One click and this new dimension opens. A panel is the threshold to a dimension of gutters and splash pages. A dimension made of ink and Kirby Krackles. A world where a madman writes of comics and graphic novels. You are about to enter No Flying No Tights.
News From The Fallout is a macabre delight. Any fans of the Twilight Zone or old school creature features looking for a fast paced adventure might find their fix with this mini-series. From the creators Chris Condon (Ultimate Wolverine) and Jeffrey Alan Love (The Thousand Demon Tree), News From The Fallout is a nonstop sprint of a story. This miniseries is set in 1960s Nevada and follows a private in the U.S. Army named Otis Fallows, after a nuclear bomb test goes horribly wrong.
Now, with no disrespect to Chris Condon and the script, this series is carried by Jeffrey Alan Love’s art work. It really is something to behold. It exists as some sort of combination of CRT TV static and shadowpuppetry mixed with pages of background lore. Love conveys just enough detail for your brain to fill in the rest of the horrific details. He’ll show the row of fangs in shadow and the reader can imagine what else it’s hiding. There’s a narrative focus on ash and he takes that opportunity to make every scene feel shrouded in ash as well as emulate the 50s and 60s television technology with a grayscale color palette. It really sets the mood for a Cold War era monster thriller, a haunted nuclear nightmare.
While Love’s artwork is probably the best selling point, Chris Condon’s script is no slouch. Given the limitations of a narrative in six issues, Condon makes every word count. He gives each of Love’s silhouetted characters a distinct voice, making up for the lack of clarity in Love’s chosen style. Along with tight and efficient characterization, Condon created a story propelled by its own moment. Each scene crashes into the next, usually with a great amount of violence. At the beginning and ending of every issue there is background information in the form of within-universe media like menus or redacted military orders. Condon uses these glimpses into the goings on in Atomic Alley to ground the story in some form of reality.
For any librarians looking to expand their adult graphic fiction or science fiction selection, this isn’t a terrible pick. This would be right at home in a read-alikes display with Ray Bradbury or Harlan Ellison. Image comics gives no listed age rating, but I would recommend this to mainly adults based on the horror and violent elements of the entire series.
News From the Fallout By Chris Condon Art by Jeffrey Alan Love Image Comics, 2026 ISBN: 9781534335745
The monsters in horror fiction, whether those monsters are ghosts, vampires, or zombies, always seem to represent something beyond the natural fear a person would have against something with fangs and claws. Many times, these monsters are symbolic of a more universal fear involving a person’s space in society or in the universe at large (at least according to critics). Ghosts, for example, are often connected to humanity’s universal fear of death. Zombies are often symbols of death as well as disease. Author and illustrator Jon Claytor, however, presents an interesting idea in his book Nowhere, the world of zombies, vampires, and aliens represents the very modern fear of growing up.
Nowhere takes place in Beauséjour. Beauséjour, a small town in Canada and it’s where teenage Joel ends up, along with his morose mother, his verbally abusive but generally useless stepfather, and various animals. When the family’s car breaks down in Beauséjour, they stay at a roadside motel and slowly become accustomed to what makes Beauséjour different from other towns. Those differences include vampires that talk to therapists, ghosts that look like sheets and who actively engage with the living, and a massive cube that sits on the edge of town. And don’t forget about the zombies that wander around at night.
People might look at Claytor’s story and think of shows that run on late 20th century nostalgia like Stranger Things, especially when Joel finds a group of his friends close to his own age to hang out with. However, these friends don’t battle the various monsters that show up in town; they simply accept them as part of living in Beauséjour. In fact, no one within this book expresses any emotions other than melancholy, even when more apocalyptic elements start happening. Many have likely read action/adventure stories with a coming-of-age element that has the protagonist learns more about who they are and who they’re going to be due to the events in the book, but if Joel comes of age within Nowhere’s pages, Joel grows to realize that banality is the norm, which is perhaps the most terrifying thing to realize.
