Clark Burscough | May 15, 2026
The innate human skill of pattern recognition ping ping pings once more, for this week’s links, below, as we’re less than a year out from Itch.io’s de-listing, re-listing, and continued demonetisation of adult works affecting a number of comics creators seeking to sell their wares online, due to pressure from payment processors and conservative activist groups, and now we’re seeing the same playbook being used on Kickstarter, which is strictly prohibiting “adult-only or sexually explicit content” due to (all together now) pressure from payment processor Stripe, which itself is not exactly free from controversy. This isn’t new, targeting of the rights of sex workers inevitably presages tactics to be later used for broader censuring of creative rights, especially those targeting works by LGBTQ* artists, but here we find ourselves again, and again, and again, &c &c. Good grief.
Florals
— Olivia Sullivan (@zebko.bsky.social) 2026-05-10T21:12:10.434Z
This week’s news.
• Comics prize-giving season continues apace, as this week the winner of the 50th annual Kodansha Manga Awards were announced, with Kei Urana and Hideyoshi Ando’s Gachiakuta named Best Shōnen Manga; Eiko Mutsuhana, Yugiri Aika, and Gin Shirakawa’s Re-Living My Life with a Boyfriend Who Doesn't Remember Me named as Best Shōjo Manga; and Shun Umezawa’s The Darwin Incident named as Best General Manga.
• Prizes yet to be won news, as the nominees for this year's Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards were announced, with double figure nods for DC, Image Comics, and Fantagraphics placing the trio at the head of the pack, and winners to be confirmed at San Diego Comic-Con in July
• Elsewhere, Melissa Mendes’ The Weight was announced as the winner of the 2026 Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize, with Eagle Valiant Brosi’s Black Cohosh and Sofia Alarcon’s Endsickness named as this year’s honor books; the National Cartoonist Society announced that Jeff Smith will receive this year’s Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in August; and Lee Lai’s Cannon was named as the winner of 2026’s Stella Prize, becoming the first graphic novel to win the award.
I think this one is finished, hoping to make some prints of it soon and maybe even finish the painting it's based on one of these days
— Pam Wishbow (@pamwishbow.bsky.social) 2026-05-08T23:06:22.471Z
This week’s reviews.
TCJ
• Brian Nicholson reviews the moral urgency of Amanda Baeza’s Wisps — “At times, Baeza assembles bright colors into compositions almost reminiscent of textiles, stitching tapestries together from the shapes of shreds, and recognizable forms are treated as abstractions employed for pure beauty. This is perhaps most evident in the first story in the book, where these color fields appear absent a holding line, but all of Baeza’s approaches float around a sun bright in color and bubbling in its emergent shapes.”
• Hank Kennedy reviews the corporate spin of Margaret Stohl, Jeanine Schafer, and Judith Stephens’ Super Visible: The Story of the Women of Marvel Comics — “Part of the problem comes from this book’s lack of villains. The sheer harassment (including sexual harassment) faced by women in the comic book industry, creators who traffic in sexist ideas, and alt-right hate campaigns led by Eltingville Club rejects like ComicsGate, are mostly absent or glossed over, and rarely named.”
AIPT
• Tiffany Leigh reviews the cinematic grandeur of Alex Segura, Phil Noto, et al’s Star Wars: Out of the Darkness.
• Landon Kuhlmann reviews the expanding focus of Deniz Camp, Javier Rodriguez, et al’s Absolute Martian Manhunter #11.
• Christopher Franey reviews the raised stakes of Morgan Hampton, Juan Jose Ryp (Artist), Will Conrad, et al’s Green Lantern Corps #16.
• David Brooke reviews the perfect match of Nick Marino, Jack Lawrence, et al’s Sonic the Hedgehog x Godzilla #1.
• George Loftus reviews the wild ride of Joe Palmer’s Destination Kill #1.
• Collier Jennings reviews the gritty wit of Rob Williams, Nil Vendrell, et al’s Hidden Springs #1.
• Rory Wilding reviews the elevating influences of Kamome Shirahama's Witch Hat Atelier: Grimoire Edition, Volume 1, translated by Stephen Kohler.
The Beat
• Jordan Jennings reviews the throwback fun of Dan Slott, Marcus To, et al’s Spectacular Spider-Man: Brand New Day #1.
• Matt Ledger reviews the straightforward setup of Mariko Tamaki, Amancay Nahuelpan, et al’s Barbara Gordon: Breakout #1.
• Clyde Hall reviews the compelling confrontation of Dave Wielgosz, Tadd Galusha, et al’s Showdown #1.
