Many of this fall’s top comics look with hope (or horror) toward the future—while others reckon with the past, including Rep. John Lewis’s long-anticipated next memoir.
Top 10
The Day the Klan Came to Town
Bill Campbell and Bizhan Khodabandeh. PM Press, Aug. 3 ($14.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-62963-872-0)
Campbell’s deeply researched work showcases “a community of immigrants and marginalized people model[ing] the best version of their nation’s ideals,” according to PW’s starred review.
Discipline
Dash Shaw. New York Review Comics, Sept. 21 ($29.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-68137-569-4)
Shaw weaves together his impressionistic drawings with original Civil War documents in this tale of a Quaker Union soldier and the sister he left behind.
The Eightfold Path
Charles Johnson, Steven Barnes, and Bryan Christopher Moss. Megascope, Jan. 4 ($24.99, ISBN 978-1-4197-4447-1)
MacArthur “genius grant” recipient Johnson puts an Afrofuturist spin on enlightenment in his comics debut.
Lore Olympus, Vol. 1
Rachel Smythe. Del Rey, Oct. 5 ($26.99, ISBN 978-0-593-16029-9)
Smythe’s Eisner-nominated webcomic updates the scandalous exploits of Greek gods in Gossip Girl style.
No One Else
R. Kikuo Johnson. Fantagraphics, Nov. 9 ($16.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-68396-479-7)
Fifteen years after his debut, Nightfisher, Johnson returns to Hawaii and an atmospheric family story of grief and renewal.
On Tyranny, Graphic Edition: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Timothy Snyder and Nora Krug. Ten Speed, Oct. 5 ($22.99, ISBN 978-1-9848-6039-2)
Snyder’s bestselling treatise on resisting authoritarianism gets adapted by National Book Critic’s Circle Award–winning artist Krug.
Red Room: The Antisocial Network
Ed Piskor. Fantagraphics, Oct. 12 ($19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-68396-468-1)
Murder is click-bait entertainment in this futuristic horror show from the creator of the Hip Hop Family Tree series.
Run: Book One
John Lewis et al. Abrams ComicArts, Aug. 15 ($24.99, ISBN 978-1-4197-3069-6)
“Lewis’s stunning American story and legacy lives on in these pages,” according to PW’s starred review of the sequel to the landmark March series.
Tunnels
Rutu Modan, trans. by Ishai Mishory. Drawn & Quarterly, Oct. 12 ($29.95, ISBN 978-1-77046-466-7)
Eisner-winner Modan digs up contested territory in the Middle East in this archaeological, political, and family adventure.
The Waiting
Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, trans. by Janet Hong. Drawn & Quarterly, Sept. 14 ($24.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-77046-457-5)
Suk Gendry-Kim follows the L.A. Times Book Prize–winning Grass with the story of a family separated by the Korean War.
Comics & Graphic Novels Listings
2dcloud
Grand Electric Thought Power Mother by Lale Westvind (Oct. 26, $34.95, ISBN 978-1-937541-57-6) showcases the Ignatz Award–winning cartoonist’s stylized portraits of massive women warriors in sci-fi and psychedelic brawls, including selections originally published as mini-comics and stills from Westvind’s films.
Abrams Comicarts
The Last Mechanical Monster by Brian Fies (Sept. 7, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-4197-5612-2) is a retro robot morality tale, twice awarded the Eisner for best digital comics, that follows the return to society of a scientist who was imprisoned for maniacal schemes and must grapple with his desire for vengeance.
Albatross Funnybooks
Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? by Eric Powell and Harold Schecter (Aug. 3, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-949889-04-8) delves into the psychology and family history of a psychopath, Ed Gein, whose murders and necrophilia in the 1950s formed the basis of films including Psycho and Silence of the Lambs.
Andrews McMeel
Murder Book by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell (Nov. 9, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5248-6116-2) considers Americans’ obsession with true crime, focusing on Campbell’s own fandom of notorious murders and murderers, while allowing space to tell the stories of the victims who are often forgotten.
Archaia
The Short While by Jeremy Sorese (Nov. 16, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-68415-746-4) charts the trajectory of two men who meet accidentally, form a deep connection, and then lose each other following a tragic event; it’s a love story about trauma and chance.
Avery Hill
Lights! Planets! People! by Molly Naylor and Lizzy Stewart (Sept. 28, $22.95, ISBN 978-1-910395-61-5) adapts a theater piece by Naylor in which astronomer Maggie Hill presents a lecture that she hopes will bring more young women into the field, juxtaposed with her first encounter with therapy for anxiety issues.
