This spring there’s an abundance of graphic memoirs (a woman and her bad dog, a bipolar mother) and biography (D&D creator Gary Gygax, singer Cass Elliot). On the fiction side, Seth wraps up Clyde Fans, his decades-long saga, and Noah Van Sciver’s literary loser Fante Bukowski returns.
Top 10
Black Hammer, Vol. 1
Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston. Dark Horse, Apr.
Ormston’s unsettling art teams with Lemire’s multilevel tale of banished superheroes trying to find their way back to the world where they matter.
Boundless
Jillian Tamaki. Drawn & Quarterly, June 6
With masterful art and evocative storytelling, Tamaki’s short stories tackle subjects from bedbugs to the addictive nature of pop culture to pornography.
California Dreamin’: Cass Elliot Before the Mamas & the Papas
Pénélope Bagieu. Roaring Brook/First Second, Mar. 7
Cass Elliot’s astonishing success and personal struggles are given a bouncy treatment in this import from France.
Fante Bukowski, Vol. 2
Noah Van Sciver. Fantagraphics, Apr. 11
Everyone knows a pretentiously self-conscious bad writer, and Van Sciver nails it in a second volume of painful but hilarious cluelessness.
Palookaville #23
Seth. Drawn & Quarterly, May 30
Seth’s been writing his massive story of the Matchcard brothers and their failing fan company since 1998, and it finally winds up in this book.
Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D
David Kushner and Koren Shadmi. Nation Books, May 9
Based on interviews with Gygax before his death, this biography captures the complicated life and legacy of a visionary.
Starseeds
Charles Glaubitz. Fantagraphics, Feb. 28
While the story is a slim cosmic battle played out in an often abstract universe, the spectacular art brings it alive.
Sunburning
Keiler Roberts. Koyama, May 16
A bipolar mother grapples with day-to-day life in these tender, funny vignettes that show a calm awareness of her situation.
Voices in the Dark
Ulli Lust. New York Review Comics, June 13
A sound engineer obsessed with the human voice and Joseph Goebbels’s daughter cross paths in a story inspired by Marcel Beyer’s novel The Karnau Tapes.
Wonder Woman, Vol. 1: The Lies
Greg Rucka and Liam Sharp. DC, Feb. 14
Rucka returns to Wonder Woman with a story that tears apart her origin, greatly aided by Sharp’s highly detailed art.
Comics & Graphic Novels Listings
2dcloud
Mirror Mirror 2, edited by Julia Gfrörer and Sean T. Collins (May 16, trade paper, $39.95, ISBN 978-1-937541-31-6). An anthology of comics by such creators as horror master Clive Barker and leading figures in alt comics such as Simon Hanselmann, this collection transcends the expectations of what a comics anthology can do.
2000 AD
The Complete Scarlet Traces, Vol. 1, by Ian Edginton and Matt “D’Israeli” Brooker (Jan. 17, trade paper $19.99, ISBN 978-1-78108-502-8). The celebrated comic book sequel to H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds is set a decade after the Martian invasion. Great Britain has cannibalized Martian technology, and a murder draws two detectives into a mystery that leads them from gin palaces to the corridors of power and the very hall of the Martian king.
Alternative Comics
The Diary of Menorah Horwitz by Menorah Horwitz (Apr. 11, trade paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-1-942801-82-5). Horwitz, a shy 29-year-old gay illustrator, combines Judaism and a love of drag in all the wrong ways when he becomes Menorah, Portland’s premiere Anne Frank impersonator. This is an autobiographical comedy about finding your authentic self in the artificial world of drag.
Boom
Strange Fruit by J.G. Jones and Mark Waid (May 30, hardcover, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-60886-872-8). An alien being falls to Earth during the Great Flood of 1927, destined to save a small Mississippi town from certain destruction. Jones (Wanted) and Waid (Kingdom Come) weave a fully painted story that examines the heroic myth while exploring themes of racism, cultural legacy, and human nature.
