Tag Archives: Graphic memoir

Exclusive Preview: Heartcore from Štěpánka Jislová and Graphic Mundi

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Where does love come from?

What is at the core of romantic attachment? Does our upbringing play a part, or is falling in love a magical, uncontrollable process? Are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over, or can we break unhealthy cycles and learn new ways to love?

These are the questions asked in Heartcore, an award-winning graphic memoir from comics creator Štěpánka Jislová and being published by Graphic Mundi on May 13. In this empowering story of self-discovery, the author reflects on her troubled experiences in dating and love and finally seeks to understand the reasons behind her many toxic relationships. She explores topics such as normative gender roles, online dating and casual sex, alcohol abuse, sexual violence, and the psychology behind interpersonal attachment, all in an engaging graphic-novel format. By confronting her unhealthy behaviors and seeking help to come to terms with her trauma, the author provides an inspiring example of how people can change for the better.

Štěpánka Jislová is an award-winning comics artist based in Prague and the cofounder of the Czech branch of Laydeez do Comics, an international organization that promotes female comic artists and their work. Jislová collaborated with Czech writer Tereza Čechová on the 2021 Muriel prize–winning Bez vlasů, later published by Graphic Mundi in English as Bald. Srdcovka (the original Czech edition of Heartcore) received the Muriel Award in three categories in 2024, including the main prize.

Check out our exclusive preview of Heartcore and order your copy from Bookshop, Amazon, or your local comic shop or bookstore.

Heartcore

The Murder Next Door is a graphic memoir that explores trauma that stays with us & how it impact us

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When Hugh was ten years old, he walked home from school to find his friends next door crying outside – they had just come home and discovered their mother’s body. She had been murdered.

Now an adult, Hugh has a happy social life and a successful career as an artist in Oakland, California. But even so he is plagued by anxiety, anger, and panic attacks. As he attends therapy and looks back on his childhood, he comes to realize the trauma and stress that the murder next door had on his life, and how it still affects him today.

Does trauma ever go away? Or does it just hang around, in the backs of our minds forever? This thoughtful, powerful memoir explores how one event in childhood can make a permanent mark on someone’s life.

Story: Hugh D’Andrade
Art: Hugh D’Andrade

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.

Bookshop
Amazon

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

Exclusive Preview: The Murder Next Door

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When someone is murdered next door, it changes everything about the way you live your life. The Murder Next Door is a brand-new graphic memoir from Hugh D’Andrade published by Street Noise Books and available now!

When Hugh was ten years old, he walked home from school to find his friends next door crying outside – they had just come home and discovered their mother’s body. She had been murdered.

Now an adult, Hugh has a happy social life and a successful career as an artist in Oakland, California. But even so he is plagued by anxiety, anger, and panic attacks. As he attends therapy and looks back on his childhood, he comes to realize the trauma and stress that the murder next door had on his life, and how it still affects him today.

Does trauma ever go away? Or does it just hang around, in the backs of our minds forever? This thoughtful, powerful memoir explores how one event in childhood can make a permanent mark on someone’s life.

Hugh D’Andrade is an award-winning illustrator based in Oakland, California. His work has appeared on young adult book jackets, rock posters, magazines, t-shirts, skateboards, and on the occasional gallery wall. Hugh is Creative Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and he has taught at the California College of Arts & Crafts, and the San Francisco Art Institute. This is his debut graphic novel. 

We have an exclusive preview of the graphic memoir. Purchase it now from Bookshop, Amazon, and your local comic shop!

The Murder Next Door

Graphic Memoir You Can Never Die by Harry Bliss delves into his personal life

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You Can Never Die

You Can Never Die is a poignant and witty graphic memoir from New Yorker cover artist, internationally syndicated cartoonist, and New York Times bestselling author Harry Bliss capturing his reflections on life and his relationship with Penny, his beloved dog. It’s out April 29, 2025 from Celadon Books.

New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss loved his sweet dog Penny, a joyful part of his life for seventeen years. Every day that he cared for his beloved pet, Harry joked with her, talked to her, and drew the adorable creature—Penny’s presence is unmistakably, hilariously incorporated into Harry’s iconic cartoons. In one, he gazes up at the night sky, remarking on the vastness of outer space, while she digs into the ground, unbothered, fuzzy tail wagging in the air.

Harry grew up in a family of artists, a rowdy and turbulent bunch, and attended art school in Philadelphia. A therapist once suggested that perhaps when he looked at Penny, he saw himself as an innocent child. As Harry grieves Penny’s loss, he reflects on his parents in their later years, his love for his wife and home, and the colorful artists, friends, and mentors who have shaped him.

With humor and gut-wrenching honesty, You Can Never Die is an intimate portrayal of a man making sense of the beautiful and painful world around him. This singular memoir integrates sharply crafted, witty stories with hundreds of gorgeous cartoons and never-seen-before sketches from Bliss’s career.

Visitations is an interesting read that gets rather frustrating by the end

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Corey’s mom has always made him feel safe. Especially after his parents’ divorce, and the dreaded visitations with his dad begin. But as Corey grows older, he can’t ignore his mother’s increasingly wild accusations. Her insistence that God has appointed Corey as his sister’s protector. Her declaration that Corey’s father is the devil.

Soon, she whisks Corey and his sister away from their home and into the boiling Nevada desert. There, they struggle to survive with little food and the police on the trail. Meanwhile, under the night sky, Corey is visited by a flickering ghost, a girl who urges him to fight for a different world–one outside of his mother’s spoon-fed tales, one Corey must find before it’s too late.

Story: Corey Egbert
Art: Corey Egbert

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.

Bookshop
Amazon
Kindle

Farrar, Straus and Giroux 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

Drafted is one of the best graphic novels of the year with amazing detail about army life

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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.

