When I wrote my best-of-2024 list for The Comics Journal last December, I predicted that what I had to say there would "differ sharply from whatever I say months from now." I was right. These days, I don't get to catch up with the talked-about comics of the previous year until, at least, the ides of March. In fact, mid-March is here and I am still working to track down acclaimed volumes from last year.* In the meantime, Jamie Colville has published his annual combined list of "best comics and graphic novels," a compilation of opinions and rankings from more than 250 sources, which is an useful resource you should go check out right now.

Below in slideshow format are twenty-two comics from 2024 that I found interesting and vital. Of these, nine appeared on my list for TCJ. The others I've mostly read since January 1, 2025. Of these, I consider perhaps five or six of them to be in KinderComics territory — that is, comics that could plausibly be labeled young readers' comics. I reviewed three of those here.

(Note: Clicking on a book's slide will take you to a publisher's or creator's webpage.)

A few more notes:

• Five of the above comics appear in the Top 20 derived from Jamie Colville's list: Absolute Wonder Woman, Final Cut, Sunday, Blurry, and Lunar New Year Love Story.
• Jamie's data suggest a disconnect between what's being talked about most and what interests me most. For the record, I am following the current Ultimate Spider-Man, Absolute Batman, and The Ultimates, but don't think of them as Top 20 books.
• The book above that I wrestled with the most was Tessa Hulls' Feeding Ghosts, probably because it is thickly narrated in what I think of as post-Fun Home style. I fought the book until the home stretch, but its layering of familial and sociopolitical history is amazing and I nearly drowned in Hulls' drawings. 
• I subscribe to Mike Dawson's Monthly 'Zine Club, which means I get something delightful in the mail roughly every month. 
• The long-awaited My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Book Two, was, alas, a letdown.
• My Books of the Year? On reflection, I'd say Ash's Cabin, Stan Mack's Real Life Funnies, Arctic Play, Grand Electric Thought Power Mother, and Sunday.
• I just finished reading Sunday today (a Sunday!), and it works wonders with the familiar sequential grammar of paneled comics. Its density and connectedness are mind-boggling. So is its playfulness. Meanwhile, Grand Electric Thought Power Mother overflows the grammar of comics; it's a stunning series of experiments with patterned image-making. As I worked my way through it, I moved from stymied confusion to reveling in its sheer chutzpah. And Arctic Play — as it combines collage, pattern poetry, list poetry, and a even a visual sonnet — has me rethinking, again, the possible relationships between comics and verse. These books reinvigorate the idea of comics; they've rewired my understanding of what comics can be.

I eagerly await the Eisner Award nominees for 2024, which will probably be announced in May.

*PS. I'm still anxious to read acclaimed 2024 titles such as Big Jim and the White Boy, I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together, The Library Mule of Córdoba, Ninja Sarutobi Sasuke, Tender, Tokyo These Days Vol. 1, and Young Hag and the Witches' Quest. I've requested these from my local library.

Gotta admit, I spent a good part of Ash's Cabin waiting for its protagonist, Ash, to "come to their senses." For a while, I was less a sympathetic reader than a fretful parent, waiting for his wayward child to realize the error of their ways. This kneejerk response of mine had the effect of, not exactly blunting, but complicating my interaction with the book. In fact, Ash is not depicted as senseless, unreasoning, or in error, but their story challenged my preconceptions. It's quietly radical and, true to form for author Jen Wang, beautifully told.

Ash, an alienated fifteen-year-old from a complex Chinese American family, is working through a tense transition. They are implicitly trans or nonbinary (resistant to labeling, certainly), also lonesome and inward-turning, mindful and resourceful, and strong of will. Repulsed by the routinized world around them, Ash plans to withdraw into the wilderness: to hike into California's Shasta-Trinity National Forest and find a secret cabin built by their late grandfather, in hopes of staying there "forever." Ash perhaps has a touch of Greta Thunberg about them, but strikes me as not so much an outward-looking activist as a lost soul seeking a Walden-like retreat from everyday compromise. Lost, but determined.

It seems fair to assume (in a YA book like this) that the protagonist will come to realize that they need community, their quest for beatific isolation will fail, and they will end up back in the bosom of family and schoolmates. And indeed (no spoiler here, I don't think) Ash's Cabin does trace that sort of arc. Yet it's not predictable. To Wang's credit, the desires and values that drive Ash into the wild are never dashed or scolded away. What Ash stands for is never dismissed as naive or impossible. Although Ash's quest resolves in a way that they do not expect, it is transformative. That's why I call it radical.

