| The new and forthcoming graphic novels in this month’s Frame by Frame feature stories tackling climate anxiety, a recounting of an overlooked labor movement, an action-filled crime caper, and more.
Plus, check out the graphic novels receiving award recognition, including the many Consortium titles nominated for 2025 Eisner Awards!
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Yixuan Liu, a 16-year-old Chinese girl, just moved from China to America with her family. To try to fit in to a new school, a new city, and a new culture, Yixuan chooses an English name, Emma. As she works to succeed in school and make friends, Yixuan/Emma is confused by the anti-Asian and anti-Black racism she hears from her teachers and her friends. Balancing chaotic school life with divorcing parents, her sister’s mental illness, and a new crush, Emma must ask herself, “How do I know who I really am?”
Publishers Weekly says, “Makee’s artwork has the simplicity of a teenager’s notebook sketches but bursts with telling details. . . . The result is both a painfully candid coming-of-age tale and a warts-and-all portrait of America.”
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Endsickness
by Sofia Alarcon
Conundrum Press • June 2025 • 9781772621075 • iPage
Coined by Elizabeth Rush, “endsickness” is a term to describe severe anxiety over the end of the world. For Sofia Alarcon, it’s also a way of describing our culture’s obsession with all things dystopian. In this collection of graphic stories about climate change and eco-anxiety, Alarcon examines the individual quandaries of living in a society unable to face the existential threat looming on the horizon.
Ali Fitzgerald, comic artist and New Yorker columnist, says, “Sofia Alarcon’s haunting collection of eco-parables perfectly expresses the surreality of existing within a world on fire.” Edelweiss reviewer Millicent Stiger adds, “Sofia Alarcon’s novel is a heady and existential confrontation with the absurdity left in the wake of hyper capitalism and techno-solutionism.”
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A teenager in 1945 is suffocated by post-WWII nationalism. A tireless doctor in 1955 desperately tries to find the origin of a new illness. Though these two people live disparate lives, decades apart, their fates are irrevocably intertwined by a rare, horrifying sickness and an enigmatic figure who follows wherever they go, known only as The Man. Confined within their eras, they each race against time to escape The Man and find a cure before The Sickness collapses their worlds.
This sprawling, ambitious work is a genre-bending look at the four decades of socio-political strife that shaped our nation, serving as a reminder that the terrors of yesterday are the terrors of today.
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This gripping graphic novel tells the story of the 1891 Coal Creek War—one of the most significant yet overlooked labor uprisings in the history of the United States. Told through the eyes of a young Welsh immigrant, Trouble! at Coal Creek is the epic story of a cross-racial struggle to abolish the system of convict-leasing in the mines. Evocative black-and-white illustrations and masterful storytelling show the personal battles and motivations that led thousands of miners to take up arms against powerful companies, their militias, and politicians.
Reviewer Andrea J. on Edelweiss notes, “It is a pleasure to see graphic novels like this come around and teach important historical events that often become forgotten in the march of time. . . . Highly recommended for an important glimpse of American labor at the turn of the century.”
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When three sleazy gangsters storm into an apartment in search of a stolen urn, they set off a series of unfortunate events that threaten everyone in the building. As blood begins to pool, it becomes clear that this story is about more than the senseless violence. What is good and what is evil? Who decides who should die? And does anyone really know their neighbors? This classic gangster comedy of errors grows into a meditation on loneliness, morality, and even love.
Edelweiss reviewer Fátima F. calls the book “a great read for people who love cult classic 90s indies and European weird thrillers,” adding, “I found it extremely enjoyable, with plot twist after plot twist. . . . I couldn’t stop reading until I finished it.”
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Eisner Nominees and Celebrated Graphic Novels!
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Numerous graphic novels from Consortium publishers are finalists for the 2025 Eisner Awards, which highlight the best publications and creators in comics and graphic novels. Awards will be presented in July at San Diego Comic-Con.
In other awards news, three Consortium titles are finalists for this year’s Locus Awards in the Illustrator and Art Book category:
Finally, two Consortium titles are nominated for the 2025 Doug Wright Awards, which honor Canadian comics and graphic novels. Nominees for best book include The Field by Dave Lapp (Conundrum) and The Jellyfish by Boum, translated by Robin Lang and Helge Dascher (Pow Pow Press). Boum is also nominated for the Doug Wright Award for emerging talent.
A huge congrats to all of these contributors and publishers!
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For more in comics, check out our Fall/Winter 2025-2026 catalogs featuring forthcoming graphic novels:
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