LibraryAware Graphic Novels & Manga April 2025

Teen Graphic Novels

Kylooe
by Little Thunder

A typical teenager finds growing up is rough. One day she cuts class to buy the new album from her favorite band and sees a strange, mysterious, yet familiar creature on the cover - it is Kylooe, her old friend! He's back, he's real, and he'll do anything to protect her. Then, an awkward girl makes an impression on a popular teen and they begin to connect beyond their peer statuses. And, in a world where expressing emotion is forbidden, a group reflects on the decisions that changed their lives forever.
Step into the intimate, touching, and emotional dreamworld of Kylooe! Hong Kong artist Little Thunder brings imagination to life with beauty, joy, and wonder through surreal art and sensual colors in this collection of three stories.

A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel
by Ursula K. Le Guin

Ged was the greatest sorcerer in Earthsea, but in his youth, he was the reckless Sparrowhawk, and in his hunger for power and knowledge, he tampered with long-held secrets, unleashing a terrible shadow on the world.

Bring Me the Head of Susan Lomond: A High School Story
by Connor B.

Monroe Poole, teenage evil genius, has suffered her greatest humiliation. Susan Lomond, wretchedly popular football star, surpassed Monroe in their high school’s proficiency ranking system. Revenge occupies Monroe’s every waking moment, yet she is somehow thwarted at every turn. The explosion detonates too late, the black hole opens up a few feet to the left, the lightning bolt instead strikes the flagpole. The homecoming dance is Monroe’s last chance to secure Susan’s demise. Will she finally succeed, or will she find that under the light of the disco ball, her obsession has turned from vengeful to something altogether different?

Duck and Cover
by Scott Snyder

For generations, the threat of nuclear attack was always in the corner of their minds. Millions of elementary school students and teens were taught that 'the flash means act fast. Duck and cover!' But what happens AFTER the blast? The year is 1955, and teenager Del Reeves dreams of ditching town for a life in movies, beyond projecting them at the local drive-in.
But when Cold War nightmares become a reality, and a sudden nuclear exchange obliterates the U.S., only the children who hid under their school desks are spared. These teens now find themselves the lone survivors in a strange and wild new '50's America.

The Flip Side
by Jason Walz

After losing his best friend to cancer, grieving Theo navigates a haunting alternate reality that embodies his depression, where he faces a shape-shifting monster and teams up with a mysterious girl to survive in a world where everyone has vanished.

The Girl Who Flew Away
by Lee Dean

It's 1976, and Greer Johnson has found herself pregnant, single, and packed off to Florida. Bunking with total strangers to await and hide the birth of her boss's child, she finds herself unmoored and friendless in the sun-and-fun-obsessed Key West. While searching for something, anything, to give her comfort, Greer does have a few things going for her: She's surrounded by an unusual parade of singular advisors, neighbors, and allies in a strange new environment, and a wild imagination run amok. But will her flights of fancy be her salvation, or her ultimate undoing? A beautifully illustrated, nostalgic, and timely graphic novel about fate and making a life from scratch.

The Writer
by Josh Gad

Plunge into the captivating world of Stan Siegel, a renowned comic book writer, whose life spirals into a terrifying adventure beyond the confines of reality. Alongside his mother Liz and daughter Izzy, Stan faces an onslaught of Nazis, demons, and mythical creatures drawn from Jewish folklore. As they navigate a landscape steeped in occult mysteries, their quest for answers reveals hidden identities and ignites a high-stakes race against an emerging terror.

Teen Manga

Dead Rock 1
by Hiro Mashima

Welcome to Dead Rock, the underworld's top educational institution! A spot at this training facility for demonic mischief is all the young demon Yakuto has ever wanted, but in Hell, there's no such thing as an easy A. Plenty of Yakuto's fellow prospects won't survive the entrance exam, and even fewer will make it to graduation. So why bother? The prize, for those who survive this death game through perdition, is the world, in the palm of their hand! Dive back into the imagination of bestselling manga creator Hiro Mashima (FAIRY TAIL, EDENS ZERO) with a new fantasy adventure!

Victoria of Many Faces 1
by Syuu

Victoria's peaceful, everyday existence has begun! Ever since she retired from the espionage world, Victoria's been living as a civilian, just like she's always dreamed of. But her past as a spy is hard to run from--even though she turned her back on danger, it can't stop danger from finding her! So when she meets Nonna, a young girl totally on her own in the world, Victoria has to decide what's truly important to her...peace, or her new friend?

