Crushing: An Illustrated Misadventure In Love And Loneliness by Sophie Burrows. Algonquin Young Readers, 2021. 9781643752396. This nearly wordless story of loneliness and missed connections is told using pencils but not many colors, though red is used throughout to direct our eyes details and characters and to give them a little more life than background characters. It’s the story of a young woman and a young man, both of whom seem trapped in their own worlds, each trying and failing to catch the other’s eye. She works in a cafe and has awful experiences with dating apps. He’s bullied a bit and takes a job that requires him to wear a costume and pass out fliers. Exercise and music offer some respite. Then there’s a bike accident which leads to something good. Lovely book, loved the drawings and the colors and just how raw this book feels in moments. I don’t think it’s a YA book, though it seems like that’s how it was marketed — it’s something less common, a graphic novel aimed squarely at adults in their 20s that some teens will enjoy too. So a warning for you school librarians (especially those of you under fire) who may be better off avoiding this sort of stuff for now: there’s some butts in the social app images, and some drinking in a pub as well.

METAX by Antoine Cossé. Fantagraphics, 2022. 9781683965152. 300pp Cossé is a storyteller who uses large images, space, the level of detail in his art, along with a spare use of color, to tell compelling stories. This one is both futuristic and fantastic. It opens with the murder of a horse owned by the king of Ronin City. It’s the second murder in as many days. The masked “terrorists” fleeing the scene of the crime take pills and transform to make their escape. In a mine an engineer sets off an explosion as part of the ongoing hunt for METAX, a mineral or the like that’s in short supply and that hasn’t been found for a while. It’s at the heart of Ronin City’s prosperity. It’s not too long before princesses arrive with the king’s advisor Mister Wig to threaten the engineer and his family. There’s murder, mayhem, a magical garden, and a bit of magic in the rest of the story, an episode in a much larger tale that happens outside these pages. There’s a lot of images to love; my favorite by far are the pages showing the blasting in the mine at the front, and every page that has a bird on it.

Never Open It: The Taboo Trilogy by Ken Niimura. Translation: Stephen Blanford. Rewrite: Josh Tierney and Antonio Núñez Sánchez. Yen Press, 2021. 9781975325831. Publisher’s Rating: OT Older Teen. Ken Niimura’s art always has a lot of energy. It’s somewhere between mainstream manga and cartoony, super polished and extremely sketchy. Here he combines his quick, well-placed lines with just the right amount of red to tell three stories inspired by Japanese mythology. Teens and adults will love this book. In “Never Open It” a young fisherman, Taro, rescues a sea turtle and is rewarded by Princess Otohime with a trip to her undersea Dragon Palace. He doesn’t pass up the offer, which is a mistake, though life in the palace is awesome. When he wants to return home he’s given a red box that will allow him to go back there whenever he wants, though he can never open it. (He meets an old man who once went to the Dragon Palace, too, and who opened the box he was given.) In “Empty” two young monks are warned by their master that to stay away from a pot that contains deadly poison. They do not listen. In “The Promise” a young man helps a wounded bird and then meets a beautiful woman who becomes his wife. She earns money by weaving cloth on his mother’s old loom, but makes him promise never to open the door to the room while she’s weaving. (Of course the young wife is the bird. It did not end as I thought it would, and the red color really played a part.)

MBDL My Badly Drawn Life by Gipi. Translator: Jamie Richards. Fantagraphics, 2022. 9781683965213. 144pp. Gipi’s autobiographical graphic novel is almost totally without panel borders, and most of it looks as if it was scribbled with a pen. He breaks this format to great effect when the book suddenly has fully watercolored panels that take place in a different place. He comes across as a man obsessed with his penis and sex, a man with problems. Inside the book there are unreal moments, strange creatures, pirates, and several medical professionals. At the end is a beautiful comics sequence, perhaps made beautiful by its contrast to the ink-filled pages in the rest of the book, in which the narrator learns to swim. I couldn’t say that I feel like I know Gipi incredibly well, but when I closed this book I had an awe for the art and page layouts and a desire to immediately read it again.

Passport: A Graphic Memoir by Sophia Glock. Little, Brown and Company, 2021. 9780316458986. Includes and author’s note at the end plus a blacked out version of Glock’s passport. This is Sophia Glock’s graphic memoir about growing up in various unnamed places, all of which I think are in or near Central America. This vagueness is because her parents were intelligence officers for the U.S. government, and she can’t disclose where she grew up or their real names. It’s about being a young person in a large family where everyone lived with that vagueness (though her parents do explain things to her when they think she’s old enough). Glock lived under a sense of heightened threat, with real security measures, but still as a teen managed to have a secret life partying with friends from school. But her friendships were tenuous. The place where she lived was clearly not home. And she was dealing with her changing relationship with her older sister, who had just left for her first year of college back in the states. Glock saw herself as the awkward one, a person who had trouble getting close to others, which was complicated by language barriers, family relationships, and the fact that she liked girls as well as boys. Her coming-of-age story feels both familiar and unique.