Banality could be used to describe the book’s artwork, which, in any other book, would be a critique, but the banality fits into the book’s overall tone. Claytor uses a deceptively simplistic art style that nevertheless depicts realistic human faces that are struggling to emote within a muted black and white world. Colors are also used sparingly, such as the blood on the vampire’s teeth when he talks with his therapist, and only provide a speck of brightness in Claytor’s universe. Even the aliens, typical grays with bulbous eyes and small mouths, approach their job of manipulation with the enthusiasm of security guards who’d much rather watch the clock tick toward the end of their shift, which is not surprising considering the universe they inhabit.
While lacking the excitement of Stranger Things, this book does share some DNA with an intellectual property well-known for weirdness. “Welcome to Night Vale,” a novel and podcast created by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, features a supernatural town where residents accept the supernatural to an absurd degree. Fans of that book/series will want to visit Beauséjour, as well as fans of shows like “X-Files” and “Supernatural,” particularly of their sillier episodes.
Nowhere By John Claytor Goose Lane Editions, 2026 ISBN: 9781773104584
Company Age Rating: 14 Years and Up
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+), Older Teen (16-18)
When most people think of Robert Kirkman’s zombie apocalypse story The Walking Dead, they likely remember two aspects of the show. The first is, of course, the zombies (or “walkers,” as they were called on the show). Everpresent and always hungry, they drove much of the story’s survival narrative. The second aspect, and perhaps the secret of the show’s popularity, was its non-zombie characters, humans who once had jobs, families, and lives before society collapsed and are now stuck simply trying to survive this new, deadly world. Everything Dead & Dying, a zombie apocalypse tale by writer Tate Brombal and illustrated by Jacob Phillips, shows Kirkman’s legacy throughout its DNA, even as it makes a subtle but poignant tweak to his formula.
The series focuses on Jack Chandler, the lone survivor of a zombie outbreak that has decimated the community and is consuming the world, but Jack cares little about the outside world. All he cares about is the community that had once welcomed him and the husband and daughter he loves. Despite the fact that they are zombies, he still treats them like human beings. He makes sure his zombified husband and daughter eat at the dinner table and that the members of their community, despite showing minimal awareness, are able to still go about the routines they performed while alive. Jack is able to maintain this precarious pantomime of existence until a group of survivors come to his community to “rescue” Jack by destroying all the zombies that were his family and friends.
Brombal’s zombie tale might seem like a lot of other zombie apocalypse stories that came before it, but he adds his own spin. The story takes place between two narratives, before the zombie outbreak and after. The reader is introduced to these characters as living, breathing human beings with personalities before showing them in their current undead state, sometimes on the same comic page. Readers also see these people accept Jack’s lifestyle when his own father doesn’t, which makes their zombified state even more tragic. Salt is finally poured into the emotional wounds when the book delves into Jack’s time with his husband Luke, revealed to be a man who was many times Jack’s anchor, and his daughter Daisy, a precocious child whom he loved dearly. In other zombie stories, the zombies are seen mostly as obstacles or environmental dangers; Brombal forcefully reminds readers that these zombies with a taste for human flesh were once human.
That isn’t to say that the book ever downplays the fact that these zombies eat human flesh. Phillips’s art showcases the dichotomy between the community pre and post zombie apocalypse. Many of his panels are bursting with reds, showcasing blood and viscera no longer contained by human skin. The zombies definitely look like zombies, with skin sloughing off and mouths and clothes stained red from previous meals. However, the realistic way Phillips illustrates human faces and anatomy hammers home the similarities and differences between these people when they were alive versus after they became zombies. Finally, Philips’s rural landscapes evokes a bucolic rural existence, even if that existence becomes a grim, bloody parody of itself.
This book should be resting in the same section as Kirkman’s The Walking Dead and other horror graphic tales that skew toward adults. It offers enough gnarly illustrations to attract graphic novel gorehounds, but the story is a tragic, heartbreaking tale of a man who’s trying to hold onto his humanity by helping his community hold onto theirs. Like The Walking Dead, this book ultimately asks how long a person can remain human when so much of humanity has become inhuman.
Everything Dead & Dying By Tate Brombal Art by Jacob Phillips Image, 2026 ISBN: 9781534332539
Charlotte Bissett seems to be a pretty average middle school girl in the quaint town of Devilfish Bay. She lives with her internet chef father, Raymond, and her loyal canine companion, Vincent. She is a bookworm and devours any book put in front of her.
