Monster High: House Haunters #5
(W) Ben Kahn (A) Sonia Liao
In the final issue of House Haunters, the ghouls have an epic showdown between an evil titan, a walking, talking house, and a pack of monsterfied animals! There’s also a nefarious little lawn gnome traipsing about the spooky basement… but together, the ghouls can face anything! Except maybe the ScareBnB cleaning fee they’re about to receive… oops!
Monster High: House Haunters #3
(W) Ben Kahn (A) Sonia Liao
As the ghouls continue to fight their way out of the cursed cabin, the situation goes from bad to scary bad. Hallways are shifting, nobody can find the kitchen, and the floor is on the ceiling — not to mention the pack of monsterfied animals keeping guard outside. There’s a gorgon bear, a psychic squirrel, and a… werewolf wolf? The ghouls are in fearious danger now…
Monster High: New Scaremester, Vol. 2
Writers: Jacque Aye, Keryl Brown Ahmed, and Ben Kahn
Art by Siobhan Keenan and Caroline Shuda
The new scaremester is well underway as a mystery fills the halls and the students prepare for the Howlidays!
Students have gone missing, and un-life at Monster High gets more complicated with each passing day. Everyone is on edge, causing cat fights between even the beast of fiends. But none feel the burden as heavily as the school’s new protector. Only Wydowna Spider and all six of her hands could count Draculaura’s obligations. Between her new position as director of the school board, fearleading practice, ghoulwork, student disembody council, and Ra knows what else, she’s found herself at D’Eath’s door…literally. ?
Monster High: House Haunters #1
(W) Ben Kahn (A) Sonia Liao
Join Frankie Stein, Draculaura, Clawdeen Wolf, Cleo de Nile, and Lagoona Blue as they uncover the mysteries of their weekend haunt! All five issues are purrfect for Monster High fans and anyone looking for a fright.
To celebrate the Halloween season, IDW is partnering with Mattel to bring readers a spooktacular, pun-filled biweekly series. And what’s more frightening than a haunted house? Except the cabin the ghouls found on the normie version of ScareBnB is… toads boring. No cobwebs, no rusty saw blades, just a tacky singing plastic fish. The ghouls are scary underwhelmed, until they discover a classically creepy basement and accidentally unlock an ancient horror, awakening an evil titan, and someone, or somehouse, else.
Dark Horse Books presents Renegade Royale, the follow-up to Ben Kahn, Rachel Silverstein, and Sam Beck’s GLAAD Media Award-nominated queer VR gaming graphic novel, Renegade Rule. Kahn and Silverstein return to write the sequel with Sam Beck illustrating, and Jim Campbell lettering. The team returns in the new volume, out Summer 2025.
Since their defeat at the VR gaming championship for Renegade Rule, the team members of the Manhattan Mist haven’t lost an ounce of momentum. So when a new brawl mode is introduced to the game—along with a sponsored inaugural competition—they’re in it to win it (again)! But in this tournament, only one player can be crowned champion. Get ready for a burgeoning romance between two team members, all-new character classes, and new rivals who will push Tonya, Sasha, Amanda and Jessie to their very limits. Whether or not the Mist can make some time between jokes, swears, and stolen glances to make one of their own a VR gaming champion remains to be seen!
Renegade Royale (paperback, 120 pages, 6.625” x 10.1875”) will be available wherever books are sold on July 29, 2025. It is now available to preorder from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Things From Another World, and your local comic shop and bookstore for $19.99
Monster High: Howliday Haunt #1
(W) Ben Kahn (A/CA) Sonia Liao
In Shops: Dec 04, 2024
SRP: $5.99
Happy Howlidays, ghouls. Blankets of snow have settled over Monster High, which can only mean that the Howliday Ball is around the coroner. There’s nothing quite like a school dance to scare up some defrightful drama. Spotted: Sparks flying between Frankie Stein and Johnny Spirit, Monster High’s ultimate bad boy. After 3,000 years of detention, the ghost is still stirring up trouble, so what could he want with the darling daughter of our headmaster? Could it be that Frankie’s electric personality has finally melted the bad boy’s ice-cold heart?
