Best New Series
THE WINNER 🏆: Assorted Crisis Events, by Deniz Camp and Eric Zawadzki (Image)
(By Matheus)
This is the Oppenheimer of comic books. In more ways than one.
You can see that statement as a simple fact: it should, and probably will, win every award it is nominated for. It’s everyone’s favorite series, and it’s quite clearly the comic of this DECADE that can enter the best-comic-of-all-time conversation.
Or you can read the affirmation with a more thematic similarity in mind. Deniz Camp comes to terms with humanity’s inevitable doom while writing a poem of hope in our resilience. His language of choice? A careful and slightly magical unpuzzling of the sequential art we call comics. It’s his resistance, and it’s his muse.
The central selling point of the series is imagining what would happen if every single world-ending event comics are obsessed with happened to normal, everyday people like you and me. All at the same time. We all, much like in our real lives, get our own little crisis personified through time travel, multiverses, and whatever else you can imagine. Every single issue has its own crisis and its own characters.
There is, of course, a masterful deconstruction of comic books themselves, as Camp and Zawadzki explore every potential limit of the format, including panel-breaking, page-turning, and even inviting you to contribute and draw something. I know we’ve all kinda seen and done that, and you are picturing a Grant Morrison Doom Patrol knockoff. But I promise the inventiveness here is not only fresh but surprising in a tear-inducing way.
The book is an homage, a study, and a truly beautiful manifesto to move forward. Or backwards. It depends on what your crisis is.
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Batman Vol. 4, by Matt Fraction and Jorge Jiménez (DC)
(by Petar)
I do not remember the last time the main Batman title graced the nominations list with its presence. True, Absolute Batman is kicking butts, even more so this year than last, but more on that later! Still, DC’s “flagship” book hasn’t been on critics’ minds in recent years.
Enter the king of reinventing characters of old: Matt Fraction. The man simply knows how to strip a character down to their core and ensure that both the man and the mask shine through. Readers old and new are falling in love with his take on Batman and relearning to love the man and the myth alike!
One could say that Fraction’s Batman is very reminiscent of his Hawkeye! Fraction brought the grounded approach back to yet another legendary character who desperately needed it. What I love most about this new run is how “classic” it feels: underneath all the glam and the gadgets, it’s a compelling detective story. The puzzle pieces are there for us as well as for Bruce, and we’re racing to complete the puzzle!
Of course, Jorge Jiménez is delivering one blockbuster issue after another with his visuals. The man has honed his craft since the days of James Tynion IV and has worked under Chip Zdarsky as well. He has become a mainstay on the title, and his love for the characters shines through in every panel of this marvelous book!
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Black Cat, by G. Willow Wilson and Gleb Melnikov (Marvel)
(by Petar)
G. Willow Wilson has proved that she can take a villainous character and make a compelling case for why they deserve to have a long-running solo comic series. Just take a look at her Poison Ivy, which is almost at issue #50! This time, she is sharpening her claws while tackling Marvel’s Black Cat!
It is mind-boggling to me that a character as long-standing, beloved, compelling, and complex as Felicia Hardy has only gotten a solo book in the last 10 years. Jed MacKay took her to new heights, giving her a supporting cast and a semi-episodic story.
Willow Wilson takes these threads and runs wild with them! She infuses Felicia’s heists with a moral dilemma, as Felicia decides to cover for the missing Spidey at the start of the series and become a proper superhero of her own. Of course, being who she is, Black Cat will always skim a little off the top, and trouble, you could say bad luck, will follow wherever she goes…
Gleb Melnikov, meanwhile, brings an expressive and kinetic energy to the story. The book feels stylish and impactful, both in its fights and in the scenes from Felicia’s civilian life that Wilson examines. It’s got humor, it’s got heart, and it should be on your shelf!
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Exquisite Corpses, by James Tynion IV, Michael Walsh, Pornsak Pichetshote, and others (Image)
(by Matheus)
The comic-book equivalent of a movie needle drop.
Tynion has made an empire out of creating and (attaching his name to) bonkers, fun concepts you immediately want to read as soon as you hear the tagline. This one reads: A secret society of trillionaires closes off a small town every year, turning it into an arena where their chosen assassins and serial killers murder one another to win their sponsoring family the humblest prize ever: control of the world. Oh, the people in those towns? Well, they fucking die. Who gives a shit?
Tynion is a good producer, and he is also a marketing genius. Every issue comes with a cutout card to collect for its day-zero card game. All the assassins are like Mortal Kombat characters, ranging from Ted Bundy types to G.I. Joes and murder bunnies. We have a whole bracket. Yeah, it’s DC K.O. with horror-movie killers. And it’s a card game? Just inject this sweet sugar into my veins.
What makes me love this, though, is the other Tiny Onion trademark: compelling and relatable characters. It’s impossible not to fall in love with the cast as they slowly realize their lives are being corrupted. Just good horror writing, full of potential final girls and boys, while the killers compete among themselves over who gets the final blow. Even the rich assholes are compelling here.
It’s unpredictable. It’s violent. It’s funny. And who knows? That might even give it the edge it needs to win against Assorted Crisis Events. Not really, though, I think.