It may come as no surprise that even during the loneliest parts of Ash's journey, the most telling scenes are those that depict social encounters, interdependence, and the process of getting and giving help. Even in the wild, Ash is never quite alone, and of course they eventually realize this. Though the novel focuses resolutely on Ash (and their loving dog Chase), and Wang devotes many pages to the  fascinating details of wilderness survival (sheltering, foraging, fishing, improvising), what sticks with me are the vivid characters and the connections they make. The same sensitivity and social acuteness that distinguish Wang's Stargazing and The Prince and the Dressmaker (the first book I ever reviewed on this blog) are abundantly here. 

The book's gorgeous, open pages suggest a journal — essentially, this is Ash's survival diary, even before they enter the wild. There is an uncluttered airy quality about the spreads, which are less packed, or more loosely joined, than in Wang's previous books (even Stargazing, with its open spaces). Lovingly drawn with mechanical pencil, ballpoint pen, and watercolor, Ash's Cabin often seems like Ash's own fugitive handiwork. Ash moves freely through the layouts, as they move through and explore the world. Wang excels at scenes of research and handiwork, and Ash does plenty of both. They are a character we get to know through their doing: dogged, brave, brilliant, often alone. Much of the book involves getting ready to do things, then learning to do things differently when push comes to shove. In a way, the book is a record of mistakes, missteps, and losses — and yet not. Ash has integrity and never stops living intently. They never stop risking everything, so the story's ending doesn't register as defeat.  

Thematically, I think Ash's Cabin ​could pair interestingly with Kengo Kurimoto's Wildful (reviewed here recently), a fable about biophily as a salve for grief, or with Jonathan Case's Little Monarchs (reviewed here in June 2023), a postapocalyptic environmentalist adventure. I'd even put it alongside Miyazaki's classic Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (in its extended manga version), a work that wavers between humanism and misanthropy and whose naturalist-hero faces a similarly impossible set of choices. (Just thinking about these connections makes me want to design another syllabus!)

This is a great book, full stop.

Wildful is a beautiful graphic novel about getting yourself lost in the woods. Or, I'd say, about deep ecology, immersion in the environment, and biophily. It at once takes a posthumanist view (avoiding anthropocentrism and decentering human ego) and yet argues a deeply humanist viewpoint, that losing ourselves in the Wild is a way of recovering our best selves. Specifically, it's a book about biophilia as a salve for grief. It is a sparsely dialogued, in fact mostly wordless book in landscape format (for wide vistas), toned in warm sepia, and drawn naturalistically rather than cartoonishly.

​I hadn't known about the author, Kengo Kurimoto, til I picked up this book on a whim at my local library. Kurimoto is a game designer (LittleBigPlanet; Dreams) and animator, and Wildful is his first graphic novel. Its organic look differs from the obviously digital artwork that tends to dominate his website (though if you dig deeply enough, you'll find analog as well as digital treasures there, in plenty). Kurimoto highly values unmediated sensorial experience and close, patient observation, and he prioritizes drawing from life rather than using cartoon schemata. In Wildful, the results are rather stunning. This is a book about patiently, patiently, observing the natural world and finding yourself changed in the process. 

The plot, in outline, is simplicity itself: A young girl named Poppy and her dog Pepper accidentally discover the wild woods behind their house, where they meet a new friend, Rob, whose loving, unhurried appreciation of the environment rubs off on them. Over the course of several days hanging out with Rob, Poppy begins to notice and question more, and to luxuriate in her surroundings. She comes to experience the natural world more deeply. Poppy longs to bring her Mum out to the woods with her, but Mum, who is still grieving the loss of her own mother, is depressed, withdrawn, and housebound. The book's resolution brings Mum out of the house and involves an overnight kip in the woods. 

The story is that basic. There are four characters: three humans, one dog. We don't learn much about the circumstantial details of their lives. We come to know very little of Poppy's family or backstory, and next to nothing about Rob's other than the fact that he finds solace in the woods. What matters is the process of their shared discoveries and the adventure in perception and empathy that they undergo. On the level of paraphrasable content, or abstracted themes, Wildful is, again, simple, or it's the kind of thing we are tempted to call simple — but as an experience, it's stunning.

