Tag: graphic novels

‘Girlmode,’ ‘We Belong’ among the nominees for the 2025 Lambda Literary Awards

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:

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Smash Pages Q&A | Craig Hurd-McKenney on ‘Curse of Dark Shadows’

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.

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SDCC | Abrams ComicArts to publish John Byrne’s ‘X-Men: Elsewhen’

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:

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Dark Horse announces a new original graphic novel by Mike Mignola

‘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.

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Paul Cornell + Lee Harris form Cosmic Lighthouse, announce first project with Comixology

The new company will publish graphic novels written by science fiction and fantasy writers, beginning with Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Paul Cornell and Lee Harris have teamed up to form Cosmic Lighthouse, a new publishing company that’s “devoted to publishing original graphic novels by the greatest modern science fiction and fantasy writers, paired with the world’s best artists.”

And ahead of next week’s San Diego Comic Con, they’ve announced their first project, a digital graphic novel that’ll be published through Comixology Originals.  Salvation’s Child is the debut graphic novel by science-fiction and fantasy writer Adrian Tchaikovsky and serves as a prologue to his bestselling book series, The Final Architecture, which includes the titles Shards of Earth, Eyes of the Void, and Lords of Uncreation.

“We at Cosmic Lighthouse are excited to work with the very best names in the field of science fiction and fantasy paired with great comic artists to bring new and longtime readers of the genre more of what they love in a new medium,“ Cornell said. “Launching our first title digitally with Comixology Originals brings us even closer to the future.”

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Guest Column | Meredith McClaren on ‘Meat Eaters,’ health, identity and transformation

In advance of her new graphic novel ‘Meat Eaters’ arriving in stores, the creator shares a personal essay about her health struggles and how they relate to her protagonist’s journey.

Today we welcome Hinges creator and Black Cloak artist Meredith McClaren to the blog, where she shares her deeply personal reflections on health, identity and transformation.

These themes also appear in Meat Eaters, her new graphic novel from Oni Press that arrives in stores July 7. It follows Ashley, a young woman looking to escape her stagnant small town life, but whose carefully laid plans are shattered when she wakes up one night covered in blood—and discovers she’s dead. As Ashley grapples with this shocking transformation and the changes happening within her, McClaren weaves a powerful story that resonates with her own experiences of unexpected life upheavals.

My thanks to the author for sharing this with us. It’s a wonderfully written essay with illustrations in the same style that I see on her Tumblr, which I recommend you follow if the essay resonates with you. You can also check out her travelogue on visiting Greece.

FUN TIMES
By Meredith McClaren
Author and Illustrator of MEAT EATERS

Your body will betray you.

(That’s a bummer of a starter sentence. Sorry. But stay with me, I have a point.)

Your body will betray you. It’s a universal human experience. I’m sorry. There’s no getting away from it. Some of us get there faster than others but we all eventually find ourselves in the unenviable position of feeling truly, utterly, devastatingly betrayed by our bodies.

For me it started with a tickle at the back of my throat that never went away.

I tried describing it to people. ‘You know how it feels when you suck in a big breath of cold air?’ It’s the way your throat feels tight. Constricted.

‘Sounds like asthma.’ One of my friends said.

But I wasn’t coughing. Yet. It was just a tickle. And it was always there.

The coughing came later. Over months. Over a year. Just one or two. A day. Everyday. Then it was a couple of times a day. Every time I woke up. Every time I went to bed. Sometimes an extra one somewhere in the middle.

It wasn’t until a friend’s wedding that I really reconciled that there was a problem. And I couldn’t really ignore it anymore. 

‘You cough a lot.’ My Dad said.

‘I know.’ I said.

Destination wedding in Flagstaff. A higher elevation. I was coughing. And I knew it wasn’t just the thinner air.

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Guest Q&A | Melissa Chan + Badiucao on ‘You Must Take Part in Revolution’

The graphic novel from Street Noise Books is a near-future dystopian story about technology, authoritarian governments and fighting for freedom.

Today we’re pleased to present a guest interview with Melissa Chan and Badiucao, creators of You Must Take Part in Revolution, conducted by Street Noise Books publisher Liz Frances.

If you’re not familiar with the graphic novel, it features a near-future dystopian story about technology, authoritarian government and the lengths that one will go to in the fight for freedom. The graphic novel is available now.

by Liz Frances

Melissa and Badiucao, this is your first graphic novel! What made you two decide that you should go from journalism and political cartoons to making a graphic novel — why this format?

Melissa: I’d been a journalist for almost two decades — writing articles and also as a correspondent for broadcast and video reports. It started to feel as if whatever I reported on didn’t really matter — that so much of it was reaching audiences who kind of agreed with me already about human rights and democracy. I’ve enjoyed graphic novels over the years, and it kind of dawned on me that this was the book I’d always wanted to write.