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Ghost Pepper, by Ludo Lullabi (Image)
(by Petar)
A cutthroat sci-fi romp centered around food trucks in the post-apocalypse!
I honestly do not even know how else to explain this crazy book! If you are not reading it, you should! No amount of my word soup will sate your curiosity without spoiling too much. Basically, humanity fought off a mysterious threat, but people’s lives still aren’t too good. Loloi is a chef with a food van, serving her delicious cooking, with a secret ingredient, to the masses.
One day, she is (un)lucky enough to serve Ash, a mysterious man(?) with superhuman strength. He is also hunted by massive robots that are “protecting” the people. After a confrontation, Loloi and Ash end up on the road together, and trouble ensues.
I will leave it at this. Hopefully, this makes you at least take a bite of the story. If not for the story, then do it for the art: it’s out of this world! Lullabi’s visuals are very manga-inspired, and the fights are explosive and jaw-dropping. I love huge shapes and surfaces in my comics, and there are plenty of those. I also love exploring new and unknown worlds, and there’s that too! This book is my winner this year!
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Temporal, by Stephanie Williams and Asiah Fulmore (Mad Cave)
(by Matheus)
My Brazilian-born self simply cannot avoid reading this as the Portuguese word for “heavy storm.” The real title, though, is a reference to its very cool plot: a retired couple who used to work as professional time bandits in a society that treats time travel basically like we treat the water company. Everything goes crazy when our lead, Savannah, decides to pull one last job under the pretext of getting her kid an authentic, now-museum-piece equivalent of our ’90s game consoles.
I’m not gonna lie, this is not my favorite on the list. I think it builds itself around a great premise while stumbling away from what makes the selling point compelling in the first place. One could argue, though, that there’s strength in something I personally saw as its biggest fault. Its writing is very good at one-upping the scale when you least expect it. Or, with my kind of annoying-ass reading, it presents a problem on page 15 and is out of it by page 17. It has a pretty crazy plot construction. Maybe that was the intention, with time travel and all.
What pushed the comic to a nomination is just how compelling and lovable a writer Stephanie Williams is, in the sense that even when you are not vibing with the plot, there’s a charm going on in the background. Her characters shine greatly even in messy environments. There’s a great story about family and some surprisingly poetic conversations that make you plead with Williams to leave all the subplotting behind and let us explore these people. It would make a great Webtoon comic. It begs for less structure.
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Best Continuing Series
THE WINNER 🏆: Absolute Batman, by Scott Snyder, Nick Dragotta, and others (DC)
(by Petar)
Are you even a tiny bit surprised this book is nominated?
Absolute Batman is MURDERING the competition, showing that American comics are not only very much alive but also moving NUMBERS. Last year, the title lost the award to Absolute Wonder Woman, but this year, it has been nominated for FIVE awards, and I’m betting it takes at least a few of them.
If you are still unfamiliar with the title, this book is basically a manga-inspired Batman where Bruce does not have his money, his billions, or a butler. Instead, he is working-class, raw, and angry. His crusade doesn’t change, though! In the new year, Snyder pushes Bruce further, breaking the Bat in unpredictable ways and expanding the mythos with absolute versions of people we know.
Nick Dragotta also brings his A-game to the table, giving us kinetic energy that is off the charts. Again, if you are a manga fan, you will love this book! His Batman is terrifying, unpolished, and brutal. The action emphasizes just how muscular and visceral he is. This is no ninja detective; he’s a pure barbarian brawler, and I am eating it up! If I were picking the winner this year, the crown would go to the king of western comics!
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Absolute Wonder Woman, by Kelly Thompson, Hayden Sherman, and Mattia De Iulis (DC)
(by Petar)
Last year’s winner of Best New Series comes back asking for more. And how could it not? Absolute Diana is as compelling as she is imposing, and Thompson, Sherman, and De Iulis have been creating a masterpiece of sequential storytelling with this book.
Again, if you are unfamiliar with the title, Absolute Wonder Woman forgoes lovely Themyscira for a much darker, grittier place. Diana is taken to Hades as a baby and given to Circe to raise as her own. Of course, even in this dark universe, Diana retains her goodness and warmth, so not even the sometimes-villainous witch can resist her.
The second year of Absolute Wonder Woman brought a crossover with Absolute Batman, as well as some new villains and allies. Diana establishes herself more permanently in Gateway City, and we are given more flashbacks exploring her relationship with her mother. Thompson pushes the characters further and questions just how much Diana is willing to sacrifice for others.
Hayden Sherman’s art is distinctly unique and such a great fit for the title. It feels both modern and mythological, with inking and paneling that are often reminiscent of amphoras. Mattia De Iulis took over for the two-issue “The Lady or the Tiger” story, giving us a painterly, ethereal view of Hades’ court and the more mythological world Diana sometimes resides in. The series has a distinct voice and heart to it, like all Thompson books, and I would not be sad if it snatched the win from Batman yet again.
