Comics & Graphic Novels

Starred Review from Library Journal, “Its unflinching portrayal of oppression and the vital necessity of maintaining idealism in the face of utter despair is as timely as it is deeply stirring.”

Starred Review from Booklist, the journal of the American Library Association, “The potent narrative . . . proves hauntingly timely with today's global unrest, growing militarism, proliferating wars, and even U.S. politics. . . . Readers could well be witnessing an oracular warning of an imminent future.”

From Emmy-nominated journalist Melissa Chan and esteemed activist artist Badiucao comes a near-future dystopian graphic novel about technology, authoritarian government, and the lengths that one will go to in the fight for freedom. 

It's 2035. The US and China are at war. America is a proto-fascist state. Taiwan is divided into two. As conflict escalates between nuclear powers, three idealistic youths who first met in Hong Kong develop diverging beliefs about how best to navigate this techno-authoritarian landscape. Andy, Maggie, and Olivia travel different paths toward transformative change, each confronting to what extent they will fight for freedom, and who they will become in doing so. 

A powerful and important book about global totalitarian futures, and the costs of resistance.

Death stalks a quartet of girls – or is it the other way around?

A simple, elemental story of a group of adorable, little girls evading the specter of Death perfectly complements Gabriel Howell’s poetic diary/manifesto/wishlist. What looks like a Victorian children’s book complete with moral lessons, depicts an internal and external tug-of-war between vulnerability and intimacy, relatability and honesty, observation and isolation. The message remains raw and uncensored: don’t hide it in a book; forget about who is or isn’t watching; Forget Me Not.

In this gripping graphic novel, a Jewish journalist encounters an extension of the horrors of the Holocaust in North Africa.

In the lead-up to World War II, the rising tide of fascism and antisemitism in Europe foreshadowed Hitler's genocidal campaign against Jews. But the horrors of the Holocaust were not limited to the concentration camps of Europe: antisemitic terror spread through Vichy French imperial channels to France's colonies in North Africa, where in the forced labor camps of Algeria and Morocco, Jews and other "undesirables" faced brutal conditions and struggled to survive in an unforgiving landscape quite unlike Europe. In this richly historical graphic novel, historian Aomar Boum and illustrator Nadjib Berber take us inside this lesser-known side of the traumas wrought by the Holocaust by following one man's journey as a Holocaust refugee.

Hans Frank is a Jewish journalist covering politics in Berlin, who grows increasingly uneasy as he witnesses the Nazi Party consolidate power and decides to flee Germany. Through connections with a transnational network of activists organizing against fascism and anti-Semitism, Hans ultimately lands in French Algeria, where days after his arrival, the Vichy regime designates all foreign Jews as "undesirables" and calls for their internment. On his way to Morocco, he is detained by Vichy authorities and interned first at Le Vernet, then later transported to different camps in the deserts of Morocco and Algeria. With memories of his former life as a political journalist receding like a dream, Hans spends the next year and a half in forced labor camps, hearing the stories of others whose lives have been upended by violence and war.

Through bold, historically inflected illustrations that convey the tension of the coming war and the grimness of the Vichy camps, Aomar Boum and Nadjib Berber capture the experiences of thousands of refugees through the fictional Hans, chronicling how the traumas of the Holocaust extended far beyond the borders of Europe.

New York Public Library Top 10 Graphic Novels of 2024

American Library Associate Top 10 Best Graphic Novels for Adults of 2024

Starred Review from Publishers Weekly. "It's a revealing visualization of a rare, 'depersonalizing' condition and how Sweeney finds 'drops of disabled joy whenever I can.' Sweeney's subtle and elegant art reflects the nuance of her moment-to-moment struggle."

An evocative and heartfelt graphic memoir about the challenges of living with a progressive disability.

When Maria Sweeney was young, she kept count of her broken bones. As she grew older, she stopped. Living with Bruck syndrome, a rare progressive condition that gives her very brittle bones and joint abnormalities, meant that those numbers climbed and climbed.

Today, she struggles every day, living in an often-inaccessible world. As an ambulatory wheelchair user, ordinary actions like entering a building, sitting at a café, or holding a cup of tea can be drastically different for her than for others.

With lush illustrations, Maria tells the story of her lifelong struggle to obtain care in an increasingly complicated and disinterested US healthcare system. But for every step that presents a struggle, there's also beauty, friendship, art, and growth. She documents the relief she's found in alternative therapies, particularly medical marijuana; in loving community and chosen family; and in nature and her creative practice. A powerfully understated critique of our modern world, Brittle Joints offers a generous, expansive look at how to live and love amidst the challenges of survival.

“This visually spectacular book offers a powerful dive into the depths of fear and trauma and a reminder that the impact of violence spreads far beyond the official victim.” —Rebecca Solnit, author of Orwell's Roses and Hope in the Dark

When someone is murdered next door, it changes everything about the way you live your life.

When Hugh was ten years old, he walked home from school to find his friends next door crying outside – they had just come home and discovered their mother’s body. She had been murdered.

Now an adult, Hugh has a happy social life and a successful career as an artist in Oakland, California. But even so he is plagued by anxiety, anger, and panic attacks. As he attends therapy and looks back on his childhood, he comes to realize the trauma and stress that the murder next door had on his life, and how it still affects him today.

Does trauma ever go away? Or does it just hang around, in the backs of our minds forever? This thoughtful, powerful memoir explores how one event in childhood can make a permanent mark on someone’s life.

Winner of the 2022 Palestine Book Award

“An artistic triumph that will stand as an enduring testament to the spirit of the Palestinian people. Mohammad Sabaaneh is a master.”--Joe Sacco, winner of the American Book Award for Palestine

What does freedom look like from inside an Israeli prison?

A bird perches on the cell window and offers a deal: “You bring the pencil, and I will bring the stories,” stories of family, of community, of Gaza, of the West Bank, of Jerusalem, of Palestine. The two collect threads of memory and intergenerational trauma from ongoing settler-colonialism. Helping us to see that the prison is much larger than a building, far wider than a cell; it stretches through towns and villages, past military checkpoints and borders. But hope and solidarity can stretch farther, deeper, once strength is drawn of stories and power is born of dreams. Translating headlines into authentic lived experiences, these stories come to life in the striking linocut artwork of Mohammad Sabaaneh, helping us to see Palestinians not as political symbols, but as people.

An in-depth piece of comics journalism exploring the persistent use of the deadly chemical Chlordecone to support the banana crops in Martinique and Guadeloupe. 

In 1975, pesticide producer LifeSciences closed their plant that produced the chemical chlordecone, after numerous employees had toxic chemical poisoning, and the local river had been polluted. But in the French Antilles, farmers continued to use the pesticide. Even after it was banned in 1993, planters continued to illegally import and use it. Chlordecone use became so widespread that it was in almost everything people on the islands ate and drank. 

Today, 95% of the inhabitants of Guadeloupe and 92% of the inhabitants of Martinique are contaminated by the chemical, and the islands have one of the highest cancer rates in the world. 

In this richly illustrated work, the author brings her personal experience and connection to the story as she interviews scores of local people as well as scientists and government officials to uncover the true story behind the decision to continue poisoning the water and the soil for the sake of global commerce. We, as global citizens, are urged to consider the decisions we are making through our consumer choices and how they affect the health of the planet and the survival of communities throughout the world.

One queer person bravely and creatively uses therapy to navigate the healing from the trauma of a past sexual assault

One day, during an ordinary early-morning run, Cara’s watch dinged with a Facebook friend request. But when they checked the message, the photo slammed them backward in time and froze them in fear. Their rapist wanted to “friend” them.

Cara always had a long to-do list; always had many projects; always was busy. But as their rapist continued to send friend requests and tried to reconnect with them, they began to lose their grip on their work, projects, and relationships. But then Cara connects with a therapist who guides them through a long but powerful process of healing. And Cara works to desensitize, reprocess, excavate and relive the old wounds in order to move past them and heal.

A graphic biography of Djuna Barnes: writer, artist, and queer radical of the Lost Generation in the Roaring 20s.

Djuna Barnes lived in a dazzling world filled with literary salons, innovative writing, and daring new art styles. But it didn’t come easily. She managed to work her way out of an abusive childhood growing up in a polygamous rural utopian community on Long Island. She was determined to live an extraordinary life, and found herself socializing with the likes of James Joyce, Natalie Barney, Peggy Guggenheim, and T.S. Eliot in 1920s literary Paris. Called the most famous unknown of the century, Djuna Barnes stood out for her brilliant writing, her biting wit, and her unique style. Her novel, Nightwood is considered by some to be one of the greatest lesbian love stories ever written. But as the stock market crashed and the Lost Generation left Paris, her life began to unwind.

