OF THE SYRIAN REFUGEES) grapple with historical events that continue to haunt present day politics. Chuck D takes on the intersection of gun violence and hip hop in his follow-up to STEWDIO. Chiara Lagani, Mara Cerri, James Strum and Joe Sutphin adapt two literary classics into graphic novels. And not to be outdone, Léa Murawiec and The Great British Bake-Off star Kim-Joy make their graphic novel debuts with stories about change and new beginnings.

Without further ado, let’s dive into the month-by-month listing of anticipated YA and adult graphic novels for Fall 2023!

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Graphic Novels for Fall 2023 – October

Erdoğan: A Graphic Biography: The Rise of Turkey’s Modern Autocrat

Writer: Can Dündar
Artist: Anwar
Translator: L.L. Kreider
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Release Date: Oct. 3
List Price: $24.95 Paperback

Winner, 2022 Atomium Comic Strip Prize.

A comprehensive graphic biography of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the authoritarian president of Turkey.

One of the world’s most divisive and controversial leaders, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has ruled over Turkey as either prime minister or president since 2003. This graphic biography sheds light on the origins of Turkey’s most powerful man, from his youth as a budding soccer player to his years spent navigating Turkey’s political landscape, including the founding of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001. Author Can Dündar, a Turkish journalist and contributor to the Washington Post now living in exile in Germany, spent several years researching this book.

Situated at the crossroads between Europe and Asia with a population of 84 million, Turkey is a growing economic powerhouse with a geopolitically strategic location. As its leader, the Islamic, conservative Erdoğan has had a polarizing effect on the country’s populace; some applaud his economic and political reforms, while others decry his autocratic, iron-fisted rule which has included the jailing of opponents, the crushing of free speech and the rights of LGBTQ+ people and others, and an ongoing war waged against the country’s Kurdish minority.

Featuring compelling illustrations by Egyptian-Sudanese comic artist Anwar, the book provides a critical and dramatic context for understanding Erdoğan’s convictions and contradictions as a demagogue for whom democracy has been merely a means to power.

40 Men and 12 Rifles: Indochina 1954

Author: Marcelino Truong
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Release Date: Oct. 3 (Bookstores)
List Price: $28.95 Paperback

By the author of Such a Lovely Little War and Saigon Calling, a stirring graphic novel about love, beauty, and war in 1950s Indochina.

40 Men and 12 Rifles is an expansive, gripping graphic novel set in Indochina in the year leading up to 1954, when the French-held garrison at Dien Bien Phu fell after a four-month battle, leading to the end of the first Indochina war between French forces and Ho Chi Minh’s nationalist rebels. Minh (no relation to Ho) is a young man from Hanoi, an aspiring painter who dreams of experiencing la vie bohème in Paris’s Latin Quarter. To dissuade him from pursuing an artistic life, his father sends him into the countryside to tend to the family’s holdings. He is soon pressed into serving with the Ho Chi Minh rebels, where he becomes a soldier despite repeatedly defying his cadres–ideological Communist commanders with whom he disagrees–becoming both hero and anti-hero in the process.

40 Men and 12 Rifles is a moving and beautifully illustrated book about the human and artistic spirit of the Indochinese people who persevered in the face of warfare and suffering.

Monica

Author: Daniel Clowes
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Release Date: Oct. 4 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 3 (Bookstores)
List Price: $30.00 Hardcover

Monica is a series of interconnected narratives that collectively tell the life story — actually, stories — of its title character. Clowes calls upon a lifetime of inspiration to create the most complex and personal graphic novel of his distinguished career. Rich with visual detail, an impeccable ear for language and dialogue, and thrilling twists, Monica is a multilayered masterpiece in comics form that alludes to many of the genres that have defined the medium — war, romance, horror, crime, the supernatural, etc. — but in a mysterious, uncategorizable, and quintessentially Clowesian way that rewards multiple readings.

Five years in the making, Monica marks the apex of creativity from one of the defining voices of the graphic novel boom over the past quarter-century. A new book from Clowes is always a huge event in comics and literary circles; Monica will be the biggest literary event of 2023.

Begin Again

Author: Oliver Jeffers
Publisher: Philomel Books
Release Date: Oct. 3
List Price: $26.99 Hardcover

In his first illustrated book created specifically for readers of all ages, Oliver Jeffers shares a very brief history of humanity and shares his dreams for where we go from here.

With his bold, iconic art, Oliver Jeffers follows the human path from the dawn of our species through history, sharing profound, sometimes poignant, commentary on our present, and then offers a challenge: Where do we go from here? How can we create new stories and new systems that allow all of humanity to flourish? How can we journey toward a collective and robust future?

Illustrated in his world-renowned art style, Oliver Jeffers’ reflection on the patterns that have led us to where we are today, the stories we have governed ourselves by, and those we might adopt going forward, is insightful, moving, and powerful. A must-have for anyone who wants the next generation to inherit a world to be proud of–and a perfect gift to share with those you care about.

Summer of Hamn: Hollowpointlessness Aiding Mass Nihilism

Author: Chuck D.
Publisher: Enemy Books
Release Date: Oct. 4 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 3 (Bookstores)
List Price: $34.95 Hardcover

In Summer of Hamn, legendary hip-hop artist Chuck D takes on gun violence with rhythmic, inventive writing and passionately raw art. He has long spoken out against gun violence, including how it intersects with rap and hip-hop culture. Summer of Hamn is the bound journal Chuck D carried with him in the summer of 2022–a summer marked by a particularly high rate of gun death.

In these pages, victims are memorialized, politicians are skewered, and vehement pleas to eradicate gun violence are made. Jaw-dropping statistics (40% of all personal guns in the world are owned by US citizens; there are 100 million more guns in the US than there are citizens) intersect with poetic reflections (“Another mall shooting seems normalized in Columbus / Raining outside in Ohio / Raining inside folks panic / Inside hearing shots bust”), all written in Chuck’s hand over vibrant, utterly original, neoexpressionist ink and watercolor art.

This book is the follow-up to STEWdio the debut trilogy on Chuck D’s Enemy Books imprint, in which he invented a new medium–the “naphic grovel”–a bound journal brimming with his observations and reflections of current events in both art and prose. Summer of Hamn is the second release on the imprint.

Cosmic Detective

Writers: Jeff Lemire, Matt Kindt
Artist: David Rubin
Publisher: Image Comics
Release Date: Oct. 4 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 3 (Bookstores)
List Price: $17.99 Paperback

New York Times-bestselling writers JEFF LEMIRE (GIDEON FALLS, DESCENDER), MATT KINDT (BANG!, MIND MGMT), and internationally acclaimed artist DAVID RUBÍN (ETHER, BEOWULF) unite on this original graphic novel, COSMIC DETECTIVE. An epic science fiction mystery that asks: when a God is murdered, who solves the crime? Enter our Detective. The murder of a god threatens to tear apart the very fabric of our reality. Only our detective stands in the way of utter destruction. But will the mystery he uncovers be worse than the disaster he’s trying to avert? And will his mind crack under the revelations he’s about to uncover before he can do anything about it? 

Parasocial

Writer: Alex De Campi
Artist: Erica Henderson
Publisher: Image Comics
Release Date: Oct. 4 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 3 (Bookstores)
List Price: $18.99 Hardcover

In the middle of the pandemic, a fading genre-TV actor, fresh from his long-running series’ cancellation, collides with an obsessive fan at a Texas convention. When she lures him to her home, he’ll have to put on the greatest performance of his life simply to survive until morning. Unless, of course, he’s the real monster… Bestselling, critically-acclaimed duo Alex de Campi and Erica Henderson (DRACULA, MOTHERF**KER!) reunite for another stylish horror reinterpretation, this time the psychosexual thriller. 

Let Me Out

Writer: Emmett Nahil
Artist: George Williams
Publisher: Oni Press
Release Date: Oct. 4 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 3 (Bookstores)
List Price: $19.99 Paperback

A face-off with the devil! From writer Emmett Nahil (Leatherwood) and illustrator George Williams (Croc and Roll) comes a riveting queer horror story set against the backdrop of an outbreak of “satanic panic” sweeping the New Jersey suburbs in 1979.

When Pastor Holley’s wife, Kelly, is found murdered, FBI agent Garrett takes on the case with local New Jersey Sheriff Mullen. Together they start drumming up a convenient satanic-flavored scapegoat to cover up their own crimes of murder and experimentation. That scapegoat comes in the form of four friends: Mitch, Terri, Lupe, and Jackson. The punks, the queers, and the outcasts. Soon the group becomes the prime suspects of Kelly’s murder. Now on the run from Garrett and Mullen, the group finds themselves in the midst of a deal with the devil themself. 

Be That Way

Author: Hope Larson
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson Books
Release Date: Oct. 4 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 3 (Bookstores)
List Price: $22.99 Hardcover

Seventeen-year-old Christine keeps a journal of an eventful year in her life in mid-90s, while juggling troubled friendships and looking for love.

It’s January 1, 1996, and high school junior Christine wants more than anything to be that cool girl everyone notices, like her gorgeous best friend, Landry. She usually hates New Year’s resolutions, but this year she vows to be that shiny kind of girl–and record it all in her diary through prose, illustration, and comics.

When Landry drops her, Christine is surprised to discover just how much she doesn’t miss her and her drama. But a misguided kiss with film-obsessed Paul, her only other close friend, also causes a rift, and she finds herself facing a long, lonely summer.

With nothing to lose, Christine finds a new sense of courage. She gets a job at her neighborhood video store, experiments with her art, and becomes romantically entangled with her next-door neighbor Whit, who’s either the coolest guy ever or a total jerk. In spite of all this, she doesn’t quite feel shiny–until a shocking betrayal shows her the value of the words and drawings she hides in her diary, and she finally understands that she doesn’t need to be cool to be noticed–she only needs to be herself.

Eisner-award winning author and illustrator, Hope Larson, has created a powerful coming-of-age story set in a time before the Internet that explores themes of betrayal, first love, self-expression, and the power of art. 

Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy

Author: Faith Erin Hicks
Publisher: First Second
Release Date: Oct. 4 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 3 (Bookstores)
List Price: $25.99 Hardcover / $17.99 Paperback  

New York Times bestseller Faith Erin Hicks is back with Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy, a young adult graphic novel romance about a hotheaded hockey player who asks for temper management lessons from the cool, calm boy in drama club.

It should have been a night of triumph for Alix’s hockey team. But her mean teammate Lindsay decided to start up with her usual rude comments and today Alix, who usually tries to control her anger, let it finally run free. Alix lashes out and before she knows it, her coach is dragging her off Lindsay, and the invitation to the Canada National Women’s U18 Team’s summer camp is on the line.

She needs to learn how to control this anger, and she is sure Ezra, the popular and poised theater kid from her grade is the answer. So she asks for his help. But as they hang out and start get closer, Alix learns that there is more to Ezra than the cool front he puts on. And that maybe this friendship could become something more…. 

Clementine Book Two

Author: Tillie Walden
Publisher: Image Comics
Release Date: Oct. 4 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 3 (Bookstores)
List Price: $14.99 Paperback

FROM THE WORLD OF ROBERT KIRKMAN’S THE WALKING DEAD

Clementine and her new friends are rescued by an island community led by an enigmatic doctor called Miss Morro, but just as Clementine’s scars are finally beginning to heal, she discovers dark secrets that threaten to tear her new life apart.

Can Miss Morro be trusted? What about the rest of the islanders? 

And just how far will Clementine go to protect the ones she loves?

Tilllie Walden’s acclaimed trilogy continues!

The Glass Scientists: Volume One

Author: S. H. Cotugno
Publisher: Razorbill
Release Date: Oct. 4 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 3 (Bookstores)
List Price: $24.99 Hardcover / $16.99 Paperback  

The gothic worlds of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, and more collide in this graphic novel series about buried secrets, mad science, and misunderstood monsters. For fans of stylish reimaginings like Lore Olympus and gaslamp fantasies like The Night Circus!

London isn’t the safest place for mad scientists these days. After that whole ordeal with Frankenstein, angry mobs have gotten awfully good at hunting down monsters and wiping out anything they don’t understand. In fact, if it weren’t for one extraordinary young man, every out-of-the-box thinker would have been locked up . . . or worse.

That young man is none other than Dr. Henry Jekyll. He believes mad scientists would thrive if they could just fix their public image, which is why he founded the Society for Arcane Sciences, a place where like-minded eccentrics could come together to defy the laws of nature in peace.

But everything changes when a mysterious stranger arrives, bent on taking the Society in a radical new direction. With everyone turning against him, Jekyll’s life starts to spiral out of control, shattering all his carefully laid plans and threatening to expose his darkest secret–one that could destroy everything he has built from the inside out.

Volume One collects Chapters 1-7 of this thrilling, humorous, beloved webcomic, which is available in print for the first time ever. It also features a brand-new side story, a behind-the-scenes look at artwork, and more exclusive bonus content! 

The Mysteries

Writer: Bill Watterson
Artists: Bill Watterson and John Kascht
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Release Date: Oct. 11 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 10 (Bookstores)
List Price: $19.99 Hardcover

From Bill Watterson, bestselling creator of the beloved comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, and John Kascht, one of America’s most renowned caricaturists, comes a mysterious and beautifully illustrated fable about what lies beyond human understanding.

In a fable for grown-ups by cartoonist Bill Watterson, a long-ago kingdom is afflicted with unexplainable calamities. Hoping to end the torment, the king dispatches his knights to discover the source of the mysterious events. Years later, a single battered knight returns.

For the book’s illustrations, Watterson and caricaturist John Kascht worked together for several years in unusually close collaboration. Both artists abandoned their past ways of working, inventing images together that neither could anticipate–a mysterious process in its own right. 

Local Fauna: The Art of Peter de Sève

Author: Peter de Sève
Contributors: Interview by Bill Watterson; essays by Mike Mignola, Glen Keane, Françoise Mouly and Randall de Sève
Publisher: Cernunnos
Release Date: Oct. 10
List Price: $40.00 Hardcover

Peter de Sève’s work spans four decades and various media, from magazines, books, and television commercials to Broadway posters and character designs for animated feature films. He is perhaps best recognized for his many covers for The New Yorker magazine and his character designs for the blockbuster Ice Age franchise (Scrat is a veritable international celebrity). De Sève has also contributed to such films as Finding Nemo, Robots, The Little Prince, and The Grinch, to name only a few. He is currently busy at work on various animated projects in both the United States and Europe.

Local Fauna showcases de Sève’s most iconic illustrations and designs alongside a plentiful selection of sketches and personal work that have become fan favorites across social media. This monograph opens a doorway into his visual universe, and it includes behind-the-scenes insight into his process, from a character or cover’s first conception to the final product. It includes an introduction by writer, illustrator, and character designer Carter Goodrich and an in-depth interview with Bill Watterson, the legendary creator of Calvin and Hobbes, as well as essays by The New Yorker art director, Françoise Mouly; Academy Award winning director and animator, Glen Keane; comic artist and creator of Hellboy, Mike Mignola; and New York Times bestselling picture book author, Randall de Sève. 

The Great Beyond

Author: Léa Murawiec
Translator: Aleisha Jensen
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Release Date: Oct. 11 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 10 (Bookstores)
List Price: $32.95 Paperback

Manel Naher wants out. In a world where your name is currency, it’s tough to make ends meet. It’s even tougher when you share a name with a rising pop star. The city is unbearable—endless high-rises, social climbers left and right, and nothing but names as far as the eye can see. But Manel is looking a little bit farther, just beyond the horizon, and she’s even convinced her buddy Ali of how much more could be lying in wait right outside city limits.

When a sudden heart attack induced by diminished name recognition foils Manel’s plans, gradual change becomes a catalyst for a complete lifestyle overhaul. This stylish, absurd comedy of contemporary manners skewers the human condition in persistent self-promo. Sharp, architectural lines are accented by decisively mellow hues, building a humorously grim world unexpectedly bathed in nothing but light.

An exciting debut from a fresh perspective, The Great Beyond showcases newcomer Léa Murawiec’s command of comics language and satirizes a sprawling metropolis, its politics, and its extraordinary inhabitants. 

Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History

Created By: C.L.R. James
Artists: Nic Watts and Sakina Karimjee
Publisher: Verso
Release Date: Oct. 10
List Price: $24.95 Paperback

The end of slavery started in what was then San Domingo. In 1791, the enslaved people of themost prized French sugar plantation colony revolted against their masters. For over twelveyears, against a backdrop of the French Revolution, they fought an epic black liberation strugglefor control of the island. Theirs was the first and only successful slave revolution. It was thecreation of Haiti as a nation, the first independent black republic outside of Africa, and aninternational inspiration to the persecuted and enslaved. This is the impassioned andbeautifully drawn story of the Haitian Revolution and its incredible leader: ToussaintLouverture. 

MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios

Writers: Gavin Edwards, Dave Gonzales, Joanna Robinson
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
Release Date: Oct. 10
List Price: $35.00 Hardcover

Marvel Entertainment was a moribund toymaker not even twenty years ago. Today, Marvel Studios is the dominant player both in Hollywood and in global pop culture. How did an upstart studio conquer the world? In MCU, beloved culture writers Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, and Gavin Edwards draw on more than a hundred interviews with actors, producers, directors, and writers to present the definitive chronicle of Marvel Studios and its sole, ongoing production, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. For all its outward success, the studio was forged by near-constant conflict, from the contentious hiring of Robert Downey Jr. for its 2008 debut, Iron Man, all the way up to the disappointment of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and shocking departures of multiple Marvel executives in 2023. Throughout, the authors demonstrate that the original genius of Marvel was its resurrection and modification of Hollywood’s old studio system. But will it survive its own spectacular achievements? Dishy and authoritative, MCU is the first book to tell the Marvel Studios story in full–and an essential, effervescent account of American mass culture. 

Genius Animated: The Cartoon Art of Alex Toth

Writer: Bruce Canwell
Artists: Dean Mullaney, Alex Toth
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Release Date: Oct. 11 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 10 (Bookstores)
List Price: $39.99 Hardcover

The third book in the series concludes the in-depth look into the life and art of one of the most significant comics and animation artists of all time.

This companion volume to the award-winning Genius, Isolated and Genius, Illustrated zooms in to focus on Toth’s groundbreaking contributions in the field of animation and features many rarely-seen or never-before-published pieces of art, much of it uncovered in the archives of Hanna-Barbera Studios!

Featuring presentation illustrations for unsold series, character designs and storyboards for old favorites such as Space Ghost, SHAZZAN, and Superfriends, and work taken from both the beginning (Space Angel) and end (Bionic 6) of Toth’s “Saturday kidvid” career, this oversized artbook features observations from animation professionals about his work, plus Alex’s own commentary on the cartoon shows that shaped a generation. Genius, Animated is filled, cover-to-cover, with must-see material, making it essential reading for Toth-fans and animation enthusiasts alike. 

Sí, Se Puede: The Latino Heroes Who Changed the United States

Writer: Julio Anta
Artist: Yasmín Flores Montañez
Publisher: Ten Speed Graphic
Release Date: Oct. 10
List Price: $19.99 Paperback

From community activism, to the halls of government, pop-culture, arts, and beyond, Latinos have shaped every aspect of American life. Nevertheless, these significant figures and their contributions are often left out of our textbooks. Sí, Se Puede, named after the “Yes, We Can” motto of the United Farm Workers, brings Latino history in the U.S. to the forefront.

The book follows a group of Hispanic-Americans as they embark on an interactive museum tour to meet Latino heroes they may not have learned about in school. The high tech, immersive exhibit allows the tour group to virtually travel through time, visiting the Hispanic Union soldiers of the Civil War; marching with César Chávez and Dolores Huerta in the farmworkers struggle; going to space with Ellen Ochoa, the first Latina to leave Earth’s atmosphere; meeting the youngest woman to ever serve in Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; and more. This ensemble of unlikely friends discover the rich history of Latinos in the United States, and gain new insights into their own American experiences.

Sí, Se Puede shines a spotlight on the often-overlooked Latino heroes throughout US history, bringing their stories to life through the sequential action, illustrated characters, and lush color palette of a graphic novel. 

