THE EIGHTFOLD PATH de Charles Johnson & Steven Barnes, illustré par Bryan Christopher Moss

From award-winning authors Charles Johnson and Steven Barnes comes a graphic novel anthology of interconnected Afrofuturistic parables inspired by the teachings of Buddha.

THE EIGHTFOLD PATH
by Charles Johnson & Steven Barnes
illustrated by Bryan Christopher Moss
Abrams ComicArts, January 2022

Eight strangers looking for enlightenment from an ancient spiritual teacher are trapped in a cave high in the mountains on their way to his temple. One of his acolytes directs them to each tell a story that the group can learn from as they wait out the horrible snowstorm that rages outside the cave’s entrance. One by one the travelers each share a story that, unbeknownst to them, is actually a morality tale representing one of the aspects of final enlightenment as taught in Buddhism. As the wind howls through the night, they tell symbolic stories of horror, dystopia, high adventure, cyberpunk, and urban fantasy. Each story is a spoke on the symbolic Dharma wheel, and each interlocking tale gets the travelers closer to their true destiny—unveiling the future of the entire human race.
This remarkable collection borrows heavily from the traditions of pop-culture morality anthology series such as The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Night Gallery, Lovecraft Country, and the publications of E.C. Comics. Heavily influenced by the science fiction pulps of the 1950s and 1960s, this brilliant collection remixes classic social narratives such as Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and The Arabian Nights, through an edgy, contemporary, yet spiritually centered lens. In THE EIGHTFOLD PATH, our destinies lie in heeding the lessons given in every one of these entrancing tales.

Steven Barnes is the New York Times bestselling, NAACP Image Award–winning author of more than 30 novels. Nominated for Nebula and Hugo awards, writer of the Emmy-winning “A Stitch in Time” episode of The Outer Limits, and winner of the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Award, Barnes is a pioneering Afrofuturist writer, and one of the most honored voices in the field. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, British Fantasy Award–winning novelist Tananarive Due. Barnes has taught and lectured at UCLA, USC, University of Washington, Mensa, Pasadena JPL, the Smithsonian Museum, the University of North Carolina, and many others. His most recent publication is Twelve Days (Tor, 2017).
Dr. Charles Johnson is a professor emeritus at the University of Washington and author of 23 books. He is a novelist, philosopher, essayist, literary scholar, short-story writer, cartoonist, illustrator, and an author of children’s literature, screenplays, and teleplays. A MacArthur Fellow, Johnson has received a 2002 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, a 1990 National Book Award for his novel Middle Passage, a 1985 Writers Guild Award for his PBS teleplay Booker, the 2016 W.E.B. Du Bois Award at the National Black Writers Conference, and many others. The Charles Johnson Society at the American Literature Association was founded in 2003. In November 2016, Pegasus Theater in Chicago debuted its play adaptation of Middle Passage, titled Rutherford’s Travels. Johnson’s most recent publications are The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling (Scribner, 2016) and his fourth short story collection, Night Hawks (Scribner, 2018). He lives in Seattle, Washington.
Bryan Christopher Moss was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio. At the age of 18, he began working professionally on storyboards and comics while founding and creating a T-shirt company, Strange Things. His commercial clients include Cirque du Soleil, Marvel Comics, Sprite, and a partnership with the Greater Columbus Arts Council. In addition to his freelancing and contractual projects, Moss is an educator. He has collaborated with the likes of Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, the Columbus Museum of Art, and the Columbus College of Art and Design. He curated, installed, and even showed his own work in his latest exhibition at King Arts Complex, “The Black Panther: Celebrating 50+ Years of Black Superheroes.” In 2020, Columbus Alive named Moss as the city’s Best Comic Book Artist. He was also recently named an artist-in-residency at the prestigious Aminah Robinson House in Columbus, Ohio.

FLUNG OUT OF SPACE de Grace Ellis, illustré par Hannah Templer

A fictional and complex portrait of bestselling author Patricia Highsmith caught up in the longing that would inspire her queer classic, The Price of Salt.

