Halloween Boy: Last of the Halloween Boys by Dave Baker. Oni Press, 2026. 9798894880747. 248pp.  Includes an interview with Baker. Includes material originally published as Halloween Boy # 1 – 5. 

Halloween Boy is “an individual without a past” who combats the impossible. He works “…as an archaeologist-for-hire, magical ghost hunter, and super-scientist explorer.” He is “…the patron saint of the impossible.” In the graphic novel’s introductory adventure, he rescues an alien slave girl named Carrion, calls upon spirits of thirteen monks for help opening a vault, and faces the guardians of the temple of a spider god (as well as others out to loot it, too). He refers to himself as a demon. And he wields a giant sword that is way beyond flaming. 

I love everything about this book, including its amusing yet serious tone, Baker’s un-inked art, and his minimal use of color. My favorite bits are the introductory pages to each chapter along with the pages where Baker goes berserk with his art. Halloween Boy reminds me of early Hellboy adventures in the best way, and it has the energy of Michel Fiffe’s Copra. 

I had an early electronic review PDF but had to buy a copy for myself the day it was released. The book is a beautiful physical object that belongs on your shelf! File it next to Baker’s amazing Mary Tyler Moorehawk and the recently published Punk’n Heads, which he co-created with Nicole Goux.

Good Old-Fashioned Korean Spirit by Kim Hyun Sook and Ryan Estrada. Penguin Workshop, 2025. 9780593521328. 204pp. Includes notes about the story’s inspiration and sketches in the back. 

Kim and Estrada continue their graphic novel series about university life in South Korea in the 1980s, when protests eventually brought about the end of the ruling military dictatorship. The series, which includes Banned Book Club and No Rules Tonight, features the members of a folk dance/music club at Anjeon University. The books are nearly all-ages; there’s a little bit of drinking in the books, plus there’s a constant threat of violence against the rebellious twenty-something characters who, each in their own way, do not conform to their families’ and society’s expectations. 

This one has some of my favorite characters in the series, the four halmonis (grandmas) who live in the tiny Dangnam Village. The halmonis need Taehee (one of them is her real grandma) and her friends to play some long-neglected traditional instruments as part of a celebration of the year’s first full moon, to sooth the angry spirits that (maybe) killed their husbands. It’s not as much of a ghost story as that sounds, but Taehee doesn’t know that when she tricks the members of her club into accompanying her to Dangnam. What follows includes revelations of several club members’ secrets, a few examples of traditional Korean ceremonies, and helping with chores around the farm. (The latter is a real thing that I hope still happens in South Korea. When I was teaching at a university there in the 1990s, huge numbers of my students would be absent when they volunteered to help at farms.)

I can’t really recommend these books enough. They feel gentle and idealized, but they will make readers ask questions about South Korea in the 1980s that should lead to an understanding of the pride its citizens take in their hard-won democracy. 

Narrow Rooms by Choi Sungmin. Translated by Janet Hong. Drawn & Quarterly, 2026. 9781770468528. 516pp. 

This massive, beautifully colored manhwa centers around Daye, a young woman studying for art school college entrance exams in Seoul. She lives in a “one room,” a small efficiency apartment in a building full of them. Daye is quiet, talented, and obsessive. But the object of her obsession isn’t art; it’s the boy who lives next door. As she starts creating chances to meet him and then goes through his trash for clues about his life, the director at the school where she’s studying gets creepier and more determined in his pursuit of Daye. She continually turns him down and finds obvious ways to escape his presence, but this doesn’t stop some of the other young women at the school from spreading rumors about her and the director. (Those young ladies also have problems of their own.)

The story kept me riveted. It’s an example of what my South Korean students used to call “one-sided love,” when one person loves another so much but the object of their affection doesn’t seem to notice or care.  (Daye’s neighbor has no clue.)

My favorite thing in the book: What Daye finds when she goes through her neighbor’s garbage. There’s nothing super strange, but I love the details like the text on trash bags and the images on Korean cigarette packs. It reminded me of when I lived in Busan, and it made me remember some small details of life there that I haven’t thought about in decades. 

Queenpin by Megan Abbott. Simon & Schuster, 2007. 9781416534280. 180pp. 

I was in the Pike Place Market’s BLMF books looking at the stacks of noir on the front counter when I asked the owner who Megan Abbott was. He was surprised I didn’t know, and he recommended this one.