However, the cracks in her personal life slowly make themselves clear. Charlotte’s mother had gone missing in the recent past on a boating trip and her father is attempting to move on and begin to date again. On top of this, Charlotte doesn’t appear to have any friends, yet when two kids from her past, Molly and Griffin, move back to town it soon becomes clear why Charlotte is so guarded in her social life. Molly used to be Charlotte’s ride-or-die bestfriend, and yet after Molly moved away the girls had a falling out. Molly wants nothing more than to have a fresh start, but Charlotte is resistant and does her best to avoid Molly. Eventually, Charlotte reveals that the reason she is upset with Molly is because when Charlotte told Molly that a sea creature was responsible for her mother’s disappearance, Charlotte didn’t believe her. It is in that atmosphere of uncertainty and pre-teen angst that Charlotte, taking refuge in her safe place, the school library, is combing the shelves when a book falls off the shelf next to her. The book appears to be bound in green, improperly prepared leather of some kind, the pieces of rotted looking material stitched together in phantasmagoric fashion reminiscent of the Necronomicon from the Evil Dead franchise. The title of the book is “Liber de Monstrum” and true to that name appears to be a grimoire of supernatural information. Taking it home, Charlotte reads from the book, very carefully sounding out the words in an unknown language and upon uttering the last word the windows of her room blow open, the electricity goes out in the area around her house and in the morning Devilfish Bay experiences the first snowfall in fifty years.
On top of these strange occurrences, that day it’s announced that one of Charlotte’s favorite teachers, Mr Cooper, has gone missing and an enigmatic woman with platinum blond hair, who doesn’t appear to be who or what she seems, takes over the class in the interim. Clearly, Charlotte has awoken something or some things from their slumber, and it’s up to her to try and fight these unknown forces. The question is whether her recently returned friends will believe her this time and offer her their help, because it is clear Charlotte cannot fight these monsters alone.
The Girl Who Loves Monsters follows spectacularly in the “kids on bikes” tradition, creating a very real and present danger in a small community and presenting the kids willing to stand up to that danger when the rest of the community can’t see it or believe in it. Charlotte, Molly, and Griffin make a compelling trio bound by their history, common interests, friendships, and burgeoning teenage emotions. In this first volume in the Devilfish Bay series, writer Insha Fitzpatrick sets the scene brilliantly for future adventures and the various mundane trials and tribulations that will also stand in the main characters’ way as they attempt to combat the enigmatic evil that has come forth from the Liber de Monstrum.
The art by Ashley Robin Franklin creates a beautiful balance between the soft, cartoonish style that sets a relaxed tone to the everyday world of the story with the sharp, phantasmagoric elements that truly evoke the horror and supernatural elements. From the first page to the last, The Girl Who Loves Monsters is a compelling read that deals with very relatable parts of adolescence, such as being taken seriously by those around you, mixed with the eerie supernatural elements that could only take place in a small town somewhat set apart from the wider world.
The Girl Who Loved Monsters By Insha Fitzpatrick Art by Ashley Franklin Penguin Random House Viking Books for Young Readers, 2026 ISBN: 9780593690901
Company Age Rating: 8-12
NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11) Creator Representation: African-American, Queer, Character Representation: African-American,
Everyone over the age of 30 remembers the TV show Mister Magic. They don’t always agree about what happened on the show—and there’s no way to settle disputes, since no footage from Mister Magic seems to exist anywhere. But they remember how passionately they loved it as children, how they felt like the kids in the show were their friends. And they remember—even if the details are blurry—that it ended thirty years ago in a terrible, violent tragedy.
When Val’s father dies, she feels lost. She’s been living on an isolated ranch since her father brought her here thirty years ago, when she was eight. He’s been paranoid, terrified that something would follow them here, but Val doesn’t know what or why. Then unexpected guests show up at his funeral. Val doesn’t remember anything from before she arrived at the ranch, but these people claim they were her childhood friends and costars on the show Mister Magic. They do seem deeply familiar, and Val is desperate to learn more about her past, so she agrees to leave with them. They’re headed to the remote desert town where the show was filmed, where they will be interviewed for a podcast.
