The energy and innovation in this genre have been accelerating in recent times – and this year promises yet more sensations. Here are 10 standouts to expect before June, from all over the world

The past decade has seen the landscape of comics undergo profound evolution. From the range of material being produced to who is creating it – and those who are reading – comics are experiencing a true golden age: one that isn’t confined to a specific genre, and which is continuing to shine.

The span of titles below perfectly illustrates the breadth and depth of comics and graphic novels today: Japanese and French translations classic and contemporary, a crop of surging British talent, children’s and young adults’ books – and much more to come – this is just a portion of what’s on the way this year.

Big Kids by Michael DeForge

Big Kids by Michael DeForge (February, Drawn & Quarterly): A new DeForge is always a noteworthy event – the prolific Canadian cartoonist’s ability to create a singular visual language is one of the foremost facets of his work, as can be seen in his art for TV cartoon show Adventure Time.

Big Kids is a bildungsroman of sorts; the story of a troubled teenage boy navigating the transformative years of high school, redefining his friends, interests, and life path. Anybody with a passing familiarity with DeForge’s unsettling, vividly beautiful comics will know that this is a deceptively simple summation.

Princess Jellyfish by Akiko Higashimura

Princess Jellyfish by Akiko Higashimura (February, Kodansha): Higashimura’s hugely popular Princess Jellyfish (“Kuragehime”) manga finally gets a much anticipated English-language release.

Already adapted into an anime series, and a 2014 live action film in Japan, the series follows Tsukimi Kurashita, a young woman with a deep and abiding fascination with jellyfish, as she makes her way in the big city of Tokyo.

Higashimura’s stylish, fashion-attentive art and warm humour have been a key component in the comic’s success.

Frontier, the BDSM issue showcasing Eleanor Davis’s work

Frontier (Quarterly, Youth in Decline): Run by publisher Ryan Sands, Frontier is a quarterly art monograph series which aims to provide space for cartoonists and illustrators to create something unique and personal. This year’s line-up is arguably the strongest yet, with Richie Pope, Eleanor Davis, Kelly Kwang, and Steven Universe creator, Rebecca Sugar, all set to produce individual works. First up, in February, is Davis’s BDSM, a modern love story about two adult film actors which tackles the complex interactions of friendship, love, feminism and kink..

Patience by Daniel Clowes (March, Fantagraphics): The first new work from Clowes (Ghost World, Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron) in half a decade, Patience is a love story about a man who travels back in time to track down his murdered girlfriend’s killer. It promises both “violent destruction” and “deeply personal tenderness”, and Clowes’s reputation is sure to draw wide interest.

Peplum by Blutch

Peplum by Blutch (April, New York Review Comics): Originally published in French in 1996, Peplum is a unique adaptation of the Satyricon; a grand, strange dream of ancient Rome, in which a gang of bandits discovers the body of a beautiful woman in a cave: encased in ice but possibly still alive. One of the bandits, using a stolen name and with the frozen maiden still in tow, makes his way towards Rome – seeking power, or maybe just survival, as the world unravels. Blutch (aka Christian Hincker) is a long-standing and much-revered member of the French arts community, where he’s regarded as one of the most important artists of his generation. Peplum is his masterpiece.

Salmon, Run! by Mackenzie Schubert

Salmon, Run! by Mackenzie Schubert (April, Peow! Studio): Bursting with imagination and verve, Salmon, Run! is the first major comic work from this artist and graphic designer. Mirabelle and her brother Alan are two street children, living in a village built on the ruins of an ancient dam, surviving off scraps from the annual salmon run. But their food source – and survival – is endangered when the migrating salmon become tainted with a strange magic. Swimming upstream, the fish whisper through the water, stealing away villagers too hungry to resist their call. When Alan is kidnapped by the salmon, Mirabelle must journey upstream in order to save him. All of which make it the perfect showcase for Schubert’s appealingly fluid art, and engrossingly detailed world-building.



Cigarette Girl by Matsahiko Matsumoto (May, Top Shelf): It’s been a long journey to print for Cigarette Girl, a volume of 11 stories forming the second English-language collection of Matsumoto’s work, after 2014’s The Man Next Door. An early adherent of alternative comic movements such as gekiga and komaga, Matsumoto was influential in introducing an understated realism to Japanese comics. His work presents the quiet, everyday challenges faced by the common man: changing families, money troubles, broken hearts, sexual anxiety, and the pressures of tradition.



Musnet: The Mouse of Monet by K Kickily

Musnet: The Mouse of Monet by K Kickily (May, Uncivilized Books): With simultaneous releases in English and French, this new series revolves around a painting mouse found in Monet’s famous gardens in Giverny: the nameless, orphan mouse is befriended by Mya and her mouse family, who live inside the artist’s house. Introduced to painting after he begins working for Remy, an old squirrel painter, he is enchanted by Monet’s work. Beautifully painted (of course), this promises to be a charming tale of humour, art, and adventure, as the little mouse grows to find his meaning and place in the world.

A City Inside by Tillie Walden (May, Avery Hill Publishing): Comics’ latest wunderkind, Walden has two new books coming out this year after a prolific, breakout 2015. A City Inside is first up, charting the life of a woman from childhood to adulthood, shifting between the mundane and the surreal. It is an exploration of aging; the journey towards finding out who you are and building a world that you can live in. Walden’s career has only just begun, but it’s striking how how fully realised it already feels.

Night Air by Ben Sears

Night Air by Ben Sears (May, Koyama Press): Sears first came to attention with his comic, Double +, the adventures of a goggle-wearing young boy and his robot companion, and the same characters are making a return in this longer work.

This, the odd duo are on the hunt for a valuable alloy, found only in a very haunted castle; imagine Indiana Jones as told by Hayao Miyazaki. Sears’s curling lines lend a magical, meditative quality, but never lose the playful doggedness of his subjects.