A fascinating window into the life of a woman whose enormous literary talent and provocative attitude were both celebrated and disdained by the world.

One of the best feminist books of the year! —Ms. Magazine

This autobiographically-inspired graphic novel explores mental health and schizophrenia in a surprising and emotionally honest story with a fantastical cast of animal characters.

Fox Foxerson's got a new roommate. Fox Foxerson's got a new job. Fox Foxerson's got a date. The roommate is only a little strange, sometimes. The job seems to involve . . . filing? It's not very clear. The date seems to be more interested in someone else. Fox would rather be making art.

As the oppressive weight of the everyday routine beats down on Fox, nothing is going right. And it doesn't seem like anyone can help — not Fox's roommate, not Fox's friends, and definitely not the nurses and doctors at the hospital, who don't seem to take notice of anything Fox tries to tell them. Fox needs some time and space to figure things out. This quirky, humorous graphic novel tinged with pathos, immerses readers in the constant question: are you okay? Fox is not okay, but Fox is working on it.

“The queer community is lucky to have Sharon on our side, using her skills and passions to create a better world for all of us.”—Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Whatever happened to Marchenoir?

Enter the Marchenoir Library, a different kind of graphic novel from A. Degen, an artist Michael DeForge (Lose, Ant Colony, Leaving Richard’s Valley) says is “one of the smartest and funniest cartoonists in the game.”  A gallery of the most beautiful covers from the beloved series, Marchenoir, is all that’s left of the mystery of Marchenoir, ex-celebrity singer/songwriter working as a superheroine to pay off her debts, and defend our dreams and reality, as she searches for a terrestrial paradise. Can you solve a book by its covers?

After immigrating from China to New York City, a teenage girl and her family struggle to adjust to the new world they’ve found themselves in.

Yixuan Liu, a 16-year-old Chinese girl, just moved from China to America with her family. To try to fit in to a new school, a new city, and a new culture, Yixuan chooses an English name, Emma.

As she works to succeed in school and make friends, Yixuan/Emma is confused by the anti-Asian and anti-Black racism she hears from her teachers and her friends. She must learn to be herself and stop striving to please everyone else in order to make sense of it all.

Balancing chaotic school life with divorcing parents, her sister’s mental illness, and a new crush, Emma must ask herself, “How do I know who I really am?”

Are you feeling fed up with the current political landscape? Over 100 amazing comic artists show you unique actions any one of us can take turn things around. 

A To Do list for changing the world. Artists share their passion and commitment to make things better in this fun and engaging collection. From simple ideas like signing a petition or going on a march, to more imaginative ones like becoming a 'raging granny' (old ladies who use their innocuous looks to gain entry into places like board meetings or arms fairs, and then create havoc). Many things can be done immediately, with little or no money at all. Others require a bit more planning. But all of them are steps that anyone can take if they want to enact change.

How China became the China we know today, through war and societal transformation.

China entered the 20th century as an agrarian society, weakened under internal and external pressures. Revolutionaries came together to bring down the last imperial dynasty but quickly split over the direction of reconstruction. Civil wars ensued, followed by WWI. 

The fate of the country appeared to be in the hands of industrial powers like Britain, Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union, and the United States. All seemed lost when Japan seized all Chinese seaports, railways, industries, and fertile farmland. Yet Chinese resistance continued for eight years and the entire society was mobilized. After decades of struggling, China finally regained independence that laid the foundation for its own modernization.

The fourth volume in this fun, comic-style series that explores China's move to modernization!

Who founded China? Are Chinese people religious? What is Chinese culture and how has it changed over time? The Understanding China Through Comics series answers these questions and more.

The fourth volume in the Understanding China Through Comics series The Making of Modern China, covers the stunningly productive Ming dynasty and its fall to the Manchus under the Qing, the last Chinese dynasty. The book also addresses Wang Yangming's School of Mind and the painful process of modernization and conflict with the West and Japan, including the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion.

A fun way to learn about China in a visual, informative comic-style history.

Who founded China? Are Chinese people religious? What is Chinese culture and how has it changed over time? The accessible and fun Understanding China Through Comics series answers those questions and more.

For all ages, Foundations of Chinese Civilization covers China's early history in comic form, introducing philosophies like Confucianism and Daoism, the story of the Silk Road, famous emperors like Han Wudi, and the process of China's unification.

Includes a handy timeline. This is volume one of the Understanding China Through Comics series.

Jing Liu is a Beijing native now living in Davis, California. A successful designer and entrepreneur who helped brands tell their stories, Jing currently uses his artistry to tell the story of China.

“a tour de force of comics” —Ed Park, The New York Times

One of the Top Ten Graphic Novels of 2020, as chosen by the American Library Association

One of the Best Books of 2020, as chosen by Publishers Weekly

“Fortunately for readers of this raw and intimate graphic memoir, Terry never fully lets go of his youthful vulnerability. . . . Reckoning with sobriety requires connection and humility, as Terry makes the case for with sincerity and beauty, as he ties his recovery to his spiritual homecoming.” —Starred Review, Publishers Weekly

A brutally honest but charming look at the pain of childhood and the alienation and anxiety of early adulthood.

In his memoir, we are invited to walk through the life of the author, Jim Terry, as he struggles to find security and comfort in an often hostile environment. Between the Ho-Chunk community of his Native American family in Wisconsin and his schoolmates in the Chicago suburbs, he tries in vain to fit in and eventually turns to alcohol to provide an escape from increasing loneliness and alienation. Terry also shares with the reader in exquisite detail the process by which he finds hope and gets sober, as well as the powerful experience of finding something to believe in and to belong to at the Dakota Access Pipeline resistance at Standing Rock.

Winner of the 2016 Foreword INDIES Award for Graphic Novels & Comic

The official manga biography of Osamu Tezuka, Japan's "God of Manga," chronicling the birth and evolution of manga and anime.

This graphic-format biography of Osamu Tezuka—Japan's "God of Manga"—looks at one of the twentieth century's great creative artists (Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion, Black Jack). It is also an anecdotal study of the evolution of Japan's early manga and anime business and its heroes.

A never-before-seen popular culture history of postwar Japan, it is sure to fascinate fans and anyone interested in manga, anime, and the potential of the graphic storytelling medium.

Have you ever gotten turned on while stuffing a turkey? Get a Little Stranger with Edie Fake.

What’s silly, scary and sexy? Edie Fake’s comics forged an entire aesthetic of art and queer culture. Since his Ignatz Award winning Gaylord Phoenix, Fake’s comics have only appeared in underground anthologies and zines. At last, these rare comics can all be found under the covers of a Little Stranger. You’ll never look at a turkey the same way again.

“Often quite funny . . . The layers of identity and story in the memoir and Som's fluid approach to representing the self, feel impressively easy, unbelabored.” —Hillary Chute, The New York Times Book Review

A Lambda Literary Award Finalist

The meticulous artwork of transgender artist Bishakh Som gives us the rare opportunity to see the world through another lens.

This exquisite graphic novel memoir by a transgender artist, explores the concept of identity by inviting the reader to view the author moving through life as she would have us see her, that is, as she sees herself. Framed with a candid autobiographical narrative, this book gives us the opportunity to enter into the author’s daily life and explore her thoughts on themes of gender and sexuality, memory and urbanism, love and loss.

“Ebensperger debuts with a big pink splash in the forthright but lighthearted memoir . . . This entertaining, funny, and warmhearted chronicle of the rocky road toward self-acceptance is a real charmer.” —Publishers Weekly

A gay giant can't hide. This charming coming-of-age and coming-to-terms with oneself story shows us what it feels like to grow up queer in a heteronormative society in the 1990s. 

Filled with pop culture touchstones from Cher to Steven Tyler, from Jurassic Park to Grey's Anatomy, this book navigates both the joy and the pain of puberty surrounded by ignorance and homophobia. How do you love yourself if you've learned so well to hate yourself? For all of us who've ever felt bizarre, damaged, or strange, we are shown that all is full of love, and that true acceptance must come from within yourself.

“Unique in both format and content, this important book is a first choice to help diversify teen graphic nonfiction collections.” —Starred Review, School Library Journal

Follow the daily life of one queer artist from Texas as they introduce us to the lives of ten extraordinary people.

