Another year is coming upon us as we sit and wait and hope for the world outside to get maybe a little better this time around. Maybe? Possibly? If anything, there’s some neat comics coming out in the next few months that can provide some comfort.

Winter 2024

1. Frank Johnson, Secret Pioneer of American Comics Vol. 1: Wally’s Gang Early Years (1928-1949) and The Bowser Boys (1946-1950)
   
   So maybe everything we knew about comics history was a little weirder than we though. Working away for nearly fifty years on his own with no thought to publication or renown, Frank Johnson filled up 2300 notebook pages with his comics, some of which predate the common starting point of American comic books and long before what we would call the graphic novel later. And yet, until his death in 1979, Johnson continued to draw away at his fifty-year spanning story. For the first time, we’re able to glimpse the first few decades of his work to see how comics were made outside of comics.
   
   
2. If You Find This, I’m Already Dead
   
   Boutique imprints are one of my favorite things at larger comics publisher, and Matt Kindt’s new Flux House imprint has been fun to watch from the outside for a little while. This year, he’s going to be putting out a new prestige series with Dan McDaid, Bill Crabtree, and Jim Campbell that focuses on an embedded journalist stuck on an alien planet while she witnesses their political power struggles and attempts to survive. 

3. Mary Tyler MooreHawk

Dave Baker is a writer. He’s looking to discover what happened to the comic and TV series Mary Tyler MooreHawk. In doing this, he meets the creator of the series, Dave Baker. What follows is a series of oddities that break through what we know about how we approach comics—as both a medium and as a way to fully see the world in which they exist. 

Spring 2024

1. Tender

There’s only so far you can go to create the perfect life for yourself. At some point, something will go wrong and how we cope with that shows who we are as people. In the case of Beth Hetland’s Carolanne, she slices off pieces of herself and eats them to deal with the stress. But then, doesn’t it make sense to deal with every carefully curated aspect of your life falling apart all at once?

2. Helen of Wyndhorn

There’s something oddly enticing about an old estate manor. The history itself is already alluring, but what things are hidden inside the walls of a house so old with so many people passing through? Helen Cole finds herself in her family’s estate after her father’s passing and discovers much more than just the manor’s history during her time here. 

3. Dawnrunner

Ram V is writing a mech series with Evan Cagle, Dave Stewart, and Aditya Bidikar? And it’s about said mechs in gladiatorial combat for the fate of humanity against an invading force? Yeah, naur, I’m in. 

4. GLEEM

Freddy Carrasco shows us vignettes of a future that has not yet arrived. The kids in the cyberpunk, afrofuturist world crafter here do as kids do: trip in church, try to save their friends, and dance. It’s the slices of humanity that persist no matter the time or setting that feel the most eternal and they’re on full display here. 

5. In Perpetuity

How often do we think about the Afterlife? Not death itself, but that classical Greek Afterlife with its endless twilight and dreary landscapes? Maria and Peter Hoey think about it often and show us in this graphic novel that centers on Jim, his criminal past, and his ability to jump from the Afterlife into the living world as well as all of the complications that come with that. 

6. Search and Destroy, Vol. 1

Osamu Tekuza is the wellspring from which manga flowed and his ideas are still fertile ground for adaptation. Be it in the form of the recently animated Pluto or in Atsushi Kaneko’s new interpretation of the epic samurai manga Dororo. This time, however, we’re being shown that story in a dystopian future setting with all of the robots and societal ills that come with it.

7. Seoul Before Sunrise

When Seong-ji and Ji-won begin to drift apart after beginning university in Seoul, Seong-ji begins her work at an overnight grocery store. It’s there she meets a woman who breaks into empty homes in the dead of night to take photos of those homes’ interiors to paint. While Seong-ji revels in this strange new freedom, she can’t help but think back to Ji-won and their friendship after all this time. 

8. A Witch’s Guide to Burning

How often doe we burn witches? If we go by Aminder Dhaliwal’s world, it seems to be quite often—at least as often as a town’s witch not being able to keep up with the constant demands they levy on her. But when Singe’s burning is interrupted by rain, she still left with enough of the magic and memories of her life to try to reconstruct herself with the help of a witch doctor and her toad. 

Summer 2024

1. Braba: A Brazilian Comics Anthology

While comics are a global medium, I know I have my blind spots when it comes to certain country’s graphic traditions. Despite so many comics artists coming out of Brazil, there’s very little I know about comic culture there. But with the release of Braba this summer, Rafael Grampá and Janaina de Luna will help to show sixteen different creators and the work they’ve been producing. 

2. Space Junk

Most adults have fled this world and the child left behind are preparing to do the same. It’s here that we find Faith and Hoshi as they wonder why they have to do any of this at all. What’s the point in all of this? As they ruminate, others are drawn to them that have been wondering the same and Julian Hanshaw shows us what happens when all of these adrift kids come together. 

3. Mothballs

Sole Otero shows us the story of nineteen year-old Rocio and what happens after the funeral of her grandmother, Vilma. In the old house she’s inherited from her grandmother, Rocio learns of her family’s history and the sexual violence that had haunted her grandmother. It’s here that Rocio also sees the parallels in their lives as women in Bueno Aires—the pressures to conform to societal standards weighed heavy on their shoulders, but Rocio is looking to break free of that history.

Some time in the future of 2024

1. During NYCC this year, DC announced the re-launching of their Elseworlds imprint of comics. These were the odd stories and What-Ifs…? that would become some of the most iconic graphic novels on our shelves for years to come. While most of the announcements were connected to Batman in some way, including a return to the Gotham by Gaslight universe, the most interesting announcement came in the form of Green Lantern: Dark, a new take on the universe and character, showing them in a post-apocalyptic dark fantasy where The Green Lantern has been a beacon of hope before her disappearance. Upon her return, she finds new horrors different from what the world has shown her before. 

            2024 will absolutely be a year. How much of a year is yet to be seen, but we can only hope we make it to the end of it relatively unscathed. At least, as always, there’s comics. 

Get excited. Get prepared.

---

Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.