Where There’s Smoke, There’s Dinner: Confessions of a Cartoonist Cook
Jennifer Hayden
Bursting with color, flavor, and messy emotions, this unprecedented graphic memoir blends comics with satirical recipes to explore the intersections of food, feminism, frustration, and family.
Jennifer Hayden has never liked to cook. She’s not particularly good at it, either. But, like so many of us…she does it anyway.
Why is that? Where did these expectations come from? What happens if you don’t live up to the ideal of the perfect wife/mother/chef? And would someone please open a window before the fire department comes?
Drawing upon her own bereavement, renowned comics artist and writer Carol Tyler emerges from a decade long period of grief to create an allegorical masterpiece.
During collisions between life and death, estrangement and loss, Carol Tyler turned to her pen to face facts and extract meaning from the oddly sacred experience. Exploring realms metaphorical, half-imagined, and all-too-real, she explored previously uncharted emotional territory for herself and others, in a work that is both painfully intimate and philosophically rich.
An artistic advancement nearly forty years into Tyler’s comics-making career, The Ephemerata features Tyler’s most breathtaking picture making ever ― fine, dense brush lines complemented with occasional color washes or highlights ― and formally stunning cartooning. Combining art and text in multiple ways ― in the traditional comics panel grid, as words-and-illustration, as organically flowing images surrounded by floating text ― she depicts the inner monologue of a fallible human being grappling with questions of profound relevance. Tyler’s memoirist skills also rise to the fore, excavating and colliding scenes from her history, delineating with sensitive intuition ways in which the inevitability of grief is built into our lives and our loves. To struggle in the face of loss is a universal experience. To turn it into this compassionate, deep and beautiful book takes a true artist.
Story: Carol Tyler Art: Carol Tyler
Get your copy now! To find a comic shop near you, visit http://www.comicshoplocator.com or call 1-888-comicbook or digitally and online with the links below.
Fantagraphics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and make a purchase, we’ll receive a percentage of the sale. Graphic Policy does purchase items from this site. Making purchases through these links helps support the site
Japanese pop-culture icon Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, whose bestselling autobiography Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window, first published in 1981, did as much as any book to set the tone for Japan’s postwar culture, has now published her long-awaited sequel to that memoir. The original installment, Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window, which chronicled the writer’s Tokyo childhood and eclectic school life in the run-up to World War II, quickly soared past all previous publishing records in Japan; by the end of 1982, it had become the bestselling book in the country’s history, a distinction it maintains with over 8 million domestic sales to date. A true international phenomenon, it has gone on to sell an astounding, Guinness World Record-breaking 26 million copies worldwide in dozens of languages. Now, over four decades later, Kodansha USA will release the first-ever English translation of Kuroyanagi’s recently published and eagerly anticipated follow-up, Totto-chan, the Little Girl at the Window: The Sequel, translated by Yuki Tejima.
Kuroyanagi ended her original, seminal memoir with a heartbreaking scene in which her beloved elementary school, Tomoe Gakuen, burned down amidst the air raids of World War II. Totto-chan, the Little Girl at the Window: The Sequelbegins with her family’s frantic effort to escape Tokyo and the worst horrors of the war. In it, Kuroyanagi details how little Totto persevered through starvation and suffering to become a trailblazing actress, a champion for the deaf and children the world over, and one of the most successful entertainers in Japanese history.
Already an established literary classic, Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Windowreached a new generation in 2023 with the release of an anime film adaptation of the story. The critically lauded picture was produced and animated by Shin-Ei Animation, distributed by TOHO, and directed by Shinnosuke Yakuwa, Yuta Kanbe, and Kunio Kato, with Liliana Ono in the leading role as Totto-chan. Kodansha USA has arranged a screening of the acclaimed film at the Japan Society in New York on November 25, 2025.
To commemorate this long-awaited release, Kodansha USA will be sponsoring the following book-launch events in New York City:
Book talk with Translator Yuki Tejima at the New York Public Library 53rd Street Branch
Book signing with Translator Yuki Tejima at Kinokuniya Bookstore
Date: Monday, November 24, 2025 Time: 6:00-8:00pm ET Location: 1073 Avenue of the Americas, New York Admission: Free More details coming soon.