Oni Press has announced four fantastically colorful and captivating YA and middle-grade graphic novels making their debut in the spring of 2025! Spanning science fiction, action-adventure, and LGBTQ+ stories of self-discovery, these books have something for readers of any age and interest. Get ready for four brand-new worlds created by critically acclaimed knockout writers Ben Kahn (GLAAD Award nominee), Ananth Hirsh (Ignatz and Ruben Award winner), Joey Weiser (Eisner Award nominee) and Andrew Wheeler (Shuster and Eisner Award winner), alongside all-star artists Georgeo Brooks (Immortals Fenyx Rising: From Great Beginnings), Tess Stone (Harvey Nominee), and Rye Hickman (Eisner Award Nominee). You won’t want to miss out on these unforgettable adventures when they roll into stores next spring!
From GLAAD Media Award nominee Ben Kahn and illustrator Georgeo Brooks comes Mr. Muffins in January 2025! An uplifting, action-packed story about the powerful connection between humans and their pets, complete with epic space battles, and asks the age-old question: Can a corgi save the galaxy?
Eleven-year-old Reuben Mahmoud just wants a break. When he takes his pet corgi, Mr. Muffins, to the park, he expects to get just that—some free time to relax with his best friend. Instead, he finds himself smack dab in the middle of an alien invasion and apparently Mr. Muffins is destined to save the galaxy!
BUZZ!, first released in 2013 by writer Ananth Hirsh and artist Tess Stone, returns in February 2025 with an updated edition featuring all-new cover art and bonus material from the creators. Read and reread the frenetic tale of spelling-bee battles, friendship, and the discovery of self-worth!
Webster’s first day of high school goes off the rails when he ends up at a back-alley rumble . . . FOR UNDERGROUND SPELLING!
He’s dubbed the Golden Kid, and from that moment on he’s drawn into the world of underground spelling bees, where letters fly like shurikens and defeat is never an option. His talent is recognized by the mysterious and dashing Outlaw King Khan, and the suave and plucky Black Queen Bonnie, who introduce the Golden Kid to no-holds-barred competitive spelling in this timeless adventure.
Next March, Join Ash, Dot, and all the fighting champions in the fast-paced, action-packed graphic novel The Littlest Fighter! The newest story from Eisner Award nominee Joey Weiser is perfect for young fans of kaiju monsters and epic battle sequences!
Ash is a novice fighter about the size of a human kid who battles giant monsters across the land, and boy, he has started to make a BIG name for himself as he defeats champion after champion on his way to fame and glory! Frankly, he’ll fight anyone, even if it means destroying a few buildings or villages along the way. That’s when he stumbles across Dot, a young villager who wants to put an end to all the fighting—which turns this littlest fighter’s whole world upside down!
Next April, from author Andrew Wheeler and visual storyteller Rye Hickman comes Hey, Mary! A touching LGBTQ+ story for young adults learning to accept every aspect of themselves.
Mark is a good Catholic boy. He goes to church, he says his prayers, and he spends too much time worrying about hell. When Mark realizes he has a crush on another boy in his school, he struggles to reconcile his feelings with his faith as the weight of centuries of shame and judgment—and his fear of his parents’ response—presses on his shoulders. Mark seeks advice from his priest, as well as a local drag performer, but also receives unexpected input from key figures in Catholic history and lore, including Joan of Arc, Michelangelo, St. Sebastian, and Savonarola. Ultimately, only Mark can answer the question: Is it possible for him to be both Catholic and gay?
To go along with the Jewish Comics Experience exhibition, JewCE held a convention with numerous panels highlighting the history of comics and it connection to Jewish culture and history. Taking place in November, the convention has now released all of the panels for streaming and to watch on demand.