FLUNG OUT OF SPACE:
The Indecent Adventures of Patricia Highsmith
by Grace Ellis
illustrated by Hannah Templer
Abrams ComicArts, February 2022

FLUNG OUT OF SPACE is an imagined portrait of the wild and complicated figure that was infamous crime writer Patricia Highsmith. As the story opens, we meet Pat begrudgingly writing low-brow comics. A drinker, a smoker, and a hater of life, Pat knows she can do better. Her brain churns with images of the great novel she could and should be writing—what will eventually be Strangers on a Train (which would later be adapted into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951).
Pat is a chronic womanizer, but she’s ashamed of being gay, and so on the recommendation of her therapist, she enrolls in conversion therapy, where she meets many of her future sexual conquests.
This is also not just the story of a queer woman, but of a queer artist. Written and illustrated by two heavyweights in the comics world—Grace Ellis and Hannah Templer, it’s a comic about what it was like to write comics in the 1950s, but also about what it means to be a writer at any time in history, struggling to find your voice.
FLUNG OUT OF SPACE isn’t a rosy portrait of queer life, but rather an unflinching one. Ellis’s savvy writing combines with Templer’s stunning illustrations to create a work that will intrigue and fascinate comics fans. An afterword written by Highsmith’s authorized biographer, Joan Schenkar, contextualizes the writer’s life with this fictional portrayal and offers insight into Highsmith’s complex legacy. Highsmith was unapologetic but guilt-ridden, talented but self-sabotaging, magnetic but withdrawn, vicious but hilarious. In short: She was a hell of a woman and a hell of a protagonist.

Grace Ellis made a name for herself in the industry by creating unforgettable, lovable, and funny characters. She burst onto the comics scene with The Lumberjanes, which she cocreated and cowrote. It was a New York Times bestselling, Eisner and GLAAD Award–winning comics series that broke the mold of both YA and superhero comics. She is also the author and creator of the series Moonstruck, illustrated by Shea Beagle, and writer of the soon-to-be-released series Lois Lane and the Friendship Challenge for DC Comics. Ellis lives in Columbus, Ohio.
Hannah Templer is a queer cartoonist currently living in Baltimore, Maryland. They have worked as a colorist, cover artist, and interior artist on titles such as GLOW, Samurai Jack, Jem and the Holograms, Captain Marvel, and Tomb Raider. They are also the creator of Cosmoknights, an original graphic novel series published in 2019 by Top Shelf Comics. Their work as a cover artist—with clients like Dark Horse, IDW, Valiant, BOOM! Studios, Marvel, HarperCollins, and Abrams Books—is as extensive as it is dynamic and stunning.

THE LAST MECHANICAL MONSTER de Brian Fies

From Brian Fies, the acclaimed graphic novelist of Mom’s Cancer, Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, and A Fire Story, comes a classic comic book adventure for all ages.

THE LAST MECHANICAL MONSTER
by Brian Fies
Abrams ComicArts, September 2021

Decades after being imprisoned for threatening his city with an army of giant robots, an elderly scientist reenters society, only to discover he needs help navigating life in the 21st century. Experiencing real kindness and friendship for the first time ever, his new relationships challenge the inventor’s single-minded devotion for vengeance—just as his plans threaten to spiral out of his control. An homage to the classic cartoons of the 1940s, THE LAST MECHANICAL MONSTER is about ambition, creativity, mortality, friendship, and legacy. How do we want to be remembered? And what will we leave behind?
This latest graphic novel from Brian Fies already has a fanbase and a considerable history of accomplishment. Initially published online as a webcomic, it was nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Digital Comic in both 2014 and 2015. It is also a pivot from Fies’s more serious graphic novels, created at a time when he was between large, demanding projects, and needing to remind himself that comics could and should be fun and provide a joyful escape—something we can all use a little more of these days.

