Nonfiction and memoirs dominate the season’s graphic works, with stories covering various places and cultures—from New York City to Iraq. The fiction in our list shines a spotlight on surviving this complicated thing called life.
Top 10
Going into Town: A Love Letter to New York
Roz Chast. Bloomsbury USA, Oct. 3
An insider’s guide to surviving New York City life as only Chast could tell it—with a wry take on the quirks and traditions of the city that never relaxes.
House of Women
Sophie Goldstein. Fantagraphics, Oct. 3
Goldstein’s sinuous black-and-white art unfurls a complex SF tale that uncovers themes of colonialism, motherhood, and sexual tension.
Lighter Than My Shadow
Katie Green. Lion Forge, Oct. 3
Green recounts growing up and her battles with eating disorders, OCD, and abuse, sketching her struggle and survival with powerful visual symbolism.
Mis(h)adra
Iasmin Omar Ata. S&S/Gallery 13, Oct. 3
In jagged, acid-toned panels, Ata presents a startling portrait of a young Arab-American man with epilepsy, stymied by doctors who don’t believe he’s really sick.
Monograph
Chris Ware. Rizzoli, Oct. 10
They’re only doodles, but Ware’s doodles are glorious, accompanied by commentary and some little-seen older comics.
Poppies of Iraq
Brigitte Findakly and Lewis Trondheim. Drawn & Quarterly, Sept. 5
Trondheim’s playful art captures Findakly’s complex relationship with her homeland, both as a Christian in Iraq and an Iraqi in France.
Satania
Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoet. NBM, Nov.
Another sumptuously illustrated adventure into horror by the creators of Beautiful Darkness exposes a young woman’s hellish trip to... hell.
Sex Fantasy
Sophia Foster-Dimino. Koyama. Sept. 12
The shifting dynamics of love and sex are explored with art that defines the delusions and sacrifices some make to be wanted.
Tenements, Towers & Trash: An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City
Julia Wertz. Black Dog & Leventhal, Oct. 3
Urban explorer Wertz portrays buildings both standing and long vanished, and the mysteries of how a city changes.
Verax: The True Story of Whistleblowers, Drone Warfare, and Mass Surveillance
Pratap Chatterjee and Khalil Bendib. Metropolitan, Oct. 3
With art as dense and claustrophobic as the paranoid world it covers, the authors explore our much surveilled world and the whistleblowers who seek to make it better.
Comics & Graphic Novels Listings
Alternative Comics
Sugar Town by Hazel Newlevant (Oct. 10, trade paper, $10, ISBN 978-1-68148-587-4). In this bisexual, polyamorous love story for the modern era, Hazel is already in a happy relationship when she meets the dominatrix Argent. How will she negotiate this new romance with her boyfriend back home? And what about his other girlfriend?
Archaia
Jane by Aline McKenna and Ramon K. Perez (Sept. 19, hardcover, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-60886-981-7) reimagines Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel Jane Eyre set in present-day New York, written by acclaimed screenwriter McKenna and Eisner Award–winning illustrator Pérez.
Arsenal Pulp
Saigon Calling: London 1963–1975 by Marcelino Truong, trans. by David Homel (Sept. 12, trade paper, $26.95, ISBN 978-1-55152-689-8). The sequel to Such a Lovely Little War follows Truong to swinging London as the Vietnam War intensifies.
Black Dog & Leventhal
Tenements, Towers & Trash: An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City by Julia Wertz (Oct. 3, hardcover, $29.99, ISBN 978-0-316-50121-7). This charming, sidesplitting illustrated history of the blocks, buildings, and guts of New York City, based on Wertz’s columns in the New Yorker and Harper’s, takes us behind the New York that you think you know. 15,000-copy announced first printing.
Bloomsbury USA
Going into Town: A Love Letter to New York by Roz Chast (Oct. 3, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-62040-321-1). A native Brooklynite–turned–suburban commuter, Chast chronicles Manhattan stories (the “overheard and overseen” of the island borough) in a part personal and part practical guide to walking, talking, renting, and venting—an irresistible love letter to the city.
Boom Studios
Ladycastle by Delilah S. Dawson, Ashley A. Woods, and Rebecca Farrow (Oct. 24, trade paper, $14.99, ISBN 978-1-68415-032-8). When the king and all the men of the castle die in a crusade, it’s time for the women to knight up in novelist Dawson’s first original graphic novel.
Conundrum
Morton: A Cross-Country Rail Journey by David Collier (Sept., trade paper, $20, ISBN 978-1-77262-012-2). A graphic memoir laments the loss of train travel, and ponders the grip of family, mortality, art, and the human condition, with many other digressions thrown in by Canada’s cartooning national treasure.