Once they reach the desert town of Bliss, Utah, things just keep getting stranger and more threatening. The entire town is extremely invested in the show Mister Magic. They’re all angry at Val for something she can’t remember. And they want something from Val and her new/old friends—something they’ll do anything to get.
This is a graphic adaptation of Kiersten White’s horror novel Mister Magic. It’s smart and creepy, playing with themes of memory, nostalgia, and trauma, as well as the desire to protect children and how we try to do that. Interspersed through the book are memos, emails, and websites about Mister Magic—including fake pages from real sites like Wikipedia and Reddit—which add to the feeling of the story being real and contemporary. And indeed, some of the book’s horror is inspired by reality. Our protagonists find themselves returning to an isolated community bent on controlling and molding children to fit their narrow, patriarchal ideal. We see how this community shaped the lives of Val’s castmates, pushing heterosexuality, marriage, and parenthood on them regardless of how badly those concepts sometimes fit. The author has confirmed in interviews that this is a reference to conservative religions, particularly the Church of Latter-Day Saints, which White left as an adult because of the church’s increasingly homophobic views.
For most of the book, the visuals are straightforward and realistic. The art is dynamic and natural, and the flashback scenes feature some delightfully nineties-TV aesthetics. Those flashbacks also have a looser, more fanciful style that evokes both the fact that they are childhood memories and the possibility that real magic was involved. As the story progresses and the supernatural elements close in on the protagonists, the more magical style reappears more often.
As far as content, this book includes some swearing, icky sexism, creepiness, and children in danger, but nothing too dire, especially for a horror novel aimed at adults. There are a couple of kisses and a few comments on female characters’ bodies, but no other sexual content. Mister Magic delivers an eerie and fascinating premise, flawed and sympathetic characters, and a pace that makes it easy to keep reading. Hand it to fans of inventively creepy vibes and to readers who like horror in which—spoilers—things mostly turn out okay.
Mister Magic the Graphic Novel By Kiersten White, and Scott Peterson Art by Veronica Fish, and Andy Fish Ten Speed Press, 2026 ISBN: 9781984863355
The killers are back and they’re bloodier than ever.
Exquisite Corpses Vol. 2 picks up right where the first volume left off—with the citizens of Oak Valley, Maine fighting for survival against a cabal of thirteen powerful families and the menagerie of violent murderers they have gathered to compete in a “game” that has already left a trail of bodies behind. From Image Comics and helmed by James Tynion IV and Michael Walsh, this new volume yet again offers up an incredibly talented roster of writers and artists for these next five issues of carnage and survival.
With Tynion as co-writer, each issue of the series maintains a consistent voice and tone, while the other writers—Che Grayson, Jordie Bellaire, Tyler Boss, Michael Walsh, and Pornsak Pichetshote—have the chance to shift focus among people on all sides of the conflict—townsfolk, killers, and the families behind it all. It’s a stacked roster of comics creatives, all coming together to tell a story that steps on the gas from page one. The pace in this volume is as quick as ever as the young people of Oak Valley gather for a party, unaware that they are creating a possible killing ground. The unhinged killers, each with their own vivid personalities and approaches to violence, crash onto and off of the page with the same chaos they have introduced to the quiet town, battling each other and anyone unlucky enough to get in their way. But the story continues to find its quieter moments as well. Not all the killers are bloodthirsty. The infighting of the rich families leisurely watching the night unfolds in layered questions of morality and power. And the town survivors must decide for themselves if they will hold onto hope or give into darker impulses as they struggle to save their loved ones.
For a story of nonstop action, Tynion and the others never forget that the humanity of the characters gives the rest meaning. The writers give the story space to breathe and allow vivid emotion amidst gripping pacing and an unfolding sequence of reversals and revelations. There are compelling personalities on all sides, and even as the bodies continue to fall, it’s hard to look away from the spectacle. Perhaps that is its own sort of commentary on the whole ordeal.