Bdang
The Shiatsung Project by Brigitte Archambault, trans. by Aleshia Jensen (Oct. 5, $20 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-77262-060-3), watches a woman trapped in a house with everything she might need—food, water, books, a swimming pool—but for company only “Shiatsung,” a TV that talks back.
Birdcage Bottom
Too Tough to Die: An Aging Punx Anthology, edited by J.T. Yost (Sept. 11, $20 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-7331509-4-1), gathers reflections by music-loving cartoonists including Emily Flake, Brother Malcolm, Liz Prince, Aaron Renier, and Ben Snakepit on growing older within the punk scene, activism, identity, and friendship in life’s moshpit.
Boom! Studios
Brzrkr, Vol. 1 by Keanu Reeves, Matt Kindt, and Ron Garney (Oct. 5, $15.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-68415-685-6) rolls out an immortal fighter, the Berserker, who wages bloody battles for the U.S. government on a promise he will be told the secrets of his cursed fate, in this first comics series by the actor.
Columbia Univ.
A Revolution in Three Acts: The Radical Vaudeville of Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay, and Julian Eltinge by David Hajdu and John Carey (Sept. 21, $19.95, ISBN 978-0-231-19182-1) tells the history of three radical artists of the vaudeville era, who challenged the period’s expectations of race and gender.
Conundrum
Dying for Attention: A Graphic Memoir of Nursing Home Care by Susan MacLeod (Oct. 5, $20 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-77262-061-0) pulls back the hospital curtain on the impersonal and puzzling practices of long-term health care systems, in a memoir about MacLeod’s time spent advocating for her elderly mother.
Dead Reckoning
The Jewish Brigade by Marvano, trans. by Montana Kane (Sept. 15, $24.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-68247-723-6), is based on a real-life WWII British infantry force made up of Jewish volunteers who were inspired to fight by the news of atrocities against their people across Europe, focusing on Leslie Toliver, a race-car driver turned soldier.
Drawn & Quarterly
Leonard Cohen: On a Wire by Philippe Girard, trans. by Helge Dascher and Karen Houle (Nov. 9, $21.95, ISBN 978-1-77046-489-6), illuminates the tumultuous life and career of the musician and poet, from his upbringing in Montreal, literary and musical rise to fame, downfalls, and comeback career.
Fantagraphics
Afternoon at McBurger’s by Ana Galvañ, trans. by Jamie Richards (Dec. 7, $16.99, ISBN 978-1-68396-484-1), brings together a group of young friends at a fast-food joint with a mysterious item on the menu: the “Once Party,” which allows adolescents the chance to view three minutes into their future.
Good Night, Hem by Jason (Sept. 21, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-68396-461-2) tails a caricatured Hemingway on a series of three misadventures, including real and imagined ones, opening with a bullfight in Pamplona in 1925, a secret WWII mission, then the 1950s as the author muses on his wild life.
First Second
Free Speech Handbook by Ian Rosenberg and Mike Cavallaro (Nov. 2, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-250-61975-4) continues the World Citizen Comics series with an installment considering the protections of speech in the U.S., why and how the laws codifying free speech were developed, the role of key Supreme Court cases, and contemporary debates. 75,000-copy announced first printing.
Fordham Univ.
Gasoline Dreams: Waking Up from Petroculture by Simon Orpana (Sept. 7, $15.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-8232-9772-6) rallies for a shift away from climate-destroying reliance on fossil fuels, using a graphic narrative to convince readers that happiness in contemporary life doesn’t require gas-guzzling.
Forge
I Will Not Die Alone by Dera White and Joe Bennett (Oct. 5, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-250-76043-2) features whimsically dressed animals in offbeat postures, unlikely pairings, and uncanny circumstances declaring hopes and dreams via short inspirational platitudes, set against an ever-more apocalyptic backdrop of dissolving civilization, exploding bombs, and falling meteors.
Graphic Mundi
Hakim’s Odyssey, Book 1: From Syria to Turkey by Fabien Toulmé, trans. by Hannah Chute (Oct. 15, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-63779-000-7), documents a refugee’s 2011 journey from Syria to Turkey, by way of Jordan, and the difficulties of leaving behind home and family, while dreaming of a safe return some day.
Hard Case Crime Comics
Gamma Draconis by Eldo Yoshimizu and Benoist Simmat, trans. by Marc Bourbon-Crook (Aug. 24, $14.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-78773-606-1), entangles Sorbonne student Aiko Moriyama in an occult mystery that takes her from London to Tokyo and through the dark arts.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
1984: The Graphic Novel by George Orwell and Fido Nesti (Aug. 24, $22, ISBN 978-0-358-35992-0) is a graphic adaptation of the dystopian classic, in which tormented everyman Winston Smith discovers love and rebellion in a world where “Big Brother is watching you,” with retro-artistic reinterpretation by Brazilian artist Nesti.
