Cosmic in scope, these contemplative sci-fi shorts by Canadian cartoonist Roy (the Prophet series) build a vast universe in a distant future with a critical eye toward humanity’s effect on alien worlds. Each tale spotlights bizarre new environments and their strange fauna and flora, such as “Hale-Bopp,” told from the puzzled point of view of a mutated elephant encountering humans for the first time. In “The Anchoress,” a student searches for the secret behind a mysteriously self-sustaining convent, while “A Portrait of the Artist as Hive Parasite” finds a human disastrously opening his mind to the history and travails of a Martian race. Parasites are a recurring theme that lends the collection a sinister, enigmatic air. The tales are bookended by a humorous, self-referential introduction and epilogue that places Roy in his own fictional postapocalyptic world. His worn-down characters, desolate environments, and grungy civilizations are reminiscent of the bande dessinée of Moebius and Grzegorz Rosiński, and are enlivened by the coloring in pastel shades and earth tones contributed by Sergei Nazarov and Drew Shields. The extensive worldbuilding and dark morals on offer here will appeal to fans of 2000 AD and Heavy Metal. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Xianzhe’s lavish manhua debut combines Chinese fighting fantasy tropes with the visual dynamism of ninja and samurai manga. Dao Ma, a roguish bounty hunter, travels the lawless outer territories of a medieval Chinese empire with his chipper young son, Xiao Qi. He tries to avoid bloodshed by cutting underhanded deals—or just makes sure his son’s eyes are covered against the worst gore. Most enemies are bandits and crime lords, but supernatural menaces include rakshasas, a desert monster of Hindu folklore. Trustworthy friends—such as Ayuya, a tough woman who carries a torch for Dao Ma—are few and far between. The figure of a lone assassin traveling with child owes obvious debt to Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s Lone Wolf and Cub series; Xu’s excellent, visceral, and thickly inked art likewise recalls historical action manga from the 1970s and ’80s. Heads fly from bodies in sprays of blood, men in broad-brimmed hats ride into Arab villages like the antiheroes in a spaghetti western, and Dao Ma gets into a nude hot-spring fight worthy of Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises. Fans longing for the throwback thrills of classic action manga will find plenty to pump their fists about. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

With humor, heart, and simple strokes of the pen, cartoonist and physician Farris (Mom Milestones) ushers readers through the tragicomic realities of medical school. In a frame narrative, Farris arrives at Beth Israel in Boston to give birth and remarks, “This is new: I’ve never been a patient here... so infantilizing when the nurse calls me ‘Mom’!” The story then flashes back to when she’s 14 and volunteers at a hospital. As a med student at Brown, she goes through a gauntlet of rotations in different specialties (tying surgical knots reminds her of friendship bracelets). Hurdles include braving protestors to shadow an abortion provider, dealing with the challenging but endearing patients at a psychiatric facility, and the first death of a patient. In the background, she meets, dates, and marries her spouse, wryly depicting their first date as a checkup. Farris’s brightly hued art is wiggly but welcoming, with gag panels sprinkled throughout (in the language of hospital flowers, lilies mean “We hope you get better, but it seems like you might not?”). She’s blunt regarding the sexism and racism endemic in medicine, and the struggles faced by clinics that serve the poor and uninsured. But she’s also passionate about the people and ideals that made the field her calling. This candid memoir belongs on every doctor’s shelf, and it’ll have laypeople in stitches, too. Agent: Mel Flashman, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Meyer and Dorison’s gritty Old West action series, long-running in France, gets its English-language debut in a story chock-full of rugged desert vistas, whiskery ne’er-do-wells, shotgun showdowns, and desperate horseback escapades. As the title suggests, its antihero has literally made death his business. This first volume peaks early in a mostly silent page, in which undertaker and gritty survivor Jonas Crow plies his trade with practiced solemnity in tight, detailed, gas-lit panels. That welcome attention to the weight of mortality grounds an increasingly wild story of mine owner Cusco’s efforts to horde his riches after his demise, by burying the gold along with his body. Charged with hauling the corpse of “old fat-cat” Cusco across the desert, Crow and a pair of hard-edged women, including Rose, who worked for the tycoon, are relentlessly pursued by aggrieved miners who want a crack at Cusco’s fortune. The bristling and uncertain connection between Crow and Rose, with revelations about their past and intimations for their future, are the storytelling highlight. Other sections indulge in repetitive scenes of nearly identical shoot-outs. Still, the moody western realism should charm fans nostalgic for films like The Good the Bad and the Ugly. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

