Dear Jackie by Jessixa Bagley, illustrated by Aaron Bagley. Simon & Schuster Books for Young People, 2025. 978-1534496576. 288pp. Jackie and Milo are nervous about starting middle school, and they’re so close that Jackie’s mother calls Milo Jackie’s “replacement brother.” (Jackie’s real brother, Jabari, has just moved away from home.) Milo is the kind of boy who cries while reading comic books, and Jackie is not at all a girly girl. They’re perfect friends. At school Milo immediately makes new friends while playing sports, and Jackie doesn’t like them at all. Her locker is below Adelle’s; Adelle wants to give Jackie fashion advice, and isn’t nice about it at all. As notes start to get passed and kids start pairing off, Jackie deals with her isolation by writing herself notes on a typewriter she finds in Jabari’s room. At first they’re the kind of things she wishes someone would say to her, to give her a boost. But soon, tired of more and more people telling her to act and dress more like a girl, Jackie types herself a note from a secret admirer and sticks it in Adelle’s locker “by mistake.” When Adelle finds it, people are shocked, but they also become nicer to Jackie. As everyone tries to figure out who likes Jackie, the whole situation becomes more and more precarious. Worth noting: Early in the book, Jackie tries to dye her hair with disastrous results. (It’s pretty funny, too.) And Jabari is the best older sibling ever. This is the second tween graphic novel by the Bagleys, who also wrote/created/illustrated Duel, the fencing graphic novel with lots of sibling rivalry.  

Cat People: A Comic Collection by Hanna Hillam. Running Press, 2024. 9780762486033. 100pp. A human woman falls through a portal to a world where cats rule and humans are pets. And she arrives on Halloween. My favorite parts: visiting the pet store; cats trying to deal with a moody, incomprehensible human; and when the cat introduces a second human to its home. Hilarious, but intended for adults and older teens rather than kids.    

North Continent Ribbon: Stories by Ursula Whitcher. Neon Hemlock, 2024. 9781952086847. 172pp.

This book contains short stories that stand together as a novella. It was shortlisted for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, and my friend Gina recommended it to me during Seattle’s Worldcon back in August.

The stories explore the culture of the planet Nakharat, a slightly futuristic society obsessed with secrets and promises that take the form of ribbons hidden in one’s hair, and that has an AI, which they don’t trust but make extensive use of. It’s worth reading the book without knowing more than that.

The sense of the culture that emerges from the six stories was beguiling, and their characters brought me back over and over. It stands with The Left Hand of Darkness and Ancillary Justice in what it accomplishes in terms of world building, and it’s all the more impressive in that it’s much shorter than either book. Highly recommended.

     

Angelica and the Bear Prince by Trung Le Nguyen. RH Graphic, 2025. 978059312472. 218pp. Includes sketches and an author’s note. Angelica (aka Jelly or Jellybean) was just accepted as a tech intern at the Log House Theater, and she’s super excited. (She’s also a bit nervous because she’s the kind of person who takes on too much, and she recently burned out.) She saw a play there for the first time when she was seven, and it was about a young girl sent off to live with a white bear by her father. In fact,  Per the Bear is kind of the mascot for the theater. And Angelica has been texting whoever runs the Per the Bear fan account for a while. (It turns out he’s the guy who wears the costume at the theater.) When Angelica tells her friend Christine (an actress) about all the texting, it’s clear Angelica has a crush on him. The rest of the book involves their romance, Christine’s relationship, the boy in the bear costume’s backstory, and Angelica and Christine’s mothers and their restaurants. It’s adorable in a way that didn’t annoy me, and I loved Angelica’s parents. This is one of those books that makes me wish my daughter was still young enough to read to. Though my local library classifies this as a young adult book (it has high school-age characters), I wouldn’t hesitate to hand it to a 5th grader. Nguyen’s previous graphic novel, The Magic Fish, was also lovely and sweet; though that felt a bit more personal, this is a beautiful fairy tale.    

This Place Kills Me by Mariko Tamaki and Nicole Goux. Abrams Fanfare, 2025. 9781419768460. 270pp.

Abby Kita is something of an outsider at Wilberton Academy, a transfer student who is pissed off. But at the afterparty for the Wilbergin Theatrical Society’s production of Romeo and Juliette, she ends up talking to one of the play’s stars, Elizabeth. When Elizabeth is found dead the next morning, Abby is the last person who spoke to her. Plus she has Elizabeth’s copy of the play (she kind of forgets that, and then keeps it secret) which includes a note from her secret boyfriend. This turns Abby into an amateur detective of sorts, with the Watson to her Holmes being her not-quite-friend of a roommate. The secret of why she left her last school is held over her head by those who want her to leave things alone.

Tamaki’s writing continues to amaze me; I always think she’s at the top of her game, but her books get better and better. Goux’s art, and particularly her use of limited colors in the book, makes the whole thing shine. If you’ve never read Groux’s graphic novel F*ck Off Squad (cocreated with Dave Baker), it’s a thing of beauty.

Worth noting: This takes place in the age of the Sony Walkman, so it may give you a sense of nostalgia, too.