Shadow Hills

Author: Sean Ford
Publisher: Secret Acres
Release Date: Oct. 11 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 10 (Bookstores)
List Price: $23.95 Paperback

The deeply divided residents of Shadow Hills must face their past – or certain annihilation.

Environmental disturbances and a mysterious epidemic wreak havoc on the remote, struggling town of Shadow Hills. The rivalrous townsfolk race to find a cure and uncover the source of the threat before it destroys the entire community. Their search for answers leads them into the depths of a buried past…

Shadow Hills is the long-awaited follow-up to Sean Ford’s perennial favorite graphic novel, Only Skin. A decade in the making, Shadow Hills collects all ten serialized chapters and brings the highly acclaimed series to a new, stunning conclusion.

Run and Hide: How Jewish Youth Escaped the Holocaust

Author: Don Brown
Publisher: Clarion Books
Release Date: Oct. 11 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 10 (Bookstores)
List Price: $22.99 Hardcover

A gripping nonfiction graphic novel that follows the stories of Jewish children, separated from their parents, who escaped the horrors of the Holocaust. From the Sibert Honor and YALSA Award-winning creator behind The Unwanted, Drowned City, and others.

In the tightening grip of Hitler’s power, towns, cities, and ghettoes were emptied of Jews. Unless they could escape, Jewish children would not be spared their deadly fate in the Holocaust, a tragedy of unfathomable depth. Only 11% of the Jewish children living in Europe before 1939 survived the Second World War.

Run and Hide tells the stories of these children, forced to leave their homes and families, as they escaped certain horror. Some children flee to England by train. Others are hidden from Nazis, sometimes in plain sight. Some are secreted away in attics and farmhouses. Still others make miraculous escapes, cresting over the snow-covered Pyrenees mountains to safety.

Acclaimed nonfiction storyteller Don Brown brings his expertise for journalistic reporting to the deeply felt personal narratives of Jewish children who survived against overwhelming odds.

Working with Ditko

Writer: Jack C. Harris
Artist: Steve Ditko
Publisher: Two Morrows Publishing
Release Date: Oct. 10
List Price: $24.95 Paperback

Working With Ditko takes a unique and nostalgic journey through comics’ Bronze Age, as editor and writer Jack C. Harris recalls his numerous collaborations with legendary comics master Steve Ditko! It features never-before-seen preliminary sketches and pencil art from Harris’ tenure working with Ditko on The Creeper, Shade the Changing Man, the Odd Man, the Demon, Wonder Woman, Legion of Super-Heroes, The Fly, and even Ditko’s unused redesign for Batman! Plus, it documents their work on numerous independent properties, and offers glimpses of original characters from Ditko’s drawing board that have never been viewed by even his most avid fans! This illustrated volume is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to experience the creative comic book process by one of the industry’s most revered creators, as seen through the eyes of one of his most frequent collaborators!

My Brilliant Friend: The Graphic Novel: Based on the Novel by Elena Ferrante

Created By: Elena Ferrante
Writer: Chiara Lagani
Artist: Mara Cerri
Translator: Ann Goldstein (Translator)
Publisher: Europa Editions
Release Date: Oct. 11 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 10 (Bookstores)
List Price: $26.00 Hardcover

HBO’s four-season TV adaptation of My Brilliant Friend has enjoyed success with critics and viewers in the U.S.; the novel has been adapted for the stage and radio plays. Here, for the first time, it is brought to vivid life as a graphic novel by one of Italy’s most beloved illustrators.

For Ferrante fans, for those new to Ferrante, for readers of graphic novels, Chiara Lagani’s and Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend: the graphic novel is a thrilling new adaptation of one of the best loved novels of recent decades. Translated by Ferrante’s long-time translator, Ann Goldstein, the graphic novel tells the enduring story of the complex friendship between Lila and Lenù in post-war Naples. 

One in a Million

Author: Claire Lordon
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Release Date: Oct. 11 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 10 (Bookstores)
List Price: $16.99 Paperback

Something is wrong with Claire, but she doesn’t know what. Nobody does, not even her doctors. All she wants is to return to her happy and athletic teenage self. But her accumulating symptoms—chronic fatigue, pounding headaches, weight gain—hint that there’s something not right inside Claire’s body. Claire’s high school experience becomes filled with MRIs, visits to the Mayo Clinic, and multiple surgeries to remove a brain tumor. But even in her most difficult moments battling chronic illness, Claire manages to find solace in her family, her closest friends, and her art. A deeply personal and visually arresting memoir that draws on the author’s high school diaries and drawings, One in a Million is also a sophisticated portrayal of pain, depression, and fear that any teen or adult can relate to. With a sensitive preface and an author’s note connecting past to present, this true story of resilience strikes a moving balance between raw honesty in the face of medical and mental trauma and the everyday musings of a teenager. 

Brooms

Writer: Jasmine Walls
Artist: Teo Duvall
Publisher: Levine Querido
Release Date: Nov. 1 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 10 (Bookstores)
List Price: $24.99 Hardcover / $18.99 Paperback

It’s 1930s Mississippi. Magic is permitted only in certain circumstances, and by certain people. Unsanctioned broom racing is banned. But for those who need the money, or the thrills…it’s there to be found.

Meet Billie Mae, captain of the Night Storms racing team, and Loretta, her best friend and second-in-command. They’re determined to make enough money to move out west to a state that allows Black folks to legally use magic and take part in national races.

Cheng-Kwan – doing her best to handle the delicate and dangerous double act of being the perfect “son” to her parents, and being true to herself while racing.

Mattie and Emma — Choctaw and Black — the youngest of the group and trying to dodge government officials who want to send them and their newly-surfaced powers away to boarding school.

And Luella, in love with Billie Mae. Her powers were sealed away years ago after she fought back against the government. She’ll do anything to prevent the same fate for her cousins.

Brooms is a queer, witchy Fast and the Furious that shines light on history not often told – it’s everything you’d ever want to read in a graphic novel. 

Huda F Cares

Author: Huda Fahmy
Publisher: Dial Books
Release Date: Oct. 11 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 10 (Bookstores)
List Price: $24.99 Hardcover / $16.99 Paperback

In this laugh-out-loud funny sequel to the graphic novel Huda F Are You?, the Fahmys are off to Disney World, but self-conscious Huda worries her family will stand out too much.

Huda and her sisters can’t believe it when her parents announce that they’re actually taking a vacation this summer . . . to DISNEY WORLD! But it’s not quite as perfect as it seems. First Huda has to survive a 24-hour road trip from Michigan to Florida, with her sisters annoying her all the way. And then she can’t help but notice the people staring at her and her family when they pray in public. Back home in Dearborn she and her family blend right in because there are so many other Muslim families, but not so much in Florida and along the way.

It’s a vacation of forced (but unexpectly successful?) sisterly bonding, a complicated new friendship, a bit more independence, and some mixed feelings about her family’s public prayers. Huda is proud of her religion and who she is, but she still sure wishes she didn’t care so much what other people thought.

Poor Helpless Comics!: The Cartoons (and More) of Ed Subitzky

Author: Ed Subitzky
Contributions By: Mark Newgarden
Publisher: New York Review Comics
Release Date: Oct. 10
List Price: $29.95 Paperback

For the entire run of National Lampoon, Ed Subitzky bent, broke, and reimagined what a cartoon could do: A cartoon that hypnotizes you. A cartoon that goes to prison. A cartoon that folds up and flies away. Framed by an interview with Mark Newgarden, this first-ever collection of Subitzky’s work is a portrait of one of the funniest, most prolific humorists of the ’70s and ’80s. 

Dauntless Dames: High-Helled Heroes of the Comics

Editors: Trina Robbins and Peter Maresca
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Release Date: Oct. 18 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 17 (Bookstores)
List Price: $100.00 Hardcover

In the 1920s they were socialites and flappers. In the 1960s they were homemakers and heartthrobs. But from the late 1930s to the early 1950s, female stars of the newspaper comic strips were detectives, spies, soldiers of fortune, even superheroes. Accomplishing everything the male comics stars of the time achieved, except they did it in high-heels and flowing skirts. Follow the daring exploits of these smart, tough, independent AND sexy Dauntless Dames.

Both a product of their era and ahead of their time, the women in these stories gave their audience just what they needed. Through the Sunday Comics readers could escape from the woes of the Depression, travel to exotic foreign lands, feel the glamor and gangsters of the entertainment world, and support the Allied efforts in World War II.

Presented in an extra-large format, here are the colorful, pulse-pounding tales of ten incredible women, both known and unknown to comics fans — and most are reprinted here for the first time in three-quarters of a century! The book also includes a special bonus insert: a fold-out section with a dozen paper doll cutouts starring the most popular women comic strip characters of the day.

Hip Hop Family Tree: The Omnibus

Author: Ed Piskor
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Release Date: Oct. 18 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 17 (Bookstores)
List Price: $75.00 Hardcover

Ed Piskor’s Hip Hop Family Tree has been a global phenomenon and perennial bestseller since the first (of four) volumes was published in 2013, spawning multiple printings, fourteen comic books, and the author’s wildly popular YouTube comics channel, Cartoonist Kayfabe (with fellow cartoonist Jim Rugg). Yet the series has never been collected under one cover. Until now.

This omnibus collection includes the original 360-page series with over 140 pages of extra material: a cover gallery of every HHFT book and comic book cover and back cover Piskor ever created, pages from the HHFT comic book series that have never been collected, new annotations of the entire series by Piskor, and much more. Plus, it features a foreword by Charlie Ahearn and an afterword by Bill Adler.

Hip Hop Family Tree is the entertaining, encyclopedic history of the formative years of the music genre that changed global culture. Piskor’s cartooning crackles like Kirby and takes you from the parks and rec rooms of the South Bronx to the night clubs, recording studios, and radio stations where the scene started to boom, capturing the flavor of late 1970s New York City in panels bursting with obsessively authentic detail. With a vigorous and engaging Ken Burns-meets-Stan Lee approach, the battles and rivalries, the technical innovations, the triumphs and failures are all thoroughly researched and lovingly depicted. Like the acclaimed hip hop documentaries Style Wars and Scratch, Hip Hop Family Tree is an essential cultural chronicle and a must for hip hop fans, pop-culture addicts, and anyone who wants to know how it went down back in the day.

