Trumpets of Death by Simon Bournel-Bosson. Translated by Edward Gauvin. Graphic Universe, 2025. 9798765644324. 230pp.
One night, Antoine’s father drops him off at his grandparents’ place in the country. He’s never liked it there; it’s full of his grandfather’s spooky hunting trophies. His grandma tries to connect with him, but his grandfather is distant when he’s not being a jerk.
When his grandma is running errands, she tells Antoine to go mushroom picking with his grandfather. They become separated. And Antoine finds a truly magic mushroom that transforms him into a young, white stag. He’s hunted by scouts and others, and eventually by his grandfather, too.
The book feels a bit more surreal than the plot suggests due to Bournel-Bosson’s coloring, which is striking. I’m not sure what most young people will make of the book, but it’s a quick, enjoyable read that’s more literary than most graphic novels marketed to them.
Tower Dungeon Volume 1 by Tsutomu Nihei. Translation: Sam Malissa. Kodansha, 2025. 9781647294540. Publisher’s Rating: 13+.
Princess Ignelia has been taken to the Dragon Tower, where most of the troops who tried to rescue her have been killed. Each village is to send someone to help, or to hand over twenty bushels of grain as a penalty. The people in Yuva’s village decide he should be the one to go. He’s fine with that; he even feels like he might be able to help. With his grandpa’s old helmet and shield in hand, he sets off for the tower.
There he finds a group of beat-up warriors trying to deal with a monster on the tower’s fiftieth level that has killed many of their comrades. Yuva is sent into the tower with a group of soldiers to try to take it out. He isn’t given a weapon or much of an explanation, though he is carrying two barrels for the group. Along the way they face a door guardian, a slime monster, and other dangers. It’s all pretty spooky and weird, which is reinforced by the sense of the mountainous size of the Dragon Tower that Nihei’s art creates, as well as some of the more bizarre character/creature designs. My favorite of the “creature” designs is the messenger who arrives toward the end of the book.
By the end, the soldiers are ordered home. But three new recruits, including Yuva, are left behind to try to bring back the princess.
I’ve read the three volumes published in English so far and have no plans to stop.
The Great American Dust Bowl written and illustrated by Don Brown. Houghton Mifflin, 2013. 9780547815503. Includes a selected bibliography and source notes that include a few stunning photographs.
I recently ordered every one of Don Brown’s nonfiction graphic novels from my local library system, and this is the best of those I hadn’t read before. Brown includes geology, history, and weather to explain the context for the start of the Dust Bowl, and then presents fourteen dusters (dust storms) in 1932 in a few quick sketches. It’s a perfect introduction to the chaos the dust creates in the later pages as it falls like “chocolate snow,” damaging everything in its path, suffocating people and animals, and burying the land as it darkens skies across the country.
Brown gives a sense of the scale of what happened, of the carry-on effects as well as the toll they took on people. And he cites his sources! Brown continues to be a model for everyone who writes graphic nonfiction.
Tall Water by SJ Sindo and illustrated by Dion MB. HarperAlley, 2025. 9780063090163. 248pp.
Nimmi wants to become a journalist like her father, but her interview to get into Columbia goes badly. When she gets home, her dad has a surprise for her; a letter from her mother, who runs an orphanage in Sri Lanka, and whom Nimmi has never met. (Minor spoiler: the government in Sri Lanka revoked her dad’s press pass long ago, and he has not been allowed to enter the country since he fled with Nimmi when she was a baby.)
Nimmi doesn’t fit in at her South Dakota high school, but she does have a great boyfriend, Daniel. And she’s having dreams about meeting her mother that seem like more than dreams. So when her father tells her he’s being sent back to Sri Lanka to cover the war there, she wants to go along and meet her mother. He insists it’s too dangerous. But that doesn’t stop Nimmi from buying her own ticket and secretly following him.
What follows is a wonderful, harrowing tale of Nimmi’s first visit to the country where she was born. There’s some violence and a hugely sad natural disaster to contend with, in addition to Nimmi and her mother getting to know one another. This book is worth reading for its setting and sense of place alone, but the story offers much more than that.
Black Cloak Volume One by Kelly Thompson, art and colors by Meredith McClaren. Image, 2023. Contains. Publisher’s Rating: T+/Teen Plus. #1 – 6.
Black Cloaks are investigators in the “last city in the known world,” Kiros. It’s a place full of magic, neon tech (think Blade Runner), and bright billboards that’s ruled by elves, though there are humans, centaurs, mermaids, and the like, too. The story is a police procedural starring Detectives Essex and Pax, a murder case involving the prince (he’s Essex’s ex (say that three times fast)). At the center of it all is a secret that could be the end of Kiros.
The city is so well designed! McClaren’s art works for me in every way, though I particularly love the way she draws people in the distance, and the way her colors make things glow.
They Were 11! by Moto Hagio. Translator: Ajani Oloye. Denpa, 2024. 9781634428156. Publisher’s Rating: Teen (13+).
I don’t read much shojo manga, but this graphic novel has so much shelf appeal I had to pick it up. The eleven characters appear on both the front and back, and the whole thing is oversized, at least in terms of how manga are usually reprinted.
The first They Were 11! adventure involves a test to enter the prestigious Cosmo Academy. Ten examinees are sent to a spaceship for their practical exam, but when they arrive, there are eleven of them. What’s the implication? Is there a taritor in their midst? Do I need to tell you more about the plot?
The second, “Horizon of the East, Eternity of the West,” mostly involves three of the examinees from the previous story, one who is the king of his planet and two others, now engaged, who are visiting him. There’s a rebellion against the king and a larger, looming conflict, and the characters spend a lot of time on the run.