The Collected Neil the Horse by Arn Saba (Oct., trade paper, $25, ISBN 978-1-77262-015-3). This long-lost comic gets its first collection, with an intro by creator Katherine Collins, who transitioned after the final issue. A totally original hybrid mixes Carl Barks and Fred Astaire—with original songs.
Dark Horse
Mr. Higgins Comes Home by Mike Mignola and Warwick Johnson Cadwell. (Oct. 18, hardcover, $14.99, ISBN 978-1-5067-0466-1). This sendup of classic vampire stories sees Mignola teaming with British artist Cadwell (Solid State Tank Girl, No. 1 Car Spotter) for an original graphic novel as outlandish as The Amazing Screw-On Head.
Grandville Force Majeure by Bryan Talbot (Oct. 17, trade paper, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-5067-0345-9). A fiendishly ingenious tale of treachery, tenacity, and tragedy, the popular Grandville series concludes with its largest and most shocking volume yet. Graphic novel pioneer Talbot fashions an anthropomorphic steampunk roller coaster of thrills, humor, and mystery.
Ether, Vol. 1: Death of the Last Golden Blaze by Matt Kindt and David Rubin (Oct. 3, trade paper, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-5067-0368-8). A science-minded adventurer gets mixed up in the mysteries of a fantasy world in this delightful new adventure from an award-winning creative team. It’s an interdimensional, genre-bending, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, mystery adventure with stunning art by Rubin.
DC Comics
Dark Knight III: The Master Race by Frank Miller, Brian Azzarello and Andy Kubert (Sept. 19, hardcover, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-4012-6513-7). Miller’s landmark Dark Knight Saga returns to a world gone awry in the aftermath of the toppling of Lex Luthor and the apparent death of Batman himself. This edition includes the nine mini-comics bound into the periodical issues.
The Wild Storm, Vol. 1 by Warren Ellis and Jon Davis-Hunt (Dec. 12, trade paper, $16.99, ISBN 978-1-4012-7418-4). Ellis returns to reboot the Wildstorm Universe he defined 20 years ago. Angela Spica, sick from the transhuman implants she’s buried in her own body, doesn’t know that the act of saving one particular man will tip over a vast and secret house of cards.
Drawn & Quarterly
From Lone Mountain by John Porcellino (Sept. 26, trade paper, $22.95, ISBN 978-1-77046-295-3) collects Porcellino’s meditative King Cat mini-comics. Uprooting his comfortable life several times, John drives through small towns, experiencing America in slow motion. Grand themes of King Cat are visited and stated more eloquently than ever: serendipity, memory, and the quest for meaning in the everyday.
Poppies of Iraq by Brigitte Findakly and Lewis Trondheim (Sept. 5, hardcover, $21.95, ISBN 978-1-77046-293-9) is Findakly’s nuanced, tender chronicle of her relationship with her homeland Iraq, cowritten and drawn by her husband, cartoonist Trondheim, creating a poignant family portrait of loss, tragedy, love, and the loneliness of exile.
Present by Leslie Stein (Sept. 19, hardcover, $21.95, ISBN 978-1-77046-294-6) takes readers on a sinuous urban stroll divorced from destination, seeing New York City through Stein’s wide-open eyes in an autobiography that evokes a beautiful, dreamlike yet endlessly relatable glimpse into the world of a 30-something woman carving out a life for herself, one step at a time.
Fantagraphics
House of Women by Sophie Goldstein (Oct. 3, hardcover, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-68396-051-5). Science fiction meets psychosexual drama when four women try to bring “civilization” to the natives of a remote planet on the fringes of the known universe. Goldstein’s second solo graphic novel follows 2015’s acclaimed The Oven.
My Pretty Vampire by Katie Skelly (Aug. 1, hardcover, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-68396-020-1). A vampire has sex-positive adventures in this pop shojo-style graphic novel. Clover, the pretty vampire of the title, is a Bardot-esque blonde who dreams of the (now-dead) girl she once was as she’s kept prisoner by her brother.
Run for It: Stories of Slaves Who Fought for Their Freedom by Marcelo D’Salete (Oct. 10, hardcover, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-68396-049-2) is one of the first literary and artistic efforts to face up to Brazil’s hidden history of slavery. The original Brazilian edition was nominated for three of the country’s most prestigious comics awards and has received rave reviews worldwide.
Humanoids
The Retreat by Pierre Wazem and Tom Tirabosco (Sept. 6, trade paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-1-59465-615-6). Two friends take off for a weekend getaway to reminisce about their third friend, now gone. From mundane conversations to intimate confidences, the two remaining pals remember things that are often left unsaid, but that remain floating in the silence.
IDW
Ditko’s Mr. A.: The 50th Anniversary Series: Book One: The Avenging World by Steve Ditko (Oct. 24, hardcover, $49.99, ISBN 978-1-68405-206-6). The cocreator of Spider-Man collects all 50 years of his Objectivist hero, Mr. A., in a complete authorized edition, for the first time.