Dark Horse
Black Hammer, Vol. 1, by Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston (Apr., trade paper, $14.99, ISBN 978-1-61655-786-7). Banished from existence by a multiversal crisis, the old champions of Spiral City are trapped leading simple lives in a timeless farming village. While they try to escape this strange purgatory, a mysterious stranger works to bring them back into action for one last adventure.
Mae, Vol. 1, by Gene Ha (Feb. 7, trade paper, $17.99, ISBN 978-1-5067-0146-2). As a girl, Abbie discovered a portal to adventure in a fantasy world, but as an adult she returns home when it all falls apart. Her sister, Mae, can’t believe Abbie’s tales, until the monsters and other terrible creatures start to cross over to our world.
DC Comics
All Star Batman, Vol. 1: My Own Worst Enemy by Scott Snyder and John Romita Jr. (Apr. 25, hardcover, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-4012-6978-8). Batman finds himself trying to help old friend Harvey Dent, as he accompanies his foe on a cross-country trip to fix his scarred face and hopefully end the Two-Face identity forever.
The Flintstones, Vol. 1, by Mark Russell and Steve Pugh (Mar. 28, trade paper, $16.99, ISBN 978-1-4012-6837-4). Fred and Barney reunite for Russell’s modern take on Hanna-Barbera’s most famous Stone Age family that shines a light on humanity’s ancient customs and institutions in a funny origin story of human civilization.
Wonder Woman, Vol. 1: The Lies (Rebirth) by Greg Rucka and Liam Sharp (Feb. 14, trade paper, $16.99, ISBN 978-1-4012-6778-0). After suffering an unimaginable loss, Diana must rebuild her mission as Earth’s ultimate protector and champion. When her Lasso of Truth stops working, she goes down a rabbit hole as dark secrets from her past unravel her present.
Drawn & Quarterly
Boundless by Jillian Tamaki (June 6, trade paper, $21.95, ISBN 978-1-77046-287-8). Tamaki (Super Mutant Magic Academy) brings realism, humor and lush art to her first collection of short stories, exploring the lives of women and how the expectations of others influence their real and virtual selves.
The Customer Is Always Wrong by Mimi Pond (Apr. 18, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-77046-282-3) continues Pond’s autobiographical story with the saga of a naive young artist working in a restaurant full of drunks, junkies, thieves, and creeps. Pond folds their tales into her own emergence as an artist in the scuzzy, low-rent war zone of late 1970s Oakland.
Hostage by Guy Delisle (May 2, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-77046-279-3). In the middle of the night in 1997, Doctors Without Borders administrator Christophe André was kidnapped by armed men and kept prisoner for three months in the Caucasus. Award-winning cartoonist Delisle (Pyongyang; Jerusalem) recounts André’s harrowing experiences.
Palookaville #23 by Seth (May 30, hardcover, $22.95, ISBN 978-1-77046-281-6). After 20 years of serialization, the story of Clyde Fans finally concludes. In this final chapter, we return to Simon Matchcard and the year 1957—exactly where we left off at the end of the first Clyde Fans volume.
Dynamite
James Bond, Vol. 2: Eidolon by Warren Ellis, Jason Masters and Dom Reardon (Mar. 21, hardcover, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-5241-0272-2). Bond is trapped in Los Angeles with an MI6 agent under fire and a foreign intelligence service trying to put them both in bags. Things may not be any safer in Britain, with bodies dropping and ghosts moving in the political mist.
Fantagraphics
Eartha by Cathy Malkasian (Mar. 14, hardcover, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-60699-991-2) is an expansive tale of pastoral life, city corruption, greed, and addictions, as a woman searches for the lost dreams of a fantasy city. From the author of Percy Gloom.
Fante Bukowski, Vol. 2, by Noah Van Sciver (Apr. 11, trade paper, $14.99 ISBN 978-1-68396-001-0) continues to plumb the depths of the life of the self-styled aspiring young writer, Fante Bukowski, as he delusively bumbles his way to literary fame and fortune, one drink at a time. There’s just one problem: Fante Bukowski still has no talent for writing.