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The Department of Truth, by James Tynion IV and Martin Simmonds (Image)
(by Matheus)
I’m channeling my inner Petar here. (Did you read his insane article in our Fazine #4?)
Here’s one conspiracy for you: Tynion is a better producer than he is a writer. Well, give those guys this book, and they will regret saying that in an instant. The sales pitch is about a secret group within the American government hiding and dealing with every single thing your uncle sends you at 9 a.m. on Sundays on WhatsApp.
I’m reminded a bit of Tynion’s book Blue Book and the quiet sadness underlying those real-life characters, as well as the deep wounds that come from feeling like the world lost its meaning by simply being so much more than we were ever prepared to deal with. There’s irony in The Department of Truth, for sure, and there’s a poignant critique of American society that feels almost prophetic and more honest than anything out there.
Martin Simmonds’ art is impossible not to compare with something like Dave McKean’s in Arkham Asylum. It’s hypnotic to the point that it even makes the comic hard to follow. Usually, that’s a bad thing, but aligned with Tynion’s dialogue, it feels like exactly what gets the book nominated for awards every year. It’s like the scene in Narnia where Lucy looks at the fire while that damn flute eases you into a dream state.
The smart thing: It’s barely a dream. It’s reality. Deal with it. Or let the colours consume you to the point of no return.
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FML, by Kelly Sue DeConnick and David Lopez (Dark Horse)
(by Petar)
FML remains such a bizarre yet deeply heartfelt book.
Dark Horse describes it as a “genre-busting, apocalyptic odyssey about a group of metal kids who face a medley of bizarre foes and encounters in Portland, Oregon during a worldwide pandemic,” and I really couldn’t come up with a better description. Maybe there’s something in the water with the Eisners this year, given that so many of these amazing books keep mixing genres to magnificent results! We should try it in 2026 too, right?
Above everything else, this is a story about growing up and the push and pull between an overworked mother and her angsty teenage son, Riley. He has his band, his sketchbook, and monster movies, and he just really wants to make it through the pandemic with his sanity intact. His mom wants the same. Of course, none of this will come true.
Kelly Sue DeConnick gives us a plethora of interesting, well-rounded characters who make this book so compelling. I was drawn into their world and couldn’t stop flipping through the pages. The sparse release schedule sadly slowed the momentum somewhat, but now we finally have the first arc fully collected, so revisiting it was a joy!
David López on art and Cris Peter on colors push this book from great to outstanding. Dynamic angles, experimentation with styles, and paneling bring DeConnick’s meta storytelling moments to life… It takes real talent to make slice-of-life stories fun for me, even when they are interspersed with monsters, witches, or an odd murder, and the team knocks it out of the park!
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The Power Fantasy, by Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard (Image)
(by Matheus)
We are in a superhero recession. General audiences have moved on. DC and Marvel have realised that just having the character’s name on the cover is not enough anymore. You need a vision. You need absolutes.
What exactly do we do in this landscape? Hmmm. A superhero book.
Kieron Gillen very much processes this uneasiness by facing the challenge head-on, unafraid of falling flat. What the book fails to give is as important to it as the things it succeeds in giving, one could argue even more so. This is a world of gods among humans, where superheroes are treated basically as nuclear powers. We get involved in their highly complex plots, schemes, and moral discussions through a nonlinear story about the consequences they have and will bring down upon Earth, like a gorilla punching an ant.
It’s the final shot of Oppenheimer turned into a Marvel or DC comic, along with all the wonderful ways in which that can go wrong. And those are precisely the questions being asked here. The morality of a whole genre. Of a whole style. Of us as readers and of artists as creators. And how the irony can go both ways.
It’s a self-admitted response to what Gillen could not do in his brilliant Immortal X-Men and to the challenges Krakoa posed, demanded answers to, and then ultimately fell flat in concluding. Nothing, not even gods, can beat corporate shenanigans. The other easy comparison is Watchmen. Not in the same way every single comic in the last 30 years has tried to be Watchmen, but by looking at the central question Moore had and figuring out what the question is NOW, as well as how our generation can respond. And the scary ways in which it’s the same and completely different at the same time.
I invite you to listen to my favourite song ever, by Brazilian legend Elis Regina, called “Como Nossos Pais” in Portuguese, or “Like Our Parents” in English, with translated lyrics here. Nothing I can ever say can transmit the feeling this book gives me quite like this song. But then again, I’m approaching my turning-30 crisis, so be careful.
It’s funny how we call the nations that decide our lives superpowers, and how power is and always will be the one word associated with comic books. Gillen lays out the fantasy in both by writing… a fantasy book. A brilliant fantasy book that, if you read it in single issues from month to month, takes you on a journey full of “I have absolutely no idea what is happening,” in the best way possible. It makes you go back to last month’s issue and reevaluate everything you read in light of the new information you just received. That, combined with the nonlinear storytelling and Caspar’s subtle artistry, gives you the best experience available anywhere right now.
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Storm, by Murewa Ayodele, Lucas Werneck, and others (Marvel)
(by Matheus)
Storm is an icon. Marvel has no idea how to use her correctly. Marvel is trying. All things can be true.