A Story of Men by Zep (Sept. 26, hardcover, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-63140-961-5). The famed creator of Titeuf has a more adult tale with the stories of a group of friends—former members of the rock group Tricky Fingers—who head to the English countryside for a reunion, where they learn who has succeeded and who has learned anything since they were teenagers.
IDW/Top Shelf
Roots by Tara O’Connor (Sept. 27, $19.99, trade paper, ISBN 978-1-60309-417-7). After a messy year of setbacks, Tara goes to Ireland in search of clues to her family’s ancestry, but what she finds isn’t what she expected. Some of it has to do with the lack of records, but much has to do with John, the charming cartoonist she met on Twitter.
Bottled by Chris Gooch (Sept. 19, trade paper, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-60309-420-7) is a haunting portrait of millennial alienation, tinged with body horror and Greek tragedy. Jane is sick of her dead-end life in the suburbs, and desperate for a change. Meeting her old friend Natalie, Jane sees a way for Natalie to do her a favor... whether she likes it or not.
Image Comics
Royal City, Vol. 1: Next of Kin by Jeff Lemire (Sept. 27, trade paper, $9.99, ISBN 978-1-53430-262-4). In his most ambitious and personal project to date, and a return to the thematic territory of Essex County, Lemire spins the captivating and engaging story of a family from the small factory town of Royal City and the ghosts that haunt them.
The Walking Dead: Here’s Negan! by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (Oct. 4, hardcover, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-5343-0327-0). Who is Negan? Since his debut, the charismatic psychopath has antagonized Rick Grimes and led the Saviors into war against Alexandria and the neighboring communities. But who was he before society broke down?
Savage Town by Declan Shalvey, Philip Barrett, and Jordie Bellaire (Oct. 3, trade paper, $9.99, ISBN 978-1-53430-246-4) is an original Irish graphic crime novel. In Limerick City, Jimmy “Hardy” Savage is a gangster on the rise. With the local cops, rival gangs, his best mate, and his mammy all out to stick a knife in him, will he live long enough to get to the top?
Iron Circus Comics
As the Crow Flies by Melanie Gillman (Oct. 10, trade paper, $30, ISBN 978-1-945820-06-9). In a collection of the acclaimed webcomic, a queer, black teenager finds herself stranded in a dangerous and unfamiliar place: an all-white Christian youth backpacking camp.
Kodansha
Akira: 35th Anniversary Box Set by Katsuhiro Otomo (Oct. 24, hardcover, $199.99, ISBN 978-1-63236-461-6) is a complete 35th anniversary hardcover box set of one of the most acclaimed and influential comics of all time, presented for the first time with the original Japanese art and right-to-left reading format.
Koyama
Anti-Gone by Connor Willumsen (Sept. 12, trade paper, $15, ISBN 978-1-927668-51-1). Reality’s grip is loosened as Spyda and Lynxa explore a potentially constructed environment that shifts between dystopic future and constructed virtual present, recalling video games that attempt to replicate, or perhaps replace, reality.
Sex Fantasy by Sophia Foster-Dimino (Sept. 12, trade paper, $18, ISBN 978-1-927668-46-7). A salacious title belies a moving look at intimacy in all its delicacies and absurdities. Covering a span of four years, the comics collected here build a portrait of a relationship that is deeper than the elegantly drawn surfaces.
Lion Forge
Lighter Than My Shadow by Katie Green (Oct. 3, trade paper, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-94130-241-5). This graphic memoir of eating disorders, abuse, and recovery is a hand-drawn story of struggle, a trip into the black heart of a taboo illness, and an inspiration to anybody who believes in the human power to endure.
Metropolitan
Verax: The True Story of Whistleblowers, Drone Warfare, and Mass Surveillance: A Graphic Novel by Pratap Chatterjee and Khalil Bendib (Oct. 3, trade paper, $25, ISBN 978-1-62779-355-1). A prize-winning journalist and the coauthor of the bestselling Zahra’s Paradise present a sweeping graphic history of electronic surveillance from 9/11 through the rise of drone warfare.
NBM
Satania by Kerascoet and Fabien Vehlmann (Nov. 1, hardcover, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-68112-143-7). The creators of Beautiful Darkness offer another plunge into a netherworld as a young woman sets up an expedition to find her brother and ends up proving the existence of Hell.
New York Review Comics
Slum Wolf by Tadao Tsuge, trans. by Ryan Holmberg (Nov. 7, trade paper, $22.95, ISBN 978-1-68137-174-0) is a gritty collection of graphic short stories depicting life on the streets. Though virtually unknown in the United States, Tsuge is one of the masters of alternative manga, and one of the world’s great artists of the down-and-out.
Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures by Yvan Alagbé, trans. by Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oct. 24, trade paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-1-68137-176-4). A timely collection about race and immigration in Paris by one of France’s most revered cult comic book artists. Alagbé uses stark, endlessly inventive black-and-white brushwork to explore love and race, oppression and escape.
Rizzoli
Monograph by Chris Ware (Oct. 10, hardcover, $60, ISBN 978-0-8478-6088-3) collects some early work, sketches, and other ephemera with commentary and biographical material, all in a meticulously designed package.
Roaring Brook/First Second
The Hunting Accident: A True Story of Crime and Poetry by David L. Carlson and Landis Blair (Sept. 19, hardcover, $34.99, ISBN 978-1-62672-676-5). As a child, Charlie Rizzo had been told that his father lost his vision in a hunting accident. It wasn’t until Charlie was in a jail cell for his own petty crimes that he learned the truth.
Rosarium
Ghost Stories by Whit Taylor (Oct., trade paper, $17.95, ISBN 978-0-9967692-9-7) collects three short stories that explore past selves and remnants of past relationships that are met with inquiry, resolution, and personal rebirth.
Seven Stories
At War with War: 5,000 Years of Conquests, Invasions, and Terrorist Attacks, an Illustrated Timeline by Seymour Chwast (Sept. 19, trade paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-1-60980-779-5). Seventy pages of stark black-and-white pen-and-ink drawings and woodcuts illustrate history’s most notorious battles—from 3300 B.C.E. to the present day, interspersed with contemplations on war from historic thinkers.
Simon & Schuster/Gallery 13
Mis(h)adra by Iasmin Omar Ata (Oct. 3, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-1-5011-6210-7). An Arab-American college student struggles to live with epilepsy in this starkly colored and deeply cutting graphic novel. Based on the author’s own experience as an epileptic, it’s a visual depiction of the daily struggles of living with a relatively little-understood condition in today’s hectic and uninformed world.
Park Bench by Christophe Chabouté (Sept. 19, trade paper, $25, ISBN 978-1-5011-5402-7). A park bench weathers all seasons from its creation to its witness of the fresh ardor of lovers, the drudgery of businessmen, and the various hopes of those who enter its orbit. Chabouté (Alone, Moby-Dick) explores community through an everyday, often ignored, object: the common park bench.
S&S/Touchstone
Trust No Aunty by Maria Qamar (Aug. 1, hardcover, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-5011-5473-7). Based on her popular Instagram @Hatecopy and her life as part of a South Asian immigrant family, Qamar has created a humorous, illustrated survival guide to deal with overbearing “Aunties.”
Uncivilized
The Story of Jezebel by Elijah Brubaker (Aug., trade paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-1-941250-16-7). Up-and-coming comic artist Brubaker has a thoroughly modern and hilarious take on the Old Testament tale of paganism, murder, and sex. With a mix of satirist wit and visual verve, Brubaker puts his unique twist on angels, famine, war, and even bear maulings.
Valiant
Faith and the Future Force by Jody Houser, Barry Kitson, and Stephen Segovia (Dec., trade paper, $9.99, ISBN 978-1-68215-233-1) pushes Faith into a centuries-spanning fight for existence alongside the greatest heroes of the Valiant Universe... past, present, and future.
Vertical
She and Her Cat by Makoto Shinkai and Tsubasa Yamaguchi (Oct. 24, trade paper, $12.95, ISBN 978-1-945054-60-0). This is the story of Miyu, a woman who lives alone with her cat, Chobi. As Miyu navigates the world of adulthood, she discovers both the freedom and loneliness that come with living independently, and Chobi learns of the outside world.
VIZ
Children of the Whales, Vol. 1 by Abi Umeda (Nov. 7, trade paper, $9.99, ISBN 978-1-4215-9540-5). In an endless sea of sand drifts the Mud Whale, a floating island city of clay and magic. But the steady pace of isolated existence is abruptly shattered when a scouting party discovers a mysterious young girl who seems to know more about their home than they do.
Sweet Blue Flowers, Vol. 1 by Takako Shimura (Dec. 5, trade paper, $9.99, ISBN 978-1-4215-9694-5). In a genre-defining saga of love and friendship between girls, Akira Okudaira starts high school and rekindles her friendship with childhood pal Fumi. But life has gotten a lot more complicated since they were kids.
Yen
Gabriel Dropout, Vol. 1 by Ukami (Oct. 31, trade paper, $13, ISBN 978-0-316-56128-0). This fallen angel’s grades keep falling in a comedy manga off the heels of the anime simulcast. Gabriel White Tenma has descended from heaven to attend high school and guide humanity, but a newly found video-game addiction might prove problematic.