Screening of Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window feature anime and panel discussion at the Japan Society
Featuring: Yuki Tejima, translator; Alexandra McCullough-Garcia, editor; Nathan Shockey, Associate Professor of Japanese at Bard College Date: Tuesday, November 25, 2025 Time: Doors 6:00 pm, Screening 7:00 pm ET Location: 333 E 47th Street, New York Admission: $16 general admission; $12 students/seniors/persons with disabilities; $8 members More Info: https://japansociety.org/film/
Today, Tetsuko Kuroyanagi remains one of Japan’s most popular and celebrated media personalities. Her enduring presence is best represented by the success of her long-running television show, Tetsuko’s Room (Tetsuko no Heya),which began airing almost fifty years ago in 1976. In 2011, the program earned a Guinness World Record for the highest number of talk show broadcasts by the same host, a record which it continues to break with every new episode.
An inspirational philanthropist, Kuroyanagi was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF—the first from Asia—in 1984 and has visited 40 countries in that capacity. She is also on the board of the World Wide Fund for Nature Japan and provides professional training to deaf actors through The Totto Foundation, which is financed with her book royalties. She has written over twenty books, including co-authored works.
Totto-chan, the Little Girl at the Window: The Sequel was originally published in Japan on October 3, 2023 and will be published by Kodansha USA Publishing on November 18, 2025. Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Windowremains in print with Kodansha USA Publishing.
The Last Time We Spoke by Jesse Mechanic and Street Noise Books is an emotional and heartbreaking memoir of the author’s lifelong struggle with his mother’s death from cancer.
Grief never goes away.
When he was a teenager, Jesse Mechanic’s mother passed away after a long struggle with cancer. In this memoir, he looks back on that time, and on the ways that experience followed him throughout his life. Struggling with school while dealing with attentional problems and the overwhelming tsunami of grief, this book tells the story of Mechanic’s slow work to figure out a life for himself. It’s about obsessive-compulsive disorder, intrusive thoughts, and depression—straight-A’s turning to straight F’s, and smiles to blank stares. It’s about what loss can teach us, and how trauma can be both debilitating and beautiful. It’s about standing in dark rooms for long enough for your eyes to adjust.
And graffiti. It’s about that too.
With powerful visuals and thoughtful, poignant text, this graphic memoir challenges readers to keep going in the face of the hardest times.
Jesse Mechanic is an opinion columnist, essayist, and artist. He has published work in Mother Jones, In These Times, HuffPost, Truthout, and other publications. Jesse enjoys woodworking, the television show Cheers, and working diligently to dismantle the various oppressive systems that define our world. The Last Time We Spoke is his debut graphic novel.
In the late 1980s, Poland faces debilitating food shortages, worker discontent, and astronomical inflation. Seemingly overnight, the country transitions from communism to capitalism. During this period of flux, Kasia Babis is born.
In the shadow of national change, Kasia experiences her own journey of growth, from rebellious teen to politically minded activist. She grapples with her country’s deep-rooted Catholicism and forges her own beliefs, leading to her becoming an active part of Poland’s left-wing Razem party. Each new experience is a reminder that broader societal upheavals reverberate on a deeply personal level.
Story: Kasia Babis Art: Kasia Babis
Get your copy now! To find a comic shop near you, visit http://www.comicshoplocator.com or call 1-888-comicbook or digitally and online with the links below.
23rd St. provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and make a purchase, we’ll receive a percentage of the sale. Graphic Policy does purchase items from this site. Making purchases through these links helps support the site
The Pulitzer has a few ways to win for comic creators/cartoonists and most would think of political cartoons when thinking “comics” and that award. On Monday it was announced that Tessa Hulls had won a 2025 Pulitzer in “Memoir or Autobiography” for Feeding Ghosts, A Graphic Memoir, the second original graphic novel to win one. Art Spiegelman’s Maus was the first to win thirty-three years ago. Welcome to the New World won in 2018 for “Editorial Cartooning” and I Escaped a Chinese Internment Camp won in 2022 for “Illustrated Reporting and Commentary.”
An affecting work of literary art and discovery whose illustrations bring to life three generations of Chinese women – the author, her mother and grandmother, and the experience of trauma handed down with family histories.
Hulls’ graphic novel, almost 10 years in the making, follows three generations of Chinese women. Her grandmother was a journalist during the Communist revolution who escapes to Hong Kong but suffers a mental breakdown. The story is of Hulls’ grandmother, her mother, and herself as they attempt to survive. Its won numerous awards including the National Books Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the 2025 Anisfield Wolf Prize, the Libby Award For Best Graphic Novel and the shortlist for the Carnegie Medal.