IDW
Chained to the Grave by Andy Eschenbach, Brian Level, and Kate Sherron (Nov. 16, $17.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-68405-784-9). Old-fashioned gunslinging gets a ghostly makeover in this tale of a Western outlaw who returns from the grave, literally attached and dragging his gravestone behind him as he seeks treasure and revenge.
Image Comics
Destroy All Monsters: A Reckless Book by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips (Oct. 19, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-5343-1924-0) finds Ethan Reckless, a 1980s PI, on a new case tracking a real estate mogul in L.A., with plenty of twists, turns, danger, and shenanigans, all rendered in Brubaker and Phillips’s trademark Southland noir style.
Rain Like Hammers by Brandon Graham (Aug. 3, $17.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5343-1355-2) travels to a fantastical world called Skycradle, dreamed up by the Eisner-winning artist, where a young woman named El is entered into a competition she never wanted, with the prize of living forever.
Indigo
Kyle Theory: A Vulga Drawings Book by Lily O’Farrell (Nov. 1, $16.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-911648-30-7) mashes up memes and feminist-minded advice in this collection based on O’Farrell’s Instagram account, including such send-ups as how to sew a new outfit from red flags sent by an ex-lover.
Iron Circus Comics
Smut Peddler Presents: Sordid Past, edited by Andrea Purcell (Sept. 7, $30 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-945820-81-6), features such cartoonists as Lucy Bellwood, Dapperpunch, Erica Henderson, Kit Seaton, EK Weaver, and Rowan Woodcock riffing on historical settings and scenarios from antiquity to the wayback 1990s in diverse, inclusive, and explicit comics erotica.
Laurence King
The Women Who Changed Art Forever: Feminist Art—The Graphic Novel by Valentina Grande and Eva Rossetti (Aug. 31, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-913947-00-2) profiles Judy Chicago, Faith Ringgold, and Ana Mendieta, and the Guerrilla Girls collective—and how each shook up and influenced the art world.
Living the Line
The Strange Death of Alex Raymond by Dave Sim and Carson Grubaugh (Aug. 10, $39.99, ISBN 978-1-7368605-0-2) examines the life and mysterious death of Alex Raymond, the creator of Flash Gordon, along with such fellow cartooning greats as Hal Foster (Prince Valiant), while recreating their artistic techniques.
Mad Cave Studios
They Fell from the Sky by Liezl Buenaventura and Xavier Tarrega
(Aug. 31, $14.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-952303-13-5). A geeky tween hero gets matched up with an extraterrestrial buddy in this sci-fi adventure about bullies, schoolyard spats, TV fandom, and what happens when an unexpected guest falls from space.
Magnetic Press
Small World by Jean David Morvan and Toru Terada, trans. by Jeremy Melloul (Sept. 21, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-951719-32-6), skewers elitism in a cyberpunk-styled Peter Pan story line in which wealthy youth tour the poverty-stricken lower world on virtual safaris—but don’t expect a visit back home by Piedra, who is fleeing the villainous Gaucho.
MIT
Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle Against Censorship by Cherian George and Sonny Liew (Aug. 31, $34.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-262-54301-9) collects interviews from more than 60 cartoonists from around the world, along with legal experts and academics, about censorship.
Morrow
Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron by Julia Quinn and Violet Charles (Aug. 17, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-06-295859-4) adapts a subplot told across several of Quinn’s Bridgerton novels into a romance starring the spirited orphan Miss Butterworth, who flees her wicked aunt to find love.
NBM
Canciones of Federico Garcia Lorca by Tobias Tak and Federico Garcia Lorca (Aug. 17, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-68112-274-8) transforms 20 pieces from Spain’s master lyricist’s 1927 publication into comics; this experiment in the emergent comics-poetry form is introduced by scholar and translator Christopher Maurer (The Collected Poems of Lorca).
Nightfall
The Autumnal by Daniel Kraus and Chris Shehan (Sept. 21, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-939424-79-2) follows a family that relocates from a hard life in the city to a small New Hampshire town that boasts beautiful fall foliage and also turns out to be haunted.
Nobrow
How to Pick a Fight by Lara Kaminoff (Oct. 5, $18.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-910620-78-6) heralds pugnacious kid hero Jimmy, who envisions his future in pro wrestling as “Jimmy Ruckus” and sets out from his crowded household to fight characters he meets on a runaway adventure.