The witty web-to-print debut from Yeon is a reverse-makeover comedy about finding oneself under layers of foundation. Plain-Jane photography major Yeseul was always told she’d blossom in college, but instead “everyone glowed up except me.... Did they all take lessons or something?!” Seeking professional help turns into a disaster when even the cosmetologist disses her looks, but Yeseul catches the eye of Yuseong, a genius makeup artist who wants a perfectly blank slate for his canvas. Together they enter a reality competition show called “face-off Cinderella,” where Yeseul serves looks against her hottie influencer friend Heewon. The manhwa is aware of the silliness of its premise and often pushes the proceedings to comic extremes: Heewon exposes a creeper via her color-changing anti-roofie nail polish; Yuseong is so dedicated to his craft that colleagues whisper no one has ever seen his bare face. But it’s serious about makeup, with tips included on palettes for different skin tones and the many uses of petroleum jelly. Yeseul learns not just what to apply to meet beauty standards, but how to come out of her shell. The cute, upbeat art, if not showstopping, does a nice job rendering the transformations of characters under different makeup treatments. Yeon’s message about the importance of self-love is sure to put a smile on readers’ faces. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

Authorial arrogance gets a hilarious thwacking in this twisty mind-bender from novelist Winters (Underground Airlines) and Italian cartoonist Leomacs. Benjamin J. Carp, a science fiction writer with a cult following (though he hates that term), wakes up in a motel room with no memory of how he got there. The real problem, according to nerdy motel clerk Marcus Dingle, who becomes his unwilling “amanuensis,” is not Carp’s bad memory but the fact that he actually died years ago. This revelation kicks off a chaotic investigation, which largely involves Carp barreling around town with Dingle in tow and spouting off one theory after another about what might have happened. A self-proclaimed hero with an exaggerated sense of his own importance, he assumes he’s a true “man of consequence... a sort of Jesus figure.” Winters revels in the sci-fi-mystery mash-up, coding Carp as a Philip K. Dick type, complete with beard, schlubby attire, and days lost to amphetamine-fueled writing jags. Though some of the third act plot points draw too heavily from Groundhog Day and A Christmas Carol, the madcap spirit and Leomacs’s jaunty artwork more than compensate. Readers will have fun with this fast-paced, smart, and self-aware caper. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

This poignant graphic adaptation of Glass’s 2006 novel, drawn by Eisner-nominated cartoonist Dresen (Max & Lily), interweaves lesbian guitarist Nina’s recollections of her heartbreaking coming-out during her junior year of high school with later scenes of her band’s triumphant debut at CBGB. As a student at a Staten Island girls’ prep school “run by nuns” in the 1980s, Nina frequents the punk scene in the East Village on weekends, alongside her BFF—and fellow Love and Rockets fan—Kerry. Nina’s been pining for Samantha, the captain of her swim team, but despite flirtations and an intimate shoreside moment, Samantha ducks away from her advances. Over summer break, Nina and Kerry start dating boys, but Nina develops a crush on Kerry—who returns her affections. When they admit their feelings and kiss, it’s blissful, but kept secret. Nina’s dad thinks Kerry’s a bad influence, and calls her friends gay slurs and “lowlife street punks”; meanwhile, Nina’s worried about hurting her chances at the Naval Academy. As she uncovers her identity, she struggles to find her place, but the buoyant CBGB scenes lift the narrative with a through line of joy as an act of resistance. Dresen’s accessible art employs thick line work, with peppy character designs etched in shades of black and blue that emphasize the dreaminess and melancholy of first love. Fans of queer romance will appreciate the complicated nostalgia of this period piece. Agent: Lane Clarke, Ultra Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