The art remains excellent throughout the volume. Claire Roe, Gavin Fullerton, and Adam Gorham join Michael Walsh deploying a relatively muted color palate across the grittier scenes, bringing realism to the visuals that helps ground the bold premise of the series. At the same time, the artists shift the major colors across characters and sequences, capturing mood and stylizing action to dramatic effect. There’s just something about a morally ambiguous woman in a fox mask flying across the page with a katana that captures the attention. The art is equally effective when two trained killers in masks are participating in a dance of death in a quiet graveyard—and when grief and horror settle in as the survivors realize the increasing cost of the nightmare that has settled over them. There’s a striking cinematic quality to the entire series, and with Walsh and Tynion both as co-creators, it’s an excellent example of artistic vision brought to life.
Fair warning to potential purchasers and readers, Exquisite Corpses earns its mature rating with graphic violence and injury and strong language throughout. The visuals never revel in the violence quite as much as the killers do, but the series never shies away from it either. Hands are removed, eyes come out, and character good and bad, young and old, are caught in the crossfire. For those who can stomach the violence and occasional sadism however, Exquisite Corpses sits comfortably in the evil rich people genre that has been popular these last few years—including films like Ready or Not and The Menu as well as comics such as Sarah Gailey’s Eat the Rich. Mix all that with a serial killer battle royale, and there’s plenty here for older readers to enjoy. Be sure to track down volume one first, but this is an action horror series well worth your time.
There’s still hours to go until dawn for the citizens of Oak Valley, and with the series still ongoing, I suspect the worst is yet to come. I, for one, will be back to see what happens.
Exquisite Corpses, Vol. 2 By James Tynion IV Art by Michael Walsh Image, 2026 ISBN: 9781534334687
Company Age Rating: M
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+) Creator Representation: Gay, Character Representation: Black, Queer,
If Dracula himself had a drop of blood for every retelling and reimagining of his story as written by Bram Stoker, then he might never have to bite another neck to sustain himself. Since stories about Dracula (and about vampires that owe so much of their aesthetic to him) are so prevalent, doing one that’s wholly original is about as difficult to find as it is to find a vampire that loves the sun. Woodstake: Three Days of Peace, Music, and Blood Vol. 1 is writer Darin S. Cape’s and illustrator Felipe Kroll’s attempt to retell the Dracula mythos, setting it at a very famous music festival synonymous with the 60’s and the Summer of Love.
The story follows Jon Harper, an aspiring music journalist. Along with his girlfriend Nina and their buddy Artie, Jon attends Woodstock to interview Jimi Hendrix, an interview that could bring notoriety to Jon’s fledgling rock magazine. However, Dracula also awakens near that famous field in New York, and he is not spreading peace and love, but is spreading death and newly turned undead. Along with a suspiciously knowledgeable coroner, Jon and his crew might be the only ones who can stop Dracula from turning Woodstock into a wholesale slaughter.
Those familiar with Stoker’s original work might snicker as they see names from the original novel reused (Jon Harper for Jonathon Harker, for example) and Dracula fans reading this could easily turn it into a scavenger hunt as they look for references in Stoker’s novel, but those fans would miss the compelling story. Cape goes beyond simply retelling Stoker’s tale with a psychedelic 60’s paintjob; he tells a solid vampire story that captures the time in which it was spawned. This can be seen in the lingo used by the characters as well as the names of chapters that reference songs of that era. Through this work, Cape manages to show his love for both Dracula and the 60’s.
Illustrator Kroll’s highly detailed style of digital painting helps the book go beyond simply setting Dracula at Woodstock. Thanks to Kroll’s nearly photorealistic images, the faces of many characters have distinct features and shading that make them look more like Polaroids taken during the concert. Dracula also benefits from this aesthetic. Not only has he traded in the black cape for a denim jacket, but his lined and rugged features have him looking more like a music lover who hitchhiked from very far away and less like a Transylvanian count, which is an important aspect of the character many adaptations miss. Dracula, as the ultimate apex predator, blends thoroughly in with his prey, even taking up smoking weed, until he is ready to strike.
