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 By Mira Friedmann, Batia Kolton, Rutu Modan, Yirmi Pinkus, David Polonsky, and Itzik Rennert
144 pages, color
Published by Actus Independent Comics; distributed by Top Shelf Productions
There are some books that are really worth waiting for, and high among them is a new release from the Actus Independent Comics collective. A collective of Israeli comic artists, you never know what you’re going to find from them. It could be a box of miniature comics, maybe an anthology of stories all written by Etgar Keret, or comics where everyone’s protagonist is named Victor. I think they’re at their best, though, when they all work off a theme; their Happy End book really showed a wealth of ways to tackle that idea, and their new book How to Love shows a really varied group of attacks on just that.
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 By Alex Robinson
128 pages, black and white
Published by Top Shelf Productions
“What if you could go back and do it all again?” It’s a pretty familiar question, one asked both in real life as well as in fiction. Generally speaking, my immediate reaction has always been, “Why on earth would I want to?” With his new graphic novel Too Cool To Be Forgotten, though, Alex Robinson has found a satisfactory answer to that question and in a way that actually makes me wish I really could go back.
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 By Lars Martinson
128 pages, two-color
Published by Pliant Press; distributed by Top Shelf Productions
Every once in a while, a book appears in front of you that makes you really pause the second you see it. That was absolutely the case for me with Tonoharu: Part One by Lars Martinson. It’s perhaps a bit unfair to get your hopes up based strictly on the production values and book design, but that’s exactly what happened here. It had been a while since I was surprised by something that was both simple and beautiful, and if the interior craft matched the exterior, well, I knew I was about to read something great.
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 By Tim Sievert
120 pages, black and white
Published by Top Shelf Productions
What is it about the ocean that seems to inspire so many works of literature? Maybe it’s because it, unlike land, is part of the world that we still haven’t really conquered. We visit it and travel through it, but the ecosystems and order of life within the ocean is one without mankind living in it, one that most people still don’t really understand. It’s probably why Tim Sievert chose it as a backdrop for his debut graphic novel That Salty Air. When you need a nemesis that is both living and inanimate, and both logical and irrational, it’s hard to go wrong with the sea.
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 By Jeff Lemire
112 pages, black and white
Published by Top Shelf Productions
Do you ever feel like you’ve already read a book before you even begin? It’s not a sense of déj? vu, but rather a sense of familiarity about the book’s story. That’s how I felt like when reading Jeff Lemire’s Ghost Stories, like I’d somehow already experienced the story, and that I was being reunited with an old friend.
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 By Christian Slade
80 pages, black and white
Published by Top Shelf Productions
So often, books that are marketed as all-ages are really meant just for children. It’s a fine line between the two, finding something that will appeal to adults while still being appropriate and interesting for younger readers as well. Christian Slade’s Korgi is the sort of book that falls squarely into all-ages but considering his past as a Disney animator that probably shouldn’t be surprising. In many ways, Korgi is a prime example of how to handle an all-ages book. With just the right level of surprise and adventure, it’s determined to hook older readers just as quickly as children.
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 By Tony Consiglio
136 pages, black and white
Published by Top Shelf Productions
There are some targets that are easy to pick on. Take the whole “boy band” phenomenon, with its endless (and interchangeable) series of generic line-ups of young men trotted out to the sound of thousands of shrieking teenagers. On that level alone, Tony Consiglio’s 110 Per¢ succeeds in its sarcastic look at the whole movement. What makes the book really work, though, is that Consiglio’s greater target isn’t the latest fad, but rather the people who develop obsessions around them.
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 By Jeremy Tinder
88 pages, black and white
Published by Top Shelf Productions
Some books sound like a punch line the second you begin to describe them. An aspiring novelist, a rabbit, and a robot seems like a strange combination from the very first second, but at no point does it seem like a set-up for a bad pun. Instead, we’re getting a strange little story about jobs and storytelling and souls and building nests. (That’s a not a set-up either.)
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 By Liz Prince
80 pages, black and white
Published by Top Shelf Productions
Some books grab you from the second you see the cover. Others take a page or two. And then there are the ones that just sneak up on you when you’re least expecting it, and that’s exactly what happened with me and Liz Prince’s Will You Still Love Me If I Wet The Bed?
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 By Renée French
216 pages, black and white
Published by Top Shelf Productions
“Edison Steelhead was born on the kitchen floor.” It’s the sort of opening you hear for legends, and of epic stories. It’s how Renée French begins the narration of The Ticking, her new graphic novel that like its opening words may make you believe it’s going in one direction, even as it quietly slides into something entirely different.
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