Now, more than ever, graphic novels are the air pop culture breathes, providing the source material for today’s biggest events in film, TV, online/digital content, and publishing in general, as sequential art steadily infiltrates the literary and academic worlds.

Libraries and their patrons are greatly responsible for this rising popularity, as evidenced by the swell in circulation and sales of graphic novels across digital and print platforms. OverDrive’s collection development specialist and resident graphic novel expert Jack Phoenix reports a 47 percent increase in circulation of the company’s more than 30,000 titles in the category, noting manga as a vast contributor to that growth. He further cites a staggering 75 percent spike in circulation of nonsuperhero titles, including biographies, memoirs, and those dealing with historical and social issues, such as civil rights pioneer Congressman John Lewis’s autobiographical March trilogy, cocreated with writer ­Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell.

According to Josh Hayes, head of Diamond Book Distributors and executive VP of Diamond Comic Distributors, “Despite a difficult 2017, libraries performed above the traditional retail channels, which is a testament to the quality content we’re seeing in the category year over year.” Another important factor is the expansion of middle grade graphic novels, easily one of the most successful segments right now.

Not to be outdone, hoopla digital owner and cofounder Jeff Jankowski tells LJ that “since 2016, we’ve seen a 76 percent increase in graphic novel circulation and a 46 percent increase in unique comic book users.” Superhero series such as Wonder Woman and The Avengers are the highest circulating for hoopla, followed by humorous works, such as Lincoln Peirce’s Big Nate and Sarah Anderson’s “Sarah’s Scribbles” collections. Jankowski adds that “comics and graphic novels are becoming a preferred reading choice in schools and libraries. We continue to invest in the experience and depth of content we are offering public library patrons.”

DEBUTS DRAWING INTEREST

This fall sees the comics landscape continue to diversify with the arrival of fresh voices from across the literary and entertainment industries. In September, Aminder Dhaliwal, a Disney animation director, debuts Woman World (Drawn & Quarterly [D&Q]), a witty, thoughtful look at a post apocalyptic universe in which a genetic mutation has killed off all males. D&Q marketing director Julia Pohl-Miranda describes the work as “very funny, very feminist…an e-original in a distinctive way since it began and blew up in popularity on Instagram before it became a D&Q release.” (See our interview with D&Q publisher Peggy Burns.)

Also decidedly feminist is newcomer Emma’s The Mental Load: Comics from the Front Lines of Women’s Lives and Other Social Justice Issues (Seven Stories, Oct.), which investigates unpaid labor in the 21st century done primarily by women, as well as social justice issues, including immigrant rights and income ­inequality.

Esteemed author Margaret Atwood’s first foray into comics (Angel Catbird) was so successful that this autumn sees the Man Booker Prize winner release two new works with Dark Horse. Joining fellow Canadian and Astro Boy artist Ken Steacy, Atwood launches the first single-issue of War Bears (Sept.), which considers the impact of World War II on a Canadian creator’s life and career. In October comes The Complete Angel Catbird, illustrated by the acclaimed Johnnie Christmas and Tamra ­Bonvillain, collecting the first three volumes of the popular series combining human/animal hybrids and pulpy superhero adventure. With Infidel (Image, Sept.), former best-selling Vertigo editor and short film writer/director Pornsak Pichetshote makes his comics writing debut, accompanied by celebrated artists Aaron Campbell, José Villarrubia, and Jeff Powell. This genre-bending haunted house story centers on an American Muslim woman and her multiracial neighbors who move into a building occupied by entities that feed on xenophobia.

In the realm of dark speculative fiction, Prentis ­Rollins’s first full-length graphic novel, The Furnace (Tor, Jul.), is described by Tor editor Diana Pho as a “cautionary tale about the surveillance state and a searing critique of the prison-industrial system, all told through the eyes of a man trying to be a better father.” Pho draws parallels between Rollins’s work and 2017’s widely praised YA graphic novel I Am Alfonso Jones, from Tony Medina and others, as both convey “big, weighty topics told through intimate human perspectives and vibrant art that paints a complicated picture.”

Earlier this year, Tee Franklin, a queer disabled black woman, founded Inclusive Press to publish her own comics and those of other marginalized creators. The author has since received widespread acclaim for the queer romance novella Bingo Love, illustrated by Jenn St-Onge and Joy San, which garnered $60,000 via Kickstarter and won the 2017 Queer Press Grant before being released by Image Comics (LJ 2/1/18). We interviewed Franklin about her experiences with Kickstarter, self-publishing, and more.