If you have patrons that love vampire stories, especially retellings that add a completely different vibe like Alex de Campi’s Dracula, Motherf**ker!, then this book should join the ranks of the other vampire-centric books in your adult graphic novel collection. Just note that, since this is volume 1 in a series, there may be more stories that will either build on this first volume or tarnish the entire story.
Woodstake: Three Days of Peace, Music and Blood By Darin S. Cape Art by Fellipe Kroll SHP Comics, 2026 ISBN: 9798992749915
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+), Older Teen (16-18)
It is All Hallows’ Eve. It is a night of foreboding, even without a storm brewing. Some believe it is a night when the boundaries between life and death are thinner, and evil things walk abroad.
The date means little to highwayman Dick Turpin, and his partner in crime, Tom King. They already live a life where the boundaries between life and death are thin. And they think there’s no evil things about but them.
They may be wrong.
When an accident overturns the carriage that was their quarry, Tom is quick to enact a new scheme. He poses as a nobleman, with Dick as his manservant “Richard,” hoping to secure the nobles’ luggage and ride off with it untroubled.
However, the scheme goes overlong, as the two parties join to seek shelter and soon find a seemingly abandoned monastery. Alas, whether it is due to the night in question or whether their presence awoke it, some ghostly presence takes exception to the intruders. Soon the scoundrels are facing closing walls, stinking clouds and swarms of rats. To say nothing of the deadly touch of the specter clad in plague doctor’s garb…
Dick Turpin and the Vengeful Shade is an interesting blend of historic fiction and horror. Of course, there is no record of the infamous British thief ever fighting a ghost. Yet writer Steve Tanner pays as much attention to historical accuracy as he does craft in spinning a ripping yarn.
The story draws upon two main conflicts. The first is that between the Church of England and the Catholic Church. The second is Plague of 1563. History buffs will appreciate this attention to detail and how it plays into the ghost story to make it a little more grounded. Not that this matters much to Dick Turpin himself, who spends most of the story wishing he could shoot something. He’s also none too choosy about it being the ghost, Tom King (who takes a bit too much pleasure in playing the noble and bossing him around) or the various nobles and servants annoying him. This adds humor, which offsets the horror, along with a noble lady who speaks of the stories of Dick Turpin ravaging the women he encounters and then being a bit slow in agreeing with her husband in finding the prospect dreadful.
The artwork is of similar craft and quality. Roland Bird, best known for his work on Legion of Super-Heroes, is in fine form here. He proves equally adept at drawing animals, period costumes and supernatural strangeness. He is well-backed by the color art of Brett Burbridge, which adds an evocative and somber aura to the finished artwork.
As with their recent reprint of Dick Turpin and the Crimson Plague, Time Bomb Comics does not offer a rating for Dick Turpin and the Vengeful Shade. However, despite a lack of nudity or any sexual content beyond references to ravaging, I’d still suggest this one be kept in the adult collection. While the horror elements and bloodshed might be acceptable for most teenagers, I feel the historical elements and slow-boiling story will appeal more to adult audiences.
Dick Turpin and the Vengeful Shade By Steve Tanner Art by Roland Bird Time Bomb, 2020 ISBN: 9781916465343
Some readers erroneously believe that adult graphic novels should have sophisticated art, particularly in a day and age where art can be easily generated through a computer. “Sophisticated” means, in this case, the artwork has aspects like realistic looking human faces, shading, and color gradation that makes the book look more like a collection of photographs than anything drawn by a human being. It’s important to remember that “graphic novel” is a medium rather than a genre, and a medium can convey a variety of different ideas. For example, Heaven, West Virginia, written and illustrated by Ravi Teixeira, doesn’t need chiseled jawlines or a computer-generated color palette to tell an emotionally wrought story about coming home to find oneself.
The book follows Lamont, a man who has come home to Heaven, West Virginia to stay with his aunt while dealing with the passing of his homophobic father, a religious man who liked to share his bigotry from the pulpit. Learning tea making from his aunt provides a measure of peace, along with his conversations with handsome cowboy Coyote. Threatening to shatter that peach is a monster lurking in the woods, a monster whose eyes glow red and whose teeth are perfect for rending flesh. Lamont sees this creature and knows that it wants to devour him. Unfortunately, Lamont cannot run from this beast. He must ultimately face this monster as well as his own identity.
