Katie O’Neill’s latest project has the charm of her previous Aquicorn Cove and The Tea Dragon Society, but in an abbreviated form for younger readers. Dewdrop is an axolotl, or a cute pink lump, who has a number of aquatic friends, including a turtle, a newt, and some fish. It’s time for the sports festival, and Dewdrop’s friends are competing, writing songs, and cooking. Each enjoys these activities, but the pressure gets to them, and they begin questioning themselves and […]

Katie O’Neill, author of The Tea Dragon Society, returns with a graphic novel bound to satisfy her audience. Aquicorn Cove has the same beautifully colored images, the same confident, sometimes wordless storytelling, similar relationships with unusual creatures, and a corresponding message about the necessity for balance with nature. As you can see in the preview pages below, Lana and her father have come to visit her Aunt Mae in a coast-side town cleaning up after a substantial storm. Lana’s mother […]

In Sheets, Marjorie is trying to keep the family business, a laundromat, together. Her mother passed away, and Dad has mostly checked out. She has to cope with self-centered customers and a pushy, smarmy neighborhood businessman. Then the ghosts appear. The spirits all look like the classic children’s image, white sheets with a rounded top for a head. But they go to support groups to try and accept how they died, and their world is notably less colorful than Marjorie’s. […]

The classic idea of a magical transformation, and the lesson of being careful what you wish for, is revisited in The Altered History of Willow Sparks by Tara O’Connor. This high school-set graphic novel does a terrific job with individual moments but doesn’t fully assemble them into a coherent whole. Willow has acne, one good friend, and a part-time job at the local library. Both she and her friend are bullied by the pretty, popular crowd, a situation Willow is […]

Jane’s World by Paige Braddock is a slice-of-life comic about a woman and her circle of friends and girlfriends that’s marking its 20th anniversary this year. For the milestone, Lion Forge has released an anthology collection, Love Letters to Jane’s World, that makes for both a starting point and a celebration of its run. Over the years, Jane’s World has been a comic strip — the publisher says “the first syndicated comic strip with a lesbian main character to appear […]

Sometimes you can go home again. I’ve always loved the Hopeless Savages series, created and written by Jen Van Meter. It ran from 2002-2005, was collected in 2010 (previous link), and finally had a new installment in 2015. In cases like these, one worries that nostalgia won’t be enough, that the magic has been lost (and decade-older readers won’t recapture the same sense of wonder). Thankfully, that’s not the case here. Which is wonderful, since the whole series is based […]

A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns is exactly what it says: an introduction to general-neutral pronouns in comic form. The short graphic novel by Archie Bongiovanni and co-writer Tristan Jimerson is out this week. It’s immediately approachable, with the two talking the reader through this introduction to what may be a new way to use language for some readers. The non-binary Archie uses they/them pronouns, while the cis Tristan uses he/him. They purposefully designed a guide that could […]