   

The Delicacy by James Albon. Top Shelf, 2021. 9781603094924. 320pp. Two brothers get a surprise inheritance and move away from their small island town (and their mother).  One (Tulip) opens a restaurant in the outskirts of London; the other (Rowan) grows veggies at the property they inherited. Tulip becomes more and more obsessed with success and fame; Rowan feels a bit abandoned and unappreciated. At the center of their restaurant’s menu is an unusual, tasty mushroom that they find on a small plot on their land. It’s soon in every dish the restaurant serves. The secret to cultivating it is a doozy, and leads to all kinds of conflict between the brothers. There’s a remarkable page that conveys the taste of this mushroom, the first time Tulip tastes one, that wowed me. But it’s Albon’s composition and his perfect, unpredictable use of color that pulled me through the book. Love Languages by James Albon. Top Shelf, 2025. 9781603095570. 176pp. This story of friendship, language, and eventually love is Albon’s best graphic novel yet. It’s about two foreigners who meet in Paris: Sarah, who’s got an office job managing a bunch of jerks, and Ping, an au pair with her own work frustrations. They mix French, English, and Cantonese to get to know each other after a few chance meetings. The brilliance of the book is not only the writing, which is wonderful; it’s the way Albon conveys the way the two dip in and out of languages and combine them. It’s something I’ve never seen done before, and it’s even more amazing after they get to know each other better. (Albon also does a great job expressing Sarah’s language fatigue and confusion at other points in the book.)  

The Shadow Planet by Gianluca Pagliarani (art) & Giovanni Barbieri (script). Image, 2025. 9781534331761. 96pp. Publisher’s Rating: M / Mature. Includes some bonus material in the back, including thumbnails and other art.

This graphic novel is a throwback to monster movies of the 1980s or earlier, and I enjoyed it as such. It even has a few bad jokes. The back says it’s Lovecraftian, but I’m not sure I agree. If you liked John Carpenter’s The Thing and wish the original Lost In Space was more gory, stop reading and find a copy.

The book opens with a blood-soaked sex scene, and soon we’re on a Federation starship with a crew of six that’s received a call for help. It’s from a ship that was reported destroyed thirty years before. Four of the crew take a shuttle to the planet’s surface to investigate. They find a very freaked out survivor who says her father massacred the rest of her family. It’s not too long before there’s a murder and alien monsters. It gets weird in ways that are predictable and fun to read.

At the heart of the story is Sgt. Vargo, an Alain Delon lookalike who always has a cigarette in his mouth. (The main characters are inspired by famous actors of the past, according to the notes at the end of the book, but I couldn’t identify any of the others offhand.)

My favorite thing: the Batmobile-inspired rover is badass.

   

Not On Display by Zelba. Translation by Alice Yang. Helvetiq, 2025. 9783039640843. 114pp. plus an Afterward by Zelba, an essay titled “The Nude In Art” by Fabrice Douar, and more. This is part of the amazing Musée du Louvre graphic novels series published in France by Futuropolis, many of which are available in English and other languages. https://www.futuropolis.fr/collection/musee-du-louvre/ I’ve read most of them and this is by far my favorite. In the opening pages of the book, a man and his father, at the front of the security line at the Louvre, take off all of their clothes before entering the museum. They’re not the only men who have to disrobe (though women and kids can leave their clothes on). What?! Six months earlier, a cleaning lady out for a smoke with a coworker explains how much she loves the “ladies” in the galleries she cleans. The works of art feel like friends to her. She says can actually hear them talking, and that they’re sick of how they’ve been treated. She promises to pass their message on to the museum’s director, that the nude sculptures of women had enough with the “unwanted touching and obscene comments from men…” and that they’re planning a rebellion. The cleaning lady is fired. And then the trouble at the museum begins! (It quickly expands a bit to include the nude women in paintings, too.) The story walks a fine line between serious and entertaining. My favorite characters are the President-Director and his sister, who functions as his Executive Secretary, because they have a secret that keeps the museum running. As at the Louvre itself, though, the statues are really the stars of the story. Zelba’s illustrations and dialogue make some works of art more compelling than ever. Worth noting: the book has a perfect ending.      

Model Five Murder: a sci-fi noir by Tan Juan Gee. Silver Sprocket, 2025. 9788886200706. 64pp. Includes a few pages of bonus content at the end about process and the history of the book.

This graphic novella has a great opening: Io is on a spacewalk at a refueling depot when she comes across a body floating nearby. Weirder, it has the same face she does; it’s also a Rohm Model Five cyborg. She returns to Tasang Loop, a huge space station and home to millions, though there are very few Model Fives living there. That last fact turns out to be central to the mystery she stumbles into.

I love Tan’s art — it takes inspiration from manga, particularly in its use of screen tones, but it’s shading and subtle use of color really makes it stand out. This is a short, enjoyable mystery from a Singaporean creator.

     

Ew, It’s Beautiful: A False Knees Comic Collection by Joshua Barkman. Andrews McMeel, 2025. 9781524897642. 140pp.

I love the birds in Barkman’s comics. They confirm my opinion that crows are the best. (Pigeons, you’re a close second!)

As soon as I read this book I recommended it to three people. And I’m still going. It’s fabulous.

You can read all the comics at https://falseknees.com (Be sure to read Life After Life, which is a short graphic novel about birds. Looks like Barkman does one every November!)