Teixeira’s seemingly supernatural evil evokes the folk horror traditions of something evil lurking in the woods, but it gets much more mileage in the readers’ minds thanks to his use of symbolism. For Lamont, as for many LGBTQ + individuals from a less than welcoming family, coming home often reawakens some very real traumas as fearsome and brutal as anything with teeth made to tear flesh. However, Teixeira’s story is not all doom and gloom because his Appalachian home provides healing. They demonstrate this thanks to medicinal tea recipes, with ingredients provided by Appalachian soil, interspersed throughout the book’s various chapters. This use of recipes, along with the beast in the woods, also demonstrates Teixeira’s skill with symbolism.
And those symbols are beautifully rendered, even if you can’t see the individual hairs on the beast stalking the woods. Teixeira’s style utilized blocky lines, flat surfaces, and simple colors, but they do a great deal with them. The artwork is clear and vibrant while the characters are still expressive, despite not seeing every wrinkle. Teixeira’s art style ultimately serves the story, especially as it seems to evoke images of Appalachian folk art.
For those who actually inform you of their beliefs that simple art work cannot be considered “sophisticated,” you can give them examples like Art Speigelman’s Maus and this book. The book’s uncomplicated beauty and rustic charm make it perfect for librarians in rural areas like Appalachia, as well as for librarians looking for well-told LGBTQ+ stories.
Heaven, West Virginia By Ravi Teixeira Oni Press, 2025 ISBN: 9781637158746
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+) Creator Representation: Trans , Character Representation: African-American,
Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales is a wildly successful series of historical stories told in graphic format. He’s also written short stories with the same style for various anthologies. In his 13th book in the series, he goes full tilt into the short story format with a series of creepy, gross, terrifying, and weird stories, most, but not all, centered around the United States.
The story is framed by his original narrators and characters from history—Nathan Hale, the hangman, the British provost, and, added in Major Impossible, Bill Richmond. Hale starts the story with his narrators peering at a sketch of the front cover, with the historical Nathan Hale explaining that “this book was created by hand by a real human artist.” There’s a humorous warning at the beginning about the scary content, then the framing plot opens.
The four narrators are sheltering from the rain under the gallows and decide to tell scary stories, starting with Captain Hale. Since it’s his thirteenth tale, he tells a scary story about a thirteen baby—the Jersey Devil. Black and white art, picked out with spots of green, illustrates the gruesome creature and its victims, ending with a short discussion on folklore and history. The provost demands a true story, so Hale begins “A Sip of Radiation” and the backgrounds glow a ghostly green as he tells the true story of Radithor, radium-infused water. The story jumps between Curie’s discovery of radium and the effects of Radithor on a welathy young man, Eben Byers, who died a gruesome death due to the “miracle cure” and ends with the radium girls and a creepy correlation between overuse of radium and the possible effects of unlimited internet use. The stories continue with the ghostly “The Demon Cat,” a grotesque tale from Edgar Allan Poe, “Hop-Frog,” and more. They include snapshots of US history, like a dream of Abraham Lincoln, a ghost story from the Civil War, and, of course, reappearances of the Jersey Devil.
Bill Richmond’s contribution, “The Boo Hag” is framed in a slightly darker green and features a cast of Black characters with creepy fleshless monsters, and placid, swirling waters in the South Carolina Sea Islands that hide dark secrets. Hale switches to a sharper contrast in “The Head in the Jar” which features the folk legend of Joaquin Murrieta. Stark white backgrounds on the small panels show the bare desert of the stockades and Gold Rush towns then switch to a mass of grays as Murrieta suffers and reenacts his vengeance in the dark of night.
The story ends with a transition that takes the readers to Denmark and introduces the berserkers of the title. Hale’s characters in this tale show sharply defined faces with pointed, craggy noses and long-haired, narrow faces contrasting with bulky, bearded warriors and fleshy tyrants. The story comes to a gory and dark end, featuring monstrous beasts and dense, packed panels showing heroes battling creatures in the dark. The stories return to the US and the true crime story of “The Butler Goes Berserk” featuring the mysterious crimes at Frank Lloyd Wright’s estate, Taliesin, committed by his butler, Julian Carlton. The collection is finished with a goofy story from the hangman, framed in glowing green and a final appearance of the Jersey Devil.