You owe it to yourself to experience this.

Vera Brosgol is one of my favorite artist-authors in the children's graphic novel field. She's back with a new book, her first graphic novel since 2018, and it's a doozy.

Plain Jane and the Mermaid is a feminist fairy tale about outward appearances versus inward self-worth. It's also an inventive, and occasionally spooky, phantasmagoria that takes place almost entirely underwater. Jane, a "plain" young woman of apparently few prospects, dives into the deepwater world of selkies, sea monsters, and mermaids in order to rescue (?) Peter, a mermaid-stolen man with whom she thinks she has fallen in love. She hardly knows the guy, but he is beautiful, and she has asked him to marry her. Marriage is Jane's one hope, because, as the last survivor of a household without a male heir, she is about to be turned out of her home by a distant and uncaring cousin:

A mysterious crone magically grants Jane the ability to survive underwater, and so Jane takes off in pursuit of her hoped-for husband. In the meantime, Peter is wooed and pampered by a trio of mermaids, little suspecting what they may have in store for him. Things turn dark(er) when Peter learns what it is that mermaids actually do with humans, but meanwhile Jane develops a comical yet genuine friendship with a seal who turns out to be a selkie, and her plainness (if that's what it is) no longer matters. There are twists and surprises en route, and the story ends delightfully, with a sense that various dangling loose ends have been tied up, or tied together, in unexpected but apt ways. It's the kind of well-engineered book where nothing goes to waste, and small details glimpsed along the way turn out to be openings (or deepenings).

Brosgol's story-world is cruel. Parents and peers judge and shame; rivals tease and bully. Plainness of face and stoutness of body are condemned. Appearances count, and mirrors are threats. Beautiful people get unearned perks and learn to rely on them, while ordinary, unlovely people are expected to scrape and crawl. Social outliers are sacrificed for the comfort of the socially advantaged. Women get the short end of most everything, and predation and hunger rule. Some readers may be taken aback by the harshness of this world, but to me it seems honest enough. Some may be alarmed by certain terrible comeuppances that are meted out. The story is tough. Moreover, some undersea scenes are scary, as when, on a sunken ship, corpses come groaning to life and close in on Jane, or when a giant anglerfish almost snaps her up in its jaws, or when a mermaid bares her teeth. Brosgol isn't scary in quite the same way as, say, Emily Carroll (whose take on mermaids is positively terrifying); she pushes only a little at what middle-grade books usually allow. But she does push. Me, I love these moments of risk-taking. Her graphic novels always play for keeps, and that wins me over.

So, Plain Jane is a recognizable Vera Brosgol book. Yet Brosgol deserves credit for making each book look and feel a little different. Plain Jane doesn't look that much like Anya's Ghost or Be Prepared (they don't look that much like each other, either). This one feels a bit rawer in the rendering, I'm guessing deliberately, but at the same time uses a full color palette, courtesy of color artist Alec Longstreth — a great cartoonist in his own right, and a great graphic novel colorist. He does a lot of heavy lifting here. (It's a shame Longstreth's name isn't on the title page where it should be. Though the back matter reveals some of the coloring process, and Brosgol praises "Alec" effusively, you have to read the fine print to find his full name.) 

Despite surface changes in style, Plain Jane boasts Brosgol's usual distinctive character designs, expert timing, and gift for small shocks. This is clear, classic cartooning. The book is not the revelation that Anya's Ghost was, but it's thrilling. Its roughly 350 pages pass too quickly, a fierce, lovely dream. The final affirmation of Jane's self-worth is not surprising — in that sense, the book ends where most of us would want it to end — but the trip is full of little gemlike touches.

Vera Brosgol really is a gift, you know?

Wow.

At last, my wife and I have been able to see the exhibition Wild Things Are Happening: The Art of Maurice Sendak at the Skirball Cultural Center here in Los Angeles. The show opened on May 23 and will be on view through September 1. 

Again, wow. Anyone interested in children's literature, picture books, the book arts, illustration, cartooning, comics, or artistic collaborations across media should hightail it to this exhibition, which  is an artistic treasure house as well as moving testimony to Sendak's life and loves. It is stunning.