Brian Fies is a writer and cartoonist. His widely acclaimed first graphic novel, Mom’s Cancer, won the Eisner Award for Best Digital Comic in 2005 (the first webcomic to win this award and the inspiration for the category), the 2007 Lulu Blooker Prize for Best Comic, the 2007 Harvey Award for Best New Talent, and the 2007 German Children’s Literature Award. He is also the author of the acclaimed, award-winning graphic novels A Fire Story, which received four starred reviews, and Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, winner of the American Astronautical Society’s 2009 Eugene M. Emme Award for Best Young Adult Literature. He lives in Santa Rosa, California.

BEHOLD THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE de Jennifer Ashley Wright

BEHOLD THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE is a little bit You Never Forget Your First, a little bit The Knick, a dash of The Age of Innocence, and a sprinkle of The Shawshank Redemption.

BEHOLD THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE
by Jennifer Ashley Wright
Hachette Books, Spring 2023

This sharp, witty Gilded Age medical history stars Madame Restell, a glamorous women’s healthcare provider in Manhattan, who was a celebrity in her era and a Moira Rose-esque figure with a flair for high fashion and petty public beefs. The story of Restell’s struggle to care for New York’s unmarried women—providing abortions, birth control, and other assistance—in defiance of increasing persecution from powerful men, it ends not in outright tragedy, but with a glorious, life-affirming, bittersweet twist. That this book doubles as a history of women’s health—and the propaganda on which the “pro-life” movement was founded—makes it not just entertaining, but profoundly comforting for feminist readers. Few and far between are the books expanding our sense of hope, humor, and what’s possible for women’s rights in this politicized arena, one which augurs some real downer developments in the coming years. BEHOLD THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE does just that, and it does so in a sumptuous, character-driven, frequently funny package.

Jennifer Ashley Wright has written beloved pop history collections from It Ended Badly and Get Well Soon (Holt) to the forthcoming She Kills Me, an illustrated field guide to righteous women who have committed murder (Abrams Image). BEHOLD THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE is Wright’s first work of single narrative history.

BROTHER ALIVE de Zain Khalid

An astonishing debut novel about family, sexuality, and capitalist systems of control, following three adopted brothers who live above a mosque in Staten Island with their imam father.

BROTHER ALIVE
by Zain Khalid
Grove Atlantic, August 2022
(via Neon Literary)

In 1990, three boys are born, unrelated but intertwined by circumstance: Dayo, Iseul, and Youssef. They are adopted as infants and come to live in a shared bedroom perched atop a mosque in one of Staten Island’s most diverse and precarious neighborhoods, Coolidge. The three boys are a conspicuous trio: Dayo is of Nigerian origin, Iseul, Korean, and Youssef indeterminately Middle Eastern, but they are inseparable, whether scheming or fighting or investigating the traces of their shared history. But Youssef has another sibling he keeps secret from his family, an imaginary familiar who seems hyper-real, a wondrous pet who lives in Youssef’s mind, a shapeshifting creature he calls Brother.
The boys’ adoptive father, Imam Salim, is known for his radical sermons extolling the virtues of opting out of Western ideologies. He is a distant father, never touching his boys physically, but supplementing their education with texts like The Blind Owl and The Foundations of Arithmetic. In the evenings, he likes nothing more than to pour whiskey into his coffee and escape into his study, where he corresponds with compatriots from his time in Saudi Arabia. Like Youssef, he too has secrets, including the cause of his failing health, the reason for his visits to a botanical garden in the middle of the night, and the truth about the boys’ parents he would be ashamed to share.
Imam Salim’s deeds and decisions will take him back to Saudi Arabia, where the boys were born and will be forced to follow. As they settle into an opulent, futuristic world that is designed to account for a new, more sustainable modernity than of the West, they will have to change if they want to survive. They soon realize that they are not the only ones who have returned home—the arrival of Youssef’s Brother will not go unnoticed.
With stylistic brilliance and intellectual acuity, in Brother Alive Zain Khalid brings characters to vivid life with a bold energy that matches the great themes of his novel—family, capital, power, sexuality, and the possibility of reunion for those who are broken.

Zain Khalid has been published in The New Yorker, The Believer, The Los Angeles Review of Books, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and elsewhere. He has also written for television. Brother Alive is his first novel. He lives in New York City.