Fall 2026 Preview: Adult Comics
This season’s rockstar lineup includes Derf Backderf, Roz Chast, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Lisa Hanawalt, Joe Sacco, and James Tynion IV
Top 10
Bleeding Hearts
Deniz Camp and Stipan Morian. Vertigo, Oct. 20 ($17.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-7995-0556-3)
The zombie image-rehabilitation renaissance lumbers ever forward in Eisner nominee Camp’s series starter, set in a future dominated by the undead. It’s one of the first trade releases from the imprint’s relaunch.
The Book of Genocides
Dana Mashoian Walrath. Harvard Univ., Sept. 8 ($24.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-674-29905-4)
Anthropologist and artist Walrath recounts the destruction of 10 different cultures in this “unflinching, artfully rendered history,” per PW’s starred review, that delivers “grace and humanity to the victims.”
The Case of David Zimmerman
Lucas and Arthur Harari, trans. by David Homel. Arsenal Pulp, Oct. 13 ($39.95, ISBN 978-1-83405-034-8)
The Oscar-winning screenwriter of Anatomy of a Fall teams with his cartoonist brother for a body-switch tale “that fans of Hitchcock and Cronenberg will devour,” per PW’s starred review.
The Dissidents: Autocrats! Vigilantes! Communists! and Cartoonists!
Derf Backderf. Abrams ComicArts, Sept. 15 ($29.99, ISBN 978-1-4197-7255-9)
Eisner winner Backderf’s fictionalized account of a real-life anti-censorship crusade by editorial cartoonists in WWI-era America documents “sobering history that reverberates to the present day,” according to PW’s starred review.
Fml
Kelly Sue DeConnick, David Lopez, and Cris Peter. Dark Horse, Nov. 3 ($29.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5067-4649-4)
Bitch Planet creator DeConnick sends the metalhead kid of a riot grrrl mama on an odyssey through a postapocalyptic Pacific Northwest.
Home/World: A Circumnavi- gation of Our Shared Earth
Ben Hatke. 23rd St., Oct. 6 ($29.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-250-37018-1)
This graphic memoir debut from the Eisner-winning creator of Zita the Spacegirl follows the cartoonist as he traverses the globe in search of a sense of belonging.
I Can’t Stop Thinking About Horses and Sex
Lisa Hanawalt. Drawn & Quarterly, Oct. 20 ($25, ISBN 978-1-77046-912-9)
Saddle up for a ride through the psyche of the Ignatz winner behind Bojack Horseman and Tuca & Bertie.
Odin
James Tynion IV, Marguerite Bennett, and Letizia Cadonici. Image, Dec. 15 ($16.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-
5343-3219-5)
With a reporter on their heels, modern-day Nazis trek into the forest to rouse ancient gods in Eisner winner Tynion’s buzzy Nordic horror.
Requiem for Gaza
Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco. Fantagraphics, Oct. 6 ($24.99, ISBN 979-8-8750-0272-4)
Following up their bestseller Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, Eisner winner Sacco and Pulitzer winner Hedges profile Palestinian refugees living in Egypt.
The Two Saddest Kitchens: A Comics Conversation
Roz Chast and Jason Adam Katzenstein. Bloomsbury, Oct. 6 ($29.99, ISBN 978-1-63973-518-1)
The New Yorker cartoonists trade quips about their inferior kitchens in this “eclectic but delectable” collaboration, per PW’s review.
Adult Comics Longlist
23rd St.
The Greater Good: People, Power, and Public Health by Whit Taylor and Joyce Rice (Nov. 3, $30.99, ISBN 978-1-250-81376-3). This graphic explainer of the systems supporting public health is rooted in case studies and key moments from history, spanning everyday policy successes to lessons from epidemics.
My Beloved Other: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Optimism in a Time of Denial by Nick Abadzis and Angela Watson (Aug. 11, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-59643-370-0). Married collaborators Abadzis and Watson “examine intersections of race, nationality, and class via the lens of their 30-plus-year relationship,” per PW’s review. “Readers will appreciate this timely and ultimately optimistic account.”
Ablaze
Parliament of Rooks by Abigail Jill Harding and Richard Starkings (Aug. 4, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-68497-793-2). In this Eisner-nominated comic, an architect awakes from an otherworldly sleep and heads to a royal ball to present a vision for the city to the princess, but plans go awry.
Abrams ComicArts
Framing Emmett Till: Exposing Dark Fear by Christopher Bennett and Eric Battle (Oct. 27, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-4197-4227-9). Journalist Bennett, who cowrote Mamie Till-Mobley’s memoir, interrogates how news coverage has shaped America’s understanding of race through the fictionalized story of a Black reporter following the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till in Mississippi, in this release in the Megascope line.