The author shares their life as a genderqueer person, living in the American South, revealing their own personal struggle for acceptance and how they were inspired by these historical LGBTQIA+ people to live their own truth. Featuring biographies of Mary Jones, We'wha, Magnus Hirschfeld, Dr. Pauli Murray, Wilmer "Little Axe" M. Broadnax, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Carlett Brown, Nancy Cardenas, Ifti Nasim, and Simon Nkoli.

An occupied country.

A people infested with demons.

a time of revolution.

a liberator rises.

One of the oldest and most powerful stories in human history comes uniquely alive in this telling of the Gospel of Mark.

Join a carpenter as he changes the world. And join Steve Ross as he re-imagines the ancient story, with all of its power and mystery intact. Told with unexpected and startling imagery, Marked will forever change the way you think about this both familiar and strange tale.

This is a human story of passion and murder. Of a compassionate man brutally killed and yet compellingly alive.

This fun, comic-style series that explores China's relationship with its barbarian neighbors. The Mongols!

Who founded China? Are Chinese people religious? What is Chinese culture and how has it changed over time? The Understanding China Through Comics series answers these questions and more.

The third volume of the Understanding China Through Comics series, Barbarians and the Birth of Chinese Identity, tells of the founding of the Song Dynasty and its attempts to reinvigorate a flagging economy and government while defending against barbarians and the eventual invasion of China by Genghis Khan and the Mongols.

Starred Review from Publishers Weekly, “Such reflections will ring painfully familiar to anyone who has stumbled around in the darkness of grief. This vulnerable graphic memoir cuts deep.”

An emotional and heartbreaking memoir of the author’s lifelong struggle with his mother’s death from cancer.

Grief never goes away.

When he was a teenager, Jesse Mechanic’s mother passed away after a long struggle with cancer. In this memoir, he looks back on that time, and on the ways that experience followed him throughout his life. Struggling with school while dealing with attentional problems and the overwhelming tsunami of grief, this book tells the story of Mechanic’s slow work to figure out a life for himself. It’s about obsessive-compulsive disorder, intrusive thoughts, and depression—straight-A’s turning to straight F’s, and smiles to blank stares. It's about what loss can teach us, and how trauma can be both debilitating and beautiful. It’s about standing in dark rooms for long enough for your eyes to adjust.

And graffiti. It’s about that too.

With powerful visuals and thoughtful, poignant text, this graphic memoir challenges readers to keep going in the face of the hardest times.

“A vibrant graphic memoir full of dark humor, Nervosa is an insightful look into the torment of disordered eating that will be a source of comfort to others who struggle with their mental health.” —STARRED REVIEW, Foreword Reviews

Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder. It is not a phase, a fad, or a choice. It is a debilitating illness, manifested in a distorted relationship with food, but which actually has more to do with issues of control. It is often a puzzle for doctors, therapists, parents, and friends. And so those who suffer from it are belittled, or tragically misunderstood, not only by society but by the healthcare system meant to treat it.

A rough-and-tumble Iraq War veteran is young and in love, and the last thing on his mind is food and the ethics of eating meat. But when his girlfriend becomes a vegetarian and animal rights activist, suddenly food is all he thinks about. 

A true story of how love and vegetarianism can triumph over all else. Love, heartache, and the rest of the ingredients that make a reader laugh, smile, stop-and-think, are all found in this enthralling graphic memoir. Amidst the stories of love and frustration, there are treatises on food, vegetarianism, and the ethics of the animal rights movement (some of it juxtaposed against Michael’s graphic wartime experiences). Told with Michael’s sardonic perspective and the delightful artwork of debut graphic novelist Chai Simone, this is a journey of true love gone temporarily astray.

Are you dating your parents? Welcome to Mount Scopus Academy, where everyone becomes who they already are.

Rivi’s been accepted to Mount Scopus Academy - but escaping Mount Scopus is like escaping your dysfunctional childhood— you end up recreating it. Is that cute boy following her, or is she dating her father? The familiar has its own gravity; just don’t fall for it. Even the best of us have daddy issues.

I Will Bite You! is Eisner Award winner Joe Lambert's debut short story collection for weird kids of all ages.

Along with several new short stories, I Will Bite You! collects the rare, self-published mini-comics work of Eisner Award winner Joe Lambert. A Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and Best American Comics selection, these comics reveal sophisticated, unusual, and surprising narratives about animal musicians, mischievous children, cavemen, and heavenly bodies.

Open every illuminated correspondence between two star-crossed artists yet to meet - and discover a dizzying, dazzling almost love story.

The 2018 Slate Book Review and the Center for Cartoon Studies sixth annual Cartoonist Studio Prize winner for Best Print Comic, the Academic Hour charts the romance between Poethel, a disgraced architecture professor, and his student, Liana. Told in a series of surreal, vibrant vignettes, and set in a fantastic, logic-defying college of shifting rooms and secret performance spaces, the Academic Hour affirms how an intense, fledgling relationship can ignite the impulse for storytelling with unbridled, ferocious creative energy.

A graphic history featuring the true story of three friends from Brooklyn who join in the global fight against fascism

In this exhilarating graphic novel about the Spanish Civil War, three American friends set off from Brooklyn to join in the fight—determined to make Spain “the tomb of fascism” for the sake of us all. Together they defy the U.S. government and join the legendary Abraham Lincoln Brigade, throw themselves into battle, and conduct sabotage missions behind enemy lines. As Spain is shattered by the savagery of combat during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), readers see the darkening clouds of the World War to come.

Artist Anne Timmons has created a thrilling graphic novel in the spirit of the “war comic” genre that appeared after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States' entry into World War II. Drawing upon the real-life experiences of Lincoln Brigade veteran Abe Osheroff, writer Miguel Ferguson offers a lively, accessible resource based on actual events during the Great Depression and the Spanish Civil War. ¡Brigadistas! will stir the memories of older audiences who remember the Spanish Civil War as a time of unparalleled international solidarity and heartbreak, and it will expose young audiences to the passions, politics, and conflicts of a bygone era with striking contemporary relevance.

"Sean Ford creates a world that's both eerie and warmly mundane. Not an easy feat." —Alison Bechdel (Fun Home)

Only Skin is an exploration of the hallucinatory and grim landscape of rural America seen through the eyes of two orphaned siblings searching for answers in a world filled with terrible questions.

Winner, 2022 Atomium Comic Strip Prize
A comprehensive graphic biography of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the authoritarian president of Turkey.

One of the world’s most divisive and controversial leaders, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has ruled over Turkey as either prime minister or president since 2003. This graphic biography sheds light on the origins of Turkey’s most powerful man, from his youth as a budding soccer player to his years spent navigating Turkey’s political landscape, including the founding of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001. Author Can Dündar, a Turkish journalist and contributor to the Washington Post now living in exile in Germany, spent several years researching this book. 

Situated at the crossroads between Europe and Asia with a population of 84 million, Turkey is a growing economic powerhouse with a geopolitically strategic location. As its leader, the Islamic, conservative Erdoğan has had a polarizing effect on the country’s populace; some applaud his economic and political reforms, while others decry his autocratic, iron-fisted rule which has included the jailing of opponents, the crushing of free speech and the rights of LGBTQ+ people and others, and an ongoing war waged against the country’s Kurdish minority.

Featuring compelling illustrations by Egyptian-Sudanese comic artist Anwar, the book provides a critical and dramatic context for understanding Erdoğan’s convictions and contradictions as a demagogue for whom democracy has been merely a means to power. 

A poignant graphic memoir about the power of art to transform and heal after the death of a loved one

In April 2020, cartoonist Sarah Leavitt's partner of twenty-two years, Donimo, died with medical assistance after years of severe chronic pain and a rapid decline at the end of her life. About a month after Donimo's death, Sarah began making comics again as a way to deal with her profound sense of grief and loss. The comics started as small sketches but quickly transformed into something totally unfamiliar to her. Abstract images, textures, poetic text, layers of watercolor, ink, and colored pencil—for Sarah, the journey through grief was impossible to convey without bold formal experimentation. She spent two years creating these comics.

The result is Something, Not Nothing, an extraordinary book that delicately articulates the vagaries of grief and the sweet remembrances of enduring love. Moving and impressionistic, Something, Not Nothing shows that alongside grief, there is room for peace, joy, and new beginnings.

What Right? and its adult-themed companion What’s Wrong? are graphic interpretations of what it means to live in a society where we presumably enjoy the right to free speech, and what happens when that right is -challenged.

What Right? collects comic art that confronts the serious issues around the denial of civil rights and freedom of speech in particular, and includes work by such familiar artists as Dan -Piraro (Bizarro), Bill Griffith (Zippy the Pinhead) and many others.