FAN FAVES MEET SCHOLARSHIP

Times have changed when a major comic book publisher launches a series of prose works and academic presses turn their attention to graphic novels. Kathryn Marguy, publicity and communications manager, University of Texas (UT), acknowledges that “perhaps unsurprisingly, not many university presses work in the [graphic] space.” Yet this year brings more academic publishers promoting illustrated works, a sign that visual storytelling is indeed gaining traction in the academy. UT puts forth its first-ever graphic biography with debut author/artist María Hesse’s Frida Kahlo: An Illustrated Life (Sept.). Originally published in Spanish and translated into English by Achy Obejas, this volume portrays the artist’s tumultuous life from her own perspective. Two new additions to Ohio State University’s “Latinographix” series also arrive in September, with Eric J. García’s Drawing on Anger: Portraits of U.S. Hypocrisy offering a scathing indictment of Republicans, Democrats, and America itself via cartoons and comics collected from 2004 to the present. Tales from la Vida: A Latinx Comics Anthology, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama, touted as the first anthology of its kind, spotlights comics and artwork by more than 80 Latinx contributors.

Princeton builds on its growing list of graphic narratives with Totally Random: Why Nobody Understands Quantum Mechanics (A Serious Comic on Entanglement) (Jun.) from father-daughter team Jeffrey and Tanya Bub. In July, Pennsylvania State (Penn State) brings us reportage illustrator Olivier Kugler’s Escaping Wars and Waves: Encounters with Syrian Refugees, a firsthand look at the life of refugees and their caregivers, as documented by the author while on assignment. Academic presses are also dabbling in fiction. Writer Ilan Stavans and artist Roberto Weil’s meta-adaptation of Don Quixote of La Mancha (Penn State, Oct.) has Miguel de Cervantes’s fictional knight and his luckless squire encountering past and present creators and adaptors as well as the modern world (available in English and Spanglish editions).

Fans of military and naval history and biography, general history, and stories of the high seas, are sure to embrace several works from the Naval Institute’s Dead Reckoning imprint, launching in September. First releases include Ian Densford’s Trench Dogs, an anthropomorphic retelling of World War I; Kevin Knodell and others’ The ‘Stan, a series of short comics chronicling the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan; and Brent Dulak and others’ Machete Squad, depicting a U.S. Army medic’s struggle to preserve life and sanity during a tour in Afghanistan.

For readers seeking comics with a more literary bent, Humanoids’ Life Drawn imprint promises “diverse voices...from different points of view, whether powerful political and personal stories from Afghanistan or Vietnam or a biography of Hedy Lamarr,” reports Fabrice Giger, CEO/publisher. Highlighting its debut season is Luisa: Now and Then (Jun.; LJ 6/1/18), a queer transformative tale about self-acceptance and sexuality by French creator Carole Maurel, adapted by Caldecott Medal winner Mariko Tamaki (This One Summer).

Simon & Schuster’s graphic imprint Gallery 13 brings lots of in-house love to Eisner-nominated writer Alex de Campi and artist Victor Santos’s ambitious historical noir thriller Bad Girls (Jul.), which tells of three tough ladies looking to escape Cuba, with $6 million in stolen cash, the night before the country fell to Castro’s Communist rule.

BIG HOUSES, NEW IMPRINTS

Many of the most exciting developments at DC Comics are all about imprints. In August, DC’s new Black Label line unleashes modern comics luminaries Frank Miller, John Romita Jr., Kelly Sue DeConnick, Scott Snyder, Phil Jimenez, Lee Bermejo, John Ridley, Greg Rucka, and Greg Capullo to create epic, out-of-continuity Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman stories. First up is Miller and Romita’s three-part Superman: Year One (Nov.), in celebration of the Man of Steel’s 80th anniversary.

August also sees Neil Gaiman’s return to DC Vertigo with the debut of the Sandman Universe line, which kicks off with his The Sandman Universe. The imprint’s four ongoing series by creators of Gaiman’s choosing feature Si Spurrier and Bilquis Evely (The Dreaming, Sept.), Nalo Hopkinson and Dominike Stanton (House of Whispers, Sept.), Dan Watters and others (Lucifer, Oct.), and Kat Howard and Tom Fowler (Books of Magic, Oct.). Mature readers who miss DC Vertigo’s glory days of Hellblazer, Preacher, and the like are directed to two new imprints, both curated by former Vertigo editors. IDW’s creator-owned Black Crown label, established in 2017 by editor Shelly Bond, follows up its first series, Peter Milligan and Tess Fowler’s Kid Lobotomy, with a collected edition of the initial arc of Tini Howard and Gilbert Hernandez’s Assassinistas (Aug.), which follows a gay college student happy to coast through life until his bounty hunter mom blows his tuition on the gear she needs to get back in the game, meaning her son is in for a ride and an interesting semester abroad. At Dark Horse, veteran editor Karen Berger, who oversees Berger Books, announces two works with edge: Emma Beeby’s graphic biography of the infamous courtesan and spy Mata Hari (Nov.) and Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece’s Incognegro: Renaissance (Oct.). Johnson and Pleece’s prequel to the much-admired Incognegro follows Zane Pinchback, a black cub reporter in early 1920s Harlem who poses as a white man to find the killer of a black writer.

