Gros, best known for her “Sort Of” series of YA adaptations of classics such as Little Women and Anne of Green Gables, offers up an LGBTQ+ romance for adults with much of the same cozy charm. Tessa, an underemployed art school grad in Vancouver, is ready to give up on dating when she learns that her high school nemesis, Olive, is back in her hometown and renting the basement apartment in her parents’ house. Having repressed the specifics of her awkward teenage memories, Tessa can’t recall exactly why she hates Olive, “but I do remember that she sucked.” When the two are thrown together to help plan Tessa’s parents’ anniversary, Tessa is forced to dig into the past and face the fact that, in the present, she and Olive are falling for each other. Gros’s simple, pleasantly rounded artwork has the feel of casual sketches, an effect that works well in the high school flashbacks, which are presented as doodles on notebook paper. Though the story dips into dark subjects like teen bullying and homophobia, for the most part it’s as sweet as the wedding cake the leads sample in one cute vignette. Romance readers looking for an enemies-to-lovers story without much dysfunction will root for this couple. Agent: Elizabeth Bennett, Transatlantic Agency. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/11/2025 | Details & Permalink

This innovative and emotionally resonant debut from Versyp centers on two women fumbling through middle age. Esther is a sporadically employed art teacher, and Rita is her nude model, who struggles to connect with her teen daughter, Nastja, in the wake of her divorce. In loose-lined, expressionistic water colors that break out of typical panel structures, Esther and Rita’s friendship grows—awkwardly but genuinely—though neither is privy to the details of the other’s private life. (Those character moments, such as Rita opening a gift of holy water from her mother, are revealed in interstitial vignettes between the main narrative.) Raised to be humble and cautious, Esther takes a chance on love with Nico, only to become the other woman in his life. Meanwhile, Rita mourns her late mother, who taught her to be “hard” but whose afterlife spirit is gentler. Esther draws and cares for stick insects whose molting serves as a central metaphor (“Shedding skin isn’t without danger”), and she prefers sketching people’s “essences” over realistic still life. Her imagined sketches pop up in the margins, shot through with bright threads of red, such as when Nastja cuts into a Christmas sausage, and slices through her mother’s heart. Clement’s art intertwines seamlessly with the script and highlights the interplay between interiority and the characters’ public-facing selves. It’s a quiet but ultimately moving portrayal of the ways tenderness can triumph over isolation. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/11/2025 | Details & Permalink

Austen scholar Barchas (The Lost Books of Jane Austen) and artist Greenberg (Glass Town) refashion the novelist’s biography into a sprightly tale in the mode of one of her classic comedies of manners. Three sections—“Budding Writer,” “Struggling Artist,” and “Published Author”—cover major events in Austen’s life as well as small, colorful moments like a boating party and a trip to the circus. In this real-life version of a Regency romance, the love story is between Jane and her family, particularly her artistic sister Cassandra, who shares Jane’s love of popular literature (“We are great Novel-readers and not ashamed of being so,” Cassandra asserts) and encourages her writing. The rest of the family listens to Jane read her drafts and offers feedback: “Fanny Price is insipid,” says her mother of Mansfield Park’s heroine. “I did however enjoy Mrs. Norris.” Coming from a poor branch of the family, the siblings must strategize to remain in their wealthier relations’ good graces, while Jane struggles to make money from her publications. Greenberg’s playful art has a handcrafted feel reminiscent of embroidery or quilting, appropriate for the period setting. She peppers scenes with choice historical details, labeling the parlor games played at a party and the food on a breakfast table. Austen fans and newcomers alike will find this charming volume handsome, clever, and rich with Regency scholarship. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/11/2025 | Details & Permalink