A fundraising project for the Little Sister’s Defence Fund (to assist the Vancouver gay and lesbian bookstore’s legal challenge to the customs seizures they’ve been plagued by for the last 15 years), Arsenal Pulp Press is donating all proceeds over and above its production costs, and all individuals involved have donated their time, energy, and creative talents to create two marvelous collections of engaging comic art.

With an introduction by author Mark Macdonald, buyer for Little Sister’s Book & Art Emporium.

Robin Fisher is a comic activist in Vancouver.

The New York Public Library's Best New Comics of 2025 for Adults

An urgent and compelling graphic memoir about a Pakistani investigative journalist at odds with his fundamentalist family and the Pakistani military that attempts to kidnap him

In Islamabad in 2018, Pakistani investigative journalist Taha Siddiqui is kidnapped at gunpoint and barely escapes being killed. He flees the country on the first plane to France with questions left unanswered: What motivated the attack? Was the tyrannical Pakistani military involved?

The Dissident Club is an action-packed graphic memoir about Islamic politics, complex family dynamics, and one man's dedication to truth and principle. With illustrator Hubert Maury, Siddiqui, winner of the prestigious journalism award Prix Albert Londres, tells the story of his intriguing life and career, beginning with his childhood in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan under the stern gaze of a fundamentalist Islamic father. Siddiqui rebels against his religion, but his personal freedom is constrained by strict Islam, especially after his father joins a jihadi mosque.

Following the Gulf War and then the shock caused by 9/11, Siddiqui enters university and begins his personal emancipation. He becomes a journalist, but as he reveals the crimes of the Pakistani military, he learns the hard way that journalists are moving targets. Once in Paris, he opens the Dissident Club, a bar dedicated to helping political dissidents from around the world.

An expansive Pakistani coming-of-age story, The Dissident Club documents Siddiqui's experiences as a young man fighting for truth and justice against the harsh backdrop of Islamic fundamentalism and corruption.

In recent years the world has borne witness to numerous confrontations, many of them violent, between protesters and authorities at pivotal gatherings of the world’s political and economic leaders. While police and the media are quick to paint participants as anarchistic thugs, accurate accounts of their subsequent treatment at the hands of authorities often go untold—as well as the myriad stories of corporate and government corruption, greed, exploitation, and abuse of power that inspired such protests in the first place. In this startling, politically astute graphic novel, Gord Hill (The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book) documents the history of capitalism as well as anti-capitalist and anti-globalization movements around the world, from the 1999 “Battle of Seattle” against the World Trade Organization to the Toronto G20 summit in 2010. The dramatic accounts trace the global origins of public protests against those in power, then depict recent events based on eyewitness testimony; they go far to contradict the myths of violence perpetrated by authorities, and instead paint a vivid and historically accurate picture of activists who bring the crimes of governments and multinationals to the world’s attention.

As the “Occupy” movements around the world unfold, The Anti-Capitalist Resistance Comic Book is a deft, eye-opening look at the new class warfare, and those brave enough to wage the battle.

This extraordinary graphic novel is a powerful denunciation of sexual violence against women. As seen through the eyes of a twelve-year-old girl named Una, it takes place in northern England in 1977, as the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer of prostitutes, is on the loose and creating panic among the townspeople. As the police struggle in their clumsy attempts to find the killer, and the headlines in the local paper become more urgent, a once self-confident Una teaches herself to "lower her gaze" in order to deflect attention from boys.

After she is "slut-shamed" at school for having birth control pills, Una herself is the subject of violent acts for which she comes to blame herself. But as the police finally catch up and identify the killer, Una grapples with the patterns of behavior that led her to believe she was to blame.

Becoming Unbecoming combines various styles, press clippings, photo-based illustrations, and splashes of color to convey Una's sense of confusion and rage, as well as sobering statistics on sexual violence against women. The book is a no-holds-barred indictment of sexual violence against women and the shame and blame of its victims that also celebrates the empowerment of those able to gain control over their selves and their bodies.

Una (a pseudonym) is an artist, academic, and comics creator. Becoming Unbecoming, which took seven years to create, is her first book. She lives in the United Kingdom.

By the author of Such a Lovely Little War and Saigon Calling, a stirring graphic novel about love, beauty, and war in 1950s Indochina.

40 Men and 12 Rifles is an expansive, gripping graphic novel set in Indochina in the year leading up to 1954, when the French-held garrison at Dien Bien Phu fell after a fifty-five-day battle, which lead to the end of the first Indochina war opposing both French and Nationalist Vietnamese forces to Ho Chi Minh's National-Communist underground state. Minh (no relation to Ho) is a young man from Hanoi, an aspiring painter who dreams of experiencing la vie de boheme in Paris's Latin Quarter. To dissuade him from pursuing an artistic life, his father sends him into the countryside to tend to the family holdings. He is soon pressed into serving with the Ho Chi Minh People's Army, where he becomes a soldier, and is co-opted by his leaders to the Communist propaganda machine, despite repeatedly defying his cadres—ideological Communist commanders with whom he disagrees— becoming both hero and anti-hero in the process.

40 Men and 12 Rifles is a moving and beautifully illustrated book about the human and artistic spirit of the Indochinese people, who persevered in the face of warfare and suffering.

In this autobiographical graphic novel, Beldan Sezen revisits the various instances of her coming of age, and her coming out as lesbian, in both western and Islamic cultures (as the daughter of Turkish immigrants in western Europe)—to friends, family, and herself. Through a series of vignettes, she navigates the messy circumstances of her life, dealing with family issues, bad dates, and sexual politics with the raw honesty of a young woman looking for happiness. Snapshots is an amusing, thoroughly modern take on dyke life and cultural identity.

Beldan Sezen's previous graphic novels were Zakkum and #GeziPark .

The Democratic Republic of Congo, the second-largest country in Africa by area, has had a fractured and bloody history, variously undone by decades of colonialism, civil war, corruption, and totalitarian rule. The country has played a crucial role in the economic growth of the Global North, but in doing so, has suffered immensely. So many seminal advances in technology were possible only through the extraction of materials from Congo, from rubber to copper to uranium to coltan. In each case, the Congolese people paid a great price exacerbated by the weight of colonial exploitation and dictatorial rule. 

In this comprehensive graphic history, author and illustrator Edmund Trueman explores the fractious story of Congo. Through deft illustrations and storytelling, Congo’s history―not widely known to Western readers―comes vividly alive. We see how Congolese musicians have spread their language across Africa by creating some of the most popular music on the continent, and how Congolese women have spent decades sidestepping sexist legislation to become leaders in local business. From resistance against colonialism to the fight for independence and the self-determination to make a life in an almost stateless place, Postcards from Congo depicts how the Congolese people have resisted and survived in order to take control of their lives and the country they call home.

Includes a foreword by historian Didier Gondola, Professor of African History at Johns Hopkins University.

An illustrated guide of practical parenting advice informed by queer experiences for anyone doing the work of parenting, from the author and the illustrator of Special Topics in Being a Human

Being a parent is enormously joyful, but it is also an enormous amount of work. Parenting requires you to make dozens of decisions a day, every one of which in some way shapes the person your child will grow into. It can be difficult to know in these moments whether you’re on the right track. Progressive parents especially can feel adrift when caregiving in ways that were not modelled for them.

From S. Bear Bergman—advice columnist, educator, and queer dad with fifteen years of parenting under his belt—comes Special Topics in Being a Parent, a witty and insightful collection of child-rearing tips for those in search of realistic ideas about screens and lunches that don’t come with a side order of judgment. Using his own choices—and errors—by way of example, Bergman offers suggestions for various stages of the parenting journey, from asking “Are we ready to have a kid?” to talking with children about diversity and difference, to questioning gender expectations placed on both kids and parents. With plenty of humor and compassion, and featuring charming illustrations by Saul Freedman-Lawson, this guide helps parents to live their parenting values while enabling their kids to grow their capacities, understand the world, and above all, feel connected and loved.

Julie Maroh’s first book, Blue Is the Warmest Color, was a graphic novel phenomenon; it was a New York Times bestseller and the controversial film adaptation by French director Abdellatif Kechiche won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013. Maroh’s latest book, Body Music, marks her return to the kind of soft, warm palette and impressionistic sensibility that made her debut book so sensational.

Set in the languid, European-like neighborhoods of Montreal, Body Music is a beautiful and moving meditation on love and desire as expressed in their many different forms—between women, men, and gender non-conformists alike, all varying in age and race. In twenty separate vignettes, Maroh explores the drama inherent in relationships at different stages: the electricity of initial attraction, the elation of falling in love, the trauma of breaking up, the sweet comfort of a long-standing romance.