Junkwraith by Ellinor Richey. Top Shelf, 2021. 9781603095006. 280pp. Florence throws away her skates one night, and they become possessed by a junkwraith, a spirit out for revenge. It curses her, causing her to start to lose her memories. (Really she should have just donated her used goods and avoided the problem but…) With her juju, Frank (a little egg-shaped companion that’s there to help her) she runs away from home. (Sensibly, her first stop is the public library where she usually escapes into paranormal romances.) After getting some advice from a friendly, once-cursed librarian, she goes into the wastes beyond the city to find a way to deal with the unfriendly spirit. This graphic novel looks like it glows — I love Richey’s art, and the best part is the colors! This is a unique, self-contained fantasy story about haunted stuff, and if you love indy comics it’s worth picking up or buying for your teen collection.

Real Hero Shit by Kendra Wells. Iron Circus Comics, 2022. 9781945820830. 120pp. Publisher’s Rating: Adults Only. Eugene is the purple, horned prince of the Kingdom of Marble. Kids sing songs about him in school, as he finds out after discussing his origins post-coitus with the young man and the young elf in his bed. Outside the castle he sees help a wanted sign for a questing party in need of a fighter. He applies and then spars with Michel (a rogue) to prove his skills. Despite the way he irritates the short-statured magic user Ani, he joins the party and they head to a small church town where people have been disappearing. (The other member of the party is Hocus, a Zsegdan who uses a “gender wheel” to explain why E uses the pronouns E does.) Eugene’s constant horniness wears on everyone, especially Ani, though it does make the entire adventure fairly lighthearted despite what they discover happened to the missing folks. This inclusive, entertainingly swear-y and sexually explicit fantasy graphic novel was just what I needed in an otherwise serious week.

Your Pal Fred by Michael Rex. Viking Books for Young Readers, 2022. 9780593206331. 272pp. Michael Rex (Fangbone!) has created a kid-friendly post-apocalyptic world full of slime cannons and mostly ridiculous weapons. (It’s kind of You Can’t Do That On Television meets classic The Road Warrior, though I know that dates me.) Two brothers, Pug and Plug, stumble into the ruins of a toy store and accidentally activate Fred, a fresh-faced robotic friend from a bygone age that is intent on spreading kindness and friendship. In quick succession Fred is taken prisoner twice and told he’s a subject of first Lord Bonkers and then Papa Mayhem. Fred gets free, but decides to visit each ruler and ask them to stop fighting over resources. (Fred’s new friend Wormy thinks it’s a crazy plan.) The ruins, costumes, and even the weapons are all very cartoony, and there’s very little sense of danger despite the dirt and the wreckage of our civilization. And guess what? Kindness wins the day. My favorite part: when Fred meets Lord Bonkers and gives him a gift, a tiny rock with a face on it. (Fred does voices for the rock. Lord Bonkers is not amused.)

The Great Zapfino by Mac Barnett and Marla Frazee. Beach Lane Books, 2022. 9781534411548. Circus performer The Great Zapfino climbs a 10-story ladder to jump into a tiny trampoline, but then decides not to make the leap. He runs for the airport and heads for a place that might be Florida instead. There he works as an elevator operator, but his circus skills do eventually come in handy. This is the most beautiful and stupendous black and white comic I’ve read in a while. Best part: the crowded elevator scenes. Take A Breath by Sujean Rim. Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2022. 9781534492530 . Bob can’t quite fly like all the other red birds, despite practicing a lot. He kind of loses it, but then he meets the helpful Crow who teaches him to BREATHE. (This all helps Bob relax, and he feels great, and then guess what?) A beautiful little book abou slowing down that can even teach you how to relax when you’re nervous. (I’m giving this one to my wife to show her I am present sometimes.) Froodle by Antoinette Portis. Roaring Brook Press, 2014. 9781596439221. All the animals in the neighborhood make the sounds you’d expect until one day a little brown bird doesn’t peep. Crow isn’t happy, but can’t make the little bird stop. And then the silliness gets contagious. My favorite part was when I mis-read “Dove” as “Dave.” I laughed really hard. Oops. (My life is full of Daves.)