Starseeds by Charles Glaubitz (Feb. 28, hardcover, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-60699-989-9). Multimedia artist Glaubitz delivers his first graphic novel, a work of mythical, pictorial, illustrative, and cosmological components, combining elements of myth, religion, and spirituality with comics, hermetic ideas, alchemy, and science.
Zonzo by Joan Cornellà (Feb. 21, hardcover, $14.99, ISBN 978-1-60699-985-1). Spanish cartoonist Cornellà’s first book, Mox Nox, gave him millions of social media followers. In this follow-up, a quick glance at his brutally funny comics of smiling psychopaths and often literal sidesplitting farce shows why.
Harper Perennial
Everyone’s a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too: A Book by Jomny Sun (June 27, hardcover, $14.99, ISBN 978-0-06-256902-8). The illustrated story of a lonely alien sent to observe Earth, where he meets all sorts of creatures with many perspectives on life, love, and happiness—based on the enormously popular Twitter account. 30,000-copy announced first printing.
HMH/Mariner
Fetch: How a Bad Dog Brought Me Home by Nicole J. Georges (July 18, trade paper, $17.95, ISBN 978-0-544-57783-1) offers a memoir of life with a difficult, beloved dog that will resonate with anybody who has ever had a less than perfectly behaved pet. At 16, Georges adopts Beija, a dysfunctional shar-pei/corgi mix, who becomes the one constant in her life—while occasionally lunging at toddlers. 15,000-copy announced first printing.
Humanoids
The Book of Chaos: Oversized Deluxe by Xavier Dorison and Mathieu Lauffray (Apr. 25, hardcover, $39.95, ISBN 978-1-59465-664-4). Archeologist Jack Stanton is the sole survivor of an expedition into the Himalayan mountains. Against all odds, he returns with proof of an advanced civilization that walked the Earth before mankind. Then his book tour about the expedition literally goes to hell.
IDW
Alack Sinner: The Age of Innocence by Carlos Sampayo and Jose Munoz (May 16, trade paper, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-63140-650-8). In the first English appearance of a classic comic from Argentina, Sinner is a hard-boiled private detective whose adventures are played out to a jazz soundtrack in a noir New York from 1975 through the 2000s.
Image Comics
Afar by Leila del Duca and Kit Seaton (Apr. 4, trade paper, $14.99, ISBN 978-1-63215-941-0). A girl with the power to possess the bodies of people light years away and her troublemaker brother are forced to work together to solve the problems they’ve created on their planet and others.
Moonshine, Vol. 1, by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso (Apr. 18, trade paper, $9.99, ISBN 978-1-5343-0064-4). The acclaimed team behind 100 Bullets is back together. Set deep during prohibition, it’s the story of Lou Pirlo, a city-slicker “torpedo” sent from New York to negotiate a deal with the best moonshiner in West Virginia. A horror-twist on a classic gangster tale.
Insight Comics
Siberia 56 by Christophe Bec and Alexis Sentenac (Mar. 14, trade paper, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-60887-861-1). Trapped on a planet millions of light years from Earth, five scientists must survive sub-zero temperatures and horrific alien creatures as they make their way across the dead, frozen landscape to their base in this action-packed graphic novel.
Koyama
Sunburning by Keiler Roberts (May 16, trade paper, $12, ISBN 978-1-927668-44-3) collects the moments that make up the messy, funny, and real days of a bipolar artist and mother. Roberts’s unflinching and intimate comics reveal real life to be as absurd as it is profound.
You & a Bike & a Road by Eleanor Davis (May 16, trade paper, $12, ISBN 978-1-927668-40-5). In 2016, award-winning cartoonist and illustrator Davis documented her cross-country bike tour as it happened with a series of loose, immediate comics.
