Cranky Chicken: Party Animals by Katherine Battersby. Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2022. 9781534470217. 104pp. Three more short stories about Cranky and her friend Speedy (a worm). The first involves getting over being hangry, in which we find out Cranky is vegetarian and does not eat worms. The second involves a surprise party that’s not a surprise (surprises make Cranky cranky). The third involves a trip to the beach which, of course, Cranky is not looking forward to. All ends well because Speedy is an awesome friend. Beautifully drawn and hilarious.     Barb and the Ghost Blade (Barb the Last Berserker Book 2) by Dan & Jason. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2022. 9781534485747. 250pp. Barb has the Shadow Blade (which she acquired in Book 1) and its power makes her awesome. She’s taking the new monster zerks she’s recruited, including her yeti friend Porkchop, to Maug Horn to try to figure out how to defeat Witch Head. Along the way they encounter bandits and Barb tells the story of how she became a berzerker in the the first place. That’s how we learn about the Ghost Blade, which makes Berserkers unbeatable. Of course Barb will need to figure out how to use the Ghost Blade to face her former teammates who have been turned evil and now serve Witch Head. (The fantasy violence in this book is more silly than anything, and most of the monsters are completely kid-friendly.) Nugget and Hot Dog: S’More Than Meets The Eye by Jason Tharp (Ready to Read Graphics Level 2). Simon Spotlight, 2022. 9781665913294. 64pp. Friends Nugget and Hot Dog go to camp, where they continue to use K.E.T.C.H.U.P. to help others (See the attached art sample.) Dijon is still evil, but when he and Crouton try to scare everyone at the campfire, their plan goes awry. This is the third book in a fun graphic novel series for early readers.        

Call Me Nathan by Catherine Castro & Quentin Zuttion. Translated by Evan McGorray. SelfMadeHero, 2022. 9781914224010. When Nathan was a girl he hated dresses. He preferred playing sports with boys, and felt disgusted with his body when he hit puberty. He liked borrowing his brother’s clothes and wanted to cut his hair. Luckily he had a girlfriend, Faustine, who saw right through him and told him he wasn’t a lesbian, but that he was really a guy. She is the first person he asks to call him Nathan, but he’s still a bit depressed and uncertain about who he is. He starts cutting himself. And then he finally tells his parents that he’s a boy and starts to transition. (This all sounds heavy, but Nathan has friends throughout (though there are idiots around, too). And his story has moments of humor — my favorite is when he says his counselor looks like the old man from Dragonball Z.) After meeting a trans teenage, Lucas, at a party, Castro (a reporter) asked him and his parents if she could tell the story of his journey to become himself. This gave birth to Nathan’s story, a slightly fictionalized version of the truth, that she wrote as a graphic novel with artist Zuttion. It reads like a well-edited, pointed graphic memoir (though I do wonder a bit about which parts she made up, which she mentions but doesn’t specify in the introduction). The art and colors are wonderful, the panels are borderless, and the book left me feeling hopeful.

Kaiju No. 8 Volume 1 story and art by Naoya Matsumoto. Translation by David Evelyn. Viz, 2021. 9781974725984. Publisher’s Rating: T / Teen. Members of the Third Division kill a giant kaiju attacking Yokohama. Their leader, Mina Ashiro (27), is celebrated by the media. Kafka Hibino (32) is part of a crew that has the thankless task that follows a kaiju kill: cleaning up the giant corpse. (In fact in this particular instance Kafka has the most thankless assignment of all, taking care of the intestines.) Once upon a time, after their homes were destroyed, Kafka and Mina vowed to join the Japan Defense Force and fight kaiju together. Kafka couldn’t pass the entrance exams. But now the maximum age for new recruits has been raised, and he decides to make one more attempt. The problem: he’s keeps transforming into a kaiju himself, and everyone is trying to hunt that monster down. Will he be able to use his new monstrous strength to join the Defense Force? Or will they find out what he is and put an end to him? Giant monster fights, scatological humor, and pitch-perfect art that works for both make this one of the most entertaining manga I’ve read in a while. I’ve already put volumes 2 and 3 on hold at my local library.