What might it mean to queer Jewish comics? In this panel, we will explore the works of comics creators who have challenged normative notions of Jewish identity and belonging, particularly in relation to gender and sexuality, by experimenting with elements like form, style, characterization, and storytelling convention. Our panelists will discuss their experiences of shaping Jewish characters and stories to expand ideas of what Jewish comics storytelling can look like, and what it can say.
Queering Jewish Comics is moderated by Tahneer Oksman and features Ben Kahn, Shira Spector, Barry Deutsch, and Miriam Libicki. Watch it now!
Even though it was a shitty year overall, I found some great comics to enjoy in 2021, both old and new. Beginning with its “Future State” event, DC easily shot up to become my favorite mainstream publisher thanks to its renewed focus on different visual styles instead of a Jim Lee-esque art style and its emphasis on LGBTQ+ characters even after Pride Month. Vault and Image continued to be the homes of both my favorite creators and SF stories, and AWA, Dark Horse and even Black Mask and Archie had titles that surprised me even if they didn’t make the cut on this list. Finally, continuing a trend that I jumped on in 2020, I continued to read or revisit classic comics (Both old and new) in 2021, like Copra, Invincible, The Umbrella Academy, Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, Wonder Woman: True Amazon, The Invisibles, Peter Milligan and Mike Allred’s X-Force, Hawkeye, and Black Bolt among others.
So, without further ado, here are my ten favorite comics of 2021
Alice in Leatherland is a wholesome, sexy, and hyper-stylized slice of life romance comic from the creative team of Iolanda Zanfardino and Elisa Romboli. The book is about Alice, a children’s book writer, who leaves her small town for San Francisco when her girlfriend cheats on her and captures the fear and adrenaline of taking a big step in your life. The series explores sex and love through an expansive cast of LGBTQ+ characters that I wanted to spend more than five issues with. Romboli uses fairy tale style visuals as a metaphor to examine Alice’s feelings and self-growth throughout the series, and she excels at depicting both the hilarious and erotic. Alice in Leatherland is an emotional, funny read with well-developed queer characters and made me immediately add Zanfardino and Elisa Romboli to the list of creators I’ll read anything by.
The Autumnal by Daniel Kraus, Chris Shehan, and Jason Wordie was the most unsettling comic I read in 2021. The book follows Kat Somerville and her daughter Sybil as they leave Chicago for the town of Comfort Notch, New Hampshire. However, this town isn’t a rural oasis, but incredibly creepy. Kraus’ script unravels the foundation of blood that the town is built on while Shehan and Wordie create tension with the fall of the leaf or a crackle of a branch. I also love how fleshed out Kat is as she deals with being an outsider in what turns out to be an unfriendly space with her parenting style and approach to life being critiqued by her neighbors. Finally, The Autumnal is the finest of slow burns beginning with NIMBY/Karen-like behavior and then going full-on death cult. It’s a must read for anyone who has lived or experienced a place where time seems to stand still, or who thinks a NextDoor app post could be the basis of a good horror story.
Contrary to its title, James Tynion, Guillem March, Steffano Rafaele, Arif Prianto, and others’ The Joker isn’t a comic looking at the Clown Prince of Crime’s inner psyche, but is a globe-trotting P.I. type story featuring Jim Gordon trying to capture the Joker for some folks that looks shadier and shadier as the story progresses. Tynion and (predominantly) March show the effect Joker has had on Gordon’s life and his family while also showing him discover himself outside the bounds of Gotham and its police department. As the series progresses, The Joker shows the impact that Batman and his rogue’s gallery have had on the rest of the world, and the ways governments, intelligence agencies, and more nefarious organizations deal with threats of their ilk. Along with a crime novel set in present time, James Tynion, Matthew Rosenberg, and the virtuosic Francesco Francavilla created several flashback comics showing the development of Jim Gordon’s relationship with the Joker over the years, and how it effected his family life and career almost acting as a “Year One” for Gordon as Francavilla’s art style shifts based on the era the story is set in. Plus most issues of Joker feature colorful backup stories with Harper Row trying to bring Joker’s newest ally Punchline to justice in and out of prison from Tynion, Sam Johns, Sweeney Boo, Rosi Kampe, and others.