Marvel
Black Panther: World of Wakanda, Vol. 1, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Roxane Gay, Yona Harvey, Alitha Martinez, and Afua Richardson (June 27, trade paper $17.99, ISBN 978-1-302-90650-4). Authors Coates, Gay, and Harvey enter the Marvel Universe in a story of the Dora Milaje, an elite task force trained to protect the king at all costs—even their own heartbreak.
Nation
Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D by David Kushner and Koren Shadmi (May 9, trade paper, $16.99, ISBN 978-1-56858-559-8). Like the game itself, the narrative casts the reader into the life of D&D creator Gygax from a first-person point of view, taking on the roles of the different characters in the story, as he fights controversy and his own partner.
NBM
The Lighthouse by Paco Roca (Feb. 1, hardcover, $15.99, ISBN 978-1-68112-056-0). A wounded 16-year-old Republican guard flees to an old remote lighthouse, where the aging operator tells tales of epic adventurers. These stories reignite the spark of life in the young soldier. By the author of the worldwide bestseller Wrinkles.
New York Review Comics
Pretending Is Lying by Dominique Goblet, trans. by Sophie Yanow (Feb. 7, hardcover, $24.95, ISBN 978-1-68137-047-7), is the first book to appear in English by the acclaimed Belgian artist Goblet. In a series of dazzling fragments—skipping through time, and from raw, slashing color to delicate black and white—Goblet examines the most important relationships in her life.
Voices in the Dark by Ulli Lust, trans. by John Brownjohn and Nika Knight (June 13, trade paper, $27.95, ISBN 978-1-68137-105-4). Based on the novel by Beyer, and set in Nazi Germany, Lust’s first fictional graphic novel is the story of a childhood betrayed, a grim parable of naïveté and evil, and a vivid, unsettling masterpiece of comics storytelling.
Nobrow
Garbage Night by Jen Lee (June 13, hardcover, $18.95, ISBN 978-1-910620-21-2). In a barren and ransacked backyard, a dog named Simon lives with his two best friends, a raccoon and a deer. The unlikely gang spends its days looting the desolate supermarket and waiting for the return of the hallowed “garbage night.”
Oni
Our Cats Are More Famous Than Us by Ananth Hirsh and Yuko Ota (Apr. 11, hardcover, $39.99, ISBN 978-1-62010-383-8). This massive collection of the Johnny Wander webcomic chronicles eight years, four cats, and three moves—with a foreword by Raina Telgemeier.
Pantheon
Imagine Wanting Only This by Kristen Radtke (Apr. 18, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-101-87083-9). The sudden death of a beloved uncle and the sight of an abandoned mining town marked the beginning of Radke’s lifelong fascination with ruins and with people and places left behind. A graphic memoir that’s at once narrative and factual, historical and personal.
Random House UK
Hubert by Ben Gijsemans, trans. by Julia Blackburn (May 1, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-224-10146-2). Hubert is a solitary man who shapes his life by going to museums and talking about museums and art. There is only one real woman who fascinates him; she lives in the opposite building and he can see her balcony from his window.
Roaring Brook/First Second
California Dreamin’: Cass Elliot Before the Mamas & the Papas by Pénélope Bagieu (Mar. 7, hardcover, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-62672-546-1). Before she became the legendary Mama Cass—one-quarter of the megahuge folk group the Mamas and the Papas—Cass Eliot was a girl from Baltimore trying to make it in the big city. Bagieu (Exquisite Corpse) returns with an insightful biography of a woman struggling to keep sight of her dreams and her very identity.
Shattered Warrior by Sharon Shinn and Molly Ostertag (May 16, trade paper, $17.99, ISBN 978-1-62672-089-3). Fantasy veteran Shinn (the Twelve Houses series) teams with artist Ostertag for her first graphic novel. In a world overrun by the tyrannical Derichets, three women create their own tenuous family while deciding if it’s worth risking their survival to join a growing underground revolution.