Orson Welles’s volatile persona and roller-coaster career animate this gloriously unruly graphic biography by Daoudi (Monk!). Paying homage to the filmmaker’s fourth wall–breaking style, the volume opens with Welles in gladiatorial swagger, declaring “I’m back in town and I want a rematch” as he looms over the Hollywood sign. From there, Daoudi strings together anecdotes from across Welles’s life, such as when he beat Manhattan traffic by darting to his gigs (staging Julius Caesar as a Nazi allegory, producing radio programs, recording commercial voiceovers) in ambulances. Daoudi peppers the script with Welles’s mix of braggadocio, self-sabotage, and self-awareness (“The only thing I want written on my tombstone: ‘He never did Love Boat’ ”). The filmmaker’s rapid rise and long fall is framed against the doomed 1970s production of The Other Side of the Wind, his never-finished semi-autobiographical film. The rough but energetic art suits the drama and verve of its subject, portraying Welles alternately with flowing scarf and brandished cigar like an artistic gunslinger and other times in hulking, despondent gloom. His self-criticisms are represented as shouts from the subconscious: “Nobody stopped you from making more Citizen Kanes!” It’s an incisive look at an artist who never recovered from the success of his youth. (May)

Reviewed on 04/11/2025 | Details & Permalink

This vital collection of Marvel’s 1969–1971 horror series, edited by journalist Dean, spotlights the work of prominent artists such as Neal Adams, Marie Severin, Jim Steranko, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Wally Wood. Several tales are narrated by the artists themselves, caricatured within the panels to deliver Twilight Zone–style twist endings. Throughout, the volume delivers atmospheric, spooky artwork with inventive panel construction and page layout. In “At the Stroke of Midnight,” a portrait of avaricious heirs frantically searching for lost treasure, Steranko divides a wide-screen shot into ever-shrinking panels that evoke an eerie entrapment. In “One Hungers,” a claustrophobic tale of a trapped subterranean creature, Adams tilts his panels precipitously in a chase through an underground cavern. The reprints retain their original coloring, a major plus with collectors. An extensive introduction by Dean emphasizes the progressive and distinctive nature of these pieces in a field then-dominated by superheroes. Other ephemera includes letters, columns, house ads, and the cheerful self-promoting Bullpen Bulletins. While the stories never reach the terrifying heights of the classic 1950s EC horror comics, there are plenty of thrills here—but it’s the detailed period artwork that will call to collectors and scholars. Old-school Marvel fans will eagerly add this to their shelf and look forward to forthcoming volumes. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/04/2025 | Details & Permalink

New Yorker cartoonist Deutsch picks at the emotional tangle of new parenthood in this candid if slight graphic memoir debut. After a series of awkward and comical dating failures, Deutsch meets Marc, who is also eager to have kids. They move in together five months later, forming a “pragmatic and not very romantic” partnership. Once she gets pregnant, however, Deutsch worries about the pitfalls of parenthood, including passing on her family history of depression and dysfunction. An unsympathetic nurse warns her that “motherhood is pain,” and the pain continues beyond childbirth, as the baby isolates her from other adults and strains her relationship with Marc. “I was in love with my baby and lonely for adult love,” Deutsch recalls. She finds humor in her travails, envisioning outlandish birth plans like a “parkour birth” and “Olympic diving birth.” At times, her pre-pregnancy self floats above her whispering taunts like, “from when you were slutty and hot... wearing a chunky heel.” The squashy digital art features body humor—elongated breasts fall to the ground after nursing—but eschews detailed backgrounds (a maternity ward is rendered as some chairs with “Maternity Ward” written over them). Parents will find plenty here that’s painfully familiar. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/04/2025 | Details & Permalink

Each of the linked stories in Ang’s moody debut depicts a young Asian American woman’s attempt to find safety and love. Jenny works a variety of jobs; in the first, at a food warehouse, a boss drawn as Mr. Monopoly barks at her and her male coworker to be more productive. But in between hauling boxes, a flirtation builds. Their budding romance is disrupted, however, by his feeder fetish, the obsessive desire to feed a sexual partner as they gain weight. Other stories explore relationships and vulnerability from different angles: a bus crash that prompts heartfelt confessions, a cousin’s mysterious physical ailment, the sobering aftermath of a fight and near-drowning at a pool. In the final chapter, Jenny is pregnant and talks to her unborn baby, whom she hopes, perhaps naively, will be a catalyst for her own rebirth. Despite shared themes, the connections between stories can be murky; it’s sometimes difficult to discern just how much each one is intended to stand alone. The similarity between some of the sketchy lined character designs adds to that opaqueness. Nevertheless, Ang conveys Jenny’s brooding nature, bodily discomfort, and veiled desires through believably messy slices of life. This poignant work will appeal to fans of Megan Kelso’s comics and Nicole Holofcener’s films. Agent: Jacinta Dimase, Jacinta Dimase Management. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/04/2025 | Details & Permalink

