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The awards ‘celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy and horror.’
Lunar Boy, the graphic novel created by Jes and Cin Wibowo and published by Harper Alley, has won a 2025 Ignyte Award in the “Outstanding Comics Team” category.
The first graphic novel created by the Indonesian identical twins is the story of Indu, a young trans boy who lives on the moon until his mom takes him to Earth to live with his new blended family.
Continue reading “‘Lunar Boy’ by Jes and Cin Wibowo wins at the 2025 Ignyte Awards”Series co-creator Jarrett Melendez teams with artist Irene Flores for the next chapter in the culinary love story.
Love is in the air—or is that the aroma of garlic and butter sizzling in a pan? For fans of culinary romance, it’s about to be both: Oni Press will publish Chef’s Kiss Again!, the sequel to the Alex Award-winning graphic novel Chef’s Kiss. The new volume arrives in stores next August.
Series co-creator Jarrett Melendez returns to write the continuation of Ben and Liam’s love story, this time teaming with artist Irene Flores (Heavy Vinyl, Disney’s Mirrorverse: Belle).
“The response to the first volume of Chef’s Kiss was better than I ever could have dreamed,” Melendez said. “I knew right away I wanted to pick up where our dear crew leaves off. Now we get to see the aftermath of Ben’s article, what that does for the restaurant, Watson’s ego, and the relationship between Ben and Liam. Like the first volume, this chapter is deeply personal to me, and I hope it will resonate with readers as it deals with all sorts of new universal problems: how to balance life and work, the horrors and delights of a new relationship, and the many varied flavors of anxiety. This volume is bigger, gayer, and has what volume one was missing: DRAG!”
Continue reading “Exclusive | Oni Press serves up another helping of ‘Chef’s Kiss’ in 2026”Oni Press will publish the punk-rock graphic novel by Guilherme Petreca and Mirtes Santana next year.
Lace up your Vans, charge your walkman and get ready to crank the volume: Oni Press has announced Superpunk, a new middle-grade graphic novel from artist Guilherme Petreca and writer Mirtes Santana, and it looks like pure punk rock comics in the best way possible.
Superpunk follows Violeta, a 13-year-old skateboarder and podcaster who discovers her grandfather’s old cassette player…and decides to play a tape backward. Naturally, that gives her musical superpowers and accidentally unleashes a horde of monsters on her hometown of Hollow Hills. Just like the 1980s warned us about.
“We wanted to make a comic that feels like a punk mixtape – loud, full of heart, and carrying you until the very last beat,” Santana said.
Continue reading “NYCC | Rock out with ‘Superpunk’ next year”The ‘Mary Tyler MooreHawk’ creator brings his self-published pulp epic to Oni in 2026.
Cartoonist Dave Baker is teaming with Oni Press for a new edition of his underground hit Halloween Boy.
Announced at New York Comic Con, Halloween Boy Vol. 1: Last of the Halloween Boys arrives in May 2026, collecting the first five self-published issues of Baker’s duotone sci-fi pulp adventure in hardcover for the first time, complete with a new cover.
The Mary Tyler MooreHawk creator described Halloween Boy as “a two-fisted adventurer for the post-superhero age.” It’s a high-concept, meta-pulp romp that mixes cosmic quests, interplanetary warfare and pulp heroics with a personal story about family and legacy.
“Does the book feature megalomaniacal villains, inter-planetary warfare, and classic pulp-inspired escapades? You bet,” Baker said in Oni’s announcement. “But it’s also a deeply personal reflection on family, fraternity, and purpose… I really wanted to re-construct the heroic iconography that lured me into this great medium as a child. To repurpose, remix, and rebuild the best aspects of these types of stories in a hyper-earnest and sincere way.”
Continue reading “NYCC | Dave Baker brings ‘Halloween Boy’ to Oni Press”‘Putty Pygmalion’ competed against four other works in the LGBTQ+ Comics category.
The 37th annual Lambda Literary Awards were presented this weekend in a virtual ceremony from Charlie’s Queer Books in Seattle, Washington that celebrated the best in LGBTQ+ literature across 26 categories.
In the LGBTQ+ Comics category, Putty Pygmalion by Lonnie Garcia took home the award. Published by Silver Sprocket, this innovative graphic novel offers a queer reimagining of the classic Pygmalion myth through Garcia’s distinctive multimedia comic art style.