What I love about this book more than anything is the way Hagio draws the action sequences; they remind me of Star Blazers, Galaxy Express 999, and Astro Boy cartoons, and make me a bit nostalgic about watching those when I was kid. The characters have big emotions, and the threat of violence and risk of death always seems cute in a way that I find entertaining. The romance is there, too, but it’s downplayed most of the time in a way that may make this a gateway to more shojo manga, at least for me
(If any of this sounds familiar, I believe Viz published these stories in English in several volumes back in the 1990s.)
The Traitor & The Wretch by Jasmine Walls, Illustrated by Rowan MacColl. Bonedust Press, 2025. 9798999373403. 375pp.
Knell, a cultist, was part of a group trying to summon a god onto a battlefield. He’s not a bad guy, though — joining the cult wasn’t his idea. But being in the cult changed him, and it’s likely he’ll be killed by anyone who sees him. Luckily, he has some powers and abilities that will help him survive.
Percy was a warrior on the other side who turned traitor. He lost his hand in the battle, and he’s shocked that he wakes up at all, though he’s even more surprised at how he survived and who saved his life.
Soon Percy and Knell are on the run together, hunted by the king’s men and whoever else wants the bounty on them. How and why the two initially come to trust each other is almost as good a story as how their trust deepens to friendship (and then something more) as they flee together.
This is pitched as a ‘dark fantasy adventure with a queer slow-burn romance, so that last parenthetical is not much of a spoiler. I will say this is one of the sweetest, slowest romances I’ve read in a long time, something that reminds me more of romantic moments in books by Lloyd Alexander than of those in novels by Rebecca Yarros.
Worth noting: this is the first book published by Bonedust Press. https://www.bonedustpress.com/
In case her name is familiar, I’ve previously reviewed two graphic novels by Walls, both of which I loved — Brooms and The Last Session Volume 1.
The Inscrutable Doctor Baer and The Case of the Two-Faced Statue by Jerzy Drozd. Iron Circus, 2024. 978163899143. 248pp.
Doctor Baer (that’s him, the plush-bear-looking dude on the cover) stores adventurers’ cursed objects. His house is also home to many a weird, possibly evil magical creature, as two adventurers discover when they bring a cursed werewolf head to him. Once placed in his vault, in the gaze of his stone guardians, the werewolf’s spirit emerges to join his household.
Outside, a bird sorcerer (Gallus) and his trusty steed (Wilhemina) are trying to break in. Inside, Doctor Baer is feeding his residents. Soon two new adventurers, Pickles (a pig) and Taft (a huge turtle), approach the house. Their entrance gives Gallus and Wilhemina the opportunity to break in and try to steal Baer’s stone guardian, though Doctor Baer manages to save the elemental wisps in the stone, and its parts are scattered.
If Gallus puts the stone guardian back together first, he’ll be able to nullify any magic used against him. Dr. Baer has to stop that, obviously. The wisps of elemental magic will help, as will Pickles and Taft, who both feel a little guilty.
What follows is a lighthearted adventure with lots of action. Drozd’s art carries the story right along, and the colors are truly magical.
Grommets by Rick Remender and Brian Posehn (writers), Brett Parson (artist), and others. Image, 2025. 9781534366480. 192pp. Publisher’s Rating: T+ (Teen Plus). Contains #1-7 of the series.
Sacramento, 1985. Rick is a new student at his junior high school. He thinks he’s found his people when he spots some other skaters, but they’re total assholes. But then he meets Lloyd, and they head to the skate park together. They both kinda suck.
This turns into a tale of teenage rebellion featuring longing for skater girls out of their league, parents lost to an exercise cult, Spencer Gifts, Taco Bell, video game arcades, and so much of what I remember from being about the same age as Rick and Lloyd in the mid-80s. Of course Rick’s parents want to ruin it all, just like the jerks who crash their party at Lloyd’s place.
Worth mentioning: No graphic novel made me laugh more this year. My favorite character is Lloyd’s horny grandpa because I knew a few dudes with his sense of humor way back when.
Madame Livingstone: Congo, The First World War written by Christophe Cassiau-Haurie, illustrated by Barly Baruti. Translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger. Catalyst Press, 2021. 9781946395474. 132pp. Oversized.
“Lake Tanganyika, Congo in the year 1915. Two vastly different men in a war that is not theirs. Assigned a virtually impossible mission: sink the German battleship, the Graf von Gotzen.” (back jacket copy)
Those men are pilot Gaston Mercier, of the Belgian army, and his guide, rumored to be the mixed-race, kilt-wearing son of David Livingstone. (His nickname “Madame Livingstone” is one used to tease/harass him.)
I don’t go in much for historical stories, and even less for historical French comics — the art and storytelling style don’t often appeal to me, but this is a standout. The story is compelling, but it was Congo-born artist Baruti’s illustrations, from the beautiful nature scenes to the battles and the characters; everything wowed me. Kudos to Catalyst for publishing it in what is, in the US at least, an oversized format.
Trumpets of Death by Simon Bournel-Bosson. Translated by Edward Gauvin. Graphic Universe, 2025. 9798765644324. 230pp.
One night, Antoine’s father drops him off at his grandparents’ place in the country. He’s never liked it there; it’s full of his grandfather’s spooky hunting trophies. His grandma tries to connect with him, but his grandfather is distant when he’s not being a jerk.
When his grandma is running errands, she tells Antoine to go mushroom picking with his grandfather. They become separated. And Antoine finds a truly magic mushroom that transforms him into a young, white stag. He’s hunted by scouts and others, and eventually by his grandfather, too.
The book feels a bit more surreal than the plot suggests due to Bournel-Bosson’s coloring, which is striking. I’m not sure what most young people will make of the book, but it’s a quick, enjoyable read that’s more literary than most graphic novels marketed to them.
