Afraid to watch horror movies with his friend, Pod, Squish the amoeba feels better after learning that even comic book superheroes get scared sometimes.

Gilbert Hernandez’s sprawling family saga focuses on the United States, where newly immigrated Luba and her sisters, body-builder Petra and therapist/film star Fritz, find their families’ and friends’ lives becoming more and more intertwined. As the three sisters have “memories of sweet youth,” the next generation finds the spotlight: Luba’s adult daughterDoralís emcees the proceedings in her role as mischievous host of a children’s TV show, while Petra’s little girl, Venus, has adventures with her aunt Fritz and her best friend Yoshio. At her mother’s urging, Venus also writes missives to her fierce, one-armed cousin Casimira, who’s back in Palomar. In these stories — never before collected together — Venus tells it like it is!

Their families dead from the pandemic SitkaAZ13, known as Pest, 15-year-old cheerleader Clare and 13-year-old chess club member Jem are thrown together. They realize that, if either of them wishes to reach adulthood, they must find a cure. A shadowy adult broadcasting on the radio to all orphaned children promises just that-to cure children once they grow into Pest and then to feed and care for them. Or does this adult have something else in mind? Against a hostile landscape of rotting cities and a countryside infected by corpses and roamed by diseased and doomed survivors, Jem and Clare make their bid for life. As their group of fellow child-travelers grows, they embark on a journey to find the cure. In their search, they are hampered by the knowledge that everything in this new world has become suspect-adults, alliances, trust, hope. But perhaps friendship has its own kind of healing power. And perhaps, out of friendship, there can come love.