• Gianni Palumbo reviews the claustrophobic dread of Rob Guillory, Sam Lofti, et al’s Innards #1.
• Khalid Johnson reviews the charming finale of Kristen Gudsnuk’s Touched By A Demon #4.
• Zack Quaintance reviews the unifying challenge of Saul Williams and Morgan Stone’s Martyr Loser King.
• Dean Simons reviews the worthwhile return of Riad Sattouf’s The End of the Arab of the Future: A Youth in the Middle East, Volume 1, translated by Sam Taylor.
Broken Frontier
• Lindsay Pereira reviews the clear-eyed bravery of Arizona O’Neill’s Opioids and Organs.
• Lara Boyle reviews the poetic allegory of Candice Purwin's The Book of Murmurs.
• Andy Oliver reviews the visual feast of Alex Taylor’s Bone Broth, and the absurdist comedy of Brad Neely’s Creased Comics.
Comics Grinder
Henry Chamberlain reviews the mesmerising storytelling of Peter Hoey and Maria Hoey’s The Shadower.
Four Color Apocalypse
Ryan Carey reviews the charismatic pull of Steve Lafler and Paul Theroux’s Crazy for You.
The Hollywood Reporter
Sheri Linden reviews the emotional immediacy of Fanny Burdino and Samuel Doux’s adaptation of AJ Dungo’s In Waves, directed by Phuong Mai Nguyen.
House to Astonish
Paul O’Brien has capsule reviews of Marvel Comics’ X-Men #29, Storm: Earth’s Mightiest Mutant #4, Cyclops #4, and Jubilee: Deadly Reunion #1.
The Observer
Killian Fox reviews the interesting questions of Arizona O’Neill’s Opioids and Organs.
School Library Journal
• Sarah Simpson has a starred capsule review of the inventive beauty of John August and Simón Estrada’s Wolf’s Belly.
• Lisa Rowland has a starred capsule review of gorgeous tapestry of Mars Lauderbaugh’s Hollow Magic.
Variety
Tomris Laffly reviews the emotional rollercoaster of Fanny Burdino and Samuel Doux’s adaptation of AJ Dungo’s In Waves, directed by Phuong Mai Nguyen.
Yatta-tachi
• Borealis Capps reviews the rushed pacing of Aki Shimizu’s Hinatsugimura, translated by Eleanor Summers.
• Kai reviews the surprising hilarity of Hirota’s My Lover Is Just Too Innocent to Handle, Volume 1, translated by Katelyn Smith.
We are delighted to announce that applications for our third CAG Mini Grant are live!It's hard to make the comics YOU want to make when the cost of living keeps rising. So this Mini Grant is here to offer a little breathing room: groceries, childcare, whatever you need.forms.gle/J7V7frhTZvH7...
— Comics Advocacy Group (@comicsadvocacy.bsky.social) 2026-05-07T15:35:24.438Z
This week’s interviews.
TCJ
• Jason Bergman interviews Robb Horan about the life and work of Drew Hayes, creator of Poison Elves, their professional and personal relationship, and the reflections of Hayes in Poison Elves — “Well, I cannot vouch for all of those stories. But certainly any stories that emanate out of Drew’s location up in Washington state likely have a high credibility rate to it, okay? I made friends with some of Drew’s friends, and, you know, [they] would confirm things for me, and as a publisher, I found it helped to create a network to see if I could find out what he was doing sometimes. So yeah, there’s lots of reasons to believe the stories.”
• Zach Rabiroff interviews the Brooklyn Organization Dedicated to the Endurance of Graphic Arts’ James Tynion IV, Courtney Menard, Bryce Gold, and Elizabeth Harburn about the upcoming Brooklyn Expo of Comics and wider plans — “[James Tynion IV:] We want to be the voice of Brooklyn cartoonists in that larger conversation around arts philanthropy in the city, and our flagship festival will be the Brooklyn Expo of Comics, but we see that as only the beginning of what we can do with BODEGA. BODEGA is something that we want to be a resource for the cartoonists that live here in the city, and an entity that can partner with all of these other organizations.”
AIPT
Chris Coplan speaks with Connor Goldsmith and Josh Cornillon about Did You Hear About Mimi Green?, breaking into the comics industry in 2026, and structuring the narrative of the series.
BBC
Jonny Manning talks to Peter Hansen about putting a lifetime’s comics collection, one of the largest private collections of British comics, up for auction.
Fanbase Press
Barbra Dillon speaks with Ernie Altbacker and Josh White about Area 51 Studios and creative learning curves, and with Chase Pond about Miss McDonald and the personal experiences driving the comic.
