A blackout leads two teens to discover the intimacy and vulnerability that can only be shared in darkness, in this fully illustrated YA novella from celebrated Angolan author Ondjaki. A blackout leads two teens to discover the intimacy and vulnerability that can only be shared in darkness in Our Beautiful Darkness , a fully illustrated YA novella from celebrated Angolan author Ondjaki and illustrator Ant ó nio Jorge Gon ç alves . Translated from Portuguese by Lyn Miller-Lachmann A Kirkus Best YA Book of 2024 Selected for the USBBY Outstanding International Book List, 2025 Selected for the shortlist for the 2025 Global Literature in Libraries Initiative Translated Young Adult Book Prize A Five Books Best New Book for Teens of 2024 The light goes out suddenly. And in this absence of light, a pair of teenagers bare their souls. Into the warm silence of the night, they share a conversation filled with their stories and dreams… and maybe even a first kiss. Set against the backdrop of the civil war that ravaged Angola in the 1990s, this book weaves the country’s history with a teenage boy’s family stories. But when a power outage shrouds the neighborhood in darkness, everyday realities fade away… As the boy and a girl sit talking in the backyard, memory gives way to imagination and vulnerability, and the space between them becomes charged with emotional electricity. Their resulting conversation is both a meditation on the storytelling impulse and a gripping narrative of first love that, through its particulars, ascends to the universal.

In the 1970s, Jean Giraud started producing science fiction works under the name of Moebius. This first book-length, English-language study of Moebius finally brings international attention to an artist whose influence on the medium was profound and immediate, making him a role model for aspiring comics creators throughout his career. Jean Giraud (1938–2012) started drawing comics in the late 1950s for a variety of French comics magazines. Under his real name, he found success in 1963 with the western series Blueberry, written by Jean-Michel Charlier and published in Pilote magazine. In the 1970s, he started producing science fiction works under the name of Moebius, which brought him international success, and which included works such as Arzach. He died in 2012, as a global celebrity in the comics world and a major influence across visual media. He was widely imitated while at Métal Hurlant in the 1970s, was "prominent among the spiritual fathers of the comic book rebels" in the 1990s, and again an example for the independent artists identified as the "new bande dessinée" in France in the early 2000s. Featuring close readings of key texts, including Blueberry, the Airtight Garage of Jerry Cornelius, and "The Long Tomorrow," this volume examines Moebius’s style and aesthetic achievement. Notably, this volume explores the tension between Giraud and Moebius—one name for westerns, the other for science fiction; one name for the domestic market, another as a global brand; one name for the brush, another for the pen; one for the mainstream and the other for the underground. Labarre challenges those dichotomies, especially in the later phases of Moebius’s career, unveiling the complex evolution of this understudied but influential artist.

Over thirty years after his initial ascent to super stardom, Todd McFarlane (b. 1961) remains one of the most popular and contentious comic artists ever. The interviews compiled in this volume offer a nuanced portrait of McFarlane’s polarizing character. Beginning with his earliest days on Spider-Man to the months before the hotly anticipated release of Spawn and ending with his writing ventures decades later, the interviews offer compelling perspectives from the renowned creator. As the most vocal representative of Image Comics, McFarlane, alongside Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Erik Larsen, Jim Valentino, Marc Silvestri, and Whilce Portacio, was a veritable rock star. Eager fans swarmed into lengthy lines around comic book stores and conventions, waiting for their chance at a thirty-second autograph. The book offers a glimpse into the comic book world of the early 1990s, a world rampant with variant covers, impossibly exaggerated bodies, and wild speculation about what would be the next comic to explode in value. The volume also includes the momentous public debate between McFarlane and Peter David, former collaborator on The Incredible Hulk, moderated by the late George Pérez at a standing-room-only event at ComicsFest in 1993. While this world sounds almost inconceivable to the comic book fan of today, it was the milieu in which McFarlane rose to stardom and excelled like no other, leaving his mark on the medium forever.