Simplicity: A Novel by Matty Lubchansky. Pantheon, 2025. 9780593701126. 272pp.

Here’s the book’s full title on the title page: In the Land of…Simplicity: A Novel. An Account Of The Unusual Peoples Of The Former United States & A Sojourn Through The Exurb Zones and Other Unsecured Territories By An Intrepid Explorer From The Coalition Of Secured City States.

The frame of this graphic novel is a school trip to a museum, in the future, to learn about the history of the United States and upstate New York in particular. The main story takes place in 2081 when Lucias Pasternak, as part of a project for the Museum of the Former State of New York, leaves the safety of a walled New York City to visit Simplicity, a former summer camp where members of the Spiritual Association of Peers live. He’s there to find out about their way of life by interviewing them and helping out. All does not go according to plan. Plus, the motivations of the person funding Pasternak’s work aren’t as noble as he believes.

The folks at Simplicity believe they’ve figured out how to live freely, but it also feels like a cult. Pasternak sinks in, stays longer than he anticipated, and eventually seems on the verge of becoming a member of the community. Then it all hits the fan. (Flashbacks to life in the walled, paranoid, security-obsessed New York City where Pasternak lives show that “civilization” doesn’t really offer a better way of life.)

The story is odd and went in unexpected directions that I enjoyed. The book is beautiful, smart, and post-apocalyptic. And it has a huge amount of shelf appeal. It’s squarely aimed at adults, though it might not look like it if you only glance at its pages. Worth noting: the queerness of some of the characters feels revolutionary in the way it’s just a fact.

 

Lucas Wars by Laurent Hopman and Renaud Roche. Translated by Jeremy Melloul. 23rd St., 2025. 9781250367402. 186pp. Includes a detailed bibliography plus a portfolio, commentary, and a few pages of notes on Roche’s creative process from roughs to finished pages.

I’ve been making my way through Rinzler’s The Making of the Empire Strikes Back for a while; I love its details, but it’s not the kind of book I read in a rush. I read Lucas Wars in one sitting.

It’s the story of George Lucas, and mostly it’s about him struggling to make the first Star Wars film. From early scripts to production problems to everyone who did not get the movie, it’s amazing that it ever got made, let alone that it succeeded. My favorite bits include the pages that dramatize early script concepts; I had read about most of it in Star Wars art books and the like, but Roche’s drawings are so full of drama and joy that they have something extra.

It’s great to read about Lucas’s focus and his belief in the movie, and to understand how much he sacrificed to bring it to the screen. There are pages that show the making of key props, sounds, and costumes, plus the founding of Industrial Light and Magic to handle Star Wars’s special effects. I loved the way Lucas confused some of his collaborators, especially in how he wanted the movie shot. Even the story of the contracts, including those of the movie’s stars and the one between Lucas and the studio, was fascinating. My favorite thing: I had heard the rumor about a detail in Mark Hamill’s contract regarding Star Wars merchandise, and I’m so happy to know it’s true.

 

Goes Like This by Jordan Crane. Fantagraphics, 2025. 9781683967729. 192pp.

This is a perfect companion to Crane’s adult graphic novel Keeping Two. The stories are short, but they share the mastery of sequential art on display in that book; the only comics creators in Crane’s league are Spiegelman, Lee Lai, and Sammy Harkham.

Goes Like This also features illustrations that range from beautiful to horrific yet beautiful. No matter the subject matter — yes, even that drawing of a pink eraser — they feel joyous.

And the design? The fuzzy hardcover of Karl Kerschel’s The Abominable Charles Christopher had a similar “Holy crap, I can’t believe this book!” feel. Goes Like this is full of different paper types that make Crane’s work that much better. Its spineless binding may leave you scratching your head until you open it. The dedication page made me laugh. Even the table of contents is perfect.

   

World’s Edge: A Mosaic Novel by James Sallis. Soho, 2026. 9781641298261. 225pp.

Sallis is one of my favorite novelists because he’s a poet who doesn’t waste words. His books circle ideas and moments and people that are often full of sadness, but somehow the totality of his stories feels honest and even a little hopeful. Part of that hope is that words, stories, and people matter in the end.

This book is a group of stories set in the future, in a broken, post-war U.S. made of ditches, towns, and even cities sometimes, or whatever is left of them. They’re places where survival isn’t guaranteed, where technology and a decent diet are as fragmentary as the idea of freedom, where different factions fight for control despite having little idea what they’ll do to make the world better.

It was a tough, dark read, but it somehow offered me that bit of hope I needed.

   

The Lamb Will Slaughter The Lion by Margaret Killjoy. Tor.com, 2017. 9780765397362. 125pp.

Danielle hitchhikes to a ghost town in the middle of nowhere, in Iowa. She hopes to find out more about her friend Clay, who used to live there. (He recently committed suicide.) It’s clear something weird is going on there from the moment of her arrival, when she encounters a blood-red, three-antlered deer and a host of undead animals. Danielle is welcomed in by a community of squatters and warned about the “deer,” which Clay had a hand in summoning. It’s clearly not a safe place for everyone, but Danielle stays to figure out what’s going on and, maybe, how to help.

This is the third book I’ve read by Killjoy (A Country of Ghosts, The Sapling Cage), and I’m officially a fan. I’m excited that there are two other books starring Danielle: The Barrow Will Send What It May (2018) and one that came out in 2025, The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice.