WOMEN ARTISTS AT WORK

With the momentum brought on by the #metoo and #timesup movements reinvigorating women’s narratives, something trailblazers such as Gabrielle Bell (Cecil & Jordan in New York) have been at for more than a decade, new comics arrive to further women’s stories in an industry still largely dominated by men.

From Fantagraphics, Swedish cartoonist Liv Strömquist’s Fruit of Knowledge (Aug.) traces how different cultures and traditions have shaped women’s health and body image throughout history, reminding us of modern civilization’s shortcomings in those areas; Anne Simon’s The Song of Aglaia (Jul.) introduces a willful sea nymph who, after experiencing betrayal and rejection from the men in her life, comes to value her independence; and Georgia Webber’s Dumb (Jun.) presents a graphic memoir about overcoming a throat injury and muteness to find one’s voice.

Independent presses such as D&Q continue to specialize in literary works both utterly of the social and political moment and firmly grounded in the comics canon. With Coyote Doggirl (Aug.), Lisa Hanawalt, producer of Netflix’s BoJack Horseman, delivers an uproarious, feminist send-up of and tribute to Westerns. In Blame This on the Boogie (Oct.), cartoonist Rina Ayuyang chronicles the adventures of a Filipino American girl born in the decade of disco. Other current and upcoming profemale releases include comprehensive collections of the raw, autobiographical cartoons of Aline Kominsky-Crumb (Love That Bunch, May) and Julie Doucet (Dirty Plotte: The Complete Julie Doucet, Oct.).

From IDW in September, Top Shelf’s Girl Town collects minicomics and anthology contributions by Carolyn Nowak (Lumberjanes), while Black Crown sends the anthology Femme Magnifique, edited by Shelly Bond, back to print. A Kickstarter success, Magnifique gathers illustrated minibios of 50 women who changed the world, from Harriet Tubman and Sally Ride to Kate Bush and Michelle Obama, as told by more than 100 global creators, including Cecil Castellucci, Bill Sienkiewicz, Mike Carey, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Tee Franklin [see the Q&A, p. 36], and Gilbert Hernandez.

In October, Anne Frank’s Diary (Pantheon) gets introduced to a new generation of readers with the first graphic adaptation of this important historical work. Authorized by the Anne Frank Foundation and including text from the original, the project is headed by Oscar-nominated director Ari Folman and artist David Polonsky.

DIVERSE MAKERS, MATERIAL

The growing supply of and demand for diversity in graphic novels and in those who create them strengthen the argument that sequential art is a singularly exciting medium. Calvin Reid, senior news editor, Publishers Weekly, contends that “the demand for genres beyond superhero comics, the demands of women, people of color, LGBTQ folks, kids, and others for comics that reflect their lives is changing the American comics marketplace dramatically.”

Thus consider Gumballs (Top Shelf: IDW, Jun.), a pioneering comic from transgender cartoonist Erin Nations, in which graphic memoir combines with observational comedy, character studies, and more. Or Lauren Keller and others’ How Do You Smoke a Weed? A Comics Guide to a Responsible High (Jun.) from Charlie “Spike” Trotman’s Iron Circus Comics, which boasts a talented roster of queer, straight, male, female, nonbinary, and multiracial creators. Coming in September from PM Press, edited by Quincy Saul, Maroon Comix: Origins and Destinies collects stories about the Africans who escaped slavery in the Americas and created their own new societies and cultures. With A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns (Limerence: Oni, Jun.), genderqueer artist/writer Archie Bongiovanni and Tristan Jimerson illustrate the basics of everyday usage, leavening a serious topic with just the right amount of humor.

Notable forthcoming graphic biographies and memoirs include Congressman Lewis’s much-anticipated Run: Book One (Comics Arts: Abrams, Oct.). Cocreated with writer Aydin and illustrators Afua Richardson and Powell, it begins the next chapter in the life of the civil rights icon, starting after the historic success of the 1965 Selma campaign. Also continuing his acclaimed memoir series, French-Syrian cartoonist Riad Sattouf releases The Arab of the Future. Vol. 3: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1985–1987 (Metropolitan: Holt, Aug.). Other standouts include Keiler Roberts’s unsparing Chlorine Gardens (Koyama, Sept.), which touches on pregnancy, raising children, and mental illness; Liana Finck’s self-dubbed “neurological coming-of-age story” Passing for Human: A Graphic Memoir (Random, Sept.); and Eisner-nominated cartoonist Tom Hart’s The Art of the Graphic Memoir (St. Martin’s, Nov.).

