Week of 7/27/2026

Another Shapes comic was reprinted in the July issue of Inx, which you can download for free here or find at shops around Charlotte, NC.

My new comic poem “Spring’s Sonnet” is in Volume 5 of Agitator Gallery’s anthology comic. I won’t be there to celebrate, but if you’re in Chicago, they’re doing a release party tonight from 7- 10 PM! All the comics in the anthology will also be exhibited at the Trinacria Arts Festival in Sicily from August 9-11.

Head over to the grooviest used book shop in Williamsburg, Spoonbill & Sugartown Books, for your sticker fix!

218 Bedford Ave at the Mini Mall, Brooklyn, NY 11211

If you missed it last week, here’s my updated event schedule as I sell limited-edition posters to celebrate The Shapes return in late September. I’ll try to put them on my online shop by next week, but I’ve been super busy with other business and life stuff, including a TV production assistant internship and creating a website to archive all of The Shapes comics.

It’s time to talk about my favorite Harvey Award nominees this year in our Lord’s year 2026. How are we closer to the 2030s than to the 2010s? While not as exhaustive as the Eisner or flowing in the indie spirit of the Ignatz Awards, there’re always a few gems in here worthy of discussion. This year isn’t an exception.

As usual, the ground rule is that I only include works I haven’t previously reviewed. Sorry, The Weight and My Gorilla Family.

Category: Best Young Adult Book

From the duo behind Banned Book Club and No Rules Tonight comes the perfect book for the Daeboreum season. It’s 1980s South Korea, and Taehee is a typical young college girl in many ways. She has a cute boyfriend and enjoys social activities like dancing and hanging out with her friends, all while living with a strict father. However, her friend group and grandmother are an eccentric bunch with their own plans in mind to celebrate Daeboreum with her, the “old-fashioned way” in a village.

A coming-of-age period piece, Good Old-Fashioned Korean Spirit is a delightful book about family, friendship, and activism that’ll make you feel like you’re in that time and place. While I haven’t read the other installments in the series, this graphic novel stands alone well on its own.

Category: Best Book of the Year

Following the critical acclaim of Stone Fruit, Lee Lai returns with another literary graphic novel. Set in her hometown of Montreal, we follow the motions of our Asian-Canadian protagonist, Cannon, who navigates caring for a senile grandparent, working a demanding chef job, relationships, and other day-to-day adulthood issues.

At the surface level, Cannon seems like low-stakes slice-of-life fare made for easy reading. Nevertheless, like the best of realistic fiction, there’re layers of character depth that manifest through their interactions and identity. By the end, you feel like you know the cast personally and resonate with them on some level.

Category: Best Children’s Book

Ranking a middle-grade coming-of-age comic over a serious work of graphic arts, how could I? If you know me well enough, I’m an animation dork, so any work that tickles that appreciation for the medium doesn’t have to try that hard to win me over.

Cue to scene, June 1999 in Canada. Twin sisters Ash and Sloane are aspiring artists in high school who get the opportunity to participate in an animation summer camp at the prestigious Ormidale College (It’s not a real-life school; don’t bother searching for it) under the tutelage of some of the greatest animators, including Douglas Frye, director of one of Ash’s favorite animated movies, Monstrous. For any art kid, this feels like the dream of a lifetime, but of course, when you actually get to experience it, the reality isn’t as utopian as the expectations.

No, this isn’t Art School Confidential lite telling children about how awful art school is. To the contrary, it contains an optimistic tone, which is probably reflective of how Faith Erin Hicks feels about her Sheridan College alma mater. That said, it doesn’t shy away from the challenges that come with being an art school student, including demanding assignments and unfair professors, setting realistic expectations for the book’s target audience.

All the cartoon references throughout took the cake. From Studio Ghibli to The Iron Giant and even the Canadian short The Sweater. God, I haven’t thought of that short in ages! From the mainstream to the relatively niche, Hicks wears her love for the art form on her sleeve. I can’t help but wonder why, however, anime and other foreign cartoons were referenced by name while American cartoons mostly used parody names. It doesn’t detract from anything; it’s just an observation I made while reading.

Category: Best Book of the Year

Join Ben Passmore as his pop lays the rap on him about black liberation, traveling through time to witness revolutionary figures and movements throughout American history from Marcus Garvey to Assata Shakur and MOVE.

Passmore, an African-American anarchist himself, is very well-read on Black liberation and leftism, so seeing an oblivious fictionalized version of himself gives the book an ironic sense of self-deprecating wit. It reminds me of those old cartoon specials where the character is taken on an educational journey. It can be a challenge to avoid the levity aspect from undermining the serious informational intent, but Passmore pulls it off well in a way that makes Black Arms to Hold You Up a perfect starting point for learning about the history of Black liberation.

Category: Best Book of the Year

Comics journalist Joe Sacco is on the scene once more to report on geopolitical conflicts. This time, he’s in India reporting on the Uttar Pradesh conflict between the Jat and Muslim populations. As always, Sacco explores these issues objectively, attempting to understand all the perspectives on the matter as he speaks with locals, government officials, and political leaders. At 135 pages, there’s a plethora of information to digest that could make for a far longer book, but The Once and Future Riot provides a comprehensive entry point to the topic.

Category: Best Book of the Year

The only thing that tickles my fancy more than entertaining my animation nerdiness is something entertaining my comics nerdiness. In 1940s LA, Japanese-American cartoonist Kevin Yamagata is the creator of the popular detective noir comic series Billy Bat. Everything is going hunky-dory until he finds out he unintentionally plagiarized a similar manga creation. Even though legally, Yamagata has as much to worry about as Disney for their derivative works, he still decides to travel to Tokyo to get the blessing of the creator to use his character idea. This is just the beginning of a greater conspiracy Yamagata finds himself wrapped up in.

Joining Western and Eastern graphic art traditions in a cross-genre matrimony, Billy Bat is a Golden Age comic fan’s wet dream equally as engaging as a general thriller tale. Damn shame it’s taken 17 years for this fine work of art to finally be translated to English.