Murewa Ayodele starts with a disillusioned dream. A repetition that can easily make someone break. Storm is not easy. Storm is a goddess precisely because, instead of taking the thrones she is very much entitled to, she chooses to dedicate herself to a dream that has done nothing but hurt her. Oh, it did do something. It saves her from reaching that aforementioned brink. And a dream that can aid gods has powers of its own.
This series is a big swing full of risks. It’s going for something bigger, more ephemeral, and deeper. And for a phase of X-Men books often dismissed as mere time-fillers, it’s a bit of a miracle. It does not fully reach that ambition, of course, but so many other things never do and receive far less criticism, even when the plans they failed to achieve were on significantly smaller scales than what this series is attempting.
The character work here is so intriguing. Murewa splits our perception of our lead, who we are not sure is in full control of herself for most of the story. And that’s the beauty: discovering this woman through the control she loses and the control she flawlessly takes. Fellow Brazilian Lucas Werneck’s art is almost a veneration of the icon. His interior art is basically cover art in every panel. And that aligns so well with what Ayodele is trying to accomplish.
The later entries in his run were not well received, and part of the blame should be attributed to a daughter-of-Storm marketing bait-and-switch and the irrational fear Marvel has of committing to status quo changes for longer periods. But it would not be completely fair to blame only editorial decisions. The series also clearly loses focus by having too many pots in the oven. The number of plots it accumulates is far greater than what we come to care about by the time it reaches its wonky conclusions. So I'm surprised to see it on the list of nominations.
I think it’s there merely because those first six-ish issues are such a wonderful blast of imagination. So, fair. I also won’t let go of things. And if we’re going to do it for any character, let it be Storm.
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Best Limited Series
THE WINNER 🏆: Absolute Martian Manhunter, by Deniz Camp and Javier Rodriguez (DC)
(by Petar)
Absolute Martian Manhunter is, without a doubt, my favorite title from the Absolute line. It is outstanding, both storytelling-wise and technically. I will die on that hill. Give this book all the Eisners and all the other awards you can. I wish Camp and Rodriguez would stay on it forever, but I also have mad respect for them saying, “This is the story we want to tell. Peace out!” (I’m paraphrasing.)
Like the other titles, Absolute Martian Manhunter gives us a different take on the classic DC character. Except here, it’s highly psychedelic and vaguely Lovecraftian. Martian Manhunter isn’t really from Mars. He (she? they? it?) is more of a creature-being-thing from somewhere that’s not here and has joined, merged, or tied itself to Detective John Jones after he suffered a traumatic explosion.
Soon enough, John discovers he has the typical Martian Manhunter powers: telepathy, empathy, Martian vision, etc. He also discovers that his wife and son see him, or have always seen him, as a stranger. Or, some might say, a Martian? It’s a fantastic mystery mixed with familiar drama, and when the two merge into an explosive first-act finish, I had to go out for a walk and breathe. It’s GREAT stuff.
Rodriguez’s art was also firing on all cylinders. As mentioned, the art is psychedelic, with John’s powers manifesting in clouds of smoke. You can pore over the panels again and again and always notice something new or something odd. There are artistic parallels and symbols, keys to the puzzle that you will notice only on your second or third read. And then, of course, there are special treats for those who buy physical books, which utilize the very medium of the printed page to enhance the experience. Did I mention it’s GREAT stuff?
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Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees: Rite of Spring, by Patrick Horvath (IDW)
(by Matheus)
This is the sequel to 2023’s smash-hit series by film producer and writer Patrick Horvath.
The story, which truly could only be done properly in comics, follows Samantha, an anthropomorphic bear who is also a serial killer in disguise, in a world that combines a bit of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Sesame Street, and Hitchcock. The original series was a delicious phenomenon that won all the awards and even brought Samantha into the DC K.O. crossover.
Sequels are hard. Horvath flips the perspective by putting us in the shoes of an outsider looking for her brother, whom we see Samantha dismembering in the opening panels. This begins a psychological war that resembles works like Hitchcock’s Psycho or even Netflix’s You.
I love how the book doesn’t simply repeat its best moments. Horvath is interested in the consequences, and he’s not afraid to burn down, literally, everything he carefully built in the first one. This works quite well, keeping the reader guessing and surprising them at every turn, as every thriller should. The town is sadder, and Samantha is meaner.
Although I would say that it sometimes feels like a book transitioning the franchise to a different place where Horvath has more freedom. That freedom is very exciting, but the move can feel too transactional (see the pun?). Still, that comes with every mandatory sequel. Horvath does a fine job of winning you over with the story’s twists and turns.
One of my favourite things about this one is the weird, unsettling feeling of seeing other animals, referred to as savages, who act like animals do in our world. They do not talk or wear clothes. They are simply animals. When a wild bear comes to town, the comparison between it and our murderous, supposedly more human Samantha becomes a great analogy for what we consider savage and the real savagery inside us.
The quiet understanding that maybe the wild bear CAN talk but simply chooses not to is a haunting thought. Maybe it is onto something.