Noam Chomsky comes to comics in Jeffrey Wilson and Eliseu Gouveia’s The Instinct for Cooperation: A Graphic Novel Conversation with Noam Chomsky (Seven Stories, Jun.). Sure to satisfy sports fans is The Comic Book Story of Professional Wrestling (Ten Speed: Crown, Oct.), as told by Aubrey Sitterson and Chris Moreno.

COMICS IN THE CLASSICS

On the crime fiction, thriller, and noir front, Pulitzer Prize winner Jules Feiffer presents The Ghost Script (Liveright: Norton, Jul.; Xpress Reviews 6/8/18), the gripping finale to his innovative “Kill My Mother” trilogy. Artist John K. Snyder III adapts novelist Lawrence Block’s Eight Million Ways To Die (IDW, Jul.) into a graphic, grainy, and moody setting that evokes the noir magazine covers of the period. And depicting male adolescence in the 1950s with grit, David Small’s first major adult work, Home After Dark (Liveright: Norton, Sept.; LJ 6/1/18), follows up (and possibly surpasses) his National Book Award finalist Stitches. Meanwhile, top suspense from Titan Comics/Hard Case Crime features Edgar-nominated Duane Swierczynski’s Breakneck, illustrated by Simone Guglielmini (Aug.); Max Allan Collins’s Quarry’s War, with artist Szymon Kudranski (Jul.); and Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer: The Night I Died (Oct.), penned by Collins, with artist Marcelo Salaza, and timed to celebrate the 100th birthday of the legendary crime novelist.

Stunning literary adaptations include Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird: A Graphic Novel, illustrated by Fred Fordham (Harper, Nov.); Jack London’s classic short story To Build a Fire (Gallery 13, Oct.), from acclaimed writer/artist Christophe Chabouté; and award-winning cartoonist Peter Kuper’s Kafkaesque: Fourteen Short Stories (Norton, Sept.). For music fans, creator Bill Morrison’s lavish adaptation of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine (Titan Comics, Aug.) complements NBM’s The Beatles in Comics! (Nov.), the complete illustrated story of the Fab Four, from their formation through Beatlemania and the turbulent 1960s to their breakup. Rock enthusiasts will savor Joe Pearson and others’ Pearl Jam: Do the Evolution (IDW, Sept.), detailing the creation of the group’s Grammy-nominated animated video, codirected by comics’ Todd McFarlane and Kevin Altieri.

TRANSLATIONS & MANGA

Speaking to the wide appeal of comics and graphic novels, or Bandes dessinées, in France, Flore Piacentino, project manager, French Publishers Association/Syndicat national de l’edition, tells LJ that “half of the [French] population reads at least one Bande dessinée per year, with 35 percent of books borrowed [from libraries] in France being graphic novels.” Furthermore, over the past decade, sales of French comics for adults and children, manga, and American comics have strongly increased. Highlighting the growing success of translated French works for American audiences, Piacentino says that “each year, translation rights for more than 200 French comics are sold to American publishers.”

Responding to the trend, D&Q has added several fresh voices from abroad to its 2018 offerings. German cartoonist Aisha Franz’s Shit Is Real (Jun.) traces a young woman’s struggles with depression in the wake of an unexpected breakup, while Korean creator Ancco’s Bad Friends (Sept.) examines female friendship in a 1990s South Korea torn between tradition and Western modernity. D&Q’s Pohl-Miranda is most excited about Ancco’s work after the huge success of Yeon-Sik Hong’s Uncomfortably Happy, noting “there’s a really good space for literary manhwa [Korean manga] carved out by the manga (and gekiga [alternative manga]) reading public.”

Mark de Vera, publishing sales manager, VIZ Media, relates that VIZ’s “library business has grown steadily over the past five years because of big new hits such as Sui Ishida’s Tokyo Ghoul [see Vol. 5: re, Jun.]...and Kohei Horikoshi’s My Hero Academia [see Hideyuki Furuhashi & Betten Court’s Vigilantes. Vol. 1, Jul.], as well as sequels to beloved manga series.” De Vera lists the most notable new trends as “the success of RWBY, a manga adaptation of the hit YouTube show [see RWBY Official Manga Anthology. Vol. 2: Mirror, Mirror (Aug.) and RWBY: Official Manga Anthology. Vol. 3: From Shadows (Nov.)] and continued growth of My Hero Academia, currently the biggest manga and anime property in America.”

