Clock Hands by Marieke Nijkamp and Sylvia Bi. Greenwillow, 2026. 9780063027138. 282 pp. including an author’s note on guilds and strikes at the end.

In the port city of Siannera, it’s hard to get decent work if you’re not a member of a guild. And it’s hard to join a guild if you don’t have the money to become an apprentice. Vale is guildless. His family needs more money than he can earn. But one day he’s hired by a man and his daughter who are new to the city and are looking for a guide. The father doesn’t play by the guild rules; he starts repairing an abandoned tower, turning it into the city’s first astronomical clock, and eventually takes on Vale as an apprentice. The guilds are not happy. But Vale and the other guildless realize how much work they do (and how much power that gives them) and start to fight for change.

This graphic novel really swept me along. I liked how it showed both the good and the bad sides of organized labor, how it can be corrupt and also one’s only hope. It suggests how to create a way within an unfair system using collective action, but it also shows that doing so isn’t without costs.

This is a companion graphic novel to Ink Girls by the same authors.

Deepwater Creek by Michael Regina. Putnam, 2025. 9780593117378. 252pp.

The Enoch River is deep. After a hurricane, Wade, his younger brother Andrew, their dad, and a few friends head out for a day of fishing. There’s a nasty fog and a bunch of debris, but another fisherman tells them about a spot that’s a ways upriver from where they usually fish. So they’re near Deepwater Creek when the fog rolls in and things get spooky. After Andrew hooks into something gigantic, he ends up in the water. He freaks out. Their dad takes the boat home.

There, the kids find articles about what may have happened in Deepwater Creek, including rumors of why it was closed. Is there really a monster up there? Wade talks his friends into taking the boat without permission and going back.

What follows is, and I mean this in the best way, a tween Lovecraftian adventure featuring some absolutely weird moments. (I’d capitalize that “w” if the ghosts of English teachers past wouldn’t haunt me.) It’s dark, harrowing, and more entertaining than most horror graphic novels for young people. (It won’t be too much for most tweens or their parents; it’s not full of gore.)

The Night Giant by Lorenzo Coltellacci, illustrated by Lorenzo Sangió. Kids Can Press, 2025. 9781525314032.

This giant plays tricks on the villagers at night. He seems to be having a great time! But not everyone is sure he’s real, and no one knows where he comes from. What does the giant think of himself?

Another strange and beautiful picture book about giants.

The Pie Reports by Hayley Lowe. Orca, 2024. 9781459838079.

Noor and her granddad love pie! After she returns home at the end of summer, they hold Friday Pie Reports online to stay in touch about pie and everything else. But then her grandpa doesn’t appear. (Noor’s mom explains it’s because he’s having “more blue days than usual…”) This is the first picture book I’ve seen about a kid dealing with an adult who’s having a tough time. Well done.

Worm and Butterfly Are Friends Always (Ready to Read Graphics) by Kaz Windness. Simon Spotlight, 2026. 9781665966498.

In the winter, Butterfly flies to Mexico while Worm sleeps underground. They need different things, but they also need each other! A lovely little comic for early readers.

Bad Banana (Ready to Read Level 2) by Michael Rex. Simon Spotlight, 2026. 9781665962124.

This banana’s friends couldn’t wait to be eaten, but no one ate it. And then he got spots and turned brown and squishy. (Minor spoiler: don’t worry, someone does what we all do with rotting bananas in the end.) Rex’s absurd, low self-esteem banana really made me laugh.

After reading Gordon’s graphic novel Into the Bewilderness I checked out a bunch of his picture books from my local libraries. I love the way he draws expressive, anthropomorphic characters, and that his illustrations include a bit of collage. Here are my three favorites:

Somewhere Else by Gus Gordon. Neal Porter, 2017. 9781626723498.

George Laurent isn’t like most birds. He doesn’t go anywhere, ever. He likes it here. He bakes and also wears a cool hat. And he has a secret: he can’t fly. (The characters’ names in this one are the best.)

Finding François: a story about the healing power of friendship by Gus Gordon. Dial Books for Young Readers, 2020. 9780525554004.

This book is about grief, found family, and friendship, and how the people you care for can get you through the worst times. It has the greatest message-in-a-bottle exchange ever, and I found it at exactly the moment I needed to. Extraordinary.

The Perfect Seat by Minh Lê & Gus Gordon. Disney/Hyperion, 2019. 9781368020046.

The cover moose are in search of the perfect place to sit and read together, but they just can’t find it. (This would be an amazing book to read with any young reader in your life.)

New World by David Jesus Vignolli. Archaia, 2019. 9781684153985. 157pp.

This mythological story of the “discovery” of the New World involves a warrior woman (Iracema) who wants to free mistreated slaves even though her elders would rather have her people hide deeper in the forest. Some follow her lead, though, and the monsters they end up facing aren’t merely the invading “white giants.”

This book is just as beautifully drawn as Vignolli’s first graphic novel, A Girl in the Himalayas.