I've seen originals by Sendak on exhibit before, including book dummies and finished illustrations, but never have I seen so much prepublished work, autographic work, and personal art by him before. The exhibition gives a powerful sense of Sendak at work, of his creative processes (for example, his everyday "fantasy sketches," such as in the detail below) and of the handmade nature of his art. 

This same intimacy comes through in the exhibit's evocation of Sendak's childhood, family, and relationships. If Sendak's work often has a tender, almost wounded autobiographical quality, the roots of that can be seen in the many family portraits and self-portraits gathered in the show (the first image in this post consists of details from three Sendaks drawn by Sendak!). Family, culture, and childhood environments loom large in the exhibition, which imparts a close and confidential feeling. I've known for a long time that many of Sendak's works were crypto-autobiographical (scholarly readings of, say, In the Night Kitchen almost always take that line), yet this show somehow makes that fact feel real and urgent. 

The show itself partakes of this veiled biographical quality, as the first installation or environment appears to be a family sitting room with a fireplace, sofa, chairs, drawing table, and bookcase, and then again a small curtain in one corner, which I imagine would be good for putting on puppet shows. From here, the exhibit draws you toward self-portraits, childhood memorabilia, and family lore, juxtaposed with published works that draw on that history. I fell for this right away, which is to say I fell under the exhibition's spell.

While highlighting the personal nature of Sendak's work, the show reveals some of his influences (Fuseli, Caldecott, Disney, McCay) and honors many of his collaborators, such as Randall Jarrell, Arthur Yorinks, Ursula Nordstrom, Ruth Krauss, Carole King, Frank Corsaro, Art Spiegelman, and Tony Kushner. Sendak's various overlapping art worlds, from the page to the stage, are well represented. The more than 150 artifacts on view suggest a life that combined art, intense, meditative privacy, and yet sociability and deep, enduring friendships.

This is simply a great show. If you can get to see it, do! And know that there is a substantial companion book as well, edited by Jonathan Weinberg.

Paul Bunyan: The Invention of an American Legend is another TOON Graphic that juxtaposes a compelling comic with carefully curated (front and back) editorial matter. In this case, the introduction and back matter are not just instructive supplements but pointed rejoinders to the comic, and essential to the book's overall effect. Noah Van Sciver's comic takes up 36 of the book's 52 pages, but the remaining pages are emphatically not filler. What we have here is a package that both burnishes and yet undermines the "legend" of the faux-folkloric lumberjack, Paul Bunyan, with Van Sciver casting a skeptical eye on how the legend was promulgated while the other features remind us of what the legend hides. It's a great and startling project. I wish it had been among the Kids nominees for this year's Eisners, and was glad to see it among the finalists for this year's Excellence in Graphic Literature Awards (which is what reminded me to write about it here).

Noah Van Sciver has become one of my favorite cartoonists. He is a terrific humorist and memoirist (his hilarious autobio comic, Maple Terrace, was one of my favorites from last year). What's more, he is one of the US's best and most prolific creators of historical and biographical comics (his brave book Joseph Smith and the Mormons is just the iceberg's tip). Paul Bunyan feels like it's right in his wheelhouse. The story, a fiction inspired by fact, takes place in Minnesota in 1914 on a westbound train, as lumber industry ad man William Laughead regales his fellow passengers with yarns about Paul Bunyan, "the best jack there ever was" and the epitome of the industry's clear-cutting zeal. Laughead's crazy, mythmaking anecdotes have the zestful absurdity of tall tales, and Van Sciver knows how appealing such tales can be. A shameless fabulist, Laughead imagines Bunyan as an unstoppable giant-sized version of himself. He meets challenges posed by skeptical listeners with a game face and ever-escalating bunkum. Van Sciver portrays him as folksy, funny, a bit desperate, and basically a shill. More critical perspectives are provided by other characters, especially a disillusioned lumber industry vet. The art is lively and joyous, but also insinuating, and the textures (drawn in ink but then colored digitally) are trademark Van Sciver. This is beautifully organic and readable cartooning. 