Kane and Able is a dual-cartoonist anthology featuring work by British cartoonists Shaky Kane and Krent Able. Kane’s stories flow together in a Jack Kirby-meets-David Lynch kind of way blurring the lines between fiction and metafiction, reality and unreality while also acting as an opportunity for him to draw cool things like dinosaurs, space women, aliens, the King of Comics, and even himself. Able’s stories have more of a grindhouse, body horror quality to him as a chainsaw-wielding Bear Fur battles a boom box wielding cockroach woman, who flesh bonds everyone in a listless, major city. Both creators have delightful, distinctive styles and put their own spin on genres like sci-fi, exploitation, and superhero. Kane and Able is free-flowing, clever, and most of all, fun and is tailor made for the larger page format of treasury editions.
As far as pure visuals go, Static Season One by Vita Ayala, Nikolas Draper-Ivey, and ChrisCross was easily one of the best looking books on the stands in 2021. This was in addition to reinventing the iconic Black superhero through the lens of contemporary social movements, like Black Lives Matter and protests against police brutality in summer of 2020. Static Season One doesn’t merely pay homage to the classic Milestone series, but brings it into 2021 with fight sequences straight out of the best shonen manga and a three dimensional supporting cast that holistically explore the Black experience in the United States while also being a coming of age and superhero origin tale. Draper-Ivey’s character designs are sleek as hell, and his high energy approach to color palette adds intensity to fight and chase scenes. I’m excited to see what the talented creative duo of Ayala and Nikolas Draper-Ivey bring to Static’s journey as Season One wraps up and Season Two (hopefully) begins in 2022.
Renegade Rule is an original graphic novel from Ben Kahn, Rachel Silverstein, and Sam Beck that is a perfect fusion of a sports manga and a queer romance story set in the world of competitive video games. Even if you’re like me and have only attempted to play Overwatch a single time, Renegade Rule and its world are quite accessible via things like hypercompetitiveness, sexual tension, and breathtaking fight choreography. The in-game sequences are almost like musical numbers and use shooting, sniping, and various acrobatics to make characters’ unspoken thoughts real. Renegade Rule is like if your favorite sports movie and romantic comedy had a gay baby who loved kicking ass at video games, and I pumped my fist every time the Manhattan Mist overcame adversity or overwhelming odds and smiled when certain characters ended up with each other…
After a four year absence from interior art, co-writer/artist J.H. Williams III didn’t mess around with Echolands, a love letter to both genre fiction and double page spreads. Done in collaboration with co-writer Haden Blackman and colorist Dave Stewart, Echolands is an epic fantasy quest loaded up with all kinds of genres and art styles leaking off the page and was one of the most immersive comics I read in 2021. It has a sprawling cast and world, but Blackman and Williams know when to slow down and dig into Hope Redhood and her allies and antagonists’ motivations and when to drop in a multi-page underwater or underground chase sequence. With its unique landscape layouts and all the details in J.H. Williams and Stewart’s visuals, Echolands is definitely a book worth picking up in physical format and has backmatter that both humorously and seriously adds to the worldbuilding.
In honor of Pride Month, DC Comics put some of its most talented LGBTQ+ creators on its most iconic LGBTQ+ characters in a super-sized celebration of overcoming adversity, being yourself, and loving whoever you want to love. DC Pride covered a spectrum of sexual and gender identities from a fast-paced date night story featuring the non-binary Flash, Jess Chambers, to James Tynion and Trung Le Nguyen’s fairy tale influenced story of Batwoman’s younger days and even the first appearance of transgender superhero Dreamer (From the Supergirl TV show) in the comics. Depending on the character or creative team, the different stories could be adventurous and flirtatious, heartfelt and emotional, or a bit of both. This book shows that superhero comics have come a long way since the stereotypes of the 1980s and 1990s, but there’s still room for improvement as many of the characters featured in this anthology are relegated to backup stories or are supporting cast members of cisgender, heterosexual heroes.