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Bronze Faces, by Shobo, Shof, and Alexandre Tefenkgi (BOOM! Studios)
(by Petar)
Bronze Faces is another heist book, though this time it is deeply political and cultural. Estranged childhood friends reunite in London on the eve of the British Museum’s purchase of their father’s art. Having been brought up in Nigeria, they see this as cultural theft and decide to right the wrongs by orchestrating a massive heist and stealing the Benin Bronzes.
The book feels deeply personal, exploring colonialism and mythology and how they affect people from different classes in Nigeria. However, the execution left me a little confused. While the narrative is very compelling, with different heist capers mixed with the cast’s interpersonal drama, the time skips and the different names the characters go by left me somewhat confused about what was happening.
The art, done by Alexandre Tefenkgi, didn’t help strengthen the case. While it is great for the tense heist scenes, as well as the mythological elements, the scenes during the downtime felt a bit awkward. It didn’t help that the two protagonists looked the same in a lot of scenes, which left me a bit confounded about what I had read and who was at odds with whom. Still, I am sure this book will find its audience, and I am sure they will find immense enjoyment in it.
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Crownsville, by Rodney Barnes and Elia Bonetti (Oni Press)
(by Matheus)
Speaking of serial killers and the real monster inside all of us, this one is very scary to contemplate.
On her deathbed, a former nurse at a psychiatric institution is looking for redemption for mysterious crimes she helped commit at work. Only saving her surviving son can keep her soul from being trapped. From there, a murder mystery unfolds, slowly turning into a ghost story and then a zombie story, while, in actuality, the real point is to confront the whole country’s treatment of Black people.
The institution, justifying itself through war, kidnaps Black children from poor communities to test some sort of biological weapon. This, of course, draws from real-life, documented cases of the American government experimenting with medicine on marginalised communities. It even touches on why some of these communities are apprehensive about vaccines, a topic that was part of our everyday lives just a few years ago.
It’s an American book through and through, both in its very pointed political callbacks and societal critiques, but also in the way it can only structure and sell itself through this genre prism. It is both liberating and imprisoning. It keeps the book from reaching the pivotal point it needs, but it also creates some of its best moments through Elia Bonetti’s gorgeous art.
It’s an interesting book, but it doesn’t reach Jordan Peele’s level of marrying identity with horror, or even the truly political, documentary-style approach of something like FX’s Dopesick. Still, it has some impressive highs and incredible pacing that very much justify the nomination.
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Everything Dead and Dying, by Tate Brombal and Jacob Phillips (Image)
(by Matheus)
A zombie book in the year of our Lord 2026?
Yes.
Tate Brombal and Jacob Phillips escape the malaise we all feel around this genre by maintaining a very strong focus. It’s cliché to say zombie stories are more about the survivors, because they are, but in this title, our living protagonist refuses to take centre stage. Instead, not only does he never move on, but he also keeps the zombie corpses of his husband, his daughter, and his entire town going as if nothing ever happened. A lonely man surrounded by death.
It’s a tear-inducing premise and a materialisation of the effect grief has on us, as well as how much that grief can turn into an all-consuming monster, literally. It’s a heartbreaking portrait of a tough man who found love, even though he never really thought he deserved it, lost it, and cannot help but feel responsible for it. He keeps everything going in a cycle. That’s the horror, really. Not the fact that his husband could eat his brains during dinner. Although that’s quite scary.
The authors offer you just enough of a glimpse of life within death that you can read the book without thinking this guy is crazy. That little glimpse is enough to break your heart when everything obviously goes wrong and the bad thing you always expected to happen knocks on your door. But again, he had been waiting for that knock way before any apocalypse.
It makes me emotional that he even keeps some of the horrible people in the town going, including people who were homophobic toward him in his teens. What a sad realisation: we keep what hurts us most going because letting it go means letting go of the thing that heals us as well. A simple gesture amid everything dead and dying, a title that can describe the view outside our window in the same way it describes a zombie outbreak.
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Out of Alcatraz, by Christopher Cantwell & Tyler Crook (Oni Press)
(by Petar)
Give me a Tyler Crook book, and I will enjoy it. It doesn’t matter what it’s about.
Luckily, on top of the out-of-this-world art, Out of Alcatraz is also highly arresting, grabbing my hand, handcuffing me, and not letting go until I was done with it. It is based on the real-life escape of inmates Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin from Alcatraz on June 11, 1962.
While official records state that the men likely drowned during their escape, the comic gives us an alternate take, having them wash ashore in San Francisco and try to make their way north while constantly running from a federal manhunt. As they travel farther, the interpersonal relationships grow more complicated and so much more fun.
Tyler Crook quickly became one of my favorite artists while working on Harrow County, and he kills it here too. The art is filled to the brim with atmosphere, and the painterly illustrations evoke a Hitchcock film. Even the covers look like vintage crime paperbacks, which makes this one hell of a noir thriller you should be reading this year!
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Best Graphic Album (New)
Cannon, by Lee Lai (Drawn & Quarterly)
(by Matheus)
My favorite of the bunch.
Just breathe. Focus on your surroundings and inhale, exhale.
