NOVEMBER 2020

GENDER QUEER

MAIA KOBABE

Gender Queer is Maia Kobabe’s (e/em/eir) intensely cathartic autobiography charting eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears.

Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.

- SYNOPSIS COURTESY OF LION FORGE / ONI PRESS

OCTOBER 2020

THESE SAVAGE SHORES

RAM V // SUMIT KUMAR

Two centuries after the first European ship sailed to the Malabar Coast and made landfall at Calicut, The East India Company seeks to secure its future along the lucrative Silk Route, in the year 1766.

An old evil now sails aboard a company ship, hoping to make a home in this new found land. But he will soon find that the ground along the Indus is an ancient one with daemons and legends far older than himself. Along These Savage Shores, where the days are scorched and the nights are full of teeth.

- SYNOPSIS IN PART COURTESY OF VAULT COMICS

SEPTEMBER 2020

HOT COMB

EBONY FLOWERS

Hot Comb offers a poignant glimpse into Black women’s lives and coming of age stories as seen across a crowded, ammonia-scented hair salon while ladies gossip and bond over the burn. The titular story “Hot Comb” is about a young girl’s first perm—a doomed ploy to look cool and to stop seeming “too white” in the all-black neighborhood her family has just moved to.

Realizations about race, class, and the imperfections of identity swirl through Flowers’ stories and ads, which are by turns sweet, insightful, and heartbreaking. Flowers began drawing comics while earning her PhD, and her early mastery of sequential storytelling is nothing short of sublime. Hot Comb is a propitious display of talent from a new cartoonist who has already made her mark.

- SYNOPSIS COURTESY OF DRAWN & QUARTERLY

AUGUST 2020

THEY CALLED US ENEMY

GEORGE TAKEI // HARMONY BECKER

In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten “relocation centers,” hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard. “They Called Us Enemy” is Takei’s firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother’s hard choices, his father’s faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.

- SYNOPSIS COURTESY OF TOP SHELF PRODUCTIONS

JULY 2020

PRINCE OF CATS

RONALD WIMBERLY

“PRINCE OF CATS” is the B side to Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, played at an eighties block party in an NY where underground sword dueling blossomed alongside hip-hop, punk, disco, and no wave.

It’s the story of the minor players with Tybalt at the center. The definitive printing of RONALD WIMBERLY’s critically-acclaimed first work, presented as intended for the first time.

- SYNOPSIS COURTESY OF IMAGE COMICS

JUNE 2020

LAURA DEAN KEEPS BREAKING UP WITH ME

MARIKO TAMAKI//ROSEMARY VALERO-O’CONNELL

Laura Dean, the most popular girl in high school, was Frederica Riley's dream girl: charming, confident, and SO cute. There's just one problem: Laura Dean is maybe not the greatest girlfriend.

Mariko Tamaki (Skim, This One Summer) and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell (Lumberjanes, What is Left) are at the top of their game in Laura Dean, starting with the premise of a teenage romance and carefully revealing a story about friendship and self-worth set at the point in life when we all start to become the type of people we are.

Much more than a high school-based drama, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me is a poignant character study, expertly told and super fun to read.

- SYNOPSIS COURTESY OF MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS

APRIL 2020

THIS WAS OUR PACT

RYAN ANDREWS

It's the night of the annual Autumn Equinox Festival, when the town gathers to float paper lanterns down the river. Legend has it that after drifting out of sight, they'll soar off to the Milky Way and turn into brilliant stars, but could that actually be true?

This year, Ben and his classmates are determined to find out where those lanterns really go, and to ensure success in their mission, they've made a pact with two simple rules: No one turns for home. No one looks back.

- SYNOPSIS COURTESY OF MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS

MARCH 2020

CROWDED VOL. 1

CHRISTOPHER SABELA // RO STEIN

Ten minutes in the future, the world runs on an economy of job shares and apps—like Reaper, a platform for legal assassination. When the apparently average Charlie Ellison wakes up one day to find out she’s the target of a million dollar Reapr campaign, she hires Vita, the lowest rated bodyguard on the Dfend app. Now, with all of Los Angeles hunting Charlie, she and Vita will have to figure out who wants her dead, and why, before the campaign’s 30 days—or their lives—are over.

Crowded is a story about tech and human connection that never veers into the preachy or cliche; an actually rollicking adventure that never loses sight of the deep characters at the center of the action. Crowded is funny, affecting, and easily one of the best serialized comics released over the past year. Do not miss this one.

- SYNOPSIS IN PART COURTESY OF IMAGE COMICS

FEBRUARY 2020

20TH CENTURY BOYS VOL. 1

NAOKI URASAWA

Humanity, having faced extinction at the end of the 20th century, would not have entered the new millennium if it weren’t for them.

In 1969, during their youth, they created a symbol. In 1997, as the coming disaster slowly starts to unfold, that symbol returns. This is the story of a group of boys who try to save the world.

- SYNOPSIS COURTESY OF VIZ MEDIA

JANUARY 2020

RUSTY BROWN

CHRIS WARE

Rusty Brown collects and presents the last 15 years of cartooning master Chris Ware’s deep, heartbreaking examination of a single day in the life at a school in Nebraska. Through themes of loneliness, vulnerability, and anxiety, Ware offers a glimpse of the human condition that is at once both profoundly intimate and, at the same time, universal.

Chris Ware is a master of comics. Rusty Brown is exhibit A in the argument placing him among the pantheon of our most important living artists in any medium. This work is a must read, both for fans of the cartooning medium looking to experience comics at its highest level of craft and for newcomers alike as an example of what the artform has to offer.

DECEMBER 2019

BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2019

EDITED BY JILLIAN TAMAKI

Jillian Tamaki, co-author of This One Summer, picks the best graphic pieces of the year.