Barbalien: Red Planet is a masterfully crafted, queer rage infused superhero/sci-fi comic from Jeff Lemire, Tate Brombal, Gabriel Walta, and Jordie Bellaire. It understands subtext is for cowards and draws parallels between Barbalien coming out as gay and a Martian with his new friend/potential lover Miguel, who is a Latino activist fighting for the US government to do something about the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Barbalien: Red Planet pays homage to the Black and Latinx activists who fought for queer liberation and is also an emotionally honest character study for Barbalien, who is easily my favorite character in the Black Hammer universe. Lemire, Brombal, and Walta use the superhero and sword and planet genres to explore the conflict between queer folks and power structures as Barbalien struggles with trying to fit into Spiral City as a white cop or being his true, gay Martian self. And to get personal for a second, Barbalien: Red Planet inspired me to speak out against my city’s Pride organization’s open support of police even though it led to me resigning as chairperson of my work’s LGBTQ+ employee affinity group. It’s both a damn good superhero book and a story that had a huge impact on my life in 2020-2021.
My favorite comic of 2021 was Die by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans that wrapped up with the mother of all quest arcs. But beyond having cool fantasy landscapes and wrapping up each party member’s arc, Die nailed the importance of stories, whether games, comics, films, prose, TV shows etc., to change how we view and interact with the world in both a heightened and realistic manner. Most of the realism came in Die #20 where the main characters escape the world of the game into our reality with the COVID-19 pandemic in full swing and have emotional reunions with loved ones or just hang out by themselves. However, the final arc of Die also is full of existential nightmares courtesy of Hans’ visuals as well as awakenings and self-realization, especially in Die #19 where Ash comes out as non-binary and discusses how games and fiction shaped their identity. The final issues of Die is a double-edged look at the power of narrative and games to shape us done in both glorious and surprisingly intimate fashion, and I felt I really knew Ash, Matt, Angela, Isabelle, Matt, Chuck, and Sol in the end.
Honorable Mentions: Casual Fling (AWA), Nightwing (DC), Made in Korea (Image), Barbaric (Vault), Superman and the Authority (DC), Catwoman: Lonely City (DC/Black Label)
Z2 Comics and the Estate of Paul Kantner have announced the adaptation of Paul Kantner/Jefferson Starship’s seminal 1970 debut album, Blows Against the Empire, as a new graphic novel. Crafted by vocalist/guitarist Paul Kantner in the wake of Jefferson Airplane, Blows Against the Empire was nominated for a Hugo Award in Best Dramatic Presentation that same year. The concept album revolves around Peter and Serenity, a pair of young lovers on the run from the fascist law enforcement of Amerikon.
The graphic novel expands upon the universe contained within the album. Exhausted by a life spent barely escaping the clutches of authoritarians, Peter and Serenity reach their breaking point with the world when they discover that Serenity is pregnant. Wanting a better world for their daughter, the pair join with a radical hippie collective to steal an experimental starship that can shepherd them across the galaxy. To create the life their daughter deserves, they’ll challenge an authoritarian superpower, fight to stay true to their compassion and morals, and brave the mysteries of the cosmos.
The album Blows Against The Empire, released in November 1970 (RCA Victor), was a narrative concept album celebrating late-sixties counter-culture, depicting people celebrating mind expansion and free love. As the album was reflective of the period of cross-collaboration among musicians in the Bay Area at the time, it featured guest artists including Grace Slick & Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead members Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, as well as David Crosby, Graham Nash, and many more. The album reached number 20 on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold by the RIAA.
Writer Ben Kahn joins cover and interior artist G. Romero-Johnson to translate this tale of interstellar hijacking and rebellious love. The deluxe edition includes a limited-edition colored vinyl and prints from G. Romero-Johnson, Kat Crow, and Michael Vincent Bramley.
Pre-orders for Blows Against the Empire are now available exclusively at Z2’s webstore with an expected book release in March 2022. The comic is written by Kahn and features art by Romero Johnson.