Watership Down: The Graphic Novel

Created By: Richard Adams
Writer: James Sturm
Artist: Joe Sutphin
Publisher: Ten Speed Graphic
Release Date: Oct. 18 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 17 (Bookstores)
List Price: $35.00 Hardcover / $26.99 Paperback

A beautiful and faithful graphic novel adaptation of Richard Adams’s beloved story of a group of rabbits on an epic journey in search of home.

Watership Down is a classic tale of survival, hope, courage, and friendship that has delighted and inspired readers around the world for more than fifty years. Masterfully adapted by award-winning author James Sturm and gorgeously illustrated by bestselling artist Joe Sutphin, this spectacular graphic novel will delight old fans and inspire new ones, bringing the joy of Watership Down to a new generation of readers. 

Confetti Realms

Writer: Nadia Shammas
Artist: Karnessa
Colorist: Hackto Oshiro 
Letterer: Micah Meyers
Publisher: Maverick
Release Date: Oct. 4 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 17 (Bookstores)
List Price: $12.99 Paperback

A group of teens are transported from a graveyard to another realm where they must collect teeth– and learn about themselves– in order to return home.

On Halloween night, when the moon is full, teenagers get up to mischief. But when an encounter with a giant, sentient puppet in a graveyard sends five teens to a mysterious dimension called the Confetti Realms, they must overcome obstacles in their own friendships-and collect the debted teeth owed to the puppet-in order to make their way home. But the allure of staying in a fantasy world is a hard one to beat, and going home to their normal lives is starting to sound less and less appealing for some. Will these friends return home?

Featuring a diverse cast of characters, this Tim Burton-esque, comedic, modern, and high-energy story is written by Eisner Award-winner Nadia Shammas, with art by Karnessa and colors by Hackto Oshiro.

If You’ll Have Me

Author: Eunnie
Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers
Release Date: Oct. 18 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 17 (Bookstores)
List Price: $17.99 Paperback

Momo Gardner is the kind of friend who’s always ready to lend a helping hand. She’s introverted, sensitive, and maybe a little too trusting, but she likes to believe the best in people. PG, on the other hand, is a bit of a lone wolf, despite her reputation for being a flirt and a player. Underneath all that cool mystery, she’s actually quick to smile, and when she falls for someone, she falls hard. An unexpected meet-cute brings the two together, kicking off the beginning of an awkward yet endearing courtship–but with their drastically different personalities, Momo’s overprotective friend, and PG’s past coming back to haunt her, Momo and PG’s romance is put to the test. 

Artificial: A Love Story

Author: Amy Kurzweil
Publisher: Catapult
Release Date: Oct. 18 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 17 (Bookstores)
List Price: $38.00 Hardcover

A visionary story of three generations of artists whose search for meaning and connection transcends the limits of life

How do we relate to—and hold—our family’s past? Is it through technology? Through spirit? Art, poetry, music? Or is it through the resonances we look for in ourselves?

In Artificial, we meet the Kurzweils, a family of creators who are preserving their history through unusual means. At the center is renowned inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, who has long been saving the documents of his deceased father, Fredric, an accomplished conductor and pianist from Vienna who fled the Nazis in 1938.

Once, Fred’s life was saved by his art: an American benefactor, impressed by Fred’s musical genius, sponsored his emigration to the United States. He escaped just one month before Kristallnacht.

Now, Fred has returned. Through AI and salvaged writing, Ray is building a chatbot that writes in Fred’s voice, and he enlists his daughter, cartoonist Amy Kurzweil, to help him ensure the immortality of their family’s fraught inheritance.

Amy’s deepening understanding of her family’s traumatic uprooting resonates with the creative life she fights to claim in the present, as Amy and her partner, Jacob, chase jobs, and each other, across the country. Kurzweil evokes an understanding of accomplishment that centers conversation and connection, knowing and being known by others.

With Kurzweil’s signature humanity and humor, in boundary-pushing, gorgeous handmade drawings, Artificial guides us through nuanced questions about art, memory, and technology, demonstrating that love, a process of focused attention, is what grounds a meaningful life. 

Upended

Author: Josh Bayer
Publisher: Uncivilized Books
Release Date: Oct. 17
List Price: $24.95 Paperback

Josh Bayer finds a manuscript of an unfinished play inside his deceased father’s desk. The play tells the story of Josh’s mother’s early death (age 37) and his father’s struggle with single parenthood. When he attempts to adapt the play into comics, it triggers a series of personal crises. Bayer’s limitations and futile ambitions are brought into sharp relief as he grapples with an estranged, unknowable parent and the play’s frustrating lack of resolution.

Humans worship lore, myth, and fables, but many people’s creative dreams become abandoned. Why?

Bayer’s inky line, tangled textures, and kaleidoscopic color boldly fuse on the page into comic book semiotics, flights of grandeur, and tangents inside tangents. Josh Bayer stitches scattered memories into surrealistic episodes permeated with dream logic. Unended is a Promethean quest to excavate the creative fire hidden inside us.

Decodependence: A Romantic Tragicomic

Author: Lila Ash
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Release Date: Oct. 17
List Price: $24.95 Paperback

Through her skillful, charming illustrations and a voice that is sardonic, vulnerable, and completely relatable, Lila Ash shares the all-too-well-known moments that she’s experienced navigating the world of family, love, and sex through the lens of codependency.

In her late twenties, Ash found herself reliving the relationship traumas of her past. She’d tried everything to help herself move on from painful memories, from therapy to drugs and more, before entering Codependents Anonymous (CoDA), where she discovered the characteristics of codependency–and checked off every box. Ash began drawing her way through her experiences, allowing herself to recognize the codependent behaviors that ruled her life, including:

How her desperation to get a boyfriend propelled her to be sexually active at summer camp as a young teenager (codependents often confuse sexual attention for approval or acceptance).

Having a crush on her guitar teacher only to later realize that he had ulterior motives (codependents struggle with setting and maintaining boundaries).

Accepting the role of personal assistant rather than girlfriend in her recent long-term relationship (codependents have trouble accepting when prospective love interests are unavailable).

Through unflinchingly honest (and sometimes sad or harrowing) stories, a wry sense of humor, and illustrations that masterfully set the book’s tone, Decodependence: A Romantic Tragicomic will resonate with readers who are looking to better understand their own potential codependent relationship behaviors, followers of Ash’s popular Instagram account, or fans of graphic novelists and cartoonists like Liana Finck, Aline Crumb, Emily Flake, Katy Fishell, Malaka Gharib, and Olivia de Recat. 

Pittsburgh

Author: Frank Santoro
Publisher: New York Review Comics
Release Date: Oct. 18 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 17 (Bookstores)
List Price: $29.95 Hardcover

A moving graphic memoir about home, childhood, and family by the author of Storeyville and Pompeii.

Pittsburgh is the story of a family, and a city. Frank Santoro faces a straightforward yet heart-rending reality: His parents, once high-school sweethearts, now never speak to each other–despite working in the same building. Stuck in the middle, he tries to understand. The result is this book.

Using markers, pencils, scissors, and tape, with a variety of papers, drawing in vivid colors and exuberant lines, Santoro constructs a multi-generational retelling of their lives. Framed by his parents’ courtship and marriage, and set amid the vital but fading neighborhood streets, the pages of Pittsburgh are filled with details both quotidian and dramatic–from his childhood mishaps to his father’s trauma in Vietnam–interspersed throughout with the mute witness of the family dog, Pretzel.

Santoro, the acclaimed author of Storeyville and Pompeii, has created his masterpiece. Pittsburgh is an extraordinary reimagining of the comics form to depict the processes of memory, and a powerful, searching account of a family taking shape, falling apart, and struggling to reinvent itself, as the city around them does the same.

Layers: A Memoir

Author: Pénélope Bagieu
Translator: Montana Kane
Publisher: First Second
Release Date: Sep. 20 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 17 (Bookstores)
List Price: $19.99 Hardcover

Following the Eisner-award winning Brazen, Pénélope Bagieu pens her first autobiographical work in this hilarious and bitter sweet graphic memoir.

Pénélope Bagieu never thought she’d publish a graphic memoir. But when she dusted off her old diaries (no, really–this book is based on her actual diaries), she found cringe-worthy, hilarious, and heartbreaking stories begging to be drawn.

In Layers, Bagieu reflects on her childhood and teen years with her characteristic wit and unflinching honesty. The result is fifteen short stories about friendship, love, grief, and those awkward first steps toward adulthood.

The Chromatic Fantasy

Author: H a
Publisher: Silver Sprocket
Release Date: Oct. 18 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 18 (Bookstores)
List Price: $29.99 Paperback

A gorgeously drawn graphic novel reminiscent of stained glass and illuminated manuscripts, telling a story of queer transmasc romance, daring adventure, and (literally) fighting your demons.

Jules is a trans man trapped in his life as a nun. The devil that the convent guards against offers him a deal to escape: an illicit tryst and lifelong possession. Jules takes the deal, and begins his new life as a criminal who’s impervious to harm. He soon meets Casper, another trans man and a poetic thief, and together they steal, lie, and cheat their way through bewildering adventures, and develop feelings for each other along the way. But as Jules and Casper’s relationship deepens, so does the devil’s jealous grasp.. 

Vanni

Research & Story: Benjamin Dix
Script & Illustration: Lindsay Pollack
Publisher: Graphic Mundi
Release Date: Oct. 11 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 24 (Bookstores)
List Price: $19.95 Paperback

A village in the crossfire of civil war. A family searching for safety.

In the tradition of Maus, Persepolis, and The Breadwinner, Vanni is a graphic novel documenting the human side of the conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the “Tamil Tigers.” Told from the perspective of a single family, it takes readers through the horrors and life-changing decisions individuals are forced to make when caught up in someone else’s war.

Set in the northern region of Sri Lanka, which was devastated by the civil war, this graphic novel follows the Ramachandran family as they flee their home after the 2004 tsunami and move from one displacement camp to the next, seeking an ever-elusive safe haven and struggling to keep each other alive. Inspired by Benjamin Dix’s experience working in Sri Lanka for the United Nations during the war, Vanni draws on more than four years of meticulous research, official reports, and first-hand interviews with refugees. Elegantly drawn by Lindsay Pollock, it depicts heroic acts of kindness and horrific acts of violence, memorializing the experiences of the Tamil civilians against the forces that seek to erase their memory.