Decorum by Jonathan Hickman (words) and Mike Huddleston (art). Image, 2022. 9781534318236. Publisher’s Rating: M / Mature. The Church of the Singularity, led by AIs with an AI God at its center, is after an egg. The Mothers protect that egg, and hope it will hatch into a messiah. Neha is a courier working to pay for her family’s cryopods until she can afford the treatment for the plague they’re infected with. After making a special delivery to a well-mannered assassin, Imogen Smith-Morley, at what becomes a very violent moment, Neha is offered a place at a special school for contract killers. There she seems outclassed by the violent, murderous alien students, and seems to lack what it takes to kill for money. But when a huge bounty is offered for delivering the egg (or for killing what’s inside it, if it’s already hatched), the reward may be enough to make her do whatever it takes. Hickman’s plot is intricate and moves the story right along; when it’s confusing it’s confusing in service to the storytelling, to get you to wonder WTF is happening and to get you to move deeper into the book. And it has those wonderful Hickmanesque touches, the white space, the well designed explainy pages and bits of iconography that you expect. But you’ll leave understanding that Huddleston is the shit, arguably the best artist working in comics. He uses a range of art and coloring styles, sometimes several on the same page, to great effect. Flipping through this book will amaze you. Reading it will make you stop several times in wonder. If it doesn’t, seek help.

Flamer by Mike Curato. Henry Holt and Company, 2020. 9781250756145. Fourteen-year-old Aiden Navarro is at camp with his Boy Scout troop. He’s looking forward to starting a new public high school after years of being teased at Catholic school. Right now he’s enjoying the silence of the woods when he can (it’s a break from his loud, abusive father), the structure of camp life, and spending time with his friend and tent-mate Elias. It quickly becomes clear (if not to Aiden) that he has more-than-friend feelings for Elias. The homophobic jokes the others boys make don’t seem to bother him, but at some point he becomes the target of quite a bit of bullying. As camp life continues, Aiden worries that the truth about what’s going on inside him will come out, though it seems inevitable; he feels like everyone will reject him, including his friend Violet (they exchange letters every week), and (minor spoiler) that life isn’t worth living after he feels like everyone knows. I love the art in this book, which is simple and mostly black and white but, like the cover, has flames on some pages in full color. This is used to great effect throughout the book — my favorite moment is when Aiden is reading some X-men comics (he wishes he was Jean Grey and loves the Phoenix Saga storyline). It’s probably worth noting, if you’re thinking of picking this graphic novel up, that the end won’t leave you bummed out. I put it up there with the great camp graphic novels, all of which I enjoyed more than outdoor camp itself: the Lumberjanes series, Vera Brosgol’s Be Prepared, and Mike Dawson’s Troop 142.

My Last Summer With Cass by Mark Crilley. Little, Brown, and Company, 2021. 9780759555464. Megan and Cass got to know each other during the summers when their families vacationed in Topinabee, Michigan. As kids they were inseparable. And, in a key incident, they once created a work of art together on a cabin’s wall. The place’s owner, a former kindergarten teacher, was more impressed than irritated, and made the girls’ parents to promise to enroll both of them in art classes. They continue to collaborate on art over the years even as Cass’s family falls apart. Most of the book takes place the summer before Megan’s senior year of high school, when she goes to New York for a few weeks to stay with Cass and her mom in Brooklyn. The neighborhood is a world apart from where Megan lives in Illinois, and she has a bread from her father talking down to her about her artistic ambitions. (He wants Megan to take over the family hardware store, and thinks art is something she can do in her spare time.) Megan has a great time full of art and deep conversations, she and Cass collaborate some more, and then they’re even going to put a piece they worked on together in a show. But when it becomes clear Megan’s parents might see it in the gallery, Megan panics. My daughter and I loved reading Crilley’s Akiko books together years ago; this story is much more mature but is a compelling read she’d love now. I was really impressed with the way Crilley uses non-white backgrounds throughout the book, which allows him to use white for emphasis and to draw my eye to different details; basically he continues to get better and better at the craft of comics, and everything he’s doing continues to wow me.