Secret Acres
The Academic Hour by Keren Katz (May 16, trade paper $19.95, ISBN 978-0-9962739-5-4) charts the romance between Poethel, a disgraced architecture professor, and his student, Liana, told in a series of surreal, vibrant vignettes and set in a fantastic, logic-defying collage of shifting rooms and secret performance spaces.
SelfMadeHero
Josephine Baker by Jose-Luis Bocquet and Catel Muller (Apr. 11, trade paper $22.95, ISBN 978-1-910593-29-5). In 1925 Paris, the Mississippi-born dancer Josephine Baker becomes the darling of the Roaring ’20s. From the authors of Kiki de Montparnasse, another portrait of a spirited, principled, and thoroughly modern woman.
S&S/Gallery
Roughneck by Jeff Lemire (Apr. 18, hardcover, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-5011-6099-8). A troubled brother and sister reconnect at a secluded hunting camp in the woods, but a vengeful ex-boyfriend pulls them back into the world of self-destruction they’ve fought to leave behind. From the author of Essex County, Descender, and The Underwater Welder.
Uncivilized
Everything Is Flammable by Gabrielle Bell (Apr. 18, hardcover, $25.95, ISBN 978-1-94125018-1). When her mother’s remote home burns to the ground, leaving her with only the clothes on her back and a favorite dog, Gabrielle and her brother have to return to Northern California to help a woman who is a stranger to them both.
Valiant
Britannia by Peter Milligan and Juan Jose Ryp (Apr. 25, trade paper, $9.99, ISBN 978-1-68215-185-3). On the fringes of civilization, the world’s first detective is about to make an unholy discovery. In 65 C.E., a veteran of Rome’s imperial war machine has been dispatched to the farthest reaches of the colonies to investigate unnatural happenings.
Harbinger Renegade, Vol. 1: The Judgment of Solomon by Rafer Roberts, Darick Robertson, and Juan Jose Ryp (May 16, trade paper, $9.99, ISBN 978-1-68215-169-3). Six months ago, a secret team of renegade whistle-blowers leaked the existence of some extraordinarily dangerous individuals to a stunned world. Today, all across the country, events have left hundreds brain-damaged—or worse.
VIZ
After Hours, Vol. 1, by Yuhta Nishio (June 13, trade paper, $9.99, ISBN 978-1-4215-9380-7). A shy young woman decides to give clubbing a try, with disastrous results. But an exciting woman comes to her rescue. A lively, heartfelt story set in the club scene about a queer young woman finding her place in the world.
Boruto, Vol. 1, Naruto Next Generation by Masashi Kishimoto and Mikio Ikemoto (Apr. 4, trade paper, $9.99, ISBN 978-1-4215-9211-4). A sequel to the worldwide smash Naruto as his son, Boruto, takes center stage. Times are peaceful, for now, but one passion does burn deep in this ninja boy, and that is to defeat his neglectful father.
Golden Kamuy, Vol. 1, by Satoru Noda (June 20, trade paper, $12.99, ISBN 978-1-4215-9488-0). In the early 20th century, Russo-Japanese War veteran Saichi Sugimoto searches the wilderness of the Japanese frontier of Hokkaido for a hoard of hidden gold. Winner of the 2016 Manga Taisho Award and nominated for the 40th Kodansha Manga Award.
Yen
Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoko Kui (May 23, trade paper, $15, ISBN 978-0-316-47185-5). Combining D&D adventure with food manga, a group of dungeon explorers run out of food and decide to eat the monsters they fight. Slimes, basilisks, mimics, and even dragons, none are safe from the appetites of these dungeon-crawling gourmands.
Your Name. by Makoto Shinkai (May 23, hardcover, $20, ISBN 978-0-316-47186-2). Mitsuha, a high school girl living in a rural area, dreams she is a boy living in Tokyo. Taki, a high school boy living in Tokyo, dreams he’s a girl living in the mountains. As they realize they are changing places, their encounter sets the cogs of fate into motion.