Cannon is a nickname given to our lead character by her best friend. She doesn’t know exactly why. She guesses it’s ironic because she’s reliable, the opposite of a loose cannon.
Well, she is reliable. She is easy to use.
Her mom leaves the care of her sick, dying grandpa entirely to her. Her friend, Trish, is glad to watch horror movies with her when she needs company, but will just as gladly talk over every conversation and leave the second something more interesting comes along. Like “ironic” sex dates with a guy she doesn’t even like.
And it’s not only them. Cannon works in a restaurant where everyone knows she can handle anything, so anything is exactly what they give her. More work. More responsibility. More chances to quietly accept being treated like shit. Even her new relationship with Charlotte feels like something Cannon is scared to define because defining it would require her to admit she wants something.
The book opens after Cannon has destroyed the restaurant. Tables overturned, plates smashed. So we know the explosion is coming. Lee Lai doesn’t build the story around whether Cannon will finally lose control but around how many people can keep taking pieces from her before she does.
The answer is: quite a lot, actually.
Cannon and Trish’s friendship is what hurts the most because the book never lets it become an easy story about one bad friend. They grew up together as two queer Chinese girls who understood parts of each other nobody else could. There is real love there. There is also Trish using Cannon’s life as material for her writing while repeatedly failing to listen when Cannon tries to tell it herself.
Lee Lai captures all of this through interruptions, missed calls, unfinished conversations and speech balloons that practically push Cannon out of her own scenes. She is always physically there. Emotionally? Well, there isn’t much room left.Cannon is about anger, but more specifically about the kind of person who believes anger is something only other people are allowed to have. Being dependable stops being a virtue and becomes the excuse everyone uses to abandon you.
Inhale. Exhale. Maybe step away from the restaurant equipment.
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THE WINNER 🏆: Drome, by Jesse Lonergan (23rd St. Books)
(by Petar)
An almost-wordless creation myth that will leave you speechless too.
The story Jesse Lonergan gives us is sort of simple enough: two godlike beings decide to try their hands at creation. As you can imagine, having a variety of living things in your little sandbox can lead to chaos, until a giant blue demigoddess is summoned to teach them about strength and peace. In each chapter, the gods create new narrative ripples, making for a very fun story.
It’s the art that does all the heavy lifting, though, and that makes this book my Best Graphic Album winner for this year. Lonergan builds his pages from 35-panel grids, often keeping all 35 square panels intact while building momentum through all of them. There are massive splash pages that define scale, as well as minuscule, minute changes in the characters’ movements as they traverse these vast grids. You lose yourself in the art, especially since there is almost no text to take your attention away!
The Fables of Erlking Wood, by Juni Ba (Goats Flying Press)
(by Matheus)
Get your warm cocoa ready.
The book literally tells you to.
Juni Ba sits us down and begins telling stories from Erlking Wood. Separate fables at first. A young girl named Vivianne. Goupil, a cowardly fox who would probably object to being called cowardly if he weren’t busy running away. Knights, monsters, bargains and the shadowy Erlking himself, waiting in the forest to offer people exactly what they think they want.
You know how that normally goes.
Every story works like a branch growing from the same tree. Some are funny, some tragic, some over before you realise Ba has just introduced someone who will become incredibly important later. Characters disappear and return years older. A monster in one person’s story becomes something much more complicated when another person finally gets close enough to look at him.
What initially feels like an anthology slowly tightens around Vivianne, Goupil and the Erlking. Their stories keep colliding across generations until all the separate fables reveal themselves as parts of one much larger tragedy. Ba is playing with the structure of folklore itself: the way a person can become a warning, then a legend, then a completely different story depending on who survived long enough to tell it.
The Erlking is treated like every proper creature of folklore should be treated. With fear. With fascination. And with the absolute certainty that accepting his help is a terrible idea immediately followed by someone accepting his help.
But Ba is not satisfied with leaving him as a mysterious forest god who arrives to teach greedy humans a lesson. The further we travel into the woods, the more the Erlking becomes a character rather than a rule. His bargains have a history. His cruelty has an emotional core. The creature haunting everyone else is also trapped inside a story he has helped create.
Juni Ba’s artwork makes the book feel ancient without becoming dusty. The characters stretch, bend and explode across the page with his usual cartoon energy, but the forests, patterns and colours make everything feel like it has been passed between generations. Like somebody found these stories carved into a tree and then added some extremely expressive fox reactions.
It feels like folklore because it understands that fables are not supposed to be safe. They are beautiful little machines designed to tell you something terrible about being alive.
At least you have the cocoa.
A Garden of Spheres, by Linnea Sterte (Peow2)
(by Petar)
This is for all those who crave some fantasy in their lives, and it’s one of the rare books of its kind on this year’s list. A Garden of Spheres is probably the one that’s most like a fantasy epic, and it is not ashamed to scream it out loud! Set in a preindustrial mythic world, the narrative covers generations of people as it follows an immortal demigod of destruction. There are deities, dragons, and societies to explore on each delicious page.