Anyone who’s ever been in a relationship will see themselves in these intimate stories tinged with raw emotion. Body Music is an exhilarating and passionate graphic novel about what it means to fall in love, and what it means to be alive.

Julie Maroh studied comic art at the Institute Saint-Luc in Brussels and lithography and engraving at the Royal Academy of Arts in Brussels. She started writing her bestselling book Blue Is the Warmest Color at the age of nineteen.

With fascism in our midst, Indigenous artist Gord Hill revises and expands his brilliant graphic history of fascism and anti-fascist movements

When it was first published in 2018, Gord Hill's The Antifa Comic Book was heralded for its searing imagery documenting the history of fascism and anti-fascist movements over the last century. In the years since its publication, the term "antifa" has been co-opted by the right to falsely describe far-left political extremism and even terrorism. But the role played by antifa movements in fighting fascism and racism around the world remains as relevant and important as ever.

For this expanded edition, Gord Hill adds new material depicting more recent flashpoints of fascist activity, including the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack, the murderous spree by Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik, the infamous 2022 Canadian convoy protests, and Islamophobic and anti-migrant sentiment in a growing number of fascist governments in Europe. At the same time, Hill depicts the important work being done by anti-fascist individuals and organizations to combat this worrisome trend, made all the more crucial by Donald Trump's return to the White House.

Powerful and inspiring, The Antifa Comic Book is an important reminder of fascism in our midst and what can be done to stop it.

The book includes a new foreword by Mark Bray, historian and author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.

From the author of Dear Scarlet comes a graphic memoir about the obstacles one daughter faces as she attempts to connect with her immigrant parents

Beginning with her mother's stroke in 2014, Teresa Wong takes us on a moving journey through time and place to locate the beginnings of the disconnection she feels from her parents. Through a series of stories—some epic, like her mother and father's daring escapes from communes during China's Cultural Revolution, and some banal, like her quitting Chinese school to watch Saturday morning cartoons—Wong carefully examines the cultural, historical, language, and personality barriers to intimacy in her family, seeking answers to the questions "Where did I come from?" and "Where are we going?" At the same time, she discovers how storytelling can bridge distances and help make sense of a life.

A book for children of immigrants trying to honor their parents' pasts while also making a different kind of future for themselves, All Our Ordinary Stories is poignant in its understated yet nuanced depictions of complicated family dynamics. Wong's memoir is a heartfelt exploration of identity,  inheritance, and the refugee experience, as well as a testament to the transformative power of stories both told and untold.

This riveting, beautifully produced graphic memoir tells the story of the early years of the Vietnam war as seen through the eyes of a young boy named Marco, the son of a Vietnamese diplomat and his French wife. The book opens in America, where the boy's father works for the South Vietnam embassy; there the boy is made to feel self-conscious about his otherness thanks to schoolmates who play war games against the so-called "Commies." The family is called back to Saigon in 1961, where the father becomes Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem's personal interpreter; as the growing conflict between North and South intensifies, so does turmoil within Marco's family, as his mother struggles to grapple with bipolar disorder.

Visually powerful and emotionally potent, Such a Lovely Little War is both a large-scale and intimate study of the Vietnam war as seen through the eyes of the Vietnamese: a turbulent national history interwined with an equally traumatic familial one.

Marcelino Truong is an illustrator, painter, and author. Born the son of a Vietnamese diplomat in 1957 in the Philippines, he and his family moved to America (where his father worked for the embassy) and then to Vietnam at the outset of the war. He earned degrees in law at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, and English literature at the Sorbonne. He lives in Paris, France.

Marcelino Truong's first book about the early years of the Vietnam war, the graphic memoir Such a Lovely Little War (2016), received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews and was named "one the season's best graphic novels" by the New York Times. In this sequel, young Marcelino and his family move from Saigon to London in order to escape the war following the assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem, for whom Marcelino's diplomat father was a personal interpreter.

In London, his father struggles to build a new life for his children and his wife, whose bipolar spells are becoming increasingly violent. But for Marco and his siblings, swinging London is an exciting place to be: a new world of hedonists and hippies. At the same time, the news from their grandparents in Vietnam grows ever grimmer as the war intensifies and American involvement becomes increasingly muddied. Young Marcelino finds himself conflicted between embracing the peace-loving anti-war demonstrators and the strong, sentimental bond he feels toward a wounded Vietnam, whose conflict is not as simple as the demonstrators make it out to be.

With its audacious imagery and heart-rending text, Saigon Calling is a bold graphic memoir that strikes a remarkable balance between the intimate chronicle of a family undone by mental illness, and the large-scale tragedy of a country undone by war.

Marcelino Truong is an illustrator, painter, and author. He earned degrees in law at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and English literature at the Sorbonne.

Julie Maroh burst onto the scene in 2013 with Blue Is the Warmest Color, a tender, bittersweet graphic novel about lesbian love, in which a young woman named Clementine becomes infatuated with Emma, a girl with blue hair. The book spawned a controversial and acclaimed feature film that won the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival as well as accolades for its stars Adèle Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux; the book itself is a New York Times bestseller and received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal.

Julie's follow-up graphic novel, Skandalon, marks a startling change of pace: a fiery, intense story about the recklessness of fame. "Skandalon," found in the Gospels, refers to a persistent trap or obstacle, such as the one that confounds the mesmerizing, Jim Morrison-like lead character Tazane. He is a true rock icon: passionate, arrogant, selfish, and sometimes violent, the charismatic singer is a beacon for controversy and scandal. But the public that worships him and the media that lavishes attention on him are waiting for him to fall from grace. At times shocking, Skandalon is a powerful and relentless meditation on the high cost of fame, and the demons awaiting anyone who refuses to be wary of them.

Julie Maroh is an author and illustrator originally from northern France. She studied comic art at the Institute Saint-Luc in Brussels and lithography and engraving at the Royal Academy of Arts in Brussels.

Suite Française, an extraordinary novel about village life in France just as it was plunged into chaos with the German invasion of 1940, was a publishing sensation ten years ago; Irène Némirovsky completed the two-volume book, part of a planned larger series, in the early 1940s before she was arrested in France and eventually sent to Auschwitz, where she died. The notebook containing the novels was preserved by her daughters but not examined until 1998; it was finally published in France in 2004 and became a huge international bestseller, including in the US, where it has sold over one million copies.

This dramatic and stirring graphic novel, translated from the French and faithful to the spirit of Némirovsky's story, focuses on Book 1, entitled "Storm in June," in which a disparate group of Paris citizens flees the city ahead of the advancing German troops. However, their orderly plans to escape are eclipsed by the chaos spreading across the country, and their sense of civility and well-being is replaced by a raw desire to survive.

A feature film version of Suite Française, starring Michelle Williams, Kristen Scott Thomas, and Margot Robbie, was recently released.

Emmanuel Moynot is a graphic artist and the author of more than forty graphic novels published in France.

As America moves closer to normalizing relations with Cuba, this gripping, vivid graphic novel reveals life and times of Fidel Castro, one of the twentieth century's most intriguing, charismatic, and divisive figures. The book is narrated by a German journalist named Karl Mertens, who is plunged into the searing heat of pre-revolutionary Cuba in the mid-1950s. He first meets with Castro while the latter is hiding in the mountains, then follows him through the dramatic revolution and his ascent to the presidency that, despite the Bay of Pigs confrontation and years of international trade blockades, lasts for nearly fifty years. We also witness his involvement in bloody skirmishes, failed missions, and brutal crackdowns, as well as his interactions with and on behalf of the Cuban people, which reveal as much about his fallible human qualities as they do his legend.

Castro is the work of acclaimed German graphic novelist Reinhardt Kleist; it was first published in English by Selfmade Hero for the British market, and is now being made available in the United States for the first time. Bristling with energy and alive with the spirit of Cuba, Castro has much to offer about the complex politics of one of the most enduring and controversial figures in modern history.

Reinhardt Kleist is the author of fourteen books, including two others available in English: The Boxer and Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness. His many awards include the BZ Cultural Award for outstanding cultural achievement from the City of Berlin.

A powerful and historically accurate graphic portrayal of Indigenous peoples' resistance to the European colonization of the Americas, beginning with the Spanish invasion under Christopher Columbus and ending with the Six Nations land reclamation in Ontario in 2006. Gord Hill spent two years unearthing images and researching historical information to create The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, which presents the story of Aboriginal resistance in a far-reaching format.