Ionheart by Lukas Kummer. Top Shelf, 2025. 9781603095587. 308pp. (Portions originally published in German, no translator listed.)

This book is a wonderful combination of science fiction and fantasy. The inside front flap references Blade Runner, Tin Tin, and The Dark Tower. The back cover says every page glows. All true.

It’s about a knight who has awakened after thirty years to find the land and its residents poisoned. And it’s his fault. Did he manage to save the princess? Why is the world full of modern technology that everyone views as magic? Who is hunting him across the wasteland, and why?

The answers are complicated. The adventure is dark, but Kummer’s illustrations make it feel a bit light. There’s nothing to keep this out of your YA section except the background details in a few panels in a brothel early in the book and, maybe, parts of the knight’s origin story. But buy it for your adult graphic novel section; it’s a great read.

Milk Without Honey by Hanna Harms. Translated from German by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp. Street Noise, 2022. 9781951491369. 111pp. Foreword by Sarah Wyndham Lewis. Afterword by Professor Jürgen Tautz.

This short graphic novel is as poetic as it is informative. It shares the beauty of honey bees and how they live. It also shows the problems they face, and the trouble humans are creating for ourselves by not helping them to prosper, pollinate our crops, and help us survive.

The book is accessible to readers of most ages, and it’s a perfect companion to Ultra Wild, the oversized, ambitious nonfiction graphic novel about rewilding the world.

The Body Factory: From The First Prosthetics To The Augmented Human by Héloïse Chochois. Translated by Kendra Boileau. Graphic Mundi, 2021. 9780271087061. 156pp.

Chochois’s graphic novel opens with a wordless section in which a young man gets into a motorcycle accident. He awakens to find his left arm has been amputated. Ambrose Paré, the father of amputation, then appears to give a history of the procedure before explaining how the young man’s was performed. More wordless interludes about the young man’s life and recovery take place between informative chapters on phantom limbs, prostheses, and transhumanism (modifying people’s bodies using technology so they can do things that weren’t previously possible).

Chochois’s art style is simple enough that even the pages about surgery and the detailed discussions of anatomy don’t feel too graphic. This is a fantastic book that has a lot of shelf appeal.

My favorite part: “You too can properly amputate, thanks to the TOURNIQUET!” a one-page how-to of sorts at the end of the section on the US Civil War.

The Woodchipper: Stories by Joe Ollmann. Drawn & Quarterly, 2026. 9781770468238. 216pp. Includes an introduction plus notes on each of the five stories in a short afterward.

When I picked this book up, I flipped through it and immediately found a few pages I love including: the “endpapers” (not real endpapers because it’s a paperback), the dedication (it seems to have an illustration of one of the worst hotels I’ve ever stayed in (it’s in Toronto)), and Ollmann’s introduction in which two young people talk up collections of “graphic shorties” like his. The latter includes amusing comments on Ollmann’s work by his daughter and the late Tom Spurgeon.

The stories themselves are just plain enjoyable. “The Woodchipper” is not a Fargo-esque crime tale; it’s a story about an accident that didn’t happen, and how a guy deals with the non-aftermath. “Nestled All Snug” is a claustrophobic holiday story that takes place in a bookstore. (Ollmann reveals in the afterword that he works part-time in one.) “Meat” is about a young woman who works as a security guard for a company up to some shady crap, and her new friendship with a woman who protests outside the company’s gates. Plus there are two more.

Ollmann’s bio at the end says: “… Still loves making comics. Still disappointed by humanity.” It’s a statement that’s amusing because it’s extreme. And I get it. I continue to write a lot about people behaving badly in libraries, arguably their worst moments. And I love these folks. They are amusing even when I’m the focus of their anger. And I think Ollmann would be similarly amused. I feel like we’re both on humanity’s side, and that’s why I love this book.

Five Gears In Reverse: A Criminal Book by Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips. Image, 2026. 978-1534333208. 144pp.

This new Criminal graphic novel from Brubaker and Philips is a story from the point of view of Ricky Lawless, who has appeared in other stories of the series. If you don’t know who he is, this is a perfect introduction; if you do, you’ll love it. (This is also a perfect book to read to get ready for the Criminal TV series on Amazon, coming later this year.)

Ricky Lawless, in debt to a bookie, agrees to rob a successful poker player. But the cocaine he snorts to stay awake in the man’s hotel room turns out to be something else, and the long wait turns into a bit of a party. The robbery, of course, goes wrong. It’s a spectacular display of poor decision-making, as is the next robbery Lawless commits with his girlfriend, Mallory. To save them both, he has to do an off-the-books favor for a mob boss. And of course that won’t go as planned, either.

Sean Philips’ art continues to amaze me, and his son Jacob Philips’ coloring makes it all the more beautiful. This book is incredibly, darkly funny, especially if you’ve ever wondered how total f-ups make it through their days. It’s a crime graphic novel no one should miss.