Hulls learned of the news will working at the Legislative Lounge in the Capitol building in Juneau. She started to receive calls and text messages congratulating her but she was busy preparing the daily special, beef stew and salmon Alfredo linguine.
It was state Rep. Justin Ruffridge who informed Hulls after looking up the news on his phone. Hulls still went about her day doing her job, a seasonal contract gig. Hulls wants to become an embedded comics journalist working with field scientists focused on climate change and ecological resilience, a job that doesn’t really exist, but we fully expect to see her will it into existence.
Feeding Ghosts, A Graphic Memoir is available through Bookshop, Amazon, your local comic shop or bookstore, and more.
Drafted is a powerful graphic novel memoir by Rick Parker, a shy, inexperienced, and overly protected teenager who gets drafted into the United States Army at the height of the Vietnam War.
In telling this story, he shows how Vietnam was the last war in the United States that instituted the draft; how the draft affected those who served; and how we as Americans think of war and our soldiers once they return from service. Parker also shows how being an artist helped him to survive his time in the army.
Story: Rick Parker Art: Rick Parker
Get your copy now! To find a comic shop near you, visit http://www.comicshoplocator.com or call 1-888-comicbook or digitally and online with the links below.
Abrams Comicarts provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and make a purchase, we’ll receive a percentage of the sale. Graphic Policy does purchase items from this site. Making purchases through these links helps support the site
Ozge Samanci‘s much-lauded autobiographically-inspired graphic novelEvil Eyes Sea has received the prestigious Cartoonist Studio Prize, given by the Center for Cartoon Studies. The thirteenth annual prize has recognized Samanci’s graphic novel from acclaimed publisher Uncivilized Books as 2024’s best long-form comic.
CCS says about the book:
The book’s greatest strengths lie in its originality and voice. The tone balances wit and melancholy with remarkable ease. The artwork is expressive and the cartooning inventive. At times, the story flirts with familiar tropes, but always on its own terms—eschewing highbrow convention for something more emotionally direct. Samanci has created a heartfelt, captivating work that deserves wider attention.
In Evil Eyes Sea, Samanci writes a feminist political mystery set in Istanbul during the 1995 elections telling the story of two broke students who witnessed an unusual death on a scuba diving expedition. As the case deepens, they become increasingly entangled with religious pressure, and possible murder and political corruption that echoes the events of contemporary America. They try to return to their every day, but their lives are increasingly entangled with the chaos, trauma, and economic instability that results from their experience.
Author Ozge Samanci says:
Evil Eyes Sea is about political dread and the rise of authoritarianism, but it’s also a story of friendship, magical realism, honesty, and absurd moments of youth. Blending fiction with autobiography helped me tell a dark story in a humorous and lighthearted way. Graphic novels take years to create, and this recognition from the CCS community means the world to me.
Uncivilized Books’ publisher Tom Kaczynski said:
Evil Eyes Sea‘s propulsive and—dare I say, action-packed—comic book storytelling stood out to me when I first read it. Foreign locales, friendship, murder mystery, and political intrigue; it’s all there and then some. Ozge’s European TinTin-esque sensibility blended with American autobiographical influences is a real treat for comics readers.
You can get it now from Bookshop, Amazon, your local comic shop and bookstore, and more.
Kate Beaton delivers a raw and honest take about her experiences working in the Alberta tar sands.
Story: Kate Beaton Art: Kate Beaton
Get your copy now! To find a comic shop near you, visit http://www.comicshoplocator.com or call 1-888-comicbook or digitally and online with the links below.
This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and make a purchase, we’ll receive a percentage of the sale. Graphic Policy does purchase items from this site. Making purchases through these links helps support the site
Sacramento, California, 1870. Pioneer photographer Eadweard Muybridge becomes entangled in railroad robber baron Leland Stanford’s delusions of grandeur. Tasked with proving Stanford’s belief that a horse’s hooves do not touch the ground while galloping at full speed, Muybridge gets to work with his camera. In doing so, he inadvertently creates one of the single most important technological advancements of our age—the invention of time-lapse photography and the mechanical ability to capture motion.
Story: Guy Delisle Art: Guy Delisle
Get your copy now! To find a comic shop near you, visit http://www.comicshoplocator.com or call 1-888-comicbook or digitally and online with the links below.
This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and make a purchase, we’ll receive a percentage of the sale. Graphic Policy does purchase items from this site. Making purchases through these links helps support the site