Other events depicted include the 1680 Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico; the Inca insurgency in Peru from the 1500s to the 1780s; Pontiac and the 1763 Rebellion and Royal Proclamation; Geronimo and the 1860s Seminole Wars; Crazy Horse and the 1877 War on the Plains; the rise of the American Indian Movement in the 1960s; 1973's Wounded Knee; the Mohawk Oka Crisis in Quebec in 1990; and the 1995 Aazhoodena/Stoney Point resistance.

With strong, plain language and evocative illustrations, The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book documents the fighting spirit and ongoing resistance of Indigenous peoples through five hundred years of genocide, massacres, torture, rape, displacement, and assimilation: a necessary antidote to the conventional history of the Americas. Includes an introduction by activist Ward Churchill, leader of the American Indian Movement in Colorado and a prolific writer on Indigenous resistance issues.

Gord Hill, a member of the Kwakwaka'wakw Nation in British Columbia, has been active in Indigenous resistance, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist movements since 1990. He is also author of The 500 Years of Resistance, a pamphlet published by PM Press.

By seeing through the eyes of the world's darkest souls, we humanize them. As these stories infiltrate the mind in a kaleidoscope of pop colors, the reality of the worlds of the dregs of humanity comes ever-clearer.

These are the stories of the hated: drug addicts bathes in nuclear science, futuristic gang members, scifi terrorists, interspecies sex workers, and beyond. In seeing reality through a prism of science fiction we are able to better see ourselves and to cultivate understanding. Once we understand, we can empathize even with those we hate, and when we empathize we may even fall in love with the unlovable.

Only with love can we transform the world.

A narrative of enslavement, a satire on colonialism, and a court battle for justice by those tortured and detained during the fight for independence from colonial rule: three comics depict key moments in African history. 

Three unique narratives depicted in comic-book form introduce readers to African historical narratives. In one, readers are offered a translation of a short story, turned into a comic, that satirizes the colonization of Africa by depicting Europeans as cats and Africans as mice. The cats wish to feast on the mice and so create an elaborate ruse by proclaiming that they can turn the inferior mice into cats via education and medication, a ruse that is finally discovered by the mice, who rise up against the cats. In a second, readers are offered a deconstruction of a slave narrative, The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano. Several historians weigh in to evaluate the memoirs of Olaudah Equiana and decipher whether his claims are true or false; nevertheless, despite some problematic aspects of his narrative and questions that remain as to its veracity, the effect it had on the abolitionist movement is without question. And finally, the third comic details how ordinary Kenyans who had been tortured and abused by the British government during the Kenyan fight for independent from colonial rule were able to obtain justice, decades later, from a British court of law. 

Winner, CODE’s 2016 Burt Award for First Nation, Inuit and Métis Literature

In this important graphic novel, two brothers surrounded by poverty, drug abuse, and gang violence, try to overcome centuries of historic trauma in very different ways to bring about positive change in their lives.

Pete, a young Indigenous man wrapped up in gang violence, lives with his younger brother, Joey, and his mother who is a heroin addict. One night, Pete and his mother’s boyfriend, Dennis, get into a big fight, which sends Dennis to the morgue and Pete to jail. Initially, Pete keeps up ties to his crew, until a jail brawl forces him to realize the negative influence he has become on Joey, which encourages him to begin a process of rehabilitation that includes traditional Indigenous healing circles and ceremonies.

Powerful, courageous, and deeply moving, The Outside Circle is drawn from the author’s twenty years of work and research on healing and reconciliation of gang-affiliated or incarcerated Indigenous men.

2016 Governor General's Literary Award Finalist

2017 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize Winner

2017 Joe Shuster Award Nominee

Teva Harrison was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer at the age of 37. In this brilliant and inspiring graphic memoir, she documents through comic illustration and short personal essays what it means to live with the disease. She confronts with heartbreaking honesty the crises of identity that cancer brings: a lifelong vegetarian, Teva agrees to use experimental drugs that have been tested on animals. She struggles to reconcile her long-term goals with an uncertain future, balancing the innate sadness of cancer with everyday acts of hope and wonder. She also examines those quiet moments of helplessness and loving with her husband, her family, and her friends, while they all adjust to the new normal.

Ultimately, In-Between Days is redemptive and uplifting, reminding each one of us of how beautiful life is, and what a gift.

The twentieth-anniversary edition of Nick Craine’s searing graphic novel about a legendary Canadian punk band, based on the feature film by Bruce McDonald and the novel by Michael Turner.

Joe Dick, Billy Tallent, John Oxenburger, and Pipefitter are Hard Core Logo — Vancouver’s legendary, but now defunct, punk band.

Joe Dick coaxes his former bandmates to overcome personal differences and reunite for a benefit concert for their ageing punk mentor, Bucky Haight, who has been shot. But the concert’s not enough for Joe; he wants the band to hit the road again. For the Hard Cores this means the beginning of the end, and they come to realize that they can neither relive nor alter the past.

From the pen of hugely talented Canadian comic artist and illustrator Nick Craine comes a searing rendition of those Hard Core days and nights. In this graphic take on the story originally conceived by Michael Turner and made into a critically acclaimed film by Bruce McDonald, Craine pits the legendary Hard Cores against a collage-like backdrop of bars, hotel rooms, the road, and the Canadian Prairies.

Featuring a new introduction by Lynn Crosbie and a tear-out guitar chord book, Hard Core Logo: Portrait of a Thousand Punks weaves together a patchwork narrative of found art, dialogue, songs, and incidental bystanders. Craine skillfully renders his own unique cover-version of this cult film classic in graphic novel form.

La versión de Pictoline, 100% ilustrada y adaptada al siglo XXI, del gran clásico del estoicismo: Meditaciones, de Marco Aurelio.

Descubre, de la mano (patita) del adorable Gato Aurelio, cómo controlar tus prejuicios, juicios y reacciones, ver cada contratiempo como una oportunidad y aprender a procurar lo que de verdad importa para ser feliz.

Para gatitos y gatitas estoicas.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

The Pictoline version, 100% illustrated and adapted for the 21st century, of the great stoic classic: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

Discover, from the hand (paw) of the adorable Gato Aurelio, how to control your biases, judgments, and reactions, see every setback as an opportunity, and learn to focus on what truly matters to be happy.

For stoic kittens and cats.

The A Word provides a feminist perspective on the history of abortion, working to end the taboos that surround this procedure—and the word itself.
The A Word champions the women advocating for free and legal access to the seventy-three million abortions performed around the world every year, more than half of which require women to resort to underground procedures that put their lives at risk. This global history defines the term and the practice of abortion as it exists today and tells the stories of women all over the world engaged in the fight to take back control of their bodies.
 
From the Indigenous use of abortive plants before colonization to the complicated legacy of Margaret Sanger, to modern advocates like Maria Antonieta Alcalde Castro, Wendy Davis, and Simone Veil, the book shines a light on pivotal moments and figures of the abortion struggle and asks: Why do poor women fare worse when trying to access abortion? How was abortion criminalized? Who profits from its illegality?
 
The A Word reflects on how the struggle for reproductive justice became a movement that has defined our time. It is a fight that has united feminists across continents and decades to secure safe access to a choice that recent history has shown we cannot take for granted.

Llega el bestseller de los exitosos dibujantes de @dinosaurcouch

Terapia para dinosaurios es mucho más que un libro de humor gráfico. A través de estas viñetas llenas de ternura, los dinosaurios nos enseñan, de forma original y divertida, cómo enfrentarnos a las paradojas de la vida moderna. En este libro podrás reflexionar sobre el estrés, la soledad o la ansiedad desde un prisma diferente, pero también te reirás con los irónicos comentarios de los dinosaurios sobre problemas comunes a cualquier ser humano.

Terapia para dinosaurios te hará pensar, reír y sentir. Aprenderás a afrontar los aspectos negativos de la vida con esperanza y sentido del humor, y a recibir los positivos sin cinismo y con el corazón abierto. Además, te recordará la importancia de cuidar nuestra salud mental y de hablar de ello sin tapujos. Sin duda, algo necesario en estos tiempos tan complicados. Únete a los dinosaurios en esta aventura terapéutica y disfruta de la vida con humor y sabiduría.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Presenting the bestseller from the successful illustrators of @dinosaurcouch

Dinosaur Therapy  is much more than a graphic humor book. Through these heartwarming cartoons, the dinosaurs teach us, in an original and fun way, how to face the paradoxes of modern life. In this book, you can reflect on stress, loneliness, or anxiety from a different perspective, but you'll also laugh at the dinosaurs' ironic comments on problems common to any human being.