“The pieces I chose were those that stuck with me, represented something important about comics in this moment, and exemplified excellence of the craft. Surveying the final collection, I’m moved by the variety of individual approaches. There are so many ways to make us care about little marks on a page.”—Jillian Tamaki, from the introduction

The Best American Comics 2019 showcases the work of established and up-and-coming artists, collecting work found in the pages of graphic novels, comic books, periodicals, zines, online, in galleries, and more, highlighting the kaleidoscopic diversity of the comics form today.

Featuring Vera Brosgol, Eleanor Davis, Nick Drnaso, Margot Ferrick, Ben Passmore, John Porcellino, Joe Sacco, Lauren Weinstein, Lale Westvind, and others.

-SYNOPSIS COURTESY OF HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT

NOVEMBER 2019

THE HARD TOMORROW

ELEANOR DAVIS

Hannah is a thirty-something wife, home-health worker, and antiwar activist. Her husband, Johnny, is a stay-at-home pothead working—or “working”—on building them a house before the winter chill sets in.

Told with tenderness and care in an undefined near future, Eleanor Davis’s THE HARD TOMORROW blazes unrestrained, as moments of human connection are doused in fear and threats.

-SYNOPSIS COURTESY OF DRAWN AND QUARTERLY

OCTOBER 2019

ABBOTT

SALADIN AHMED// SAMI KIVELA

Hugo Award-nominated novelist Saladin Ahmed (Black Bolt) and artist Sami Kivelä (Beautiful Canvas) present one woman’s search for the truth that destroyed her family.

Hard-nosed, chain-smoking tabloid reporter Elena Abbott investigates a series of grisly crimes that the police have ignored. Crimes she knows to be the work of dark occult forces. Forces that took her husband from her. Forces she has sworn to destroy.

SEPTEMBER 2019

PROMETHEA VOL. 1

ALAN MOORE // J.H. WILLIAMS

Sophie Bangs, an ordinary college student, finds herself inexplicably transformed into Promethea, the living embodiment of The Imagination. Her trials have only begun as she must master the secrets of her predecessors before she is destroyed by Promethea's ancient enemy.

Promethea might be legendary writer Alan Moore's most accessible, entertaining work. Alongside the incomparable J.H. Williams III, this team crafted one of the weirdest, most interesting takes on the superhero mythos in the medium. Promethea is a must-read.

AUGUST 2019

COYOTE DOGGIRL

LISA HANAWALT

Coyote is a dreamer and a drama queen, brazen and brave, faithful yet fiercely independent. She beats her own drum and sews her own crop tops. A gifted equestrian, she’s half dog, half coyote, and all power. Together with her trusty steed Red, there’s not much that’s too big for her to bite off, chew up, and spit out right into your face, if you deserve it.

Lisa Hanawalt is simply one of the best cartoonists on the planet, and probably the funniest. Perfect for fans of westerns, laughter, horses, and also everyone else.

-SYNOPSIS COURTESY OF DRAWN AND QUARTERLY

JULY 2019

HIGHEST HOUSE

MIKE CAREY // PETER GROSS

The creators behind The Unwritten, Mike Carey and Peter Gross, invite you into The Highest House, the story of a slave boy named Moth, who makes friends with a powerful entity called Obsidian that promises advancement and happiness.

Highest House is fantasy at its best, executed with a deft hand and stunning, meticulous art. If you're looking to fill the Game-of-Thrones-sized hole in your heart, you couldn't do any better than this.

-SYNOPSIS COURTESY OF IDW PUBLISHING

JUNE 2019

EXIT STAGE LEFT: THE SNAGGLEPUSS CHRONICLES

MARK RUSSEL // MIKE FEEHAN

It’s 1953. While the United States is locked in a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, the gay Southern playwright known as Snagglepuss is the toast of Broadway. But success has made him a target.

Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles is a surprising, affecting, consistently funny character study from source material that no one was expecting. Mark Russel is proving to be one of the most interesting voices in comic books and this month's selection is the perfect chance to find out why.

-SYNOPSIS COURTESY OF DC COMICS

MAY 2019

THANOS WINS

DONNY CATES // GEOFF SHAW

Ask the most powerful beings in the Marvel Universe how they fear the universe will end, and in their most honest moment, they will answer with two words: “Thanos wins.” And now, it looks as though that disturbing thought is about to become a horrific reality! See what happens when the Mad Titan gets his way!

Donny Cates and Geoff Shaw present a big, bombastic, cosmic, time traveling romp that made for one of 2018's best superhero stories. Thanos Wins is not to be missed.

-SYNOPSIS COURTESY OF MARVEL COMICS

APRIL 2019

MISTER MIRACLE

TOM KING // MITCH GERADS

Scott Free is the greatest escape artist that ever lived. So great that he escaped Granny Goodness’ gruesome orphanage and the dangers of Apokolips to travel across galaxies and set up a new life on Earth with his wife, the former female fury known as Big Barda.

You might say Scott Free has everything...so why isn’t it enough?

Tom King and Mitch Gerard present a thoughtful, super-humanist character study that challenges the ideas behind what superhero stories are capable of. Mister Miracle is not to be missed.

-SYNOPSIS COURTESY OF THE PUBLISHER

MARCH 2019

ON A SUNBEAM

TILLIE WALDEN

Two timelines. Second chances. One love.

A ragtag crew travels to the deepest reaches of space, rebuilding beautiful, broken structures to piece the past together.

Two girls meet in boarding school and fall deeply in love—only to learn the pain of loss.

With interwoven timelines and stunning art, award-winning graphic novelist Tillie Walden creates an inventive world, breathtaking romance, and an epic quest for love.

-SYNOPSIS COURTESY OF TILLIE WALDEN