Morgana Santilli (mangamaven.com), manager of Comicopia bookstore, Boston, also cites My Hero Academia as a “straightforward shonen action series...[drawing] from the very American influence of superhero comics…it has wide crossover appeal, and people who might not have typically read manga before are coming in and asking for it by name.” Santilli further credits the present growth of manga to technological advances, stating that “(t)he wide availability of anime streaming services means that more people…are able to access shows they might not have been able to…and in turn they are looking for the source material for those stories.” Santilli also acknowledges that publishers “are releasing much of their backlist and frontlist digitally, with some titles being digital-first or digital-only options.” Thanks to publications from small presses, such as Seven Sea’s 2017 success Nagata Kabi’s My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness and Chii’s The Bride Was A Boy (May), “the sudden appearance of LGBTQ+ voices in manga feels like a long time coming,” said Santilli. Moreover, vintage titles, including Go Nagai's Devilman and Leiji Matsumoto's Captain Harlock, also from Seven Seas and available in English for the first time, make it “clear that nostalgia is just as marketable for manga as it is for films and other media.”

THE NEXT AGE OF SUPERHEROES

Signaling that the superhero genre is alive and well is the unprecedented success of the Black Panther film, which garnered a record-breaking $242.1 million in box office sales in its first days of hitting theaters this past February. Jenny McClusky, collection development librarian, Ingram Library Services, considers superhero saturation from the perspective of libraries, telling LJ that “with the name recognition of critically acclaimed graphic novel creators [e.g., Mariko Tamaki, Gene Luen Yang] now on board to write superhero stories, the usual complexities of superhero worlds should hopefully take a backseat in public library collection development. If this approach works, we could see libraries and educators, as well as graphic novel fans, embrace superheroes in a whole new way.”

PW’s Reid notes several recent attempts by Marvel and DC to incorporate “diversity and social trends to their well-known heroes: Marvel has a lady Thor as well as an Afro-Latino Spider-Man...an Islamic Ms. Marvel, the revival of Black Panther, Iceman coming out as gay.” Fans should also look to John Ridley’s The American Way. Vol. 2: Those Above and Those Below, continuing a series the Oscar-winning director (12 Years a Slave) began a decade ago, as well as a new series he’s working on that expands the background of DC heroes from marginalized communities, The Other History of the DC Universe. Still, many of the major current releases are collected or deluxe editions of ongoing series or recent successes, including Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Dark Nights: Metal; Deluxe Edition (Jun.), with Quarto set to release Robert Greenberger’s long-overdue DC Comics Heroines: 100 Greatest Moments (Sept.).

ETCHING OUT THE TIMES

Among the big titles set in the continually revisited World War II era is Anthony Del Col and others’ Son of Hitler (Image, Jun.), which sees a British agent find the title character in occupied France and recruiting him for a most dangerous mission.

America and its conflicted history remain popular themes as well. Val Mayerik and Jim Berry’s Kickstarter-funded Of Dust & Blood: The Battle at Little Big Horn (NBM, Oct.) views that fateful event through the eyes of a cavalry scout and a young Lakota warrior. Jump ahead to 1970s America, a popular setting for the macabre, as seen in National Book Award winner Nate ­Powell’s Come Again (Top Shelf: IDW, Jul.), marking the artist’s first solo graphic novel in seven years. In a hilltop “intentional community” in Arkansas, high in the Ozark Mountains, the spirit of the Love Generation is kept alive even as the Me Decade comes to an end.

As evidenced by this latest crop of titles, the graphic medium continues to transform the storytelling landscape. Citing Congressman Lewis’s March trilogy and Ken Krimstein’s upcoming graphic biography The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt (Sept.), Bloomsbury associate publisher and editorial director Nancy Miller considers the current strengths and boundless possibilities of comics. For Miller, “graphic nonfiction can be especially effective in bringing a historical subject to vivid life in a way that makes it feel quite of the moment, both politically and visually—and almost cinematic in its sweep and immediacy...speak[ing] to readers in new ways.”

GOING GRAPHIC

Below are the forthcoming titles mentioned in this article. Translations are denoted by (Tr.)

Jody Osicki, Community Services Librarian, Saint John Free Public Library, NB, began reviewing videos and graphic novels for LJ in 2006. A pop culture devotee since age three, he has written about film, music, books, and other works of popular art for various publications since 1990. Osicki was LJ’s 2014 Video Reviewer of the Year