Lantern Pass: A Supernatural Noir Alpine Thriller by Serge Lehman and Frederik Peeters, trans. by Christopher Bradley (Nov. 17, $34.99, ISBN 978-1-4197-8846-8). Angoulême award winner Peeters draws this “big, ambitious fantasy that blurs genre lines to dazzling effect while staying true to its French noir roots,” per PW’s starred review.
Andrews McMeel
My Giant Nerd Boyfriend by Yen Ee (Aug. 18, $16.99, ISBN 979-8-8816-0194-2) collects the popular webtoon about the quotidian misadventures of a Malaysian cartoonist named Fishball and her unusually tall partner.
Avid Reader
The Nightingales by Emil Wilson (Aug. 15, $34.99, ISBN 978-1-7995-0117-6). Wilson debuts with a mid-1980s period piece about a teen whose father’s ailing friend moves in. “Intimate and soft-spoken, this sketchbook family album finds the hard-won possibility of grace in America’s fraught early reckoning with AIDS,” according to PW’s review.
Bloomsbury
Thirty: A Guide to Embracing the Wonderfully Messy Decade by Ariella Elovic (Dec. 1, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-63973-763-5) examines what it means to be an adult who hasn’t yet hit such milestones as getting married or having kids, much less acquired the wherewithal to roast a chicken and host dinner guests. 75,000-copy announced first printing.
Boom! Studios
The Last Day of H.P. Lovecraft by Romuald Giulivo and Jakub Rebelka, trans. by Mercedes Gilliom (Aug. 18, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-89215-872-5), unfolds an unconventional tale of H.P. Lovecraft’s final days, resulting in a “moody, surrealistic imagining of a legendary writer’s life” that “Lovecraft himself might appreciate,” per PW’s review.
Cicada
Shushu by Ziggy Hanaor and Benjamin Phillips (Sept. 1, $22.99, ISBN 978-1-80066-061-8). The first adult graphic novel by the creator of the picture book Alte Zachen distills the trials of motherhood through the epic battle to get a recalcitrant child to quit their pacifier habit.
Conundrum
Borderline by Zeta Paul (Sept. 29, $20 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-77262-124-2). The Mi’kmaq artist chronicles her experiences as an Indigenous young person with borderline personality disorder growing up in a dysfunctional home and a hostile world going through rapid change.
Dark Horse
Did You Hear About Mimi Green? by Connor Goldsmith and Josh Cornillon (Jan. 12, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5067-5091-0). When a fatphobic comment by a social media star named Mimi goes viral, she retreats to a woo-woo spa until the furor dies down, but finds that the restorative treatments are crueler than words.
Knight City by Matt Kindt and David Lapham (Aug. 18, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-5067-4539-8) investigates the mental load of being a superhero via the story of a flying protector of justice by day who, when he sleeps, enters a parallel realm where he leads a banal life.
DC
Harley & Ivy: Life & Crimes by Erica Henderson (Aug. 18, $17.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-7995-0950-9). The Eisner-winning creator of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl puts her spin on the enemies-to-allies saga of the eponymous female villains, who bond after getting framed by the Joker.
Difference Engine
How Are You Feeling? by Andeasyand et al. (Aug. 26, $23 trade paper, ISBN 978-981-94-1178-8). Featuring contributions from cartoonists including Griselda Gabriele, Vinita Ramani, Wayne Rée, and Nurjannah Suhaimi, this anthology takes on sensitive topics including menstruation, menopause, pregnancy loss, and mental health struggles.
Drawn & Quarterly
Major Taylor: The World’s Fastest Man by Frederick Noland (Sept. 8, $30, ISBN 978-1-77046-493-3) memorializes the life and times of one of the first international Black sports heroes, Marshall Walter “Major” Taylor, who won a world championship bicycle race at age 20 in 1899.
Murder School by Paul B. Rainey (Sept. 15, $27, ISBN 978-1-77046-860-3) recalls the cartoonist’s miserable middle grade years dodging meanie classmates and teachers while immersing himself in unusual schoolyard games played to unexpected ends.
My Friend Kim Jong Un by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, trans. by Janet Hong (Oct. 27, $30 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-77046-822-1). From the Eisner-winning South Korean cartoonist’s island home, she can see North Korea. Here, she draws on original interviews and research to examine the life and personality of dictator Kim Jong Un.
Dstlry
Life by Brian Azzarello, Stephanie Phillips, and Danijel Zezelj (Nov. 24, $35 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-962265-27-0). In a far-flung future world, felons serving multiple life sentences must suffer through near-eternities of extended animation, working the mines of a forgotten planet—until a fresh shipment of dangerous criminals accidentally arrives on their shore.
Experiment
Early Man Was a Woman: Reclaiming Prehistory by Ulli Lust (Sept. 1, $29.95, ISBN 979-8-89303-137-9). In this “illuminating look into what makes humans human,” per PW’s starred review, the Angoulême award winner reconsiders the role of prehistoric women, weaving together memoir, art history, archaeology, and anthropology.