Oni
Orcs in Space, Vol. 1 by Justin Roiland et al. (Oct. 5, $15.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-62010-756-0) launches a new series from the creator of Rick and Morty, following the escapades of a trio of fun-loving Orcs who sneak onto a sentient spaceship and party across the universe.
Pantheon
Original Sisters: Portraits of Tenacity and Courage by Anita Kunz (Nov. 2, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-31614-6) was the artist’s Covid lockdown project, researching women changemakers (ranging from Joan of Arc to Misty Copeland), writing their stories, and painting 150 portraits.
PM Press
My Mom Had An Abortion by Beezus B. Murphy, Tatiana Gill, and Shout Your Abortion (Nov. 11, $13.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-62963-922-2) documents one quirky teen’s awakening and shifting understanding of reproductive rights, from taking in right-wing rhetoric to learning about her mother’s own experience and becoming an activist.
Scribe US
Two-Week Wait: An IVF Story by Luke Jackson, Kelly Jackson, and Mara Wild (Aug. 3, $20 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-950354-63-4) illustrates the fraught experience of a couple going through infertility treatments as they venture on rounds of IVF in hopes of a successful pregnancy, based on the real experience of the Jacksons, married coauthors.
Secret Acres
Recidivist IV by Zak Sally (Oct. 5, $19.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-9991935-9-4) offers short experimental comics in Sally’s abstract, surreal style: in one, a protagonist makes art with teeth, while another follows kids fleeing destruction into unexpected visions.
Street noise
Power Born of Dreams: My Story Is Palestine by Mohammad Sabaaneh, trans. by Mouin Rabbani (Sept. 21, $15.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-951491-14-7), advocates for Palestinian rights through acts of human storytelling, as the Al-Hayat al-Jadida cartoonist and former political prisoner imagines an artist drawing diverse stories of his community from within cell walls.
Titan Comics
Smart Girl by Fernando Dagnino (Oct. 5, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-78773-719-8) imagines a Blade Runner–styled future in which an abused domestic android named Yuki develops self-awareness and the spirit to fight her overlord-and-creator, the tech company Gorgona.
TKO Studios
Forgotten Blade by Tze Chun and Toni Fejzula (Oct. 5, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-952203-08-4) recruits a schoolteacher and a warrior on a vengeance quest to kill god, in the land of the Five Rivers, where the church jealously guards the water from the Citadel that grants magical powers.
Top Shelf
Ballad for Sophie by Filipe Melo and Juan Cavia, trans. by Gabriela Soares (Sept. 7, $24.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-60309-498-6), charts a publicity-averse music star’s swan song, as detailed to a journalist who gets the scoop on a life full of secrets, unexpected encounters, love, villainy, Nazis, evil managers, and nice nuns.
Tuttle
Soseki Natsume’s I Am a Cat: The Manga Edition: The Tale of a Cat with No Name but Great Wisdom! by Soseki Natsume and Chiroru Kobato, trans. by Zack Davisson (Sept. 28, $14.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-4-8053-1657-3), adapts into manga the classic satire of Japanese 20th-century society, narrated by an observant cat.
UNCIVILIZED
Ex Libris by Matt Madden (Oct. 19, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-941250-44-0) constructs a postmodern puzzle narrative involving a man in a room, a box of comics using different ways to tell a story, and a secret that readers and the protagonist must discover between their panels.
Univ. of New Mexico
Memorial Ride by Stephen Graham Jones and Maria Wolf (Oct. 1, $24.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-8263-6323-7) revs up and rattles out a Southwestern road adventure as Cooper Town, a Native soldier returning from the Middle East, tangles with a gang and leads them on a motorcycle chase.
Viz Media
Burn the Witch, Vol. 1 by Tite Kubo, trans. by Jan Mitsuko Cash (Oct. 5, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-9747-2359-1), set in the world of Kubo’s Bleach series, this outing spins a hardened fairy tale of two Wing Bind agents out for glory but stuck watching over a fugitive who keeps attracting dragons.
Workman
Dirty Produce by Marinaomi (Nov. 23, $10.95, ISBN 978-1-5235-1331-4) peeks in on a produce aisle of fruit going hot and heavy, from an orgy of grapes to an orange that really enjoys being juiced.
Z2 Comics
Run the Dungeon by Patrick Kindlon (Sept. 21, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-940878-27-0) draws on role-playing game logic for the tale of a guy trapped in a dungeon and trying to solve its endless puzzles so he can make his way to a surface world. It comes with an original game and a soundtrack packaged as an exclusive vinyl or download code.
