Staff Picks
Critics Couldn't Resist Putting These 13 Comics On Their Year-End Lists
- Thomas M.
- Sunday, December 29, 2019
Collection
These 13 comics sum up 2019, including magical manga, deconstructed superheroes, and intensely personal stories drawn from real life.
This Place
150 Years Retold
Published in 2019
"Explore the past 150 years through the eyes of Indigenous creators in this groundbreaking graphic novel anthology. Beautifully illustrated, these stories are an emotional and enlightening journey through Indigenous wonderworks, psychic battles, and time travel. See how Indigenous peoples have survived a post-apocalyptic world since Contact."-- from Publisher's website.
Hot Comb
Published in 2019
"Hot Comb offers a poignant glimpse into Black women's lives and coming of age stories as seen across a crowded, ammonia-scented hair salon while ladies gossip and bond over the burn. The titular story "Hot Comb" is about a young girl's first perm--a doomed ploy to look cool and to stop seeming "too white" in the all-black neighborhood her family has just moved to. In "Virgin Hair" taunts of "tender-headed" sting as much as the perm itself. It's a scenario that repeats fifteen years later as an adult when, tired of the maintenance, Flowers shaves her head only to be hurled new put-downs. Realizations about race, class, and the imperfections of identity swirl through Flowers' stories and ads, which are by turns sweet, insightful, and heartbreaking."-- Provided by publisher.
Blank Canvas
My So-called Artist's Journey. Vol. 02
Published in 2019
"A RUDE AWAKENING. Thanks to Hidaka-senseis intensive training, Akiko manages to get through her art school exams. Shes one step closer to seeing her dreams come trueor so she thinks!"--Page [4] of cover.
Mister Miracle
Published in 2019
"Mister Miracle is magical, dark, intimate and unlike anything you've read before. Scott Free is the greatest escape artist who ever lived. So great, he escaped Granny Goodness' gruesome orphanage and the dangers of Apokolips to travel across galaxies and set up a new life on Earth with his wife, Big Barda. Using the stage alter ego of Mister Miracle, he has made quite a career for himself showing off his acrobatic escape techniques. He even caught the attention of the Justice League, who has counted him among its ranks. You might say Scott Free has everything--so why isn't it enough? Mister Miracle has mastered every illusion, achieved every stunt, pulled off every trick--except one. He has never escaped death. Is it even possible? Our hero is going to have to kill himself if he wants to find out. From Hugo Award nominated writer Tom King and artist Mitch Gerads, the team behind The Sheriff of Babylon, comes an ambitious new take on one of Jack Kirby's most beloved New Gods in Mister Miracle!"-- Provided by publisher.
Gender Queer
A Memoir
Published in 2019
"In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia's intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity--what it means and how to think about it--for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere."--Amazon.
They Called Us Enemy
Published in 2019
"A stunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei's childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon -- and America itself -- in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love. George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's -- and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future. In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten 'relocation centers', hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard. They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future. What is American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do?"--Provided by publisher.
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me
Published in 2019
Laura Dean, the most popular girl in high school, was Frederica Riley's dream girl, but Freddy is learning she is not the best girlfriend, so she seeks help from a mysterious medium and advice columnists to help her through being a teenager in love.
Guts
Published in 2019
Raina wakes up one night with a terrible upset stomach. Her mom has one, too, so it's probably just a bug. Raina eventually returns to school, where she's dealing with the usual highs and lows: friends, not-friends, and classmates who think the school year is just one long gross-out session. It soon becomes clear that Raina's tummy trouble isn't going away... and it coincides with her worries about food, school, and changing friendships. What's going on?
Bitter Root. Vol. 01, Family Business
Published in 2019
In the 1920s, the Harlem Renaissance is in full swing, and only the Sangerye Family, once known as the greatest monster hunters of all time, can save New York -- and the world -- from the supernatural forces threatening to destroy humanity. But those days are fading and the once-great family that specialized in curing the souls of those infected by racism and hate has been torn apart by tragedies and conflicting moral codes. A terrible tragedy has claimed most of the family, leaving the surviving cousins divided between by the desire to cure monsters or to kill them; they must heal the wounds of the past and move beyond their differences ... or sit back and watch a force of unimaginable evil ravage the human race.
Stargazing
Published in 2019
Growing up in the same Chinese-American suburb, perfectionist Christine and artistic, confident, impulsive Moon become unlikely best friends, whose friendship is tested by jealousy, social expectations, and illness.
Middlewest. Book 1
Published in 2019
The lands between the coasts are vast, slow to change,and full of hidden magics. The town of Farmington has been destroyed sending an unwitting adventurer and his vulpine companion in search of answers to quell acoming storm that speaks his name. From author Skottie Young and artist Jorge Corona comes the tale of Abel, a young boy who mustnavigate an old land in order to reconcile his family's history.
Middlewest. Book 2
Published in 2019
"Seeking security and well-being doesn't mean settling into contentment or trying to find an easy way out. It means when things get difficult, there are people to count on and a place to find comfort and respite. Abel thought he'd found that. But, like so many others before him, his lack of self-control has put his new home, and those closest to him, in jeopardy. As told by writer Skottie Young and artists Jorge Corona, Abel's quest to find answers continues to shape who he will become. With the Fox at his side, Abel consults the bygone beings of an ancient Middlewest, while his father, Dale, continues to unravel as he desperately pursues a son who does not want to be found."--Provided by publisher.