Are You Willing To Die for The Cause?

Author: Chris Oliveros
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Release Date: Oct. 11 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 24 (Bookstores)
List Price: $24.95 Hardcover

A deep dive into a contentious and dramatic period in Canadian history–the rise of a militant separatist group whose effects still reverberate today.

It started in 1963, when a dozen mailboxes in a wealthy Montreal neighborhood were blown to bits by handmade bombs. By the following year, a guerrilla army camp was set up deep in the woods, with would-be soldiers training for armed revolt. Then, in 1966, two high-school students dropped off bombs at factories, causing fatalities. What was behind these concerted, often bungled acts of terrorism, and how did they last for nearly eight years?

In Are You Willing to Die for the Cause?, Quebec-born cartoonist Chris Oliveros sets out to dispel common misconceptions about the birth and early years of a movement that, while now defunct, still holds a tight grip on the hearts and minds of Quebec citizenry and Canadian politics. There are no initials more volatile in Quebec history than FLQ–the Front de libération du Québec (or, in English, the Quebec Liberation Front). The original goal of this socialist movement was to fight for workers’ rights of the French majority who found their rights trampled on by English bosses. The goal became ridding the province of its English oppression by means of violent revolution.

Using dozens of obscure and long-forgotten sources, Oliveros skillfully weaves a comics oral history where the activists, employers, politicians, and secretaries piece together the sequence of events. At times humorous, other times dramatic, and always informative, Are You Willing to Die for the Cause? shines a light on just how little it takes to organize dissent and who people trust to overthrow the government. 

Time Under Tension

Author: MS Harkness
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Release Date: Oct. 25 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 24 (Bookstores)
List Price: $24.99 Paperback

M.S. Harkness is graduating from art school in Minneapolis and facing a crossroads in life. She has a strained relationship with her mother, a sexually abusive father on parole, and is in love with an aspiring MMA fighter who mostly hangs out with her to get high and already has a girlfriend and career prospects with a fight promoter. An art career feels untenable — as one professor tells her, “Don’t expect to get by on this fucked-up broke girl shit.” She decides to get a personal trainer’s certificate — it seems like a feasible and sensible career option — but continues to dabble as a sex worker and weed dealer because the money is too irresistible. With idle hands due to no classes or full-time work, M.S. has ample time to aimlessly fuck around — or, to get her shit together. “I want to be better, I want to be stable and solid. I don’t want to keep aimlessly shifting between untenable situations.”

Harkness’s bold, precise black-and-white cartooning and eye for storytelling invites the reader in, while her sharp wit and naturalist ear as a writer takes it away from there. Never didactic, always real, Time Under Tension is a spirited and assured work of graphic memoir.

I Must Be Dreaming

Author: Roz Chast
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Release Date: Oct. 25 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 24 (Bookstores)
List Price: $27.99 Hardcover

#1 New York Times bestselling, award-winning New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast’s new graphic narrative, exploring the surreal nighttime world inside her mind-and untangling one of our most enduring human mysteries: dreams.

Ancient Greeks, modern seers, Freud, Jung, neurologists, poets, artists, shamans-humanity has never ceased trying to decipher one of the strangest unexplained phenomena we all experience: dreaming. Now, in her new book, Roz Chast illustrates her own dream world, a place that is sometimes creepy but always hilarious, accompanied by an illustrated tour through “Dream-Theory Land” guided by insights from poets, philosophers, and psychoanalysts alike. Illuminating, surprising, funny, and often profound, I Must Be Dreaming explores Roz Chast’s newest subject of fascination-and promises to make it yours, too. 

Don’t Spit in the Wind

Author: Stefano Cardoselli
Colorist: Dan Lee
Publisher: Mad Cave
Release Date: Oct. 11 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 24 (Bookstores)
List Price: $17.99 Paperback

One man’s trash is another man’s living. Since earth became inhospitable, humanity escaped ages ago to live in a space station floating above the atmosphere. Now Travis and his crew of garbage men are tasked with cleaning up mountains of toxic waste, working for a company called Atomic Bros INC., to create a ‘Clear World’. But when one of Travis’ crew members goes missing near an old nuclear facility Travis’ job becomes a bit more complicated. 

Turtle Bread: A Graphic Novel About Baking, Fitting In, and the Power of Friendship

Writer: Kim-Joy
Artist: Alti Firmansyah
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
Release Date: Oct. 23 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 24 (Bookstores)
List Price: $19.99 Paperback

The debut graphic novel from The Great British Bake-Off star and author Kim-Joy, Turtle Bread explores mental health and the power of friendship, community and, of course, baking!

On her way home from another unsuccessful job interview, Yan stumbles upon Baking Club.

Her social anxiety tries to keep her away, but the bakers encourage her to come out of her shell, especially the caring and supportive Bea. As the club bakes together, Yan discovers that her new friends may need her too, more than she realises…

Features illustrated recipes throughout, for some of Kim-Joy’s favorite bakes!

Smash the Patriarchy: A Graphic Novel

Writer: Marta Breen
Artist: Jenny Jordahl
Translator: Sian Mackie
Publisher: Helvetiq
Release Date: Oct. 4 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 24 (Bookstores)
List Price: $19.99 Hardcover

The patriarchy is falling. It’s time to smash it. This graphic novel shows you how.

Patriarchy means “the rule of the father” and describes a system where men are in control. At least since the time of Aristotle, loud-mouthed men have called women weak and inferior. In entertaining comic book form, Smash the Patriarchy shames the culprits and salutes more than 100 inspiring women–from Pharaoh Hatshepsut to Mary Wollstonecraft to Petra Herrera–who stood up to them.

The book is not afraid to examine some of the worst crimes–public shaming, medical examinations, and the widespread murder and jailing of feminists around the world–as it calls on readers to finally smash the patriarchy forever.

These men get embarrassed: Aristotle, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Woody Allen and many more…

These women are celebrated: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Emily Dickinson, Queen Christina of Sweden, Arundhati Roy, Amanda Gorman, and many more… 

Diaries of War: Two Visual Accounts from Ukraine and Russia

Author: Nora Krug
Publisher: Ten Speed Graphic
Release Date: Oct. 25 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 24 (Bookstores)
List Price: $24.99 Hardcover / $18.00 Paperback

Powerful graphic journalism that highlights the contrasting realities of a Ukrainian journalist and a Russian artist grappling with their own individual experiences of Russia’s war on Ukraine–collected, edited, and illustrated by award-winning author Nora Krug

Immediately after Russia began its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Nora Krug reached out to two anonymous subjects–“K.,” a Ukrainian journalist, and “D.,” a Russian artist–and began what would become a year of correspondence. Based on her weekly interviews with K. and D., Krug created this collection of illustrated accounts that chronicles two contrasting viewpoints from opposing sides of the first year in this ongoing war.

With millions displaced, injured, or killed as a result of the invasion, Krug presents a look at the devastating effects on an everyday, individual level. K.’s diary documents a year of emotional and existential distress. She experiences loss in every sense of the word: the death of those close to her, the disconnection from her family and friends, and the devastation of her country–but her account is also a story about bravery and survival in the face of dire uncertainty.

In juxtaposition, D.’s narrative details his disdain for his government’s murderous actions and his attempts at emigrating his family abroad. He navigates his own struggle with cultural identity, guilt, and lack of action in the face of a tyrannical regime–a perspective that is necessary in challenging readers to confront the political actions of their own countries. Krug approaches Diaries of War with the immense skill and thoughtfulness required to document these two complicated experiences for the purpose of encouraging critical thinking.

Published as an Op-Comic series with the Los Angeles Times, with a portion of the entries unique to this book, Diaries of War is a harrowing real-time record of an international conflict that continues to devastate countless lives.

Whisper of the Woods

Author: Ennun Ana Iurov
Publisher: Mad Cave
Release Date: Oct. 25 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 24 (Bookstores)
List Price: $19.99 Paperback

What happens when a foreigner doesn’t listen to the local’s warnings and dives head-first into a haunted forest?

In search of his missing friend, Adam travels to the heart of Romania’s most supernatural forest, Hoia Baciu. Disregarding the local’s warnings of iele hunting the men in the vicinity, and the witch’s premonition of his impending death, he remains steadfast in his decision to find his friend. Though with every passing night, it becomes impossible to ignore the happenings around him…

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Graphic Novels for Fall 2023 – November

Middle Distance

Author: Mylo Choy
Publisher: SelfMadeHero
Release Date: Nov. 1 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 31 (Bookstores)
List Price: $19.99 Paperback

A charming, heartwarming, and poignant story of running and self-acceptance, Mylo Choy’s Middle Distance combines exertion and introspection in an exploration of the physical body’s connection to the human experience. An exciting graphic addition to a growing field, this sports memoir recounts Mylo’s history with running, and how their love for that famously solitary sport pushed them to grow over time.

As Middle Distance grapples with themes of resilience, identity, and self-care, Mylo leads us along the middle way between motion and rest, hurt and healing, fear and joy. The result is an honest, nuanced work of subtle power that will appeal to all runners, especially those who are transgender or nonbinary.

Good Comics for Bad People

 

Author: Zach M. Stafford
Publisher: Image Comics
Release Date: Nov. 1 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 31 (Bookstores)
List Price: $14.99 Hardcover

For fans of STRANGE PLANET, MR. LOVENSTEIN PRESENTS: FAILURE, and the SARAH’S SCRIBBLES Collection! Master of the hilarious, unpredictable, and just plain weird, Zach M. Stafford’s GOOD COMICS FOR BAD PEOPLE marks his graphic novel debut, and features all the laughter, absurdity, and bodily fluids that have made his worldwide mega-hit webcomic so (in)famous! Includes all your favorite Extra Fabulous Comics plus book exclusive comics that can’t be found online and an introduction by Sarah Anderson AKA Sarah’s Scribbles. 

