Fantagraphics

Creative Team

Description

“Not all stories are spells, but all spells are stories.” Thus begins the wisdom of the Book of Murmurs, a storybook Little Moon’s mother reads to her at bedtime. When one day her parents are slain by the frightful Shenk and the book is stolen by the mischievous Catwitch, these words will guide the girl on her quest to piece her world back together. Enter a fantastical world encompassing the lush Glassmoor forest, the shivering magic of The Fault, the ethereal grandeur of The Wandering Haar, the secret Mushroom Library. Along the way, the girl encounters curious friends and foes — the Goblin, the stranger, the assassin, the librarians, gigantic spiders, a family of giants, and many others. In this place, names carry power, and the nameless are lost, adding an interior and metaphorical dimension to the girl’s journey. Looming over all is the Shenk — who threatens to steal names and consume the realm with fear. In confronting this monster, the girl will face her trauma, learn of her maternal history of witchcraft, and discover her role. In The Book of Murmurs, graphic novelist Candice Purwin crafts a fantasy world rich in lore and vibrantly rendered in watercolors and colored pencils. An enchanting story of grief, identity, and queerness that conjures whimsy, wonder, and a delightful sense of dread.

Creative Team

Description

Peter Bagge is not only one of the primary architects of the alternative comics scene that exploded in the 1980s and 1990s (alongside peers including Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, and Daniel Clowes), but also someone who helped fashion the aesthetics and attitudes of an entire youth movement. His comic book series, Hate, chronicled the exploits of twentysomething Buddy Bradley and his gang of lovable losers through the rise and fall of the grunge era (and eventually beyond). Bagge's style became a part of the Gen X zeitgeist and Hate became the best-selling alternative comic of its era, with Bagge's illustrations gracing countless album and magazine covers as well. The Complete Hate Volume 3 collects all the Buddy Bradley stories from Hate Annual (nine issues, 2001–2011), as well as a host of other odds and ends from the original Hate series, Details magazine, I Like Comics, and much more. Now in his 30s and married, with a child, onetime slacker hero Buddy Bradley shaves his head, dons an eye-patch, quits his "real" job and buys the local dump — because what better place to raise a toddler? Part screwball comedy, part soap opera, part loose autobiography, Hate is an enduring chronicle of the 1990s as well as riotously relatable to anyone bumbling through their twenties.

Creative Team

Description

Riad is a teenager growing up in the French region of Brittany, where he lives with his mother and brother and attends high school in Rennes. But his adolescence is anything but typical. Born to a Syrian father and a French mother, Riad spent much of his early childhood in Libya, rural Syria, and France—moving through contrasting worlds, political ideologies, and daily absurdities. Years earlier, his father—charismatic, authoritarian, and obsessed with dictators and with building a utopian Arab society—abducted Riad’s second younger brother, Fadi, and returned to Syria, leaving behind a fractured family. At 14, Riad navigates puberty, isolation, and the pressures of French society, while haunted by the absence of his father and brother, and the sadness of his mother. He turns to books, heavy metal, and drawing as refuge. The tone is darkly comic and sharply observant, capturing both the universal pains of adolescence and the surreal contradictions of the 1990s. Blending personal story and social commentary, this standalone volume offers a biting, poignant portrait of a young man coming of age in a world that feels both familiar and foreign. The End of the Arab of the Future is the first book in a two-volume series that concludes the critically acclaimed autobiographical graphic novel begun in Arab of the Future.

Creative Team

Description

When Ninkugel, a conniving, peasant farmworker, inadvertently causes an insect plague that destroys his town’s crops, he leaves his village in a self-imposed exile to avert death. From there, he lies and cheats his way across the countryside in a quest for fortune and high-living. When he convinces the elders of another village that he is a champion demon slayer who has arrived to free them from the tyranny of Balthicus the demon’s reign of terror, he is feted as a hero savior. But much like the tale of the scorpion and the frog, will Ninkugel’s devious nature get the better of him? And what does any of this have to do with What We Mean By Yesterday Vol. 1? Although Vol. 2 reads as a distinct and satisfying graphic novel on its own, there are still mysteries to be revealed! What We Mean By Yesterday began as a daily comic strip, one page per day, posted on Marra's Instagram (@benjamin_marra). Originally begun as an experiment in drawing faster and looser, it quickly became one of the more popular pandemic era webcomics, followed by over 20,000 readers daily, and has morphed into the most ambitious project of Marra’s career.