Helena and Mr. Big Bad Wolf 1
by Bliss

Helena has always found her strength through stories. When her father left and didn't come home one night, and when Arthur, her only brother, got into an accident...reading and creating stories was what kept Helena going. By a stroke of luck, she attends an autograph signing of her favorite author, Mr. Big Bad Wolf, and the two grow closer, bonding over their shared love for storybooks. The cold, reserved man with a wolf head is shrouded in mystery, but perhaps he has a gentler side only Helena can see

Cat Man
by Parari

In a world where humans and humanoid cats coexist, shy cat man Hachisuke struggles with being seen as just a "cute" object. Trying to fit in among humans who don't fully understand him, he faces society's hidden biases head-on. With wit and warmth, this story challenges us to see the world differently--through the eyes of a cat who just wants to belong.

Adult Graphic Novels

Rifters
by Brian Posehn

Fenton and Geller are a couple of part-time Wisenheimers, full-time vice time-cops who suck at rule-following but excel at busting time-travel crimes. Unfortunately, their daily grind involves tedious police work--like chasing down jerk influencers hellbent on live-streaming illegal transtemporal trips to 1920s Chicago to steal primo bootleg hooch.

However, in a twist of fate, our heroes find themselves thrust into the heart of an inter-time serial homicide mystery, but not before things change, forcing our pair into the crosshairs of potentially lethal consequences. Get ready for a high-octane, double-illegal adventure where the only sure thing is that RIFTERS is rewriting the rulebook on time-travel tales!

Dogsred 1
by Satoru Noda

After winning the national championship, 15-year-old figure skater Rou Shirakawa was on his way to the Olympics. But with his mother's tragic death on his mind, he threw it all away in an outburst of rage. Banned from figure skating, he and his sister move to Hokkaido. When he meets some local kids at the skating pond, they convince him to be a stand-in player for their soon-to-be-disbanded hockey team. The team has never won a game, and they're up against the local champs--but if they've got to go down, they want to score at least one goal before it's all over. Rou hasn't got a clue how to play ice hockey, but he sure knows how to skate!

Parable of the Talents
by Octavia E. Butler

A continuation of the travails of Lauren Olamina, Parable of the Talents is told in the voice of Lauren Olamina's daughter, Asha Vere--from whom she has been separated for most of the girl's life--interspersed with sections in the form of Lauren's own journals.

Against a background of a war-torn continent under the control of a Christian fundamentalist fascist state, Asha searches for answers about her own past while struggling to reconcile with her mother's legacy--caught between her duty to her chosen family and her calling to lead humankind into a better future among the stars.

Minor Arcana 1
by Jeff Lemire

Theresa's mother has fallen ill, and as a young bitter misanthrope, returning to her hometown to take care of her phony psychic of a mom is the last thing on Theresa's bucket list. But when Theresa finds out these abilities might be real after all, it will up to her to reconcile with her ailing mother, confront the failures of her past, and help the townsfolk she'd spent her life running from not so long ago. This is a heart-gripping supernatural story about life, family, community, grief, mortality, and the power of human connection.

Ginseng Roots: a memoir
by Craig Thompson

From the celebrated author of Blankets and Habibi comes a long-awaited return to the graphic memoir form. Ginseng Roots follows Craig Thompson and his siblings-who spent the summers of their youth weeding and harvesting rows of coveted American ginseng on rural Wisconsin farms for one dollar an hour-and interweaves the three-hundred-year history of the global ginseng trade and the many lives it has tied together. Stretching from Marathon, Wisconsin, to northeast China, Ginseng Roots charts the rise of industrial agriculture, the decline of American labor, and the search for a sense of home in a rapidly changing world.

Tongues
by Anders Nilsen

Set in a version of modern Central Asia, Tongues is a retelling of the Greek myth of Prometheus. It follows the captive god's friendship with the eagle who carries out his daily sentence of torture, and chronicles his pursuit of revenge on the god that has imprisoned him. Prometheus' story is entwined with that of an East African orphan on an errand of murder, and a young man with a teddy bear strapped to his back, wandering aimlessly into catastrophe. The story is set against the backdrop of tensions between rival groups in an oil-rich wilderness. . Tongues is both adventure story and meditation on human nature in our present fraught historical moment.

The Climber 1
by Jiro Nitta

Transfer student Buntaro Mori starts his first day at his new school already on the administration's radar. He's withdrawn and sullen, and the teachers are just waiting for him to explode. When his annoying classmate Miyamoto promises to leave him alone forever if he climbs to the top of the school, Mori eagerly takes up the challenge and shocks everyone when he makes it all the way to the roof. Flushed with the victory of his first successful climb, Mori can't resist the lure of the local peak, despite warnings from more experienced climbers about the risks of climbing alone. But Mori doesn't care. A little danger is nothing in the face of his new obsession.