   

Freaking Romance Volume 1 by Snailords. WEBTOON Unscrolled, 2023. 9781990778964. 354pp. Zylith just got kicked out by her parents. Her hunt for an apartment isn’t going well, which is why, when Landlady Howser shows her a cheap place that’s allegedly haunted, she signs the lease. (Also in the place’s favor is the handsome, green-eyed ghost she catches a glimpse of in the apartment’s bathroom mirror.) What follows is weird and not too creepy. She catches her cat, Mr. Purrfect, being held by the boy ghost while he naps on her couch. When she touches the ghost, he vanishes. But he reappears in her apartment over and over again, doing the things one does at home. Zylith’s tough best friend, Vera, thinks Zylith is nuts to stay. But Zylith is obviously taken with the ghost. And he’s not exactly what he first seems, as we find out when the story shifts to his point of view later in the book. This is a totally weird romance. I picked it up because “Snailords” is an epic pen name, but I stayed for the art and the story’s pacing. (Snailords thanks their main artists– Mariami, Akikakies, and Rav — along with others, including editor Paul Jun, in a detailed dedication.) Volume 2 has already been published. Or you can still read the story on Webtoons at https://www.webtoons.com/en/romance/freaking-romance/list?title_no=1467&page=2  

The Ghost of Wreckers Cove by Liniers (illustrations) and Angelica Del Campo (written by). Papercutz, 2025. 9781545821237.

Cristina, her dad (an illustrator), and her younger sister Martha move to a new house that’s next door to an old lighthouse. The lighthouse’s lens is missing, though; it disappeared during the night of a big storm long ago.

The sisters meet the ghost of a young girl, Ida, and then, during a visit to the library, find out that Ida may have been the lighthouse keeper. The sisters decide to form a secret society of detectives to solve the mystery of what happened the night of the storm so Ida can rest. (Ida doesn’t seem to be able to help with the mystery.)

This is as unspooky a ghost story as I’ve read. It’s also a fine little mystery that starts with research! Liniers’ illustrations are always worth checking out — see his Macanudo series, Written and Drawn by Henrietta, The Big Wet Balloon, and Good Night Planet — but this is the first graphic novel I’ve read by him. It’s worth reading for that reason alone.

 

The Hard Switch by Owen D. Pomery. Avery Hill, 2023. 9781910395707. 99pp.

“The Hard Switch is coming.” It’ll happen when alcanite, the mineral that makes jump navigation (think faster-than-light travel) possible, is gone.

Ada is dropped into a hidden wreck. She’s there with Mallic (the engineer) and Hiaka (the pilot) to salvage any alcanite on board. She ends up in a gunfight with hunters out for the same. The squatter she saves gives her an artifact in thanks.

And it’s curiosity about that artifact, and the possibility of some earlier, long-lost faster-than-light technology that leads the crew to their next job — transporting cargo — and eventually to confronting the person out to profit from that lost technology, if it exists.

The interplay between the crew is great; I can’t decide who I like more, Mallic or Ada. She’s very tough! He’s just completely unexpected. And all three seem like good “people.”

I’m hoping this is the first part of a much longer graphic novel series.

 

Nafu Wants Food by Subi Bosa. Graphic Universe, 2025. 9798765629963. 112pp.

Nafu is the gigantic, hungry creature on the cover, and as the title suggests, he’s hungry. In fact he eats all of Mongo Village’s food then drinks all of their water and still he wants more. The Chief says it’s okay because Nafu protects the village’s residents and its temple, but a young girl named Doya points out that Nafu is a greedy bully.

Nafu soon wanders off into the desert and literally begins to fall apart. Then this becomes a much stranger story. Nafu’s head wanders for 15 years and finds a new village where food is controlled by a single family. There, creatures race for a chance to eat dinner, and then (minor spoiler) Nafu’s head ends up on the menu.

I’d have loved this weird graphic novel as a kid! And I hope to have a chance to read more of South African Subi Bosa’s comics.

 

The Fire-Breathing Duckling by Frank Cammuso. TOON, 2025. 9781662665332. (Easy-To-Read Comics Level Two)

Cammuso (Max Hamm: Fairy Tale Detective, Otto’s Orange Day, Knights of the Lunch Table) has fun with an ugly duckling story about a “duckling” who is clearly not a duck. The animals are all cheerful and full of personality; the stand-out is the little blue bird, who helps the title character figure out what kind of duck he is .

    All The Hulk Feels by Dan Santat. Abrams Fanfare, 2025. 9781419776137.

When scientist Bruce Banner gets angry, he turns into the Hulk. Hulk thinks Banner is mad for the wrong reasons. And Hulk wishes he could feel something other than anger. Santat’s drawings of the Hulk and a few Marvel villains are incredibly fun, as is the fact that this is an epistolary picture book — the text is mostly notes between Hulk and Banner.

    Giant Baby! by Liz Rozenberg, illustrated by Eva Byrn. Marble Press, 2025. “9781958325247.

After his parents put him to bed, Ezra grows into a giant baby and heads out into the night. He towers over buildings! He uses real cars as toys! Will he make it back home before his parents find out he’s gone? I love Byrn’s drawings, particularly the cows at the end.