You could say that this is Van Sciver's project (the indicia assigns the copyright to him and TOON), but the elements provided by other creators are vital. Those elements, from Native writers and artists, decry the "seizure of homeland" and environmental devastation spurred by America's rapacious lumber industry, and champion forms of history and knowledge obscured by the aggressive expansionism of the Bunyan myth. Lee Francis IV (Pueblo of Laguna), well-known as an advocate for Native comics, provides a wisely ambivalent introduction. Deondre Smiles (Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe), critical geographer and academic, supplies an informative and well-illustrated essayistic postscript about the links among colonization, land theft, and deforestation. Marlena Myles (Spirit Lake Dakota), a multidisciplinary artist, provides essays, a bilingual, Dakota and English map, and strikingly stylized illustrations and endpapers. There is a meeting of talents and perspectives here that suggests careful project management (by editor Tucker Stone and editorial director and book designer Françoise Mouly). The whole definitely exceeds the sum of its parts. 

Paul Bunyan is the kind of project I've come to expect from TOON: distinctly individual, yet collaborative; personal, yet proactively curated by an expert editorial team. More than further proof of Van Sciver's historical imagination and cartooning chops, it's a multifaceted group effort, the kind that is needed when you're demythologizing and debunking an entrenched bit of Americana. It's a short read, but excellent, and I find myself paging through again and again with admiration.

Over the past two weeks, the Denver-based nonprofit Pop Culture Classroom has announced the winners of this year's Excellence in Graphic Literature (EGL) Awards. This marks the 7th annual round for the EGL prizes (founded in 2017). 

First, on June 4, the group announced the winners in eight categories, that is, both fiction and non-fiction winners for Children’s (Pre-K to 4th grade), Middle Grade (5th to 8th grade), Young Adult (9th to 12th grade), and Adult (eighteen years and older) books. At the same time, they announced the finalists for their two big prizes that are not age-leveled, the Book of the Year and the Mosaic Award (which focuses on diversity and inclusivity). 

Here is the full list of 2024 EGL winners:

The EGL process does not include public voting, except for a promised "Reader's Choice Award" to be decided by "a public online vote" (I could not find more information about that). In general, the EGLs are decided by professional juries, with the fiction and nonfiction works in each age category judged by a separate jury. Once the category juries have decided upon their finalists and winners, the Book of the Year and Mosaic Award finalists are announced. Those two awards are then judged by the assembled jury chairs in tandem with an EGL Advisory Board (whose current makeup I have not been able to ascertain). Typically, the winners in the several categories also loom large among Book of the Year and Mosaic Award finalists.

The EGLs tout their "clearly defined and transparent process," which apparently relies upon rubrics. I gather that all the age categories are ranked according to common criteria and a consistent four-point scale, while the two big awards are judged somewhat differently. The process gives the appearance of orderliness and predictability, though not all categories have been awarded in past years; perhaps the process is still evolving. The yearly juries seem to have a fair degree of turnover. (For more on the judging criteria and process, see here.)

Ever since the EGLs were announced, I've been on the fence about them. The awards aim to help teachers and librarians identify those comics that "best advance literacy, learning, and social connection—particularly in educational settings," which to my mind sits awkwardly alongside the nominal emphasis on literature, a term that has usually implied a degree of artistic autonomy if not an ars gratia artis stance. The juries seem to consist solely of librarians and educators (past advisors have included publishing pros, comics retailers, and a very few creators). It's a bit puzzling, though potentially a plus too, that the EGL finalists tend to be so different from those of other comics awards, such as the Eisners. There's nothing wrong with that, or with awards that pay attention to educational value (consider for example the NCTE's Orbis Picture Award for children's nonfiction, or the ALA's Geisel Award for beginning readers). But the "graphic literature" tag seems odd when paired up with what appears to be a language-arts approach whose horizons are primarily academic. 

Ah well. This tension (or what I perceive as a tension) is not new. Maybe it's at the root of what we call children's literature.

It may be that I'm simply too biased toward the notion of artistic autonomy to get comfortable with the EGL criteria. That's on me. In the meantime, reviewing this year's list of EGL finalists has gotten me to check out some new books — which is the whole point, right?

(To get the full benefit of the EGLs, check out the whole list of this year's finalists!)

Punk Rock Karaoke, a YA graphic novel, is a high-spirited valentine to punk and Black queer music-making. It's also a love letter to Chicago (the author's home base) and community. The plot follows three recent high school grads, Ariel, Michele, and Gael, and their hopes for their struggling punk band, Baby Hares. Mostly it's about Ari and her crisis of faith, as she falls out with Michele, her best friend, and seeks comfort and encouragement in the arms of another musician, a local punk legend. At first this guy seems to care for her, but in the home stretch we learn otherwise. The story turns into a parable about cultural appropriation and exploitation, as well as a tribute to the sustaining power of friendships.