Continue reading “‘Putty Pygmalion’ by Lonnie Garcia wins at the 2025 Lambda Literary Awards”“I’m doing exactly what I want—a big cosmic adventure with giant Kirby style monsters …”
The Goon creator Eric Powell will prove himself worthy in a new graphic novel coming next May from Marvel and Abrams ComicArts.
Thor: Behemoth of the Black Moon will be published through Abrams’ Marvel Arts line, an initiative curated by Alex Ross and edited by Charles Kochman, editor-in-chief of Abrams ComicArts. It’ll be a cosmic adventure featuring giant monsters and a burden left to Thor by his dad, Odin.
“Growing up a Marvel kid as I did, getting free rein to tell a story with a premier character like Thor is a dream come true,” Powell said. “I didn’t want to waste this opportunity, so I’m doing exactly what I want—a big cosmic adventure with giant Kirby style monsters. Yeah, this book is absolutely my love letter to Jack Kirby and Walt Simons on, and I think their influences will be clear. Did I mention cosmic monsters? Cosmic . . . MONSTERS. The kid in me is giddy. I’m so appreciative of Alex Ross, Marvel, and Abrams ComicArts for offering me this project and allowing me to do my thing in this universe.”
Continue reading “Abrams ComicArts line expands with Eric Powell’s ‘Thor: Behemoth of the Black Moon’”We continue our interview series in advance of a live question-and-answer session between the two creators in Boston next week.
We continue our interview series on creators speaking at the monthly Picture + Panel event in Boston, which brings together two comic creators to talk about a specific topic — for September, Štěpánka Jislová and Sofia Szamosi will discuss “the lies that TV told me” about body image, women and relationships.
Next Monday, you can join the creators and moderator Rebecca Hains, Ph.D. for the discussion at the Boston Figurative Arts Center. You can find more details on it here.
Štěpánka Jislová is an award-winning comics artist based in Prague and the cofounder of the Czech branch of Laydeez do Comics, an international organization that promotes female comic artists and their work. Jislová collaborated with Czech writer Tereza Čechová on the 2021 Muriel prize–winning Bez vlasů, later published by Graphic Mundi in English as Bald. Srdcovka (the original Czech edition of Heartcore) received the Muriel Award in three categories in 2024, including the main prize.
Sofia Szamosi is an artist and author originally from New York City. In addition to making books, she enjoys painting and creating art in analog photobooths. Along with her debut graphic novel, Unretouchable (Lerner/Graphic Universe), she is the author of BAD KID: My Life as a Troubled Teen (Little, Brown Ink, forthcoming Spring 2026), a graphic memoir exploring her adolescence in and out of the troubled teen industry. A third graphic memoir is currently in development with Street Noise, focusing on healing from eating disorders and the journey of recovering fertility. Szamosi now lives in a small town in Massachusetts—just the right distance from New York City—with her husband, two daughters, and their elderly Pomeranian, Breakfast.
Check out the interview below, and big thanks as always to Gina Gagliano and Jason Viola, who organize the monthly series in Boston and brought this Q&A series to Smash Pages!
Continue reading “Picture + Panel | Štěpánka Jislová + Sofia Szamosi on ‘the lies the TV told me’”The interactive graphic novel by Ryan North, Chris Fenoglio and team took home the award at this weekend’s Seattle WorldCon.
Star Trek: Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way, written by Ryan North with art by Chris Fenoglio, Charlie Kirchoff and Jeff Eckleberry, won the 2025 Hugo Award in the “Best Graphic Story or Comic” category.
The graphic novel, which was published by IDW and edited by Heather Antos, features the cast of the popular animated series (which also won a Hugo Award) in a choose-your-own-adventure story involving different paths to death, destruction and coffee.
Continue reading “‘Star Trek: Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way’ wins a Hugo Award”The annual awards recognize LGBTQ+ books, poetry, comics and more.
Lambda Literary has announced the nominees for the 34th annual Lambda Literary Awards, which celebrate “the very best in LGBTQ literature.” The awards include an “LGBTQ+ Comics” category.
The nominees were chosen by 80 judges who took part in “the review and deliberation on this year’s 1,339 submitted titles across six months.” The list of judges included literary critics, academics, librarians, students, poets, independent and traditionally published authors, and other avid readers “representing a bright and bold spectrum of LGBTQ+ lived experiences.”