FreakSugar
Jed W. Keith talks to Monica Gallagher about Assassin Roommate, reader receptions to the book, and crowdfunding the next volumes of the story.
GraphicMemoir
Jonathan Sandler interviews Jonathan Baylis about So Buttons, short form storytelling, pairing artists with stories, and publishing schedules and original art.
The Guardian
Sian Cain talks to Lee Lai about Cannon, winning the 2026 Stella Prize, breaking reader expectations, and key comics influences.
Hollywood Soapbox
John Soltes speaks with Zack Rosenberg and Jared Cullum about Kaitō ’84, working in the sandbox of Stan Sakai’s creation, and 1980s nostalgia.
ICv2
Milton Griepp shares a two-part conversation with Mad Cave’s Mark London and Mark Irwin about the publisher’s origins, upcoming licensed titles, and creator initiatives.
Steven Heller interviews D.B. Dowd about Reading Pictures: A Cultural History of Illustration and the fundamental ties between illustration and literacy, and Ethan Persoff about The Illustrated Life of Terry Southern: Book One (1924–1938) and making the story read like a flipbook of Southern’s life.
Quill & Quire
Andrew Woodrow-Butcher speaks with Arizona O’Neill about Opioids & Organs, creative obsession with organ transplants, and the personal grief at the core of the book.
Lo Spazio Bianco
Emilio Cirri and Paolo Garrone talk to Deniz Camp about Assorted Crisis Events, comics cultural touchstones, collaborative processes, and making your reader feel something.
NIF 2026 HAS BEGUN and we’ve got all-new events planned for every weekend in May, a fabulous marketplace with 80+ comics, plus some FREEBIES?! Go check it out at nif.cartoonist.coop
— Cartoonists United (@cartoonist.coop) 2026-05-01T13:27:05.643Z
This week’s features and longreads.
• Here at TCJ, Patrick Rosenkranz writes on the handwritten correspondence of cartoonist S. Clay Wilson, sharing key examples from a prodigious number of issuances, and speaking with recipients of the notes, letters, and artworks — “Wilson’s lifelong writing habit ended in the fall of 2008 when he suffered a debilitating head injury on a rainy San Francisco street late on a Saturday night. He remained in a coma for a week and the doctors didn’t know if he would ever recover, but when he they disconnected him from life support, he came awake and was able to talk and recognize his friends. His brain trauma permanently changed him though, and he began losing his ability to draw and write. Within a year he laid down his pen and stopped doing those things he enjoyed so much.”
• Also for TCJ, Matt Seneca writes in recommendation of Robert Kanigher and Frank Thorne's 1970s series Son of Tomahawk, examining the ways in which the comic hews to and pushes against the mores of the times, and placing the comic's creative and editorial team in the historical context of DC's wider line of publishing - “Kanigher's scripting reached new heights in this period. Perhaps it was increased empathy brought about by the fading of his own personal star, or perhaps it was that even this unpleasant figure could see America's treatment of race in the early '70s was bullshit. But his work leaned more and more heavily into questions of racial discrimination and conflict, culminating in Son of Tomahawk.”
• Over at Solrad, Mina Ruyle writes on Osamu Tezuka’s MW, its place in the history of queer media, the book’s core intersection of homosexuality and villainy, and separation of queerness from monstrousness in media.
• For Koha, Shaban Maxharraj and Besarte Elshani report on the 2026 edition of Gran Fest, Kosovo’s annual graphic novel festival, which this year had the theme of ‘the limits of freedom’, and saw Iranian cartoonist Kianoush Ramezani stopped by border authorities in North Macedonia and prevented from attending the event.
• For Publisher’s Weekly, Zach Rabiroff reports from Manhattan’s Comic Arts Fest, that took place last month, with guest appearances from Charles Burns, Frank Quitely, and Chip Kidd, amongst others.
• Over at The New York Times, Sam Thielman and Gabriel Gianordoli present an interactive appreciation of the work of Michael DeForge, previewing the monsters and postmodern complexity to be found in All the Cameras in My Room.
• Also for The New York Times, Michael S. Rosenwald writes in remembrance of cartoonist, painter, and educator Frank Stack, aka Foolbert Sturgeon, creator of The Adventures of Jesus, who passed away last month at the age of 88.
• For Shelfdust, Margot Waldman writes on the Spectre, from genesis via Jerry Siegel and Barnard Baily, through to John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake’s run on The Spectre, the outrageous stunts in which the character indulges, and what constitutes divine justice in Ostrander’s theology.
