Etelka Lehoczky

Amanda Kolson Hurley is well-acquainted with suburbia's many negative stereotypes. But in a new book, she asks us to take a look at what is possible in this realm when the human spirit is at its best.

Artist Michael DeForge's enigmatic new graphic novel is all about ambivalence — belonging, displacement, escape and return. Also, strangely charming, blobby animals with all-too-human feelings.

Box Brown has a knack for using comics to illuminate tricky subjects. Now, with Cannabis: The Illegalization of Weed in America, he's turned his attention to one of the touchiest topics today.

Christopher Cantwell's new graphic novel follows teenaged Luna, who's struggling with mental health issues and finds a kind of hope in the appearance of a mysterious flying woman in the Chicago skies.

When Salvador Dalí met Harpo Marx, he was so infatuated that he wrote a treatment for a surreal Marx Brothers film, Giraffes on Horseback Salad. The film didn't fly, but this graphic novel does.

Garth Ennis' new graphic novel creates a fictional character to flesh out the stories of the real Night Witches, Soviet female pilots who dropped bombs on the Nazis from rickety old biplanes.

In the world of writer Chelsea Cain and artist Kate Niemczyk, women are seen as dangerous animals. They bring that world to life with pages and pages of ephemera: fake ads, pamphlets, even a magazine.

Alison Wilgus' graphic novel imagines a time-traveling history student from 2042 New York who finds herself trapped in Japan in 1864, masquerading as a male warrior as she tries to find a way home.

The title essay reveals just how far New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm has evolved from the unassuming reporter who might once have reassured herself before an important interview.

Turn-of-the-last-century labor leader Eugene V. Debs lead an interesting life — but this graphic biography misses plenty of opportunities to render the most interesting parts of it on the page.

Comics creator Farel Dalrymple returns to the world of his 2014 book The Wrenchies for a story about a teen genius stuck — in more ways than one — on a space station light years away from Earth.

Author Aleš Kot and artist Tradd Moore create a zippy, dizzily excessive vision of a future where the entertainment industry has merged with law enforcement after nuclear catastrophe and war.

C.S. Pacat's comic about rivalries and relationships in the overheated world of elite high school fencers stars a brash outsider up against a sleek yet surly prodigy at the top of his game.

This new graphic adaptation of Ted Fox's history of the Apollo Theater captures countless electrifying performances, but goes easy on the grittier aspects of the fabled theater.

Jessica Abel's comic Trish Trash, Rollergirl of Mars isn't just a sports story and a coming-of-age tale, it's a masterful critique of capitalism that stays engaging despite a few wobbles.

Olivier Schrauwen's new graphic novel is cold and rejecting, giddy and uncontrolled, all at the same time. It's semi-autobiographical and loosely sci-fi, set in an unsettlingly minimalist future.

M. Dean's psychedelic collection of graphic short stories chronicles how music affects the lives of a group of young people in the 1960s and '70s, with masterfully nostalgia-invoking illustrations.

While José Hernández and Jon Lee Anderson struggle continually to balance nuanced truth with cartoony distillation, Che remains a remarkable accomplishment.

Neil Gaiman's most famous creation first appeared in the comics 30 years ago, but the Sandman is still shaping our dreams — and his stories look and feel just as cool now as they did in 1989.

David Barnett and Martin Simmonds' comic about a troubled teen haunted by the ghost of Sid Vicious really gets going when it introduces centenarian (but immortal) ghost-buster Dorothy Culpepper.