Last year’s winner in the comics category was A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll. Other past winners include Lee Lai’s Stone Fruit, Spinning by Tillie Walden and O Human Star: Volume One by Blue Delliquanti.
Congratulations to this year’s nominees:
Continue reading “‘Girlmode,’ ‘We Belong’ among the nominees for the 2025 Lambda Literary Awards”The writer of the new graphic novel that dives back into the world of the cult classic supernatural soap opera discusses the project, which is currently up on Kickstarter.
Dark Shadows was a supernatural-themed daytime soap opera that ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971, but still holds a place in the hearts of many fans. Barnabas Collins and his brood have lived on in books, movies and through streaming services over the years, bringing new fans to Collinsport, Maine — a city inhabited by vampires, zombies, werewolves, witches, warlocks and more.
Hermes Press has kept the story alive through a series of novels and reprints of previous comics, but now they’re returning to the world of Dark Shadows with an original graphic novel that moves the story into the present. Craig Hurd-McKenney, writer of the recent Station Grand from Oni Press, and Jok, artist of the under-appreciated In Hell We Fight with John Layman at Image Comics, are bringing these characters back to the forefront and continuing the drama that made the show so popular.
Here’s the description of Curse of Dark Shadows:
Carolyn Stoddard-Hawkes made a deathbed promise to her mother. But, in order for Carolyn to complete that promise, she must rely on the one person in the world she doesn’t want to see: vampire Barnabas Collins. His return home after an extended period away sets in motion a chain of events that will change the Collins family forever. Can Carolyn and her cousin David survive the newly-awakened CURSE OF DARK SHADOWS, or will Barnabas be the end of the Collins family line?
The project is currently up on Kickstarter, and Hermes Press has a small number of limited edition copies at the San Diego Comic-Con. They’ll also host a panel this afternoon at 3 p.m. Pacific at the con, featuring Hurd-McKenney and actress Kathryn Leigh Scott, who played Maggie on the show and will join the conversation remotely.
I spoke with Hurd-McKenney about the project, his history with the show and working again with his longtime collaborator Jok.
Continue reading “Smash Pages Q&A | Craig Hurd-McKenney on ‘Curse of Dark Shadows’”The 600-page story will be told across three hardcover volumes.
I can’t say I ever expected to see this news, but hey, there’s no better time than the week of Comic-Con for a surprise. Abrams ComicArts and Marvel are teaming up to publish X-Men: Elsewhen, a collection of John Byrne’s alternate history X-Men story.
Byrne is one of the legendary artists of the new X-Men, if not THE legendary artist of the new X-Men that debuted back in Giant-Sized X-Men #1. Byrne joined writer Chris Claremont on X-Men with issue #108, shortly before “Uncanny” was added to the title. Together with inker Terry Austin, he drew some of the most well-regarded issues of the title, including the Dark Phoenix Saga, Days of Future Past, the introduction of Alpha Flight and more. He left the title with issue #143, and went on to work on everything from Fantastic Four to Alpha Flight to Sueprman to Doom Patrol and so much more.
Cut to about seven years ago, and Byrne started posting these X-Men: Elsewhen comics on his Byrne Robotics forum. As the press release describes it:
Continue reading “SDCC | Abrams ComicArts to publish John Byrne’s ‘X-Men: Elsewhen’”‘Uri Tupka and the Gods’ is the first of two graphic novels Mignola has planned as part of his ‘Lands Unknown’ universe.
Mike Mignola is expanding the Lands Unknown universe with Uri Tupka and the Gods, a new graphic novel that Dark Horse Comics will publish next year.
“This is the first of two books tracing the life of Uri Tupka, former Doctor of Theology but now heretic, on the run as he looks for the truth about the gods,” Mignola said. “See Uri barely escape one disaster after another—pirates, bandits, witches and demons, giants and monsters. There is also a talking cat and a queen of the vegetables because, of course, why wouldn’t there be?”
The OGN follows Bowling With Corpses and Other Strange Tales From Lands Unknown, and like that volume, Mignola will work with colorist Dave Stewart on the art.
Continue reading “Dark Horse announces a new original graphic novel by Mike Mignola”