Speaking of these pages, the visual worldbuilding is like nothing you’ve seen on this list. The book alternates between lush, hallucinatory, full-color pages and duotone segments for a striking contrast. The linework is fluid and ethereal, perfectly matching the weird flora and fauna that fill the world beat for beat. It is very reminiscent of Art Nouveau posters, with thin, sometimes serpentine, inking and shapes and a muted, nature-inspired palette.
She won’t hold your hand while reading this book. Instead, Sterte confronts you with an immersive yet alienating experience that will leave you changed after you’re done with the book. It will also make you keep revisiting it time and again.
More Weight: A Salem Story, by Ben Wickey (Top Shelf)
(by Petar)
More Weight: A Salem Story is yet another examination of a historical event. Unlike the Alcatraz escape, it takes the Salem witch trials and disperses them through the prism of time, examining the cultural scars that remain in the centuries after the horror.
The narrative is manifold, shifting from the tragedy of Giles Corey in 1692 to examining authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in the 1860s, and spanning all the way to modern times and Wickey’s own experiences as a tourist in Salem.
The style is deliberately cartoony yet unsettling. Think Edward Gorey, for example. This way, the historical cruelties committed are even more horrific due to the contrast between the depiction and what is being done. The color palettes and visual approaches shift with the centuries to help the reader differentiate between the points of view, creating a truly haunting experience.
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Shadows of the Sea, by Cathy Malkasian (Fantagraphics)
(by Matheus)
Good dog.
Sorry. Stanwick is a former landmine-sniffing dog who has just lost his leg, his job and, apparently, his name. The company still calls him Landmine Sniffer Dog #336 in his dismissal letter. (Capitalism is efficient like that.)
Unable to speak and with nowhere in particular to go, he meets Doris, a small woman with enough energy and anger for the both of them. Stanwick comes along. Maybe because he has nothing better to do. Maybe because lonely people can recognise each other even when one of them is pretending very loudly not to be lonely.
Their journey takes them through forests, empty roads and an abandoned city before eventually leading them to the sea. Cathy Malkasian’s world operates according to dream logic, so nobody seems particularly concerned that Stanwick is a dog wearing a little suit. (Honestly, why would they be? There are much bigger problems). Stanwick and Doris are among the people, and dogs, who remain on the ground. The discarded workers. The grieving widows. The ones who cannot simply float away from the boring inconvenience of reality.
Doris keeps talking. Stanwick cannot talk at all. It creates a very funny and very sad partnership where she fills every empty space while he quietly notices everything she is trying not to say. They are almost opposites, except both have constructed entire new lives around avoiding the same thing.
Grief.
In Malkasian’s world, that grief is not only an emotion. Their shadows physically carry it. They stretch behind the characters, heavy with memories their owners cannot face and truths they have rewritten into more survivable stories. You can run from your past, apparently. Your shadow is still coming with you. Very rude.
The art gives everything a strange, uneasy weight. Bodies twist into unusual shapes, buildings look abandoned by logic itself and the subdued colours make the entire world feel like the air immediately before or after a storm. Even the funny characters appear to have grown from the same sad earth they are walking across.
But this is not a book arguing that pain automatically makes somebody wiser or stronger. Stanwick and Doris survive because they find someone willing to walk beside them while they remain confused, frightened and occasionally dishonest. Their friendship does not solve the past. It simply makes confronting it possible.
The sea eventually forces both of them to look directly at the losses they have been carrying. Not defeat them. Look at them.That is already difficult enough.
Shadows of the Sea is a strange, gentle book about people the world has declared unnecessary. A three-legged dog. A furious little woman. Two shadows full of things nobody wants to see. Together, they discover that losing your purpose is not the same as losing your value.
Good dog. Yes, I meant it this time.
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Best U.S. Edition of International Material – Asia
(all by Daniel)
It is time, once again, my fellow geeks, nerds, and readers!
On July 24, the Eisner Awards return to celebrate the genius writers, incredible artists, and phenomenal stories from the world of comics and manga!
Just like last year, my dear friends Matheus and Petar will be guiding you through the world of comics, while I dive deeper into every single nominee in this category...
If I may... these are the nominees for “Best U.S. Edition of International Material – Asia”!
Hirayasumi, vols. 4–7, by Keigo Shinzo, translated by Jan Mitsuko Cash (VIZ Media)
And of course... we’re starting off strong with Hirayasumi by Keigo Shinzo, a name you should definitely keep in mind for a moment.
Hirayasumi is one of the best slice-of-life manga ever created... and I genuinely mean that!
We follow 29-year-old Hiroto, who has no job, no girlfriend, and no real plan for what comes next in his rather boring life. But... he’s happy!
That happiness is put to the test when his younger cousin, Natsumi, moves in with him to attend art school. She’s his complete opposite and, despite having only just become an adult, is already stressed beyond compare. She cannot stand Hiroto’s carefree attitude and simply cannot understand how he manages to stay so calm.
The story then unfolds as a slice-of-life narrative that is sometimes episodic and sometimes more connected.
In general, Hirayasumi explores adulthood, grief, love, friendship, creative ambition, and, at its core, the search for happiness.
Rather than telling extraordinary stories, the characters find beauty and meaning in the ordinary, and, in turn, so do we!