Huda F Are You? by Huda Fahmy. Dial, 2021. 9780593324318. This based-on-real-life bit of fiction follows Huda, a young Muslim woman who chooses to wear a hijab, as she navigates high school and the rest of her life. (Fahmy explains in the opening why she always draws Huda wearing her hijab, even in bed, and that this book isn’t meant to represent all Muslims or their experiences.) This is a straightforward high school story with an identity crisis, worried parents, and unrequited crushes that takes place after Huda and her family relocate to a new city. She is not the only hijabi in her high school, but she does face some racism. She also has to deal with people’s stereotyping her and other Muslim students. Huda’s main problem is that she’s not sure who she is (and that she is pretty good at faking interest in whatever anyone is talking about). Luckily she has some good friends around to help, and her family is pretty cool too. I learned a bit from this book about halaqa (Huda’s friend says it’s like Bible study, but they talk about Islam and the Quran), wearing abayas, and the stuff Huda has to deal with. Mostly I’m in awe of Fahmy’s writing and cartooning; she brought me right into Huda’s life using simple layouts and a perfect balance of words and art. This book deserves a home in middle, high school, and public libraries whether or not they have massive graphic novel collections.

Killer Queens: Putting the Sass in Assassin written and created by David M. Booher, pencils and inks by Claudia Balboni. Dark Horse Books, 2022. 9781506722153. Killer Queens opens in the bathroom at Stan’s Diner. Max is about to get it on with a pink alien in a bathroom stall. Alex is having less luck with the woman she’s dating, who is off talking to someone else. Then a flying alien monkey (jetpack, not wings) arrives with a couple of hench otters to try to get his spaceship back from them. That monkey, Captain Bieti, is also pissed that the pair are no longer intergalactic assassins-for-hire, though we don’t know that until the totally unnecessary dialogue on the page where they escape post lasergun fight. (They actually refer to it as “totally unnecessarily dialogue about stuff we both know” which is cute.) They’re soon offered a rescue job which they take and turn into a horny, innuendo-laden adventure that’s a lot of fun. Balboni’s art adds to the charm of the book and makes the whole thing feel like an episode of Flash Gordon. I’d give it to anyone who loves both Saga and Wilma Deering’s outfits in 80s Buck Rogers reruns.

Cloud Town by Daniel McCloskey. Amulet Books, 2022. 9781419749643. Cloud Town is located near the inter-dimensional rip, which is where the “Hurricanes” (aka giant monsters) emerge from. One recently destroyed Cloud Town High, so all of its students are now attending school in Tinker Town. Olive is not adjusting well to student life there, mostly because of bullies, but luckily her friend Pen is standing up for her while trying to get her to stand up for herself. Pen has an intense life — she was recently caught shoplifting, her dad has a huge medical debt, and a social worker is looking into her less-than-normal home life. Bottom line is she has to get a job. And an opportunity presents itself one day when she and Olive find themselves near a fight between a Storm Chaser (a giant robot with a half-human pilot) and a Hurricane. The Chaser goes down. Olive and Pen seek shelter from the monster inside the cockpit. And Pen, despite the impossibility of the move, thinks she can use her skateboarding abilities to pilot the robot. It seems like she might be right. (Minor spoiler: they save the day and she’s offered a job and becomes a bit of a celebrity for piloting the Storm Chaser. But that doesn’t last long, and the truth of which of the girls can actually pilot a Storm Chaser soon tests their friendship.) I love books that use black and white and one other color, and McClosky’s blue tones really work for his his art, which lives at a beautiful place between cartoony and realistic. The whole story feels immediate and intense, but there’s a lot of humor and heart here to balance that out. Plus: monsters. It reminds me of Brandon Graham’s comics in all the best ways, and I’d recommend it to anyone who is still a little young for his King City books. Worth noting: I met McCloskey at the American Library Association conference in Washington, DC, where he gave me a copy of this book after we talked a bit. He’s clearly a nice guy who puts a lot of effort into everything he does. Hire him to do a library program if you ever get the chance.