Badiucao: Yeap, graphic novels take serious topics like human rights and geopolitics and make them more accessible to groups who might not know the subjects well. I’d always want to break through the circles of my usual readers and speak to younger groups who are comics readers, gamers — basically to leverage the power of pop culture. You know that famous “tank man” from the Tiananmen Square student protests? How about making figures like that as cool and as popular as Spider-Man!

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Help conjure Donya Todd’s ‘The Witch’s Egg’ through the magic of crowdfunding

Avery Hill launched a Kickstarter campaign today for the dark fairytale.

As part of their Fall 2025 line-up, Avery Hill Publishing plans to release Donya Todd’s new graphic novel, The Witch’s Egg — and you can help bring it to life through a Kickstarter campaign that will launch soon.

The Witch’s Egg is one part dark fairytale, one part apocalyptic love story, featuring the macabre, wonderful art of Todd. This is Avery Hill’s second book with Todd, following Buttertubs. Todd has also done work for Cartoon Network, Mercury Filmworks, Blank Slate Books, Guillemot Press, Image Comics and many others.

You can check out the publisher’s description and some pages from the graphic novel below.

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Exclusive Preview | Check out the noir time-travel tale ‘Host Mortem’

The project is currently being crowdfunded through Kickstarter.

Courtesy of Clover Press, we’re pleased to present this exclusive preview from Host Mortem. The new graphic novel is currently being crowdfunded on Kickstarter.

Host Mortem is written by — and stars — Kevin Shinick, former host and time-traveling detective from the TV series Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego?, alongside actor/host Greg Lee. Both of them appear in the graphic novel, as an appearance at Comic-Con goes horribly wrong, and they find themselves transported back in time. After arriving in 1947, they find themselves involved in a murder mystery set against the Humphrey Bogart film The Big Sleep. When one of the stars winds up dead, Kevin and Greg’s knowledge of random trivia might be the key to solving this Hollywood caper.

“Between the two of us, Greg and I have hosted a number of game shows,” Shinick said. “As a result, we have a lot of random trivia floating around in our heads and I always wished I could put that knowledge to better use other than just, ‘Hey, did you know the singular of spaghetti is spaghetto?’ And since we both played fake detectives on Carmen Sandiego (me a time traveling detective and Greg a classic gumshoe detective) I got to wondering how we might fare with an actual murder? The ultimate question being, ‘Are hosts really smart? Or do they just have the answers?’”

The graphic novel is being brought to life by artists Damien Torres and Andrea Schiavone, colorist Pippa Bowland and letterer Taylor Esposito. Check out the preview and some of the variant covers available through the Kickstarter campaign below.

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Ngozi Ukazu returns to Apokolips for ‘Orion’

The sequel to ‘Barda’ will arrive in stores in 2026.

Ngozi Ukazu, creator of the wonderful Check, Please, brought the New God Big Barda, along with others from Jack Kirby’s Fourth World comics, to DC’s young adult graphic novel line last year. That graphic novel, Barda, will get a sequel next year that will focus on another New God — Orion.

In the first volume, Barda started the story as the right hand of Granny Goodness and has been tasked with an impossible task — break their prisoner, the unbreakable Scott Free. But something broke in Barda on the fiery Apokolips in the story of first loves. The new volume details Orion’s life on New Genesis as he his fears about not really belonging there are confirmed when Highfather reveals his true lineage.

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‘Feeding Ghosts’ by Tessa Hulls wins a Pulitzer Prize

Former Washington Post political cartoonist Ann Telnaes also won this year in the Illustrated Reporting and Commentary category.

Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls has become the second graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize.

The graphic novel won the award in the “Memoir” category, which comes with a prize of $15,000. Hulls follows in the footsteps of Art Spiegelman, who won a Pulitzer in 1992 for his work on Maus.

Pulitzer Prize administrator Marjorie Miller announced the awards today in a livestream on YouTube and described Feeding Ghosts as “an affecting work of literary art and discovery whose illustrations bring to life three generations of Chinese women — the author, her mother and grandmother — and the experience of trauma handed down with family histories.”

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Ed Brubaker + Sean Phillips return to ‘Criminal’ with a new graphic novel

Image Comics will release ‘The Knives’ in August.

It’s been about half a decade since we’ve seen new Criminal material from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, but that dry spell ends this year with The Knives, the first Criminal story since 2019.

The Knives arrives from Image Comics in August as an original graphic novel. Previous volumes of Criminal started as comic series that were eventually collected, so it’s a shift to the OGN format the duo has been excelling in for the past several years with Pulp, Night Fever and other projects.

“A few years ago someone reached out to me to return some of my uncle’s lost possessions, after his family estate had been plundered, and bizarrely, that sparked the inspiration for what I hope is the biggest and best Criminal book yet. A crime story about one generation growing up in the life, another growing older and trying to get out of it, and Hollywood, somehow, too,” said Brubaker. “This book is an epic, the longest original graphic novel we’ve ever done, and it’s been a joy to return to this series and these characters, especially after spending most of the last three years watching them come to life on set and screen. I can’t wait to get this book into readers’ hands.”

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