The Yves Saint Laurent Revolution: The Story of “Le Smoking” by Loo Hui Phang, illustrations by Benjamin Bachelier. Thames & Hudson, 2026. 9780500030967. 168pp. Includes a Cast of Characters, a chronology, and a bibliography which includes exhibition catalogues and films. (This graphic novel was originally published in France, I believe.)

The book opens in 1966, with Yves Saint Laurent finishing sketches to be handed to his premiers d’atelier so that they can turn his ideas into reality. The sketches are of Le Smoking, a tuxedo adapted for women. In the next section, in 1967, he and Betty Catroux walk around New York while she’s wearing Le Smoking with little underneath. They’re turned away from high-end restaurants because Betty is breaking the rules by wearing “men’s clothes.” They discuss the history of fashion and laws about it, plus they run into Andy Warhol, Coco Chanel, and others; it’s easy to see why they were soulmates. 

My favorite section in the book is the next, “Dancing,” in which one of the aforementioned premiers d’atelier explains their job. It’s clear how exacting a knowledge of form, fabric, and stitching they bring to their work, and why different premiers d’atelier will produce different products from the same sketches. (This brought comic book inkers and colorists to mind for me; each has their own style and can change the look and feel of the art they help finish.)

The real star of the book for me is Bachelier’s art. It’s stunning. He blends pencils and inks, includes a bit of collage, and has just the right amount of color, some of it added using unexpected textures. Every page of this book provided me with a beautiful surprise. 

La Plus Belle Plage Du Norde by Lucas Burtin and Sun Bai. Fidèle Editions, 2021. 9782492290015. 76pp. In French, but there’s a translation of each panel that contains text on the inside of the dust jacket, in both English and Chinese. Images of / from the book plus ordering info at https://fidele-editions.com/products/la-plus-belle-plage-du-nord-lucas-burtin 

Here’s the description of the book from the publisher’s website (English version):  

“Following the rise of sea levels, on a deserted Earth, a Northern restaurant pours one last coffee to two friends who came to say goodbye. Just a moment to remember the strolls on the windy coast, confronted to the choice of leaving or staying. Further away, a thick cloud of smoke rises from the silent depths of the northern sea.”

This is a quiet, melancholy book. Humans have mostly abandoned the planet. A young woman travels to a nearby town to meet a friend at a cafe to say goodbye. Their meeting is awkward. 

This graphic novella is a stunning physical object. I tracked down how to order a copy after seeing some of Bai’s illustrations online, and was super happy to receive mine within a week. (The publisher is located in France but shipped my order from a US location.) I’ll be ordering more books from the Fidèle Editions again soon. 

Desmond Cole Ghost Patrol: The Graphic Novel: Beware the Werewolf adapted from a novel by Andres Miedoso, illustrated by Salvatore Costanza at Glass House Graphics. Little Simon, 2026. 9798347103706. 

Andres is a cat person. His best friend Desmond is a dog person, and he’s also the founder of the Ghost Patrol. The story begins with them looking for ghosts in a park when the dog catcher picks up a puppy the two are chasing. The strays in his truck look surprisingly happy! He invites them to visit the puppy at the pound the day after the night of the full moon. They sense something weird going on, and yeah, it involves werewolves.  Despite the chase scenes in the latter half of the book, it’s not too scary. 

The October Girl Book One by Matthew Dow Smith. Maverick, 2025. 9781960578594. 

Autumn used to believe in fairies and magic and her imaginary friend, Barnaby. Now she’s thirteen, has a weekend job, and her life is not a fairy tale. But then her imaginary friend shows up, and things start to get weird. She finds answers to what’s happening, or at least the beginning of them, in the bookstore she used to visit with her dad back before he left. 

I love Smith’s art, particularly how it works with his straightforward layouts. (I’ve already read Book Two in the series, and it’s great, too.)

All In Line by Saul Steinberg. New York Review Books, 2026. Introduction by Liona Finck. Afterword by Ianin Topliss. Includes additional drawings from the 1947 Penguin paperback edition plus: “Notes on All In Line” by Sheila Schwartz of The Saul Steinberg Foundation, and “Captions” which lists the original date of publication and other information about each drawing. 

I picked up this book because I’m a huge fan of Finck’s comics and illustrations. (I’m sure she mentioned it in her Substack newsletter, which you should subscribe to.) She explains that Steinberg “…is a good artist crush.” And that, “His perfect ease can’t be faked.” 

I don’t think you’ll fall in love with every drawing in this re-issue of Steinberg’s first book, but if you flip to five pages, I’d be willing to bet you’ll see one you’ll think about for a long while. Looking at his lines brought me joy. I love the images, in particular, that he seems to have composed with wire rather than ink. I don’t understand how he found ways to express thoughts that were so smart and silly at the same time. 

The Lights Of Niterói by Marcello Quintanilha. Translated from Portuguese by Bruna Dantas labato & Marcello Quintanilha. Fantagraphics, 2026. 9798875001772. 232pp.

Hélcio and his friend Noel (aka Turtle) are at the beach when they see someone in the distance fishing with dynamite. Hélcio wants to go out and grab some of the fish to sell, since there will be too much; Noel wants to play it safe and turn in the empty bottles he has. Hélcio has more reason to be cautious than Noel — he’s a rising star in the local soccer scene, and is supposed to be at practice soon — but he talks Noel into going out in a rented boat. 

What happens is beyond what either bargained for. It includes flashbacks of Hélcio’s life as he dives for fish, the threat of violence as the two try to sell their haul, and a storm that is as terrifying as it is beautifully drawn. As they try to keep their boat afloat, it’s clear that both their lives and their friendship are at stake.

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.