It’s a near-perfect crime novella. The protagonist is an unnamed young woman taken under the wing of the hard-as-nails Gloria, an aging beauty who rescues her from her idiotic bosses, the consequences of the slightly crooked bit of bookkeeping she does for them, and the ordinary life she’ll have after she finishes school. Gloria gives her an apartment, nice clothes, and a place in the underworld where, for a while, she does as she’s told. She starts by making deliveries and not asking questions before moving up to collecting debts and helping to wash money. But then she falls for the wrong guy, a gambler who can never walk away from a table while he’s winning. 

It’s soon clear she’s going to have to cross Gloria and Gloria’s bosses to save this dude from the consequences of his debts. But it’s hard to pull anything over on Gloria because she sees everything. 

The Observologist: A Handbook for Mounting Very Small Scientific Expeditions by Giselle Clarkson. Gecko Press, 2023. 978177657190. 120pp. Includes an index, a final exam, and a certificate of completion in the back, plus a Where Is Waldo? element that you probably won’t notice until you get to the end.

The book defines Observology as the study of looking, and observologists as those who make small scientific expeditions every day in (but not limited to) damp places, on pavement, on weedy patches of ground, and behind curtains. Many bugs are shown and explained in detail; the illustrations are fabulous. The section on bees is my favorite, but there are others that will be helpful to budding observologists like “how to sneak up on a bug”, and others that will be more helpful to the bugs themselves, like “how to save a moth from drowning” and “how to help an exhausted bee.”

This is another of those books I wish I’d had as a kid, back when my grandparents bought me boring nonfiction for kids from the backs of periodicals. It’s oversized, fun, and encourages a level of kindness in budding scientists that I have never seen in books like it.

Scion by James Islington. S&S / Saga Press, 2026. 9781668239247. 240pp. 

Azure is a gene-boosted agent of the Keres. Mostly he’s contracted to assassinate lifers — those who can afford the drugs needed to keep them young forever. (Those on basic income sometimes crowdfund these assignments, though he usually doesn’t know who hired him or why.) The book opens with the final moments of one such job, with Azure taking on a many-eyed, many-armed, many-clawed bioweapon. 

Azure is a big banged-up, but his next assignment should be easy. It’s a protection gig. They’re usually low-risk, but this one just keeps getting weirder. The compound outside the megacity, Themis, where he is dropped off to meet his client, is impossibly expensive once he understands its features. And that client presents as incredibly old, though she could obviously afford not to. He’s not allowed the help of the AI, Atti, that he usually relies on. And along with his pay he’s offered a bonus — information on a job that nearly killed him.

This was just the bit of short-ish, well-written violence I needed on a recent trip, the perfect distraction during a stressful flight and a long wait. It was the first book by Islington I read, but I enjoyed it so much I’ll be picking up his The Will of the Many soon. 

Murder School by Paul B. Rainey. Drawn & Quarterly, 2026. 9781770468603. 216pp.  

Yesterday was a perfect day. I was looking for a reason to avoid work on a project, and I arrived home to find a review copy of Murder School in the mail. I felt entirely justified in clearing my schedule and reading it in one sitting, even though today I’m putting in a few extra hours of work. The one-sheet that came with it describes it as “part memoir and part surreal fiction.”

The book opens with reproductions of a few issues of Crud, a comic-format school newspaper by “ex-All-Saints pupil Nick Goddad!” In the first, after another student wet himself, Nick approaches the headmaster to try to get him to allow students to go to the toilet without permission. In another, he takes revenge on a nonchalant bully. In a third, Nick is sexually assaulted by an older boy, and no one seems to care. The fourth is Murder School, and it’s about something that he witnesses while wandering the school hallways during class. 

Who is Nick Goddard? How does his experience relate to what Paul Rainey experienced at his secondary school, All-Saints? (This is the subject of most of the rest of the graphic novel.) What Rainey and others go through is dark. It includes not just beatings by other students but repeated violence at the hands of teachers. But Rainey has friends, and he has comics. Sometimes he even has a friend who likes comics. He’s caught stealing. He gets the strap. 

One of his teachers always sends him out of class, and he’s unsure why. Another beats all the students in class, usually with a slipper, for speaking while he’s lecturing. (He does this even when no one is actually speaking). This teacher is one of my favorite characters. I can’t justify this; something is clearly wrong with me. I really loved the music teacher, too, who invites students to bring in music to play during class but doesn’t seem to understand the filthy lyrics. (I laughed aloud several times while reading the book, probably loudest when an idiotic teacher was trying to shame a young Paul Rainey for reading 2000 AD.)