This is complemented by Keigo Shinzo’s charming art. With few lines, Shinzo creates detailed panels that have a sketch-like vibe while remaining incredibly thoughtful and full of life. They are straight-up masterpieces...
And if you know me from our Open Warehouses, our articles, or anywhere else, you will know that I tried my very best to stay objective here and not completely burst with love for this series...
But that is just a side note to really get my point across! :P
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Land, vol. 1, by Kazumi Yamashita, translated by Kevin Gifford (Yen Press)
But an award show would not be complete without some variety! So, let us leave the happiness behind (sounds like a metal song, in a way...) and dive straight into dark fantasy!
Talk about a mood swing... damn.
Anyway... in this story, four gods watch over a peaceful village where a young girl named An lives with her father.
Life is good, and thanks to the gods, there is nothing to worry about...
However, An is always drawn to the mountains, even though everyone knows that leaving the village behind means abandoning its peace and security.
So... An stays, living with her curiosity and her loving father. Until...
An’s long-lost twin sister suddenly appears and reveals the creepy truth about their father.
He abandoned one of his daughters in the mountains, sacrificing her to the beasts beyond the village!
Now... An is faced with the biggest decision of her life:
Does she leave with her sister to uncover the truth about the world and their father, or does she stay and seek revenge against the sister she never knew, who might even be lying...
I’m always up for a good mystery full of twists and turns, especially when it is paired with incredible artwork, and Land definitely delivers!
The lines are clean, the character designs are nostalgic yet unique (even if they seem a little unusual at first), and the watercolor illustrations used in key moments are absolutely stunning.
I do not want to spoil anything... but wow, those first few pages had me hooked immediately!
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THE WINNER 🏆: Purgatory Funeral Cakes, by Sanho, translated by Danny Lim (Dark Horse)
Let us welcome another contestant, this time a manhwa!
And before I get into it, I have to admit that, out of all the nominees, this was the one I knew the least about going in, and I had no real expectations.
However, once you dive into the story and experience its gorgeous artwork, you will immediately understand why it earned its nomination.
Baker Margot and her ghost assistant, Miro, create special funeral cakes that the living dedicate to their dead relatives and loved ones. Every cake is lovingly crafted around the memories of the person it honors, turning each cake into a small masterpiece.
The story then unfolds through a series of melancholic and warm tales, following people like a mystery novelist mourning the loss of a young patient or the daughter of a vampire reminiscing about the past she shared with her unusual parent.
It is a comforting, bittersweet story about life, death, and how our memories keep us alive, even long after our bodies are gone.
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Tokyo Alien Bros., vols. 1–3, by Keigo Shinzo, translated by Casey Loe (VIZ Media)
I hope you managed to remember Keigo Shinzo’s name while I geeked out about the other stories for a moment.
Because... he’s nominated again!!!
Remember how I mentioned that Shinzo does not tell extraordinary stories in Hirayasumi? Well, the same applies here... in a way, I guess. Stick with me for a second here!
Instead of following an unlikely cousin duo, this time we have two alien brothers trying to navigate everyday life in Tokyo while assessing whether Earth would be suitable for colonization.
As you can see, Tokyo Alien Bros. starts out with a much stronger sci-fi premise, but it quickly turns into a fun and quirky slice-of-life comedy.
The two brothers know absolutely nothing about us, so even the most mundane aspects of our daily lives leave them completely confused, which made me laugh so incredibly often.
It’s just the best type of humor: holding up a mirror to our weird routines and ideas.
But this isn’t just a comedy... It also becomes quite deep...
The brothers learn so much about us: our lives, how we love one another, and what it truly means to be human.
It takes everything that makes Hirayasumi so special, like its vibe, art, and unique storytelling, but places it in a completely different setting.
This allows it to tell stories that Hirayasumi simply would not be able to tell...
So... I guess it is not surprising that this new manga genius, whose name you definitely have to remember now, is nominated not once... but TWICE!
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Yan, vols. 1–2, by Chang Sheng, translated by Vanessa Liu (Titan Manga)
Last, but definitely not least, let us talk about Yan, finally something with a bit more action!
At first, it looks like a supernatural horror story... but it quickly turns into so much more.
Our protagonist, Detective Lei, is investigating a series of horrific murders, all of which seem to be connected to a woman called Yen, a woman who seemingly returns from the dead ten years after dying in prison.
Now she is back, and with her is a girl who possesses supernatural abilities.
These two set out to take revenge on those who are responsible for the massacre of her family, which was also pinned on her.
A premise that immediately drew me in. I just love a good mystery-revenge story, especially if the dead are coming back to take revenge!
But... although the action is great, it is also a very deep story that offers a fresh perspective on how revenge and justice are closer to each other than one may assume... and how each can corrupt you if it consumes you.
Once again... incredible art in this one as well! The horror really comes across in every supernatural element and crime scene. The action is fast-paced and clean, making the pages feel alive!
So, this one is the nominee for all those who are not into your classic slice-of-life or heartfelt mysteries but rather prefer something darker and more action-oriented.
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