Fantagraphics
Bimbo Agitprop by Raquelle Jac (Aug. 4, $34.99 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-8750-0221-2). “In her searing debut, Jac depicts her dysfunctional childhood with a mastery of craft” that “combines the technical savvy of Phoebe Gloeckner with the brutal humor of Aline Kominsky-Crumb,” per PW’s starred review.
The Mess by Noah Van Sciver (Sept. 29, $19.99, ISBN 979-8-8750-0268-7). The Ignatz winner turns back to fiction with this tale of the grieving daughter of a hoarder cleaning out her father’s packed house with her disaffected teenage son, as she holds out hope of finding an original Picasso rumored to be hidden there.
Graphic Mundi
The Human Remains: Drawing Out Compassion in Medicine by Nathan A. Gray (Nov. 10, $26.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-63779-105-9). This debut memoir takes a scalpel to the intensive cycle of study and sleep deprivation that students go through to become doctors, dissecting how the author felt his compassion drain away during his residency until he found his calling in palliative care.
Helvetiq
Flight 111 by Talel Aronowicz (Sept. 1, $24.95, ISBN 978-3-03964-147-5). The Swiss cartoonist documents a family and national tragedy: the 1998 crash of a Swissair flight from New York City to Geneva that killed both her grandparents.
IDW Dark
The Twilight Zone: Stories from the Fifth Dimension by Dan Watters et al. (Sept. 1, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-88724-529-4).
Cartoonists cross into twilight territory in this anthology continuing in the style of the 60-year-old TV series, including work from Francesco Francavilla, Nate Powell, Tom Scioli, and James Stokoe.
Ignition
Roots of Madness by Stephanie Williams and Letizia Cadonici (Sept. 22, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-96806-310-8). This Eisner-nominated series puts a supernatural twist on the real-life story of 19th-century Black entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker, portrayed here as a young woman who mixes potions and science to counteract the poison sold to Black women as haircare.
Image
The Cutting Garden by Darcy Van Poelgeest and Erin Connally (Sept. 29, $22.99, ISBN 978-1-5343-3080-1). A mysterious child gets entangled in a series of deaths in Jazz Age New Orleans. “Familial feelings bloom between a monster and a mother in this delicate, melancholy horror story,” per PW’s review.
Royals by Derek Kirk Kim and Jacob Perez (Dec. 8, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-5343-8904-5). Bickering telepathic twin card sharps ply their trade in the seedy back rooms of Seoul, until they get found out by the wrong guys—and must make a criminal bargain to win their way out.
Mad Cave Studios
Havana Split by Brrémaud and Vic Macioci, trans. by Montana Kane (Sept. 1, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5458-2696-6). A daughter tries to rescue her kidnapped gambling-addict father in 1950s Cuba, tangling up with an ex-CIA agent and various gangsters and lowlifes in a plot to exchange a movie star for her deadbeat dad.
Is Ted Ok? by Dave Chisholm (Sept. 29, $24.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5458-2998-1). An office worker toiling for a trillionaire begins to lose his grip, and the troubled minder assigned to keep an eye on him finds her intervention only pushes their paranoid coexistence into ever weirder territory.
Magnetic Press
Liberty by Jordan Mechner, Etienne Le Roux, and Loïc Chevallier (Dec. 8, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-962413-83-1), recounts the
espionage exploits of French playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, who got weapons from Europe into the hands of American revolutionaries in 1776.
Marvel Universe
Ultimate Endgame by Deniz Camp, Terry Dodson, and Jonas Scharf (Sept. 22, $17.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-302-96730-7). The finale of the Ultimate Universe series finds Spider-Man, America Chavez, Killmonger, and Doom facing off against the Maker and the Children of Tomorrow against the backdrop of World War III.
NYRC
Like Swimmers by Dash Shaw (Aug. 25, $32.99, ISBN 979-889-623-1-059). Filmmaker and Eisner-nominated cartoonist Shaw returns with this “Rashomon-like whodunit,” per PW’s starred review, set in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. An artist is shot with a silver bullet and his sister tries to piece together the clues to find his killer.
Oni
Crownsville by Rodney Barnes and Elia Bonetti (Aug. 11, $24.99 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-89488-099-0). Eisner nominee Barnes sets this gothic horror and crime story within the halls of a segregated Maryland psychiatric facility that closed after allegations surfaced that staff abused patients.
Pantheon
Hotel and Farm by Ben Katchor (Oct. 6, $30, ISBN 978-0-307-90691-5). The creator of Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer returns with a short tale about the oddities of agriculture and the hospitality industry, as told by the denizens of a diner.