Graphically, the book is a gas. Bianca Xunise values expressiveness at least as much as conventional narrative clarity, and draws vivaciously, explosively even. This is distinctive work. Drawing for the extended graphic novel format seems to free Xunise up and take them beyond their well-known work in Six Chix and various online outlets (I first saw their work at The Nib). Xunise tucks in many visual asides, or telling details, about Chicagoland, and man, can they convey the energy of friends making music together:

So, there are many visual delights in the book.

Story-wise, alas, I'm not convinced. Punk Rock Karaoke rigs its plot to make a Point, and to me that point was obvious and predictable about a quarter of the way in. Spoiler alerts are needless, as you can see the twists coming. Though the energy of gigging and moshing is undeniable (and infectious), the novel's depiction of life in a band feels unreal. Despite a stated focus on community, Punk Rock Karaoke becomes a standard rock 'n' roll story about "making it," and it feels like wish-fulfillment rather than a hard-hitting YA novel. Its politics are vague. Beyond a neighborhood fair (where the Baby Hares play a crucial gig), the plot stays narrowly focused, favoring Ari's perspective. Inevitably, her fling with an exploitative outsider brings disappointment and bitter wisdom.

In this case, wising up means sticking with your buds and resisting cooption —​ but this message feels defensive and narrow, and the book contradicts itself. Xunise champions, rather than examines, the usual punk attitudes about being authentic and not a "poseur," and yet the conclusion demands that the Baby Hares get noticed by an industry mogul who thinks they have potential (a trope familiar from countless backstage musicals). The story finally falls into a heavy-handed allegory about appropriation in which the characters serve as mouthpieces. I found all this simplistic, and longed for less rigging, more questioning. Punk Rock Karaoke ​has lively cartooning on its side, but to me its lessons feel predetermined rather than earned.

On Friday I reviewed this year’s Eisner Award nominees for Kids (roughly, middle-grade readers). Today I turn to the nominees for Teens, that is, Young Adult books (see my post of May 17 for an overview of all young readers’ categories). Once more, I’ve tried to describe every book fairly, while signaling my favorites. The Teens category is amazing this year!

Of course, this is all about getting ready to cast my votes before the June 6 deadline! (For info on voting, see here).

​​Blackward, by Lawrence Lindell (Drawn & Quarterly).
Four friends run a club for queer, nonbinary, and otherwise “alternative” Black folx. With the help of a bookstore owner, they organize a Black zine fest to build community, while fending off online hate from reactionary, homophobic voices. Blackward is a hilarious, high-spirited mash note to zinesters, organizers, and the kind of friendship that creates new cultural spaces. It’s also a knowing satire of Black community frictions. Lindell’s cartooning is quirky and wild, and sometimes strains to its limits. Yet he uses repetition and braiding to great effect, and the characters are great. I bet this book will change lives. 

​Danger and Other Unknown Risks, by Ryan North and Erica Henderson (Penguin Workshop).
Like Mexikid, this made my TCJ Best-of list. Since then, I’ve read many books I wish I had read earlier, so if I were writing that list now, it would look different. This book, though, would still be on it. A brilliantly engineered fantasy about a transformed, postapocalyptic world, Danger offers an adventure in thinking. It rewires a conservative premise (saving the old world) into something wiser (welcoming in the new); ultimately, it’s about embracing change rather than clinging to an idealized past. Ingenious, dizzying, moving, and gobsmackingly drawn by Henderson, this one has captured my heart, and my vote. 

​Frontera, by Julio Anta and Jacoby Salcedo (HarperAlley)
In this blend of realism and magic, a young man, Mateo, slips across the Mexico-US border and crosses the Sonoran Desert, aided by the ghost of another man who died during that crossing almost seventy years earlier. The Border Patrol, vigilantes, and dehydration stand between Mateo and his goal, and he nearly dies, though he gets, and gives, help along the way. Frontera’s magical-realist plot works to refute nativism, as Mateo’s quest conveys complex truths about the geography and politics of the border. The climax, however, is generically heroic and feels forced. Graphically sharp, with stylized naturalism and expressive colors. 