Dinosaur Therapy  will make you think, laugh, and feel. You'll learn to face the negative aspects of life with hope and a sense of humor, and to receive the positive ones without cynicism and with an open heart. Moreover, it will remind you of the importance of taking care of our mental health and talking about it openly. Undoubtedly, something necessary in these complicated times. Join the dinosaurs on this therapeutic adventure and enjoy life with humor and wisdom.

This is the century of homeland security. 

The federal government created a monster. They said it would keep us safe. The monster hatched in November 2002. It was named the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). An appetite for control and conquest was in its DNA. Its early influences, in the years after 9/11, were paranoia and vengeance. 

The DHS is the only new department the United States has spawned in this century. With its birth, issues that were previously seen as separate—immigration control, policing, and counter-terrorism—were brought into a single, sprawling entity. Twenty-two preexisting agencies were absorbed into what became the nation’s third largest government department. Today it has a budget of over $100 billion and employs a quarter of a million people. Every danger is now conceived of as a threat to “homeland security,” and as the 9/11 Commission said in 2003, “the American homeland is the planet.”

This gripping graphic novel tells the story of the 1891 Coal Creek War—one of the most significant yet overlooked labor and abolitionist uprisings in the history of the United States.

Told through the eyes of a young Welsh immigrant, Trouble! at Coal Creek is the epic story of a cross-racial struggle to abolish the system of convict-leasing in the mines. Austin Sauerbrei's evocative black-and-white illustrations and masterful storytelling show the personal battles and motivations that led thousands of miners to repeatedly take up arms against the powerful companies, their militias, and politicians.

Lured by coal companies’ promises of good pay, stability, and opportunity, the narrator’s father brought their family across the Atlantic Ocean for work in the mine. The job, however, was deadly, and life grew unbearable as the coal companies immiserated miners and their families. Meanwhile, slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, racist terror, and the birth of the Ku Klux Klan were still fresh memories for most. Coal companies relied increasingly on the forced labor of mostly Black prisoners who were loaned out from the state, an extremely profitable continuation of the old system of racist brutality. As Ida B. Wells noted at the time, "The Convict Lease System and Lynch Law are twin infamies which flourish hand in hand."

The miners of Coal Creek, however, set fire to the edifice of convict-leasing and inspired similar rebellions throughout the South. In this captivating graphic novel, Saurbrei brings their overlooked story to life for new generations of organizers.

Anarchy in the Big Easy is an anarchist graphic history of the quest for freedom in radical and revolutionary New Orleans.

The story begins with the anarchic forces of nature creating the land and the cooperative indigenous communities that thrived before the European conquest. Next we see the revolt against domination through the Enslaved Peoples’ Uprising of 1811, the rise of maroon communities, the work of figures such as anarchist geographer Elisée Reclus and utopian revolutionary Joseph Déjacque, and the moving history of labor militancy—exemplified by the First International, the General Strike of 1892, and the rise of the Industrial Workers of the World. The anarchic aspects of jazz are explored, including its birthplace, the famous red-light district of Storyville. Other episodes recount the history of the Black Panthers, including the legendary shootout in the Desire Project, and the important role anarchists played in the grassroots recovery after Hurricane Katrina. The often-subversive People’s Carnival is depicted, from the history of the Mardi Gras Indians through today’s anarchist marching Krewes. The book concludes with the recent struggle to take down the confederate monuments, and the growth of a decentralized, autonomous mutual aid movement.

These stories are recounted by surregionalist writer Max Cafard and brought vividly to life through the striking images of comix artist Vulpes.

Down by Law: Criminalization, Solidarity, and Survival in Europe is a collaborative graphic novel by ethnographers, artists, and activists that starkly and honestly illuminates people’s stories of those whose lives have been shaped by the social and political implications of criminalization across Europe.

The near-total ban on abortion in Poland, new hate speech laws across Europe, a de facto ban of sea rescue in the Mediterranean, and the criminalization of sex work—these trends toward a harsher politics of criminalization, securitization, and threat are spreading throughout the continent. In eight moving, illustrated vignettes, readers encounter everyday people involved in search-and-rescue activism, sex work, internet content moderation, abortion activism, drug use. We set sail with civilians who take action to save the lives of migrants at sea who face increasingly militarized borders, follow the journey of a woman jailed for a bus fare she couldn’t pay, see the impact of state neglect and violence on people who use drugs in Poland, and follow a migrant woman navigating the challenges of sex work policing who finds resilience in her community, and more.

These ethnographic stories not only bring to life alarming insights into criminalization across Europe but the hope and solidarity of everyday people in the face of increasing repression. The criminalized don’t stay put. They adapt, resist, and survive. Their personal stories are rarely seen or heard, until now.

With contributions from Agata Chełstowska, Agata Dziuban, Aleksandra “Sasza” Stachowska, Asia Bordowa, Beate Binder, Friederike Faust, Florian Krynicki, Carmen Grimm, H-P Lehkonen, Janita-Marja Juvonen, Jan Peukert, Jérémy Geeraert, Joris Bas Backer, Justyna Struzik, Juulia Kela, Katarzyna Urbaniak, Monique Horstmann, Salla Sariola, Sylvain Adam, Todd Sekuler, Valerie Assmann.

In the early-20th century, strikes and union battles were common in industrial centers throughout the US. But nothing compared to the class warfare of the West Virginia Mine Wars. The origins of this protracted rebellion were in the dictatorial rule of the coal companies over the proud, multi-racial, immigrant and native-born miners of Appalachia.

Our illustrated history begins with Mary Harris “Mother” Jones's arrival at the turn of the century. White-haired, matronly, and fiercely socialist, Jones became known as the “miners’ angel,” and helped turn the fledgling United Mine Workers into the nation’s most powerful labor union. “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living,” was her famous battle cry.

In 1912, miners led by stubborn Frank Keeney struck against harsh conditions in the work camps of Paint and Cabin Creeks. Coal operators responded by enlisting violent Baldwin-Felts guards. The ensuing battles and murderous events caused the governor to declare and execute martial law on a scale unprecedented in the US.

On May 19, 1920, in response to evictions by coal company agents, gunshots rang through the streets of a small-town in “Bloody Mingo” county. In an event soon known as the “Matewan Massacre”; the pro-union, quick-draw chief of police Smilin’ Sid Hatfield became an unexpected celebrity—but also a marked man.

Events climax with the dramatic Battle of Blair Mountain that pitched the spontaneous Red Neck Army of 10,000 armed strikers against a paid army of gun thugs in the largest labor uprising in US history and the largest armed uprising since the American Civil War.

This graphic interpretation of people’s history features unforgettable main characters while also displaying the diverse rank and file workers who stood in solidarity during this struggle.

Addicted to War takes on the most active, powerful, and destructive military in the world.

Hard-hitting, carefully documented and heavily illustrated, it reveals why the United States has been involved in more wars in recent years than any other country. Read Addicted to War to find out who benefits from these military adventures, who pays and who dies. Over 450,000 copies of the previous editions are in print.

This edition is substantially reworked and fully updated including Barack Obama's drone wars, Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks, statistics on military spending, and the ongoing costs and consequences of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The explosive tale of Peterloo, told through the voices of those who were there. This is a vivid, original and historically accurate 'comic book' visual account of the 1819 Manchester massacre, to be published as part of the 200th anniversary commemorations. More than 15 people died and 600 were severely wounded by sabre-wielding troops at a peaceful pro-democracy rally.

The entire narrative is drawn exclusively from the direct testimony of the time (letters, memoirs, journalist's accounts, spies' reports, courtroom evidence...) carefully woven together by rich, vivid, graphic-novel style illustrations created by professional cartoonist, illustrator and graphic novelist Polyp.

This a vital record of working-class history by Manchester-based authors and artists who have been central in reviving the long-suppressed memory of this shocking and world-changing event.

Before the Golden Age of comic books, there was Mr. Block: a bumbling, boss-loving, anti-union blockhead, brought to life over a hundred years ago by subversive cartoonist Ernest Riebe.

A dedicated labour activist and member of the Industrial Workers of the World, Riebe dreamed up his iconic, union-hating anti-hero to satirize conservative workers’ faith in the capitalist system that exploits them. This wickedly funny anthology of Riebe’s writings and comics is a treasure trove of radical 20th-century art and an essential addition to the bookshelves of comics lovers, historians, and labour activists alike.