The end of the main narrative about Rainey leads into another issue of Crud, which is back after a forty-year break. And then this turns into the final act, also titled “Murder School,” that starts with Rainey giving an amazing presentation about his first graphic novel and leads to a strange reunion or two. 

Murder School is another volume of deadpan brilliance from Rainey, and it made me happy that I never had to navigate school life in the UK.

Fire Power Book One by Robert Kirkman and Chris Samnee. Image, 2022. 9781534322073. 448pp. Includes Fire Power Prelude and issues #1-12.

The book opens with Owen Johnson climbing through the snow to find the lost Temple of the Flaming Fist and train there. To be accepted as a student he has to fight Master Wei Lun (who is odd and not at all what you’d expect). Another student, Ling Zan, is the first to show him kindness. They fall in love. And of course Owen makes enemies. There’s a room he’s not permitted to enter that he’s told contains a dragon, and a statue of Master Shaw that may be alive. Everyone is working to rediscover the lost art of the flaming fist.

Owen Johnson is also in search of the truth about his birth parents, which has to do with the Scorched Earth Clan. (While the Temple of the Flaming Fist works to keep the dragon imprisoned and the world safe, the Scorched Earth Clan wants to see the dragon released and watch the world burn.) Early on there’s an attack on the temple featuring ninja-like warriors and airships. Plus there’s some basketball. Oh, and Owen rediscovers the Flaming Fist technique.

Then the story jumps forward 15 years. Owen is back in the US, married to a badass cop, and the father of two wonderful children. He makes furniture. Everything is peaceful. And then someone from the Temple finds him and tries to get him to come back. He’s told Wei Lun is gone and that the Temple is vulnerable to the Scorched Earth clan. Said ninja-like warriors are soon attacking Owen and his family in their home. And Owen finds out that almost everything he has been told is a lie.

I initially dismissed this comic series as an Iron Fist ripoff, and I’m glad to find out I was totally wrong. It’s got a light, entertaining tone throughout, and at the heart of it all is Owen’s family. He’s not hiding anything from his wife, his kids aren’t idiots, and they’re all in this crazy situation together. And this all moves it along as much as the amazing martial arts fight scenes.

This is a deluxe hardcover edition of the first part of the series, which wraps up with Book Two.

Poking the Squid: What We Can Learn From Animal Sex by Perrin Roosevelt Ireland. W.W. Norton, 2026. 978132408904. 272pp. 

Ireland, along with cats Pudge and Ursala, takes readers on a graphic tour of the amazing sex lives of animals. She dives right into details in the introduction, the first in a long line of complicated examples of how “…so much of what humans struggle with about sex, and what makes understanding the private lives of animals so difficult for us.” It’s about hyenas. (See the included images from the book for more info.) 

The graphic novel is full of unexpected examples and facts about other species; their biological sex is complicated and eye-opening, as is their behavior. Perrin shows how previous generations of scientists tried to interpret all of this through their human- and male-centric viewpoints and ideas about morality, often to the denial or outright misinterpretation of the complexities of biological sex, its expression, and the act itself. 

The whole adventure is entertaining and often utterly unexpected. The diverse generation of scientists Ireland quotes and interviews seems to be doing a fantastic job of trying to make sense of it all, as is Ireland herself.

Backwater by James Sallis. Soho, 2026. 9781641298599. 208pp.

I love short crime novels, and I love those written by James Sallis. He was a poet who created characters by sharing moments from their lives, whose books often move suddenly and naturally between a character’s present and the past in a way that feels natural. This was his last novel; Sallis died earlier this year. 

Bishop, a former detective turned jazz guitarist, is talked into coming back to the town where he grew up to help solve a murder (though there’s no body) by a friend from his days as a cop. By the time Bishop shows up to take a look, that friend has absented himself. Bishop sinks in behind his friend’s desk, into his files, and into life in a place he never wanted to return to. It brings back memories of moments on the police force, of growing up, and of books he’s read. He connects with the people he works with as much as anyone, and finds many things unchanged. And as he puts in time, much of it just spent listening and paying attention, solutions to puzzles and problems present themselves, as do a few other crimes and tragedies of different sorts. 

I’ve read most of Sallis’s novels more than once. For me, this is one of his best, right up there with Moth, Death Will Have Your Eyes, and Drive (which was the basis of the film starring Ryan Gosling).