​Lights, by Brenna Thummler (Oni Press)
The third and final volume in the Sheets series (unknown to me until now). A benign ghost is haunted by his inability to remember his own past, and why he died; his two living friends, eighth-grade ghost-hunters, help him recover those memories, while renegotiating their own complicated friendship. Delicately drawn and colored, Lights is also brilliantly written, filled with subtly observed moments of social negotiation and moral decision-making. Thummler is wise to the ways we typecast other people, limiting who they can be, yet the ending poignantly turns stereotype on its head. Stunningly good (and another one I’d vote for).

​Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story, by Sarah Myer (First Second)
In this memoir of intercountry adoption, Sarah, a Korean child of a white family living in rural Maryland, struggles against racism, social ostracism, and bullying – and her fear of her own explosive anger. Frankly, given the unrelenting cruelty shown here, I often felt that her violent outbursts, or moments of fierce self-defense, were justified. Graphically, Monstrous is bold, imaginative, and sometimes frightful; drawing, for Myer, is clearly a high-stakes act of self-invention. Yet the story is anchored by retrospective text that seeks to narrate her experience calmly, from a stance of mature judgment, which softens its impact. Still, powerful work. 

My Girlfriend’s Child, Vol. 1, by Mamoru Aoi, translation by Hana Allen (Seven Seas)
In the first volume of this ongoing manga, a high schooler’s unplanned pregnancy upends her life, tipping her into indecision and emotional turmoil that she cannot share with anyone else, even her sympathetic boyfriend. Aoi’s visuals are sensitive and devastatingly acute. Pensive, almost dreamlike, and marked by long wordless passages, the storytelling balances a sweet, idealized style against unyielding facts. Conversations are muted yet quietly agitated; visual metaphors are understated but fraught. The evocation of anxiety, tenderness, and naivete is overwhelming, and the sense of isolation often harrowing. No preaching here, just minutely observed and heartbreaking drama. I’ll be back.

Some final thoughts: I like to treat comics of all varieties, and from all spaces, as cousins, and the comics world as a continuity. I maintain an interest in comics of just about every kind, and I try to follow comics publishing in several sectors. Yet I must admit, it is now impossible for me to “keep up” with comics in the US in any comprehensive way. The Eisner Awards of today, despite their roots in comic book fandom, represent an attempt to spotlight many different kinds of comics, and I appreciate that. Every year I see signs of progress toward greater inclusivity, as well as signs of strain.

As a former judge, I can attest that focusing on and weighing so many different kinds of comics is a huge challenge. The Eisners are not guild awards; the US comics field is not a united (much less unionized) industry, and, as my colleague Benjamin Woo has pointed out, there really isn’t any such thing as a single “comics industry.” Nor is there a single comics community – the Eisners represent, and speak to, several different communities. The job of the judges, each year, is to craft a ballot that acknowledges that complexity and seeks out excellence of many different kinds.

Honestly, I never read so many comics, in such a brief span, as I did when I served as a judge back in 2013. It was joyous work, but hard.

But I know that thinking about the Eisner nominees always gives me a better sense of what’s happening in the field (fields?). And I know that I greatly enjoy this custom of picking out at least a few categories and trying to get up to speed. My favorites in the Teens category are Lights and Danger and Other Unknown Risks, but I’ve enjoyed the whole process.

Congratulations, nominees, and thank you, judges!

Yesterday I reviewed this year’s Eisner Award nominees for Early Readers. Today I turn to the nominees for Kids, which I assume means roughly middle-grade readers, around 8 to 12 years old (see my post of May 17 for an overview of all young readers’ categories). Once again, I’ve tried to describe every book fairly, while acknowledging my favorites. I’ll be back soon with a third and final post about the nominees for Teens. 

This is all about getting ready to cast my votes before the June 6 deadline! (For information about voting, see here).

Buzzing, by Samuel Sattin and Rye Hickman (Little, Brown Ink)
A book for our time: a neurodivergent Bildungsroman, plus a paean to creative and queer community, in the form of a Dungeons & Dragons-like RPG that gives the protagonist, a young man with OCD, a group of nonjudgmental friends with whom he can be free. He just has to persuade his anxious mother that playing the RPG will be good, not bad, for him. OCD is a familiar topic in disability-themed comics, but Buzzing does something new. Intrusive thoughts are cleverly represented through visual metaphor (a swarm of bees, buzzing), while the cartooning is lively and the cast delightful. Vivid!