Satan’s Kingdom

 

Author: Robert Sergel
Publisher: Secret Acres
Release Date: Nov. 1 (Comics Shops) / Oct. 31 (Bookstores)
List Price: $19.95 Paperback  

The road to Satan’s Kingdom is paved with good intentions.

Robert Sergel’s Best American Comics selection and Ignatz Award nominated series, Eschew, captures those awkward, private, hilarious moments of our past. This new collection proves those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Tour America’s haunted history of spite houses and bad babysitters, meet Napoleon in New Jersey, and find yourself somewhere between Desolation Bay and Satan’s Kingdom. This is one to remember. 

Courage to Dream: Tales of Hope in the Holocaust

Writer: Neal Shusterman
Artist: Andrés Vera Martínez
Publisher: Graphix
Release Date: Oct. 31
List Price: $24.99 Hardcover / $14.99 Paperback

National Book Award winner Neal Shusterman and acclaimed illustrator Andrés Vera Martínez present a graphic novel exploring the Holocaust through surreal visions and a textured canvas of heroism and hope.

Courage to Dream plunges readers into the Holocaust – one of the greatest atrocities in human history – delving into the core of what it means to face the extinction of everything and everyone you hold dear.

This gripping, multifaceted tapestry is woven from Jewish folklore and cultural history. Five interlocking narratives explore one common story – the tradition of resistance and uplift. Neal Shusterman and Andrés Vera Martínez are internationally renowned creators who have collaborated on a masterwork that encourages the compassionate, bold reaching for a dream. 

Transitions: A Mother’s Journey

Author: Élodie Durand
Translator: Even McGorray
Publisher: Top Shelf Productions
Release Date: Nov. 8 (Comics Shops) / Nov. 7 (Bookstores)
List Price: $19.99 Paperback

When university biologist Anne Marbot learns that the 19-year-old she raised as “Lucie” is a transgender man named Alex, she’s overwhelmed by questions. How can this be? Who put these ideas in your head? What if you regret it? Am I overreacting? How will your grandparents react? Why didn’t I see it coming? Why is this so easy for others? Am I a bigot? What does gender really mean, anyway? How can I be the parent my child needs?

It soon becomes clear that Alex is not the only one embarking on a journey of self-discovery. The road is not easy, and sometimes their relationship is bitterly strained. But Alex is sure of himself, and Anne is determined to be strong for his sake. With time, she too will be transformed, rediscovering her identity as a mother in profound new ways.

With grace and sensitivity, award-winning graphic novelist Élodie Durand (Parenthesis) captures the unique journey of well-meaning loved ones who struggle to reconcile new gender identities with their old assumptions. Deeply researched and drawn from true experience, Transitions is a must-read companion for allies and families navigating trans issues and a compassionate roadmap to acceptance.

The Cliff

Author: Manon Debaye
Editor: Translated by Montana Kane
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Release Date: Nov. 8 (Comics Shops) / Nov. 7 (Bookstores)
List Price: $22.95 Paperback

Schoolyard outcasts Charlie and Astrid meet up after school near a cliff at the edge of the woods surrounding their sleepy town. They make a blood pact to jump together in five days time, before their thirteenth birthdays. Not that navigating the unspoken pecking order of the school quad makes it easy. Can the intensity of their bond survive the scrutiny of their peers, or will it crumble under the sum of each other’s disappointments?

Manon Debaye’s characters live in a world just on the periphery of adult supervision, where kids prey upon one another with casual aplomb only to find themselves completely out of their depth. A deft use of colored pencils brings sleepy but barren suburban landscapes to the fore, further capturing childhood’s last pivotal moments as it teeters on the edge of adolescence with startling honesty in this devastatingly well-crafted debut.

Winner of the 2023 Philippe Druillet Prize at Angoulême, The Cliff is a moody, visceral glimpse into pre-teen life, unflinching in its portrayal of trivialized cruelties alongside simple joys. 

Macanudo: Optimism Is for the Brave

Author: Liniers
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Release Date: Nov. 8 (Comics Shops) / Nov. 7 (Bookstores)
List Price: $24.99 Hardcover

The second volume in Fantagraphics’ English-language collection of the internationally beloved newspaper strip.

Elves, witches, forest monsters, unicorns, children, talking cats and penguins… plus zombies with fitbits, Stephen King’s Christine working as an Uber, and office politics? The bounds of a daily comic strip don’t restrict Macanudo’s imagination or subjects.

With the range of The Far Side, the whimsy of Mutts, and the heart of Calvin & Hobbes, artist Liniers brings his distinctive illustrative line and sensitive watercolors to whatever crosses his mind on a given day. Readers of the previous volume will recognize some recurring characters and stock players, but each book stands alone, and every strip builds its own world. Whether commenting on pop culture, society, or the environment, or celebrating art, nature or the act of reading, Liniers (Ricardo Siri) expresses his thoughts with joy and beauty. Most of them are pretty funny, too.

Beginning in 2002 in Buenos Aires, Macanudo steadily gained popularity around the world, and has been appearing in US newspapers since 2018. Optimism is for the Brave is the second of a series of volumes collecting Liniers’ groundbreaking strip. 

Miles Davis and the Search for the Sound

Author: Dave Chisholm
Editor: Rantz Hoseley
Publisher: Z2 Comics
Release Date: Nov. 8 (Comics Shops) / Nov. 7 (Bookstores)
List Price: $39.99 Hardcover

Miles Davis and the Search for the Sound is a synesthesia-inducing graphic novel that follows the many lives of music legend Miles Davis.

With narration adapted from Davis’ own words and an innovative visual style that shifts to reflect Davis’ constant musical changes, this 150-page graphic novel follows Davis through four decades of musical innovation, all centered around his quest to find a mysterious sound he heard on a moonlit country road as a child.

Meticulously researched and expertly crafted by writer/artist Dave Chisholm—a doctorate holder in jazz trumpet from the Eastman School of Music—Miles Davis and the Search for the Sound deftly explores the often volatile journey of Miles Davis and his world-renowned music. 

Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey

Author: Edel Rodriguez
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Release Date: Nov. 8 (Comics Shops) / Nov. 7 (Bookstores)
List Price: $29.99 Hardcover  

Hailed for his iconic art on the cover of Time and on jumbotrons around the world, Edel Rodriguez is among the most prominent political artists of our age. Now for the first time, he draws his own life, revisiting his childhood in Cuba and his family’s passage on the infamous Mariel boatlift.

When Edel was nine, Fidel Castro announced his surprising decision to let 125,000 traitors of the revolution, or “worms,” leave the country. The faltering economy and Edel’s family’s vocal discomfort with government surveillance had made their daily lives on a farm outside Havana precarious, and they secretly planned to leave. But before that happened, a dozen soldiers confiscated their home and property and imprisoned them in a detention center near the port of Mariel, where they were held with dissidents and criminals before being marched to a flotilla that miraculously deposited them, overnight, in Florida.

Through vivid, stirring art, Worm tells a story of a boyhood in the midst of the Cold War, a family’s displacement in exile, and their tenacious longing for those they left behind. It also recounts the coming-of-age of an artist and activist, who, witnessing American’s turn from democracy to extremism, struggles to differentiate his adoptive country from the dictatorship he fled. Confronting questions of patriotism and the liminal nature of belonging, Edel Rodriguez ultimately celebrates the immigrants, maligned and overlooked, who guard and invigorate American freedom.

Rose Wolves (Book 1)

Author: Natalie Warner
Publisher: Top Shelf Productions
Release Date: Nov. 15 (Comics Shops) / Nov. 14 (Bookstores)
List Price: $14.99 Hardcover

This wordless two-color graphic novel is an enthralling fable about disability, companionship, and transformation, set in the haunting beauty of the wild.

One day, a little girl picks an unusual flower from an unusual bush in the forest. Overnight, the flower blooms and turns into a magical creature: a rose wolf, missing a leg just like she is missing an arm. Together, the new friends must go on a journey to find where they belong.

In her graphic novel debut, Canadian cartoonist Natalie Warner presents a moody, tender, and captivating new fairy tale, without using a single word. Fans of Nightlights, Sheets, and The Tea Dragon Society will hold it close and read it again & again. 

I Don’t Want to be a Mom

Author: Irene Olmo
Translator: Kendra Boileau
Publisher: Graphic Mundi
Release Date: Nov. 1 (Comics Shops) / Nov. 14 (Bookstores)
List Price: $19.95 Paperback

What does choice really mean for a woman?

In I Don’t Want to Be a Mom, Irene Olmo recounts her coming-of-age transformation from assuming she will one day start a family to realizing that she just doesn’t want to be a mom. With an affecting mix of humor and introspection, she describes the subtle and not-so-subtle ways she was pressured to have children and the feelings of isolation and self-doubt that ensued. Her delightful full-color illustrations capture perfectly the maddeningly narrow-minded reactions of those around her as well as her own discomfort and frustration.

A true story of liberation and self-empowerment in the face of societal prejudice, I Don’t Want to Be a Mom questions the imposition of motherhood on women as both an expectation and a path toward fulfillment. It shows us that “choice” has more than one dimension and that, ultimately, some questions in life are more complicated than they seem. 

The Cat Who Taught Zen

Author: James Norbury
Publisher: William Morrow
Release Date: Nov. 14
List Price: $25.00 Hardcover

From the author and illustrator of the international bestseller Big Panda and Tiny Dragon comes a beautifully illustrated exploration of life and Zen, an adult fable of an old cat’s journey to find infinite wisdom and the lessons he shares with others along the way.

In a distant city, an old cat considers himself as wise as can be, until he hears of an ancient pine far away, under the boughs of which infinite wisdom can be found. Thus, the Cat embarks on a journey deep into the forest to search for the tree. Along the way, he meets new friends–the Hare, the Magpie, the Wolf Cub, the Monkey, the Tortoise, and the Tiger–and comes across the energetic young Kitten. What wisdom does the Cat have to impart to his friends, and, perhaps more importantly, what does he still have to learn?

Inspired by Zen koans, with stunning illustrations and a gentle voice, The Cat Who Taught Zen has wisdom to offer all readers.