“Who will remember them, if not us?” asks Dranger (Miss Remarkable and Her Career) in this meticulous chronicle of her Jewish family’s history of disruption and dislocation. When Dranger was growing up, her grandparents deflected her questions about relatives who “disappeared” in WWII. Dranger details her yearslong quest to fill in this untold ancestry, and how she connects with long-lost living family members. She follows her great-grandfather Aron and his family, who fled pogroms in Russian-occupied Bialystok in the early 1900s, from their arrival in Sweden through the Nazi occupation of neighboring states. Among those profiled are Dranger’s great-uncle, who ran a successful textile factory, and relatives who join a kibbutz. Even in purportedly neutral Sweden, other relatives are forced to separate and relocate to avoid Nazi threats. In one particularly moving section, Dranger discovers a previously unknown cousin from Belarus who seemingly died in the camps as a baby and adds his name to a memorial in a Stockholm synagogue. The storytelling unfolds in a collage of archival photos and documents, which helps anchor the evocative black-and-white drawings. Dranger is dedicated to memorializing those murdered but also empathizes with her elders: “What parent would want to instill such an incomprehensible terror in their children?” It’s a weighty and well-constructed addition to the graphic literature of the Holocaust. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/04/2025 | Details & Permalink

Psycho-Pass screenwriter Yoshigami and artist Ogino debut with a fast-paced but lackluster crime-thriller manga. In an alternate Japan, the deregulation of narcotics wreaks havoc on society. A new drug called Icarus causes addicts to develop supernatural powers, and the corrupted superhumans become known as “dopemen.” While rogue factions seed chaos and crime, the government establishes a dopeman-led D-Unit to maintain order. This opening volume focuses on an unconventional D-unit duo: rough and tumble Tojima, who claims he’ll “kill every dopeman,” and straitlaced Matrix, whose superpower is that she can “produce any medicine,” including toxins she spews forth in battle. After an obligatory rapid-fire opening fight scene, the script flashes back to Matrix’s origins, as she wakes from a 10-year coma chained to the bed as a human experiment. Once freed, she hooks up with Tojiman, and the narratives cliff-hanger ending hinges on the question of how these two will get along. The art flaunts savvy character designs and dynamic action sequences, and the arc follows a dystopian, battle-shonen formula. Though the plot is driven by the female lead, aspects of her characterization (like how she “births medicine”) feel cringey (“Period Matrix!” she shouts over images of swirling liquid). This retread of a familiar conceit lacks wow factor. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 03/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

Fialka, a history professor at Middle Tennessee State University, teams up with artist Carman (Fear Hunters) for this urgent if overstuffed graphic history of guerrilla warfare in Civil War–era Missouri. Pro-slavery “Bushwhackers” clashed in bloody skirmishes and covert terror operations with the occupying forces of the Union Army. Civilians are depicted both as murdered bystanders and perpetrators of violence. Fialka makes the case that this is not atypical in war, noting that “state and non-state actors” regularly break official rules of combat. The carnage depicted shocks the conscience, as in a bravura sequence that dramatizes the ambush of U.S. soldiers by William “Bloody Bill” Anderson’s guerrilla band. Carman employs tight panel layouts, capturing both the tactical sweep and the zeal of men on the hunt, with close-ups of scalping and other gore. Fialka offers in-depth sourcing and context for every word and image, which illuminates the history. But in a long section involving the trial of a murderous representative of the Union Army, which demonstrates war crimes committed by both sides, the dense blocks of text diminish the drama. Later, the swirl of atrocities in the art juxtaposes sharply with scholarly minutia. The result is a comprehensive treatment of a potent topic that occasionally gets too bogged down in details. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 03/28/2025 | Details & Permalink