• From the world of open-access academia, in societies, Gillian Harvey, Maryam Mallakin, and Katherine Sellen present a paper on using graphic medicine as a design tool for harm reduction messaging and addressing stigmas relating to opioid overdose response.
• For CrossWorks, Alessandro Camarra shares volume 4 in the series 'Librarians? Oh Yeah, THEM!': The Information Professional in Popular Culture, with “Overworked, Undernourished, and Weak in the Eyes”: The Portrayal of Librarians in Comics, a comprehensive directory of the appearance of librarians as characters in comics, strips, manga, webcomics, and more.
• Mike Peterson rounds up the week’s editorial beat, over at The Daily Cartoonist, as we look to history, in the form of plague and pestilence, war and more war, and worship of graven images in an attempt to discern what the future may hold.
So excited to announce the 🌟INCREDIBLE🌟 lineup for The Comics Courier Issue 4 (launching on Kickstarter soon). It's gonna be an awesome issue, so make sure you've hit that NOTIFY ME ON LAUNCH button.comicscourier.com
— Tiffany Babb (@explodingarrow.bsky.social) 2026-05-06T17:49:50.194Z
This week’s audio/visual delights.
• Catching up with recent meetings of the New York Comics & Picture-Story Symposium, as Austin English hosted talks from Frédéric Coché on comicsmaking and engraving, and leaving space for the reader to project themselves into your work; and from Michael DeForge on making serial comics across a wider body of work, filmic inspirations, and varying degrees of creative looseness and tone across the alt comix spectrum.
• The world’s most-weekly comics podcast, Comic Books Are Burning in Hell, returned, as it does every week, with a new episode from Chris Mautner, Joe McCulloch, Matt Seneca, and Tucker Stone, in which discussion was had over the legacy of Sam Kieth, DC’s Absolute line, Shirato Sanpei’s The Legend of Kamui, Atlas Comics’ Fright: Featuring the Son of Dracula by Gary Friedrich and Frank Thorne, National Lampoon, Sammy Harkham’s Crickets, and more.
• The internet’s second-most-weekly comics podcast, SILENCE!, also returned, as Gary Lactus, Al Kennedy, and Andrew Hickey were punished for, presumably, crimes in a former life, by the Drifting Reviewniverse demanding a review of 1995’s Generation X Annual #1 and the men’s fashion to be found therein.
• BBC’s Radio 2 Book Club celebrated The Phoenix’s annual Phoenix Fest event, as Sara Cox spoke with creators Jamie Smart, Neill Cameron, Jess Bradley, Patrice Aggs, and Joe Brady on the British kids’ comics phenomenon.
• NHK World Japan returned with some of its officially translated episodes, as Urasawa Naoki’s Manben welcomed Umino Chica to the show to break down a day-in-the-life while working on March Comes in Like a Lion; and there’s a celebration of 50 years of Comiket, and the fans and creators who make it happen, in Our Comiket’s History: 50 Years of Love.
• A few interviews from Comics Kingdom’s regular creator chat series, Inside the Kingdom, as Alex Garcia spoke with Vaughan Tomlinson about Oddly Enough and keeping a joke simple, Bill Holbrook about managing workloads while keeping three strips on the go at once, and Stephen Webster about The Saga of Brann Bjornson and making a daily strip that also works as longform storytelling.
• A quick round-up of some other recent interviews from across the world wide web, as Brian Hibbs welcomed Judd Winick to Comix Experience’s Graphic Novel Club to discuss Hilo Presents: The Mighty, Henry Chamberlain was joined by James Hilger on Comics Grinder to speak about Treeboy, Off Panel’s David Harper spoke with Matthew Rosenberg about If Destruction Be Our Lot… and with Dave Wielgosz about Showdown, and Heidi MacDonald chatted with Roy Schwartz about the unveiling of Jack Kirby Way for Publisher’s Weekly’s More to Come.
We've launched a crowdfunding campaign to support The New York Working Cartoon Library! Please donate and share! We are asking for a lot so as to build a space for comics that will, we hope, do a lot in return for a community of artists and readers in this city and beyond.gofund.me/57505be66
— Domino Books (@dominocomics.bsky.social) 2026-05-14T02:38:59.081Z
No more links, as it’s now Desertfest weekend, so it’s time to don a utility kilt, head out, and spend 3 days listening to songs ostensibly about weed, goblins, and weed and goblins.
— Haus of Decline (@hausofdecline.bsky.social) 2026-05-13T13:48:56.465Z
English (US) · 