Mabuhay! by Zachary Sterling (Scholastic Graphix)
A Filipino American brother and sister struggle to balance assimilation pressures at school with filial obligations at home. Forced to work on their family’s food truck, they are alienated and resentful – until their family must unite to, I guess, save the world? This acculturation fantasy starts with everyday complaints and embarrassments, then lurches into magic and monsters inspired by Filipino folklore. Sterling’s elastic, manga-flavored cartooning shows his expertise in animation design: characters are distinct, and emote hugely, with broad expressions. The action is frenetic; the plot feels juryrigged. The lessons in filial piety are rather on the nose, I think. 

Mexikid: A Graphic Memoir, by Pedro Martín (Dial Books for Young Readers).
This memoir made my Best-of-2023 list for The Comics Journal. Young Pedro, his many siblings, and mom and dad make an epic road trip to the family’s ancestral hometown in Mexico, there to reunite with his grandfather. Americanized Pedro is often startled by what he learns on the way. Exuberant and graphically tricky, with many inventive, diagram-like pages, Mexikid is a loving tribute to family in all its quirkiness and complexity. In the home stretch, Martín shifts, convincingly, from hilarity to grief, tenderness, and new depths. I’m teaching this in the fall, and it’s my strong favorite in this category.

Missing You, by Phellip Willian and Melissa Garabeli. translation by Fabio Ramos (Oni Press)
Neotenic cuteness (think Bambi) vies with hard-won lessons about grief and letting go in this gorgeous, disquieting book. A family nurses a wounded fawn back to health, even as they cope with the loss of one of their own. Caring for the deer seems to heal their own hurts, yet they know the deer must someday go back to the woods. Prepare yourself for the inevitable parting (and note, along the way, the deer’s own sad backstory, its own remembered parting). Garabeli’s sumptuous watercolors and elegant pages boost the already considerable power of this of course manipulative, yet beguiling, heartwringer. 

Saving Sunshine, by Saadia Faruqi and Shazleen Khan (First Second)
Feuding twins, sister and brother, make peace during a family trip to Key West. There they learn to care for each other, even as they nurse an enormous loggerhead turtle that lies ailing on the beach. As Muslims from a Pakistani American family, they share a history of struggling against racism and Islamophobia, which informs both their quarreling and their reconciliation. Rendered in digital watercolor, with some lovely, open pages, this book at first leans into adult-centered didacticism (these kids need to learn a lesson), but happily brings nuance and sympathy as it goes. So: predictable arc, but surprising details. 

Some final thoughts: I'm surprised that Dan Santat's A First Time for Everything was not nominated in this category. It is contending in the category of Best Graphic Memoir, though. (Interestingly, most of the nominated memoirs this year could be considered either middle-grade or YA books.)

I obtained all of the above books from the Los Angeles Public Library, save one, Missing You. My sense is that graphic novels published by the children's imprints of the "Big 5 (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster) are easy to find in LAPL. Unsurprisingly, so are books from Scholastic, the market leader in children's GN publishing. With other presses, or children's imprints that are not so well known, I had trouble; for example, I could not find a couple of nominated books from Oni Press.  

We know that the middle-grade graphic novel is (besides manga) the busiest and most profitable sector in US comics publishing. It is also a sector that produces a lot of formulaic work. Reigning themes in middle-grade comics perhaps reflect reigning themes in children's book publishing, period: social negotiation among friends, acculturation, loyalty to family and culture, displacement, loss. Often an adult-centered didacticism clings to books with these themes: I note that the young protagonists of Mabuhay! and Saving Sunshine complain about their parents' decisions, but there is never any suggestion that the parents might need to question their choices (what parents do is not up for debate). When reading middle-grade comics, I often have a feeling that I know just what is happening, and what prosocial messages are meant to be reinforced. I get impatient with that feeling.

That said, I've enjoyed reading almost all of this year's middle-grade nominees. To me, the most interesting ones by far are Buzzing and Mexikid, as they are the most formally inventive. It happens that they are also the ones that most clearly resist the thumping didacticism I'm complaining about. Not coincidentally, they have the most complex adult characters as well (though props to Missing You for showing adults and children grieving together).