As income inequality skyrockets and the collective power of the working class is undermined, the lessons from Mr. Block’s misadventures and misbeliefs are as relevant today as ever. Building the new world from the ashes of the old demands many tools—and laughter will always be one of them.

Before the Golden Age of comic books, there was Mr. Block: a bumbling, boss-loving, anti-union blockhead, brought to life over a hundred years ago by subversive cartoonist Ernest Riebe.

A dedicated labour activist and member of the Industrial Workers of the World, Riebe dreamed up his iconic, union-hating anti-hero to satirize conservative workers’ faith in the capitalist system that exploits them. This wickedly funny anthology of Riebe’s writings and comics is a treasure trove of radical 20th-century art and an essential addition to the bookshelves of comics lovers, historians, and labour activists alike.

As income inequality skyrockets and the collective power of the working class is undermined, the lessons from Mr. Block’s misadventures and misbeliefs are as relevant today as ever. Building the new world from the ashes of the old demands many tools—and laughter will always be one of them.

2020 Bram Stoker Awards Finalist

“Spectre Deep 6 is awesome! Horror, science-fiction, great characters, devious twists, rampant weirdness and a heck of a lot of fun! Highly recommended!” -Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of V-Wars, Rot & Ruin and Black Panther: Doomwar”

In the vein of Flatliners and Ghost meets The Bourne Identity and La Femme Nikita, a diverse team of black ops “Spectres”—elite soldiers who died in the line of duty only to be reanimated by military scientists and brought back as actual ghosts—carry out illicit missions for the United States government in exchange for day passes to haunt their old lives and fulfill their unfinished business.

Spectre Deep 6 is a paranormal sci-fi graphic novel that centers on six reanimated spectres who have the tactical precision and paranormal abilities to carry out the most important and clandestine missions for our government. Missions that are too dangerous, illegal, and secretive to leave any trace—assassinations, regime toppling, technology theft, halting nuclear weapons programs, and more.

When the Spectre Team assassinates a target, they literally scare the victim to death, making it look like they had a stroke or heart attack, so the target appears to die from natural causes. Then they ghost from the scene, leaving no trace they were ever there. They’re the perfect weapons. The downside to spectre soldiers? They’re like batteries that need to be recharged, or they’ll disperse and pass on. That’s why they have to stay locked in containment most of the time, a glorified ghost prison located in a secret military bunker under Area 51 and powered by a nuclear reactor (it takes a lot of energy to charge a ghost). Oh, and ghost soldiers can get a bit … testy. They don’t always get along or follow orders. After all, they didn’t ask to be brought back.

A Kirkus Reviews Best YA Book of 2022 

A USBBY 2023 Outstanding International Book

A 2022 Foreword INDIES Bronze Winner (Graphic Novels & Comics Category)

Honorable mention, 2023 Children's Africana Book Awards

2022 VLA Graphic Novel Diversity Award Overfloweth honoree

Nominated for the TLA Maverick List

 All Rise: Resistance and Rebellion in South Africa revives six true stories of resistance by marginalized South Africans against the country’s colonial government in the years leading up to Apartheid. In six parts—each of which is illustrated by a different South African artist—All Rise shares the long-forgotten struggles of ordinary, working-class women and men who defended the disempowered during a tumultuous period in South African history. From immigrants and miners to tram workers and washerwomen, the everyday people in these stories bore the brunt of oppression and in some cases risked their lives to bring about positive change for future generations.

This graphic anthology breathes new life into a history dominated by icons, and promises to inspire all readers to become everyday activists and allies. The diverse creative team behind All Rise, from an array of races, genders, and backgrounds, is a testament to the multicultural South Africa dreamed of by the heroes in these stories—true stories of grit, compassion, and hope, now being told for the first time in print.

A graphic novel that confronts our habits, narratives, and fantasies head-on to help
break our petroleum dependency

What if the biggest barriers to responding to climate change are not technological or governmental but, rather, cultural? In other words, what if we ourselves could help to enact change through a deeper understanding of our petroleum dependency? In a provocative graphic format that draws widely from history, critical theory, and popular culture, Gasoline Dreams explores and challenges the ways fossil fuels have shaped our identities, relationships, and our ability to imagine sustainable, equitable futures.

As our rapidly warming planet is pushed toward ecological collapse, we might often feel helpless or paralyzed by the enormity of the challenges confronting us. However, reflecting upon the cultural dimensions of our predicament helps reveal the great potential for social transformation inherent in the multiplying crises. Author and artist Simon Orpana engages with contemporary scholarship in the emergent field of Energy Humanities to confront the habits, narratives, and fantasies that support our attachment to fossil fuels. By revealing the many ways petroculture repeatedly fails to deliver on its promises of “the good life,” Gasoline Dreams calls us to the difficult work of waking up from the fantasies that inhibit us from working toward a global transition to renewable energy.

Written in an engaging graphic format that makes relevant historical, cultural, and political analyses of global warming and petrol dependency important to a wide audience, Gasoline Dreams refutes the progress narratives that depict contemporary, energy-intensive societies as the inevitable product of human history. By revealing the contingencies, coercions, and compulsions this myth disguises, the book allows us to imagine truly progressive alternatives. Rather than casting climate change as a problem for technological elites to solve, the book confronts the everyday realities that reinforce our dependence on fossil fuels, offering a space of hope and engagement from which concerned people can work to build a more sustainable future.

On the threshold of the single greatest transformation the human species has yet faced, Gasoline Dreams challenges us to start living, working, and dreaming differently to become less culturally dependent on petroleum.

Can Alison play with fire without getting burned? From two comics superstars comes an explosive, high school noir romance for everyone with a mind of their own. 

Everyone hates Darren, the firebug, the bad boy trouble follows everywhere. Alison finds a warmth to Darren, a spark everyone's missing. Alison knows what she's doing, but after tonight's fireworks, she'll find out who knows best. 

Palefire, the first collaboration between writer MK Reed and artist Farel Dalrymple, takes us back to high school for a hot date to the party of the year. When you're not a girl, and not yet a woman, the last thing you want is advice. The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but everyone deserves a second chance—even if it goes up in flames..

In the summer of 2012 the Kurdish people of northern Syria set out to create a multiethnic society in the Middle East. Persecuted for much of the 20th century, they dared to try to overcome social fragmentation by affirming social solidarity among all the region’s ethnic and religious peoples. As Syria plunged into civil war, the Kurds and their Arab and Assyrian allies established a self-governing polity that was not only multiethnic but democratic. And women were not only permitted but encouraged to participate in all social roles alongside men, including political and military roles.

To implement these goals, Rojava wanted to live in peace with its neighbors. Instead, it soon faced invasion by ISIS, a force that was in every way its opposite. ISIS attacked its neighbors in Iraq and Syria, imposing theocratic, tyrannical, femicidal rule on them. Those who might have resisted fled in terror. But when ISIS attacked the mostly Kurdish city of Kobane and overran much of it, the YPG and YPJ, or people's militias, declined to flee. Instead they resisted, and several countries, seeing their valiant resistance, formed an international coalition to assist them militarily. While the YPG and YPJ fought on the ground, the coalition coordinated airstrikes with them. They liberated village after village and in March 2019 captured ISIS’s last territory in Syria.

Around that time, two UK-based filmmakers invited the author to spend a month in Rojava making a film. She accepted, and arrived to explore the society and interview people. During that month, she explored how the revolution had progressed and especially the effects of the war on the society. She found that the war had reinforced social solidarity and welded together the multiethnic, gender-liberated society. As one man in Kobane told her, “Our blood got mixed.”

Wildcat Anarchist Comics collects the drawings of Donald Rooum, mostly (but by no means entirely) from the long-running “Wildcat” cartoon series that has been published in Freedom newspaper since 1980. Rooum does not just purvey jokes but makes the drawings comical in themselves, “getting the humour in the line,” provoking laughter even in those who do not read the captions or speech balloons.

The chief characters in the strip are the Revolting Pussycat, a short-fused anarchist who is furious and shouty; and the Free-Range Egghead, an intellectual who would like anarchism to be respectable but sometimes appears foolish. Governments, bosses, and authoritarians are presented as buffoons, and quite often so are anarchists. This thoughtful and delightful collection includes strips from The Skeptic and many more, all beautifully colored for the first time by Jayne Clementson.

The book also includes a lively autobiographical introduction that discusses Rooum’s role in the 1963 “Challenor case,” in which a corrupt police officer planted a weapon on Rooum at a demonstration, ultimately resulting in Rooum’s acquittal.