In this fierce and fabulous debut, book designer and indie cartoonist Kayla E. reconfigures the impersonal visual language of 20th-century commercial art into the harrowing, deeply personal story of her traumatic childhood. Over the course of a series of set pieces, a narrative emerges: after her parents’ divorce, young Kayla bounces between the homes of her unstable, abusive mother and her disinterested father, who turns a blind eye when her brother molests her. As she grows up, she deals with being gay in a fundamentalist Christian environment and begins to abuse alcohol. The story is told out of chronological order and filtered through the formats of mass-produced print entertainment: picture books, comic strips, activity pages (a word search invites readers to find “vodka,” “dissociation,” and “PTSD”), paper dolls, recipe cards, comic-book advertisements (“Do You Need Money? Consider robbing your child’s piggy bank!”), and more. Kayla’s mother appears sometimes as a faceless 1950s housewife engaging in horrifying behavior, sometimes as a huge and terrifying presence, sometimes as a child who needs to be cared for herself. The flawless pastiche of commercial art and design, drenched in cheery primary colors, suggests the influence of Chris Ware and Ivan Brunetti while establishing an aesthetic all its own. This four-color atomic bomb of a comic signals the arrival of a formidable talent. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

Lindell (Blackward) reflects in this poignant graphic memoir on their struggle to maintain emotional equilibrium after a string of setbacks. Framed as a series of conversations between Lindell and a chatty older woman they keep meeting at a bus stop, the narrative unfolds in flashbacks. Lindell explains they’re a campus aide now but “used to be an artist tho,” and skips through fragmented anecdotes about attending church, sharing meals with family, and globe-hopping for music and art gigs. Eventually, Lindell reveals they have been flailing since they broke up with their girlfriend, Rey, and afterward survived a shooting: “I stopped existing after.... Time froze. I stayed there.” The sequence of these events is left vague, as their emotional progression holds more meaning than their chronology. What’s clear is that, for Lindell, they represent formidable mental barriers to moving forward. Eventually, by reconnecting with their artistic side, Lindell relocates their sense of worth. As Lindell’s bench mate puts it: “Sometimes we just need to take a moment and remember who we are.” The frank storytelling and bold, scribbly graphics reflect the creator’s zine background in their disarming directness. Lindell hits just the right combination of introspective and punk rock. Agent: Albert Lee, UTA. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

French artist ZD debuts with a fitfully entertaining manga-style superhero story. In a city overrun by organized crime, cocky police sergeant Zack Kazuma zips around on his motorcycle bringing perps to justice, while his younger brother Joe struggles to keep his job as a bicycle delivery boy. During a visit to their family’s cabin in the woods, they dig up their father’s old sports equipment and discover, independently, that Dad’s ball cap and boxing glove grant them superpowers. “I have a burning desire to punch something!” gasps Joe, and in no time he’s knocking out biker gangs and wowing the regulars at the neighborhood boxing gym. Meanwhile, the cap gives Zack headaches and an obsession with justice. The comic takes most of the first volume to establish its premise and barely has time to set up hints of darker twists to come (in a touch of body horror, the magic accessories fuse to their wearers’ bodies). The artwork boasts a retro 1980s–1990s manga look, with unadorned linework and ample speed lines. Though some of the supporting cast, like Joe’s bickering employers, are neatly caricatured, the main characters are blandly designed. The conflict between brothers has potential, but the meandering pace and so-so art keep this from standing out in a crowded manga market. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

Archaeologist Vigil Virgo searches for the mind-shattering origins of the universe in this fast-paced, retro-styled science fiction adventure from Eisner winners Visaggio (Girlmode) and Oeming (Powers). A crew member aboard the 41st-century Voidship Verisimilitude, Vigil is set on finishing a mission that her late parents started, and is accompanied on her quest by a diverse and distinctive cast of characters. Starship commander Odysseus Rex acts as Vigil’s adoptive parent, but he and abrasive engineer Petra are keeping plenty of secrets from her. (Among them: Vigil’s parents are still alive.) Wisecracking green alien Ondon and mystic warrior nun Krios round out Vigil’s allies. Visaggio’s sharp, witty script sets a brisk pace, with a string of space-age mysteries to be solved that culminate in one of the crew evolving beyond humanity into a “cosmic question mark.” Oeming’s trademark exaggerated, cartoony character designs have a 1980s vibe (Ray-Ban-style glasses abound), with innovative, fluid layouts. Fans of both Star Wars–esque space adventures and Jaime Hernandez’s early Love & Rockets strips will enjoy cruising the galaxy with this eclectic crew. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

Dislocation and unfulfilled dreams haunt this ragged yet affecting debut collection from New Yorker cartoonist Kennedy. With a blocky style that alternates between immersive chaos and wider scenes of emptiness, Kennedy’s storytelling is loose, fanciful, and at times hard to grasp. The 10 stories span decades, oceans, and even solar systems but are linked by the longing for home. Kennedy’s semi-dazed wanderers and dreamers traverse the cold damp “bleak” of England’s Midlands, where Caribbean emigrants of the Windrush generation face nativist hate and loneliness; 1920s Louisiana, where a ghostly folk tale has the cutting rawness of an undiscovered Delta blues masterpiece; and a faraway planet where even interstellar exploration cannot escape the stain of colonialism. There are fitful references to resistance, as in the callout to dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson’s “Inglan is a Bitch” and a woman’s declaration of postcolonial optimism (“Damn right, the Irish, the Africas, next the Indies... all the rapers and the pillagers can get stuffed!”). But despite all the talking animals, spirits, and shape-shifting, Kennedy’s vision maintains a gritty, true-to-life understanding of the perpetually in-between state of diasporic peoples. This dreamy and embittered work lays bare the challenges of living in an inequitable world. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this boisterous alien invasion tale from Llor (Last Day) and Dalmau, a burned-out cartoonist gets unexpected inspiration when a strange creature crashes into her living room. Maya is struggling to meet her deadlines on a sci-fi comic (while also texting her anxious best friend Juu through an awkward first date), when a one-eyed alien that looks like a brain with tentacles careens through her window. His helmet cracked and his ship in disrepair, Soma explains, via mind meld achieved by placing a tentacle on Maya’s temple, that he needs help. Turns out, he’s trying to prevent a full-scale invasion of Earth by his species. Within seconds, Maya and Juu’s town is under attack, turning Juu’s date into a battle for survival and putting Maya’s comics on hold while she and Soma work together to save humanity. Dalmau’s fizzy manga-influenced art pops, with savvy worldbuilding that makes environments and props feel like characters themselves (e.g., the overflowing ashtray on Maya’s desk, whose lingering smoke looks like a jagged word balloon). However, the actual characters, particularly Juu, feel underdeveloped, and the shift in genre from slice-of-life to sci-fi action is abrupt. Still, fans of Scott Pilgrim will dig the mash-up of mundane anxiety and apocalyptic mayhem. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