In her electrifying English-language debut, French Vietnamese artist de Narbonne trips through a psychedelic cyberpunk society. In a vast futuristic city called the Metastation, “junkyard dog” Gael Kaldera and his street punk friends rely on one another to survive. During a drug trip, Gael wanders away from the crew and into a hallucinatory journey that takes him to the Gap, an outcast community crowding in the city’s dump. He falls in love with dreadlocked Borisse, the closest thing the Gap has to a leader, who warns, “We are the trash they dream of purging.” Then Naomi, a runaway from the city’s upper class, arrives with news that the Gap is about to be destroyed. De Narbonne packs her pages with boldly inked black-and-white panels filled with techno music, brawlers, squatters, graffiti, and sci-fi settings ranging from the austere penthouses of the wealthy to a street market that looks like a Spirited Away bathhouse for burnouts. Though the novel trades in modern political concerns and social trappings—the characters go to raves and discuss manga—it feels like a welcome throwback to 1970s Metal Hurlant creators like Chantal Montellier, with visual flourishes reminiscent of contemporary alt-manga artists like Taiyō Matsumoto. De Narbonne’s classic underground sensibilities will delight outsider-art comics fans. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

The contributions of George Orwell’s wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy Blair, get their due in this brisk and emotionally charged graphic novel based on her life from Chalupa (In the Shadow of Stalin) and Revel (Now Let Me Fly). Born in 1905, Eileen rallies against sexism as a university student and young poet, then runs a typist firm, improving a refugee scholar’s manuscripts on the sly. Her conventional, middle-class family bristles at her dating Eric Blair, a rakish, volatile author who publishes under the pen name George Orwell. Despite Blair’s flirtations with other women, the two wed (Eileen is shown objecting mid-ceremony to one vow: “I will not ‘obey’ ”) and almost immediately set out for the Spanish Civil War, where Eric gets injured. Traumatized and mourning “comrades arrested and killed,” they return to a disquieted existence on an English farm. There the plot of Animal Farm takes shape in a conversation between the two. The couple adopt a baby, then Eileen dies during a hysterectomy in 1945. Chalupa’s script emphasizes Eileen’s hot temper and Eric’s manipulative tendencies, while Revel’s jaunty character designs sport exaggerated, cartoony facial expressions (Eileen, for example, recalls a 1930s Hopey from Love and Rockets). This energetic portrait brings to vivid life a critical influence on the work of Orwell—and the personal costs of activism. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Through intimate, neatly composed illustrated profiles of women and their companion animals, Willett (Women of Tarot) meditates on the mysteries of interspecies bonds. Her subjects include a psychic and her guinea pig, rock singers and horses, a witch who runs a bat rescue, an archaeologist caring for an Istanbul street kitten, and a woman whose formerly feral cat becomes a “petfluencer.” The women talk about how they connected to their pets (or, in a few cases, farm or wild animals), and how having a nonhuman in the family has changed their lives. Willett touches also on the history of domesticated animals and the role of women in the animal rights and environmental movements. Her background as a commercial illustrator shows in stylish layouts with textured backdrops; she contrasts appealingly posed portraits of her subjects with close-ups of such imagery as a horse’s long-lashed eye or a hand shaking a paw. Even skeptical readers will be won over by such candid revelations as when a blind artist, easing her guide dog into retirement, shares that “even without seeing London, I know exactly how beautiful she is.” Animal lovers will find plenty to relate to, whether they’re cohabitating with a rabbit, a rooster, or a rottweiler. Agent: Joan Brookbank, Joan Brookbank Projects. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 02/27/2026 | Details & Permalink