Red Harvest: A Graphic Novel of the Terror Famine in Soviet Ukraine

Author: Michael Cherkas
Publisher: NBM Publishing
Release Date: Nov. 15 (Comics Shops) / Nov. 14 (Bookstores)
List Price: $19.99 Hardcover  

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin waged a brutal war against the Soviet peasantry leading to the Holodomor, the terror-famine that killed at least 4 million Ukrainians during the fall and winter of 1932-33. Red Harvest is based on the tragic events that took place in Soviet Ukraine and other parts of the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1933. Stalin and the ruling Communist Party began their program of forced large-scale collectivization of individual farms and farmers, including the seizure of livestock, farm implements, crops, seed stock, and other property. Red Harvest is the fictional story, based on true stories as related to the Ukranian-Canadian author, of Mykola Kovalenko, a Ukrainian immigrant to Canada, who was the only member of his family to have survived the famine. Through his memories, we witness the horrors of what happened to his family and fellow villagers in the “breadbasket of Europe” as they struggled–not only to make sense of the war that was being waged against them–but, ultimately, to survive. 

Silence, Full Stop

Author: Karina Shor
Publisher: Street Noise Books
Release Date: Nov. 15 (Comics Shops) / Nov. 14 (Bookstores)
List Price: $23.99 Paperback

A breathtaking and gut-wrenchingly real graphic memoir of the struggles of an adolescent girl processing the trauma of childhood sexual assault. An immigrant at the age of six, she arrived in a strange new world. Karina was labeled “different” immediately, and a desire to be invisible was born. The “different” label expanded to “weird” and “freak”, terms that she fervently embraced. By taking society’s critique, owning it, and taking pride in it, she gained power over it. In a life overshadowed by fear, Karina wanted control. If something was going to ruin her life it would be her and her alone. 

I Am Only a Foreigner Because You Do Not Understand

Author: L. Nichols
Publisher: Secret Acres
Release Date: Nov. 15 (Comics Shops) / Nov. 14 (Bookstores)
List Price: $15.95 Paperback

Some books take the whole of a lifetime to write.

I Am Only a Foreigner Because You Do Not Understand continues Flocks, L. Nichols’s graphic memoir of growing up trans in the rural South. These comics document L.’s further transition, from living as a man to walking the middle path, facing depression, disease, divorce and death. Healing leaves scars, things fall apart, and pronouns change until there is no I, there is only us. 

How to Love: A Guide to Feelings & Relationships for Everyone

Author: Alex Norris
Publisher: Walker Books Us
Release Date: Nov. 14
List Price: $17.99 Paperback

A guide for to dating, relationships, and identity–from a wildly popular web comic artist.

Isn’t it wonderful when love strikes? We connect with someone beautiful and interesting and suddenly–feelings. But what to do when that first crush levels you? When sparks fly and then fizzle? Or when love just . . . hurts? Aimed at both young people who are just starting out in their love lives and those with more experience seeking a fresh perspective, How to Love is a funny, wise, and unique full-color guide to relationships of all shapes and sizes by a popular web comic creator. Chatty and confessional, humorous and heartfelt, and inclusive of all genders and sexualities, this graphic handbook pairs a classic Q&A format with Alex Norris’s bright, accessible, and unmistakably clever meta comic style. Certain to resonate with teens and adults, this one-of-a-kind guide offers valuable insights on everything from first love to self-love and love ever after. 

Leftstar and the Strange Occurrence

Author: Jean Fhilippe
Publisher: Silver Sprocket
Release Date: Nov. 15
List Price: $15.99 Paperback

A wildly imaginative fantasy graphic novel about the responsibilities of creation.

Leftstar can’t seem to access the world they’ve been building. They also haven’t slept in a long time. These things are almost certainly unrelated, and they should really go get the mail, anyway. But their trip to the post office is interrupted by a curious visitor: an enormous fruit bat. Whisked away in the bat’s claws, Leftstar is taken on an adventure to unblock the path to their deserted creation. Between bites of pie and words of wisdom, can Leftstar remember the most crucial part of invention?

Find out in this chill and cozy story, potentially familiar to those who find themselves trapped outside of their own worlds.

Curses

Author: George Wylesol
Publisher: Avery Hill Publishing
Release Date: Oct. 11 (Comics Shops) / Nove. 15 (Bookstores)
List Price: $24.99 Paperback

From hospitals to hell to the wilderness, George Wylesol’s short stories take place in liminal spaces where nothing is as it seems; the surreal becomes real; and something is lying in wait around every corner. As our main characters navigate through corridors, passageways, and highways, they sink deeper and deeper into everyday strangeness that slips into peculiarity, creating an internal journey from normalcy to the supernatural.

With surprising twists and turns, cleverly combining the strange and realism, smart, surprising, and sometimes terrifying – these stories make it clear that George Wylesol is like no one else in short comics-format fiction. 

The Wilderness Collection

Author: Claire Scully
Publisher: Avery Hill Publishing
Release Date: Nov. 16 (Bookstores)
List Price: $19.99 Hardcover

What is our relationship with physical and emotional environments? How do we react to and live in the world around us? This book explores the dimensions of how geography affects the psyche, from the known to the unknown.

In colorful, gorgeous pen-and-ink illustrations, the transformation of landscapes from immediate and personal to fantastical and nostalgic captures the sense of place. Viewing each image creates your own personal experience of space. Starting with more immediate spaces and ending with faraway planets, this book is an emotional, creative journey. 

Melvin Monster

Author: John Stanley
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Release Date: Oct. 25 (Comics Shops) / Nov. 17 (Bookstores)
List Price: $24.95 Paperback

Now collected in an omnibus paperback, John Stanley’s Melvin Monster is about a good-natured monster boy whose sweet personality belies his monstrous appearance. Melvin just wants to be good, go to school, and do as he is told. Melvin’s sunny optimism makes him an oddball outcast in his Monsterville community, where he disappoints his parents, “Mummy” and “Baddy,” with his irrepressible sunny disposition, and also continually escapes the wrath of their pet alligator Cleopatra who only wants to eat Melvin whole. Gag after gag, the acclaimed mid-century cartoonist Stanley sets Melvin up in fairly quotidian situations that spiral into hilarious ridiculousness, with a ferociously frenetic comedic timing.

Charmingly naïve, Melvin Monster draws its direct inspiration from the 1960s monster craze and the work of cartoonist Charles Addams and its television adaptation The Addams Family as well as The Munsters, however, Melvin Monster is all its own with Stanley’s superior cartooning skills, melding pop colors, expressive lines, and funny jokes on full display.  

Good Girls Go To Hell

Author: Tohar Sherman-Friedman
Publisher: Graphic Mundi
Release Date: Nov. 8 (Comics Shops) / Nov. 21 (Bookstores)
List Price: $29.95 Hardcover

A coming-of-age graphic memoir set in the West Bank, Good Girls Go to Hell depicts the reality of growing up in a region split by religious tensions—and sometimes violent conflict.

From political protests to personal struggles with school, body image, and relationships with family and friends, Tohar Sherman-Friedman’s life is an inspiring story of conflicting convictions, rebellion, and personal growth. Tohar recounts her experience as the youngest of seven children in a conservative Jewish family, navigating a life buffeted by high expectations for school performance and religious adherence at home and tense conflict in the world outside. With utter sincerity and through detailed panel-style drawing, she relates what it’s like to be on a journey that ultimately takes her far from how she was taught to think and what she was expected to believe. 

The Boy from Clearwater

Writer: Pei-Yun Yu
Artist: Jian-Xin Zhou
Translator: Lin King
Publisher: Levine Querido
Release Date: Nov. 8 (Comics Shops) / Nov. 21 (Bookstores)
List Price: $25.99 Hardcover / $19.99 Paperback

For fans of Persepolis; An incredible true story in graphic novel form, that lays bare the tortured and triumphant history of Taiwan, an island claimed and fought over by many countries, through the life story of a man who lived through its most turbulent times.

Tsai Kun-lin, an ordinary boy was born in Qingshui, Taichung in 1930s Taiwan. In part 1 Tsai, in concert with the beautiful illustrations of Chou Jian-xin, depicts a carefree childhood despite the Japanese occupation: growing up happily with the company of nursery rhymes and picture books on Qingshui Street. As war emerges Tsai’s memories shift to military parades, air raids, and watching others face conscription into the army. It seems no one can escape. After the war, the book-loving teenager tries hard to learn Mandarin and believes he is finally stepping towards a comfortable future, but little does he know, a dark cloud awaits him ahead.

Part 2 opens with Illustrations reminiscent of woodcuts showing the soul-crushing experience of Tsai’s detention and imprisonment. In his second year at Taichung First Senior High School, Tsai attends a book club hosted by his teacher and is consequently arrested on a false charge of taking part in an “illegal” assembly. After being tortured, he is sentenced to ten years in prison, deprived of civil rights for seven years, and sent to Green Island for “reformation”. Lasting until his release in September 1960, Tsai, a victim of the White Terror era spent ten years of his youth in prison on an unjust charge. But he is ready to embrace freedom. 

Museum of Degenerates

Author: Eli Valley
Publisher: OR Books
Release Date: Nov. 28
List Price: $34.95 Hardcover

Museum of Degenerates is a lush showcase of Eli Valley’s critically-acclaimed art capturing America in a state of ongoing cataclysm and making the provocative case that the entire political class has been complicit in the reactionary waves currently overwhelming the country. Unlike most political cartoons, Valley’s art is a howl of rage against the political, cultural and media elites driving America into an authoritarian abyss.

Inspired in equal measure by early 20th century Yiddish cartoon art, Weimar-era expressionist woodcuts, and the free-for-all lunacy of early MAD comics, Valley’s distinctive style has energized the left and enraged the most worthy targets of our time. No single artist has captured our new era in all its horror and grotesquerie quite like Valley, whose comics have served as both mirror and lightning rod for a country in crisis.

Museum of Degenerates highlights Valley’s art, both black and white and full-color masterworks, from the past seven years of American strife. Including rare works and art appearing in print for the first time, the collection will be framed by notes on individual drawings as well as a lengthy introduction in which Valley explores his personal artistic vision in a time of unprecedented national crisis and links his work to earlier periods of antifascist art. Museum of Degenerates will feature some of the most indelible images from any artist working today, available in one place for the first time. 