This frenzied and occasionally befuddling series opener from Pires and Casalanguida (New America) spins conspiracy theories about the Illuminati—five filthy-rich families who control world business and politics—into a glittery web of schemers and backstabbers. When Medici patriarch Cosimo dies in a bloody attack during an Illuminati meeting, Paolo Medici inherits command of the family and its secret operations, but his ascendancy is complicated by the intricacies and subterfuges of his father’s life. Alliances shatter, enemies scheme, and Paolo falls in love with the wrong girl: Ming, of the rival Yinling family. Casalanguida’s energetic artwork revels in the story’s sex, violence, and dirty deeds. The script jump cuts through a confusingly large cast of characters—who often don’t get named or placed within a family alliance for pages after they appear. The sweep and action of the narrative is exciting nonetheless, even if readers may need to keep flipping back to each chapter’s opening page, which lays out a who’s-who of characters that appear in the following pages. The comic ends on a cliffhanger—promising the beginning of “the end of the world” but delivering a “wait and see.” Readers will be curious to find out what happens next. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 01/03/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this adroitly drawn but narratively bland manga-styled action-fantasy from Vorniére, his English-language debut, monsters roam a world of endless night, only attacking if they hear a loud noise. A young man named Saber tends to the children in a tiny settlement inside an old church. The inhabitants communicate in (cleverly depicted) sign language, and only some of the men are allowed to venture out to fish and trap game. They invite Saber on his first foray, but when he glimpses a mysterious humanoid figure, he’s startled into an exhalation, causing a fiery boar-monster to attack and seriously injure his mentor. Saber secretly ventures out again to try and make things right, and the figure reveals herself to be the mystical Lune, who hails from the mountaintop settlement of High-Fort. She shows Saber how to harness the monsters’ powers by cooking their organs into a stew. Saber jumps at the chance to help save his people, but their journey to High-Fort is complicated not just by what lurks in the shadows but by his community’s fear of the unknown. Vorniere’s creative monster designs (inspired by French folklore) and dynamic fight sequences are more impressive than his characters, which fit standard fantasy tropes. The art, however, is savvy enough to bring manga fans back for a second installment. Here’s hoping the sequel turns up the volume. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/03/2025 | Details & Permalink

Geary (the Treasury of Murder series) ably adapts Klickstein’s whimsical novel, written in the naive voice of real-life Victorian child author Daisy Ashford (1881–1972). Apple-cheeked, pinafore-sporting Daisy is sitting on her lawn when, out of nowhere, a rocket ship lands and disgorges a black-clad man from the moon named Zogolbythm. Just like that, she jets off on a space adventure: wandering an underground moon colony, battling alien monsters and invaders from Venus, and meeting a visitor from the future who comes bearing a television. Daisy’s escapades capture the stream-of-consciousness rhythm of a story told by an actual child, and Klickstein’s narration copies Ashford’s idiosyncratic syntax and spelling: “She sat there sometimes jotting down this or that as idears did pop into her head.” As events loop around like the moon in orbit, the plot becomes increasingly self-referential and Daisy wonders, “Am I writing this story or is it writing me?” Geary’s artwork, with touches that recall turn-of-the-century comic strips and antique printing techniques, is perfectly suited to Victoriana. Readers with limited patience for nonsense may grow impatient with the story’s disjointed inventiveness. But by Daisy’s own standards—“You cannot be peculiar enough as a true writer, and the only sin is boredom”—it more than succeeds. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/03/2025 | Details & Permalink

Oeming follows The Mice Templar with another anthropomorphic animal adventure wrapped inside a vivid historical horror story. In a 12th-century England fractured by civil war and inhabited by walking and talking beasts, raccoon monk William uses the power of his faith to put supernatural threats to rest. He appeases the lonely spirit of a woman’s dead husband, a tormented ghostly chaplain, and soul-stealing fairies. The head of the monastery disapproves of these otherworldly activities, but Winnie, a spunky mouse thief, is sufficiently impressed to reform and become William’s apprentice. “A lost soul often looks for another lost soul, Winnie,” William warns. “And when I look around this world, that’s all I see.” Oeming’s boldly inked, deeply shadowed artwork owes an unmistakable debt to Mike Mignola’s Hellboy series but with visual touches inspired by the era’s illuminated manuscripts and woodcut illustrations. Readers are immersed in a medieval European’s perspective on a demon-haunted world where skeletons fly and biblically accurate angels (many-eyed and wielding swords) might descend at any moment. The well-researched historical details include such plot points as the unsolved mystery of the Green Children of Woolpit. This deserves a place on every fantasy reader’s shelf. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/03/2025 | Details & Permalink