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Seattle Picks: Graphic Novels and Comics

Enjoy this selection of recent graphic novels and comics selected by librarians at The Seattle Public Library. Annotations by staff, or as cited. (February 2024)

The Seattle Public Library

24 items

  • Set in a small, industrial post-apocalyptic town, this black, white and orange sketch illustration follows an increasingly desperate man willing to risk it all for his ill wife.
    Graphic Novel[San Diego, CA] : Living the Line, 2023. — GN HOUSE ON F 2023
  • Ducks

    Two Years in the Oil Sands

    Beaton, Kate, 1983-
    Beaton (Hark! A Vagrant) delivers a masterpiece graphic memoir: an immersive, devastating portrait of the two years she worked at Fort McMurray and nearby oil sands in northern Canada. (Publishers Weekly)
    Graphic Novel[Montréal, Québec] : Drawn and Quarterly, 2022. — 338.2728 B3807B 2022
  • Fine

    a Comic About Gender

    Ewing, Rhea
    In Ewing's ambitious debut, they conduct and draw dozens of interviews over a decade to chart the murky waters of gender. (Publishers Weekly)
    Graphic NovelNew York, NY : Liveright Publishing Corporation, [2022] — 305.3 Ew55E 2022
  • Gharib's empathetic second graphic memoir, a follow-up to I Was Their American Dream, covers culture clashes, family clashes, and identity mash-ups, set in the late '90s to the early 2000s. (Publishers Weekly)
    Graphic NovelCalifornia ; New York : Ten Speed Press, [2022] — 741.5973 G3415G 2022
  • This is a wordless, allegorical graphic novel about depression. Set in a forest, it follows a bear whose head is stuck in a cone and a rabbit who won't give up trying to help.
    Graphic NovelNew York : Seven Stories Press, [2023] — 741.59485 G533B 2023
  • Whizbang, front man of his band, Fascinator, gets ousted by his band right before their tour. Then his pregnant wife gives birth and leaves him with the baby. He doesn't want a job... so how will he adult?
    Graphic NovelSeattle, WA : Fantagraphics Books, [2023] — 741.5971 G7551M 2023
  • Any time Mako sees something dirty, whether literally or figuratively, she gets a heavy nosebleed... how can she ever find an intimate partner in this circumstance?
    Graphic NovelSan Francisco, CA : Viz Media, LLC, [2022] — 741.5952 It11D 2022
  • This collection finds Kelso (Queen of the Black Black) exploring the dynamic between interpersonal relationships and interior experience with skill and insight equal to or greater than anyone currently creating works of short fiction in…
    Graphic NovelSeattle, WA : Fantagraphics, [2022] — 741.5973 K2997W 2022
  • This very colorful, wordless graphic novel follows a young boy whose house is set on fire. A gull saves his life and they flee on a boat which begins the boy's adventure in a strange land.
    Graphic NovelNew York, NY : The New York Review of Books, [2023] — 741.5942 K485G 2023
  • Khan debuts with a deeply introspective, elegantly rendered graphic memoir about her experiences, faith, and family in the South Asian diaspora community of East London. (Publishers Weekly)
    Graphic NovelBrooklyn, New York : Street Noise Books, [2022] — 305.89141 K5275W 2022
  • Lai presents a tender and emotionally raw examination of three women struggling to form and maintain their identities within and outside of their immediate family. (Library Journal)
    Graphic NovelSeattle, WA : Fantagraphics, 2021. — 741.5973 L14S 2021
  • A city building inspector's daughter passes away. Distraught to the point of madness and convinced she's not gone, he searches for the labyrinth she's stuck in, listening for clues she leaves him throughout the city.
    Graphic NovelMilwaukie, OR : Dark Horse Books, 2022. — 741.5973 L5435M 2022
  • Four friends refuse to give up on creating a space of joy and celebration for Black, queer weirdness in Lindell’s latest graphic novel. (Kirkus)
    Graphic Novel[Montreal, Quebec] : Drawn & Quarterly, 2023. — 741.5973 L641B 2023
  • Both a hilarious and terrifying send-up of capitalist-driven masculinity and a poignant story about the perception-altering blessings (and burdens) of queerness. (Publishers Weekly)
    Graphic NovelNew York : Pantheon Books, 2023 — GN BOYS WEEKE 2023
  • This Country

    Searching for Home in (very) Rural America

    Mahdavian, Navied, 1985-
    Late in 2016, New Yorker cartoonist Mahdavian and his wife moved to a remote area of Idaho, built a tiny house on several acres of land, started a garden, and had a baby. Along the way, they experienced culture shock. (Kirkus)
    BookNew York, NY : Princeton Architectural Press, a division of Chronicle Books LLC, [2023] — 155.8973 M2777M 2023
  • The debut graphic novel from Mohamed presents a modern Egypt full of magical realism where wishes have been industrialized and heavily regulated. (Kirkus)
    Graphic NovelNew York : Pantheon Books, [2022] — 741.5962 M892S 2022
  • In oil painting style this story follows Sasha and Eliza, sex worker and struggling single mother, respectively. The two strike up a delicate friendship, the intimacy of which is deepened and subsequently increasingly awkward.
    Graphic NovelSeattle, Washington : Fantagraphics Books, [2022] — 741.5994 P2493M 2022
  • A poignant ode to the power of music to fill voids left by family and circumstance, with provocations thrumming on race and identity that sound out like a smashed guitar. (Publishers Weekly)
    Graphic NovelNew York, NY : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2022] — 781.66092 Sp66S 2022
  • This cartoon-y, brightly colored, anecdotal memoir explores gender theory in a satirical tone.
    BookSan Francisco, CA : Silver Sprocket, [2023] — 741.5973 Sz12E 2023
  • Playful yet plaintive, this is an elegant study of young women caught between the comforts of the past and the promise of what comes next. (Publishers Weekly)
    Graphic Novel[Montreal, Quebec] : Drawn & Quarterly, 2023. — 741.5973 T15R 2023