Bookshop
Amazon
Kindle

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

Dark Horse presents Jeff Lemire’s 10,000 Ink Stains: A Memoir

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Jeff Lemire is an Eisner award-winning and New York Times bestselling author and comic book creator. He is best known for his critically acclaimed books Sweet Tooth, Essex County, Underwater Welder, and Mazebook as well as being the co-creator of Black Hammer, Gideon Falls, Descender, Little Monsters, The Bone Orchard, Phantom Road and many others.

For the first time ever in his new illustrated memoir, 10,000 Ink Stains: A Memoir (Dark Horse, July 15, 2025, $49.99) Jeff Lemire is sharing his winding path to success via a book-by-book and step-by-step journey of sketches, previously unpublished materials, essays, archives and more.

In 10,000 Ink Stains readers will learn about Lemire in a whole new way, including:

  • An intimate look at Lemire’s personal life, and his struggles with his mental health informed his most iconic works including Sweet Tooth, Essex County and The Underwater Welder;
  • Lemire’s accounts of what it’s really like to work for DC and Marvel Comics;
  • Lemire’s struggle to maintain his own voice while taking on some of comics most iconic characters;
  • Insights into the adaptation of Sweet Tooth for Netflix’s hit TV series;
  • An unprecedented look at Lemire’s creative process through never-before-seen sketches and archives and how he built the worlds of Descender, Black Hammer, Gideon Falls and more;
  • Archival reproductions of Lemire’s very first self-published mini-comics and other rare comics from early in his 25-year career;

Lemire has worked extensively for both Marvel and DC Comics including a celebrated run on Moon Knight which heavily inspired the 2022 Marvel television show. His graphic novels have been translated into dozens of languages, establishing him as one of the most prolific and acclaimed comic book creators of his generation.

His iconic comic book Sweet Tooth has been adapted into a popular Netflix original series produced by Robert Downey Jr., and Essex County was adapted in 2023 into a 5-part prestige television miniseries starring Molly Parker, with Lemire both writing and showrunning the production.  Many of his other books are also in active development for film and television.

Lemire has won numerous Eisner Awards, YALSA Alex Awards, Joe Schuster Awards, Doug Wright Awards and has also collaborated with musicians including Eddie Vedder and Gord Downie.

10,000 Ink Stains will be available on July 15, 2025 in bookstores and July 16 in comic book stores nationwide. 

10,000 Ink Stains

Visitations is an interesting read that gets rather frustrating by the end

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Corey’s mom has always made him feel safe. Especially after his parents’ divorce, and the dreaded visitations with his dad begin. But as Corey grows older, he can’t ignore his mother’s increasingly wild accusations. Her insistence that God has appointed Corey as his sister’s protector. Her declaration that Corey’s father is the devil.

Soon, she whisks Corey and his sister away from their home and into the boiling Nevada desert. There, they struggle to survive with little food and the police on the trail. Meanwhile, under the night sky, Corey is visited by a flickering ghost, a girl who urges him to fight for a different world–one outside of his mother’s spoon-fed tales, one Corey must find before it’s too late.

Story: Corey Egbert
Art: Corey Egbert

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.

Bookshop
Amazon
Kindle

Farrar, Straus and Giroux 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

George Takei announces a new graphic memoir It Rhymes With Takei

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Top Shelf Productions has announced It Rhymes With Takei — a new full-color graphic memoir from the team behind George Takei’s award-winning bestseller They Called Us Enemy, telling the untold story of his journey from closeted actor to international gay icon. Scheduled for publication in June 2025, It Rhymes With Takei will offer an unprecedented view into the heart of this beloved star and a celebration of the warp-speed changes he has witnessed in one lifetime.

George Takei has shown the world many faces: actor, author, outspoken activist, helmsman of the starship Enterprise, living witness to the internment of Japanese Americans, and king of social media. But until October 27, 2005, there was always one piece missing — one face he did not show the world. There was one very intimate fact about George that he never shared… and it rhymes with Takei.

Now, for the first time ever, George Takei shares the full story of his life in the closet, his decision to come out as gay at the age of 68, and the way that moment transformed everything. Following the phenomenal success of his first graphic memoir, They Called Us Enemy, Takei reunites with the team of Harmony Becker, Steven Scott, and Justin Eisinger, now joined by the award-winning colorist José Villarrubia, for a jaw-dropping new testament. From his earliest childhood crushes and youthful experiments in the rigidly conformist 1950s, to global fame as an actor and the paralyzing fear of exposure, to the watershed moment of speaking his truth and becoming one of the most high-profile gay men on the planet, It Rhymes With Takei presents a sweeping portrait of one iconic American navigating the tides of LGBTQ+ history.

Combining historical context with intimate subjectivity, It Rhymes With Takei shows how the personal and the political have always been intertwined. Its richly emotional words and images depict the terror of entrapment even in gay community spaces, the anguish of speaking up for so many issues while remaining silent on his most personal issue, the grief of losing friends to AIDS, the joy of finding true love with Brad Altman, and the determination to declare that love openly — and legally — before the whole world. 

Looking back on his astonishing life on both sides of the closet, George Takei now presents a charismatic and candid witness to how far America has come…and how precious that progress is. 

It Rhymes With Takei

Shrink: Story of a Fat Girl is an interesting graphic memoir that’s about how we perceive weight

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Shrink is a work of graphic medicine that depicts the emotional and physical realities of inhabiting a large body in a world that is constantly warning about the medical and social dangers of being “too fat.” This smart and candid book challenges the idea that weight loss is the only path for a fat person and encourages the reader to question the prevailing cultural and medical discourse about fat bodies.

Story: Rachel M. Thomas
Art: Rachel M. Thomas

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.

Bookshop
Amazon
Kindle

Graphic Mundi 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

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