Ruined

Writer: Sarah Vaughn
Artists: Sarah Winifred Searle, Niki Smith
Publisher: First Second
Release Date: Nov. 29 (Comics Shops) / Nov. 28 (Bookstores)
List Price: $28.99 Hardcover

For fans of Bridgerton comes a Regency-era romance graphic novel about the unexpected passion that blooms from a marriage of convenience.

The whole town is whispering about how Catherine Benson lost her virtue, though they can never agree on the details. Was it in the public garden? Or a moving carriage?

Only a truly desperate man would want her now–and that’s exactly what Andrew Davener is. His family’s estate is in disrepair, but Catherine’s sizeable dowry could set it to rights.

After the two wed, Catherine finds herself inexplicably drawn to Andrew. But could falling in love with her husband tear her marriage apart? In this richly detailed Regency romance, duty and passion collide in a slow-burn tale of intertwined fates.

Spider-Man: Panel by Panel

Created By: Marvel Entertainment
Writer: Chip Kidd, Stan Lee
Artists: Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko
Commentaries By: Sara Duke, Tom Brevoort, Mark Evanier
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Release Date: Dec. 6 (Comics Shops) / Dec. 5 (Bookstores)
List Price: $60.00 Hardcover

Spider-Man first swung onto the comic book pages in August 1962 with the publication of Amazing Fantasy no. 15, created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and with cover art by Jack Kirby. Sixty years after the comic’s publication, award-winning graphic designer Chip Kidd reimagines the iconic first story, which was also told in The Amazing Spider-Man no. 1 from March 1963, using original vintage copies of both comic books as well as the original art with handwritten notes to present these classic tales in a whole new way.

Perfect for both lifelong fans and the latest generation of Marvel enthusiasts, the book also includes text by Chip Kidd, Marvel editor Tom Brevoort, historian Mark Evanier (Kirby: King of Comics), and Library of Congress curator Sara Duke. Stunningly photographed by award-winning photographer Geoff Spear, Amazing Fantasy no. 15 and Amazing Spider-Man no. 1 are showcased as you’ve never seen them before–oversize and up close. This is a panel-by-panel exploration of both entire issues that captures every single detail and nuance of Lee and Ditko’s groundbreaking story, making it a must-have for every comic book collection.

Escapting Wars and Waves: Encounters with Syrian Refugees

Author: Olivier Kugler
Publisher: Graphic Mundi
Release Date: Nov. 22 (Comics Shops) / Dec. 5 (Bookstores)
List Price: $18.95 Paperback

While on assignment between 2013 and 2017, often for Doctors Without Borders, Olivier Kugler interviewed and photographed Syrian refugees and their caregivers in camps, on the road, and in provisional housing in Iraqi Kurdistan, Greece, France, Switzerland, and England. Escaping Wars and Waves is the astonishing result of that record keeping–a graphic novel that brings to life the improvised living conditions of the refugees, along with the stories of how they survived.

Kugler captures the chaotic energy of the camps through movement-filled drawings that depict figures, locations, and seemingly random details that take on their own resonance. He gives precedence to the voices of the refugees by incorporating excerpts from his many interviews and portraits sketched from thousands of reference photos. What emerges is a complicated and intense narrative of loss, sadness, fear, and hope and an indelible impression of the refugees as individual humans with their own stories, rather than a faceless mass.

Escaping Wars and Waves is an unnervingly close and poignant look at the lives of those affected by the Syrian war and the volunteers who tend to them.

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Graphic Novels for Fall 2023 – December

Homicide: The Graphic Novel, Part Two

 

Writer: David Simon
Artist: Philippe Squarzoni
Publisher: First Second
Release Date: Dec. 6 (Comics Shops) / Dec. 5 (Bookstores)
List Price: $32.99 Hardcover

Homicide, the celebrated true crime book from the creator of HBO’s The Wire, is reenvisioned as a gritty, cinematic graphic novel duology. This thrilling second volume concludes the saga.

A woman is stabbed and left to die in her bedroom. A taxi cab driver is killed for a handful of jewelry. A man is gunned down over a debt of $8. As the board fills with red ink, the pressure rises. All the while, Detective Pellegrini is haunted by the murder of eleven-year-old Latonya Wallace, a case that is getting colder by the day.

Originally published in 1991, Simon’s Homicide became the basis for the acclaimed television show Homicide: Life on the Streets and inspired HBO’s The Wire. Now, this true-crime classic is reenvisioned as a gritty two-part graphic novel series.

Pete Townshend’s Life House

Writers: Pete Townshend, James Harvey, David Hine
Artist: Max Prentis
Publisher: Image Comics
Release Date: Dec. 6 (Comics Shops) / Dec. 5 (Bookstores)
List Price: $49.99 Hardcover

An original graphic novel based on rock music legend Pete Townshend’s 1970 screenplay of the same name, which inspired The Who’s 1971 globally bestselling and universally beloved album, Who’s Next. Set in a Dystopian future where music has been outlawed, Life House follows a small band of rebels who stage an underground concert in an effort to undermine a tyrannical leader… and free Britain and all of humanity. This graphic novelization is co-written by Doom Patrol’s James Harvey and Spider-Man Noir’s David Hine with art by both Harvey and Australian visual artist Max Prentis, lettering by Michah Myers, and inks by Eisner Award winning artist Mick Gray. It is edited by the former Editor-in-Chief of Bleeding Cool, Hannah Means-Shannon, and features a massive Vinyl LP format (12.25″ x 12.25″). This is a must-have for any serious music collectors, rock fans, and pop culture aficionados! Originally envisioned as a sci-fi rock epic to follow-up The Who’s chart-topping song, “Tommy,” and put aside 50 years ago–in favor of Who’s Next songs like “Baba O’Riley,” “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” and “Behind Blue Eyes”–Life House will finally take center stage.

The Quarry

Writer: Mike Salisbury
Artist: Marvin Luna
Editor: Andrea Lorenzo Molinari
Publisher: Scout Comics
Release Date: Dec. 6 (Comics Shops) / Dec. 5 (Bookstores)
List Price: $14.99 Paperback

The Quarry is a love story graphic novel for YA audiences about young love and loss, set against the harsh winter wonderland of Northern Michigan. Based on the short story by Mike Salisbury and illustrated by Marvin Luna.

After a recent family tragedy, a boy sets out to purchase a Christmas tree with the help of his big brother’s ex-girlfriend, Katie. Trying to ease his father’s mourning and hold what’s left of his family together, Katie and the boy search for a Christmas tree in their small town. Together, they try to reclaim a bit of Christmas and help each other deal with the aftermath of death. The Quarry is a coming-of-age story about young love and loss, set against the harsh winter wonderland of Northern Michigan. 

Voyage de Gourmet

Writer: Paul Tobin
Artist: Jem Milton
Publisher: Maverick
Release Date: Dec. 13 (Comics Shops) / Dec. 12 (Bookstores)
List Price: $14.99 Paperback

Teenagers compete in a reality TV cooking show that puts their friendship to the test.

Layne Green is a social media sensation of a cook. He’s selected to compete on a reality TV show called Voyage de Gourmet – a globe-trotting foodie adventure. However, his partner is his former best friend, Jiang-Mi Pipper, someone that he really wronged with some of his posts. Can the two find forgiveness, flavor, and themselves on this journey?

The Hard Switch

Author: Owen D. Pomery
Publisher: Avery Hill Publishing
Release Date: Oct. 25 (Comics Shops) / Dec. 15 (Bookstores)
List Price: $20.99 Hardcover

Ada, Haika, and Mallic are on a mission . . . one last mission, before everything, everywhere shuts down. They’re raiding old, abandoned spaceships and wrecks for the (sometimes-expensive) parts – and they make just enough money to get by. But living their nomadic, exploring life isn’t sustainable when they can’t afford fuel anymore.

The time is coming when the mineral that makes inter-system jumps possible runs out. When it does, the scattered inhabitants of the vast galaxy will be stuck where they are. Everything will be different . . . unless the discovery in the latest wreck Ada, Haika, and Mallic are scavenging can unlock a whole new kind of interstellar transit. 

Four Gathered on Christmas Eve

Writer: Eric Powell
Artists: Eric Powell, Mike Mignola, Becky Cloonan, James Harren
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
Release Date: Dec. 20 (Comics Shops) / Dec. 19 (Bookstores)
List Price: $24.99 Hardcover

Four of the top creators in comics gather to continue the Victorian tradition of ghost stories on Christmas Eve.

Four tales of the bizarre and terrifying to keep you company on the cold yule night. A unique approach to the ghost story format where the creators themselves become part of the story in this deluxe edition hard cover designed by the award-winning Phil Balsman.

Underground: Cursed Rockers and High Priestesses of Sound

Writer: Arnaud Le Gouëfflec
Artist: Nicolas Moog
Publisher: Titan Comics
Release Date: Nov. 15 (Comics Shops) / Dec. 19 (Bookstores)
List Price: $29.99 Hardcover

They don’t do it for the fame, they do it for the music — these rock legends and priestesses of sound are the outsiders, the trailblazers, artists who changed the face of music forever simply for the love of it.

From Captain Beefheart to Patti Smith, this odyssey through the rock hinterlands is perfect for fans of outsider artists, rock history aficionados, and those modern vinyl lovers who want to discover the saga that got music to where it is today. Featuring an all-new foreword from writer and musician Michael Moorcock, this is the essential guide to the weird and wonderful performers that became legends in their own right.

Although not widely known, each of these artists has changed the history of music. So, to celebrate the incredible contributions of these unsung heroes, Arnaud Le Gouëfflec and Nicolas Moog have brought their stories to vivid life.

Discover the sensitive and manic-depressive genius Daniel Johnston; the Peruvian queen of exotica, Yma Sumac; the improbable blind and homeless Moondog; the classy bargain hunters of The Cramps; the legendary Patti Smith; and many, many more.

A veritable illustrated bible of the underground music scene, this anthology of 50 biographies invites you to discover little-known maestros and creators of underheard masterpieces. This is a book for the simply curious, as well as the connoisseur!

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Looking for more great reads? Check out The Beat’s list of anticipated kids and middle grade graphic novels for Fall 2023 and anticipated manga for Fall 2023!