And we’re back with BF’s Staff Picks feature for May 2026! This regular blog piece is where members of the team give a monthly overview of recommended new releases, designed to spotlight just a few key releases that appeal to us. This is not, then, intended as a comprehensive, exhaustive or extensive round-up but rather to point you in the direction of some top projects that caught the eyes of BF contributors. Please also remember these aren’t intended as reviews and full coverage of the comics/books below may follow in due course!
Comic of the Month
Mary Pain (Drawn & Quarterly)
Lola Lorente’s Mary Pain (translated by Andrea Rosenberg) is a difficult comic. But what it eschews in easy legibility, it more than makes up for with incredibly moving, cinematic art, and a story that is profoundly specific yet relatable. For who among us has not felt at odds with the world at times? The protagonist is unemployed, stuck in a town forsaken by time, and responsible for caring for a disabled grandfather, in a house she could lose any day. Her disillusionment, sorrow, disgust, and helplessness are portrayed with a raw visual language that is visceral bordering on uncomfortable. Perhaps what I like most about this comic, outside of Lorente’s obvious drawing and inking skills, is that it does not try to have all the answers. There are no neat little epiphanies, no attempt at comforting the reader, no evident desire to make death, dying and the vagaries of life look more appealing than they are.
– Kay Sohini
Fungae (Fantagraphics Books)
I LOVE a graphic novel/thriller crossover, and the beautifully vibrant Fungae from Fantagraphics and Wojtek Wawszczyk and Tomasz Lew Lesniak looks right up my street. With the premise focused on a family lost in the wilderness searching for respite, we explore every dark crevice in this eerie physical and psychic terrain, where things that can kill lurk in the blackness.
Polish animators and cartoonists Wojtek Wawszczyk and Tomasz Lew Lesniak show their incredible skill and flex their creative muscles through their textured, absurdist style, coupled with the modern-day parabolical storytelling. As the blurb says, whether you like it or not, Fungae will grow on you.
– Lydia Turner
Noisy Valley: The Art of Protest (SelfMadeHero)
Myfanwy Tristram’s socially conscious comics and zines have had considerable coverage at Broken Frontier over the years, including titles like the multi-creator Draw the Line and Sorry for the Inconvenience… We Are Trying to Save the World. With the British Prime Minister yet again threatening the right to protest just this very week this book could not be more timely or relevant.
Noisy Valley is more graphic non-fiction from Tristram again exploring the power of protest via the stories of the people of the Rhondda Valley in South Wales. We’ve seen an advance copy of this and you can be guaranteed it will be getting some coverage time in the not too distant future.
– Andy Oliver
2000 AD Prog 2481 (Rebellion)
While it may not mean much to the rest of the world, The Galaxy’s Greatest Comic is finally coming to the home of Mega City One on a weekly basis starting in May. Lunar Distribution is bringing physical editions of the legendary UK magazine to comic stores in the US, they will also be printed in the States, with only a two-week delay from the UK release date. I was a subscriber for many years to the digital editions of 2000 AD, there’s always quality genre work happening here.
– Gary Usher
The Book of Murmurs (Fantagraphics Books)
Sometimes it only takes the briefest of previews to convince you that a new graphic novel is something extra special regardless of anything else you know about it. Just take a look at those pages from Candice Purwin’s The Book of Murmurs – art that’s dreamy, fluid, haunting and ethereal, with a carefully applied use of colour to enhance its otherworldly feel.
Purwin’s story is a fantasy quest of loss and discovery as a young girl journeys across a darkly magical landscape and faces a creature who feeds on fear. The buzz around this one has been building for some time and we will have a full review up here at Broken Frontier very soon.
– Andy Oliver
Narrow Rooms (Drawn & Quarterly)
Narrow Rooms is described as a romantic thriller and while the description fits to a point, it is also limiting because there is so much more going on here. The book functions as a critique of how society creates boxes for individuals, for instance, or how systemic misogyny plays an overwhelming role in defining how women must live without a male partner or protector. Narrow Rooms is the first of Choi Sungmin’s graphic novels to be translated, but more will definitely be expected in the years to come.
Read Lindsay’s full review at BF here.
– Lindsay Pereira
Archie’s TV Laugh-Out #79 Facsimile Edition (Archie Comics)
An odd choice for the Broken Frontier Staff Picks you may say? But comics serve many functions and one of those is the kind of pure escapism that we all need right now. That’s just as important as discussions of experimental comics craft and socially relevant reportage when the world is burning all around us.
And nobody does feelgood comics better than Archie, especially in their heyday. While the publisher’s own output has diminished significantly in recent years – and the future seems to be in licensing out their characters to other outfits – their reprint facsimile editions are a welcome reminder of another era when their easy-reading comics and digests were everywhere.
– Andy Oliver