Hale ends the book with his usual meticulous research; in this case he adds additional information to the sources explaining which parts of each story are factual and which are folklore or legends. He also includes an encouragement for readers to explore short stories and some recommendations and sources.
This is a fitting transition to twelve wonderful historical graphic novels and hopefully marks the beginning of a new set of these histories. It’s also a fun way to get readers to try something new as well as stop to think a little more deeply about the media and stories they consume, since Hale includes lots of discussion points throughout the story as well as plenty of gore, monsters, and creepy happenings. A sure bet for middle school readers and anyone who enjoys creepy stories and interesting historical tidbits, this will delight both old fans of Hale and those new to his work.
Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales: Bones and Berserkers By Nathan Hale Abrams, 2025 ISBN: 9781419773204
NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11), Teen (13-16), Tween (10-13)
One click and this new dimension opens. A panel is the threshold to a dimension of gutters and splash pages. A dimension made of ink and Kirby Krackles. A world where a madman writes of comics and graphic novels. You are about to enter No Flying No Tights.
always seem to represent something beyond the natural fear a person would have against something with fangs and claws. Many times, these monsters are symbolic of a more universal fear involving a person’s space in society or in the universe at large (at least according to critics). Ghosts, for example, are often connected to humanity’s universal fear of death. Zombies are often symbols of death as well as disease. Author and illustrator Jon Claytor, however, presents an interesting idea in his book Nowhere, the world of zombies, vampires, and aliens represents the very modern fear of growing up.
When most people think of Robert Kirkman’s zombie apocalypse story The Walking Dead, they likely remember two aspects of the show. The first is, of course, the zombies (or “walkers,” as they were called on the show). Everpresent and always hungry, they drove much of the story’s survival narrative. The second aspect, and perhaps the secret of the show’s popularity, was its non-zombie characters, humans who once had jobs, families, and lives before society collapsed and are now stuck simply trying to survive this new, deadly world. Everything Dead & Dying, a zombie apocalypse tale by writer Tate Brombal and illustrated by Jacob Phillips, shows Kirkman’s legacy throughout its DNA, even as it makes a subtle but poignant tweak to his formula.
Devilfish Bay. She lives with her internet chef father, Raymond, and her loyal canine companion, Vincent. She is a bookworm and devours any book put in front of her. 
agree about what happened on the show—and there’s no way to settle disputes, since no footage from Mister Magic seems to exist anywhere. But they remember how passionately they loved it as children, how they felt like the kids in the show were their friends. And they remember—even if the details are blurry—that it ended thirty years ago in a terrible, violent tragedy.
The killers are back and they’re bloodier than ever.
If Dracula himself had a drop of blood for every retelling and reimagining of his story as written by Bram Stoker, then he might never have to bite another neck to sustain himself. Since stories about Dracula (and about vampires that owe so much of their aesthetic to him) are so prevalent, doing one that’s wholly original is about as difficult to find as it is to find a vampire that loves the sun. Woodstake: Three Days of Peace, Music, and Blood Vol. 1 is writer Darin S. Cape’s and illustrator Felipe Kroll’s attempt to retell the Dracula mythos, setting it at a very famous music festival synonymous with the 60’s and the Summer of Love.
be easily generated through a computer. “Sophisticated” means, in this case, the artwork has aspects like realistic looking human faces, shading, and color gradation that makes the book look more like a collection of photographs than anything drawn by a human being. It’s important to remember that “graphic novel” is a medium rather than a genre, and a medium can convey a variety of different ideas. For example, Heaven, West Virginia, written and illustrated by Ravi Teixeira, doesn’t need chiseled jawlines or a computer-generated color palette to tell an emotionally wrought story about coming home to find oneself.
with the same style for various anthologies. In his 13th book in the series, he goes full tilt into the short story format with a series of creepy, gross, terrifying, and weird stories, most, but not all, centered around the United States.