Pow Pow
The Price of Silver by Sophie Bédard, trans. by Robin Lang (Oct. 13, $19.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-2-925114-67-3). This girl-meets-girl love story with a supernatural twist sees a barista fall for a coworker, who turns out to be a werewolf—just the type of creature the barista was born to hunt.
SelfMadeHero
The Great Marc Evers: The True Story of a Champion Against All Odds by Ivo van Woerden and Gemma Plum (Oct. 6, $31.94, ISBN 978-1-914224-51-5). The autistic Paralympic swimmer from the Netherlands recounts how his family persevered to
support him despite a medical establishment that recommended he be institutionalized
in his toddlerhood.
Seven Stories
The Oracle Speaks: A Self-Help Guide Against Self-Help by Liv Strömquist, trans. by Melissa Bowers (Nov. 3, $23.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-64421-577-7). This takedown of the self-help and wellness industries employs a hybrid of comics, photo essays, and quotes from the writings and teachings of Catherine of Siena, the Oracle at Delphi, Slavoj Zizek, and God.
Storm King Comics
John Carpenter’s Cathedral by John Carpenter, Sandy King, and Sean Sobczak (Aug. 4, $22.99 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-9928116-8-1). A cathedral in ruins in the center of Los Angeles has been presumed empty for years, until a murder pulls a lieutenant and her fellow officers across its very unholy transom and ever deeper into a vortex of evil.
Street Noise
Fertile: A Graphic Memoir by Sofia Szamosi (Nov. 3, $20.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-951491-54-3) follows the cartoonist on her difficult journey to conceive and depicts her struggle with disordered eating once she was pregnant, bringing to light all the ways that shame enters into the experience of early motherhood.
Ten Speed Graphic
Stagtown by Punko (Oct. 6, $28.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-593-83625-5) collects the interactive webcomic murder mystery, in which a woman attempts to uncover who or what is watching her town via the cameras cropping up on every corner and inside people’s homes.
Thames & Hudson
Bomb It! The Story of Graffiti Art by Balthazar Pagani and Damiano Restivo
(Sept. 15, $24.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-500-03034-9). The vandalism-as-art that flourished as part of hip-hop culture in the 1980s and ’90s gets a graphic history that traverses from train tunnels to elite gallery collections, and from New York City to Paris and São Paulo.
Titan Comics
Alva in the Dark by Aksel Studsgarth and Daniel Hansen (Sept. 22, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-80618-370-8). This magic-tinged Nordic noir, the first in a trilogy, follows a would-be burglar as she finds out that she has witchy powers desired by the Craftsman, who begins to chase her across the snow.
Top Shelf
Forevr by Brian Box Brown (Sept. 8, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-60309-600-3). An app allows the dying to upload their minds and keep conversing with their loved ones as long as they pay their subscriber fees, but when a grieving family takes their late mother on a hike in the wilderness, things take a wrong turn.
Vault
The Mountains Belong to Us by Benjamin Dickson and Charlie Adlard (Nov. 3, $34.99, ISBN 978-1-63849-446-1). A shepherd and his dog pick up a young woman whose father has died in the mountains, but when the shepherd is drafted into war and leaves her with the pup, she runs up against evil monsters and men. 75,000-copy announced first printing.
Nectar by Jeremy Robinson, Annapaola Martello, and Francesco Francini (Aug. 4, $24.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-63849-367-9).
Per PW’s review, this “satisfyingly creepy” horror comic series features butterflies who drink blood, and “fans of gothic-tinged folk horror will enjoy the sugar rush of terror.” 85,000-copy announced first printing.
Webtoon Unscrolled
Gourmet Hound by Robyn Lee Hamada (Oct. 27, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-83411-049-3) collects the webtoon series, in which a foodie who has lost access to a nostalgic flavor sets out on a quest to reunite the team of chefs who helmed the restaurant she loved as a child.
Vertigo
Whats Wrongdog? (End of Life #1) by Kyle Starks and Steve Pugh (Oct. 13, $17.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-7995-0620-1). An inept hit man, who acts more like a boy playing the part, crosses the wrong bad guys and goes on the run, but trouble comes after him, including in the form of a canceled cartoonist who has turned to crime.
West Margin
Not Death, but Love: The Strange, Supernatural Story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning by Lavender Vroman and Joshua Kemble (Sept. 22, $29.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5131-4161-9). This graphic history covers the poet’s life, loves, odd-fellow friendships, writing career, and dalliances with opium and spiritualism.
Z2
WTF Is a Podcast with Marc Maron by Brendan McDonald and Brian Box Brown (Nov. 3, $34.99, ISBN 979-8-88656-222-4). Written by WTF producer McDonald, this comics history recounts the 1,000-episode run of the podcast, whose guests included Anthony Bourdain, President Barack Obama, and Robin Williams.
