Comics and Graphic Novels 2025

Matt Madden is a cartoonist and translator who has also taught in art schools around the world. He is known for his playful and inventive comics like the metafictional romp Ex Libris and 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style (Penguin), a comics adaptation of Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style which led to his initiation into Oubapo, The Workshop for Potential Comics, in 2005. In 2013 he was named Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government. He has also done translations from the French and Spanish, including Aristophane's The Zabîme Sisters (First Second) and Edmond Baudoin’s Piero (New York Review Comics). He wrote two comics textbooks in collaboration with his wife, Jessica Abel, and the couple were series editors for The Best American Comics from Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt for six years. From 2012 to 2016, he and his family did a four-year residency in Angoulême, France at La Maison des Auteurs. They are currently living in Philadelphia where he is doing translations and working on new comics when he’s not looking after his kids or playing guitar.  
Photo credit: R. Carter Studios

Bishakh is an Indian-American trans femme visual artist and author. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Autostraddle, The Strumpet, The Boston Review, The Georgia Review, Black Warrior Review and The Brooklyn Rail, amongst other publications.   Her graphic novel Apsara Engine (The Feminist Press) is the winner of a 2020 L.A. Times Book Prize for Best Graphic Novel and a 2021 Lambda Literary Award winner for Best LGBTQ Comics. Her graphic memoir Spellbound (Street Noise Books) was also a 2021 Lambda Literary Award finalist.  Bishakh has illustrated two books about architecture: The Prefab Bathroom: An Architectural History, (McFarland Press) and Cocktails and Conversations: Dialogues on Architectural Design (AIA New York).  Bishakh’s artwork was featured in solo shows at ArtLexis Gallery and at Jaya Yoga Center and in group shows at The Society of Illustrators in New York, the Bannister Gallery at Rhode Island College, Issyra Gallery, the Grady Alexis Gallery, De Cacaofabriek in the Netherlands and most recently at Art Omi in Ghent, NY. You can see her work at www.bishakh.com.  

Photo credit: Shirya Samavai

Tom Hart is a cartoonist and the founder / Executive Director of The Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW), an online school and arts organization in Gainesville, Florida. He has created graphic novels, short stories, memoir, comic strips and many instructional books.  He is the author of the New York Times #1 Bestseller, Rosalie Lightning, a book about the loss of his young daughter, Rosalie. That book has been translated into French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Chinese, and was featured on many best of 2016 lists, and nominated for two Eisner Awards. His work has been featured in Greatest American Comics in 2004 and 2015. His daily “Hutch Owen” comic strip ran for 2 years in newspapers in New York and Boston, and his “Ali’s House”, co-created with Margo Dabaie was commissioned by King Features Syndicate. 

Michel Vrana discovered his passion for publication design while studying at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. He has designed comics, graphic novels, magazines, and directed a design studio. Since 2009, he has focused on creating book covers for various publishers, with his work being honored by the Alcuin Awards. In 2019, he relaunched his comic book micro press, Black Eye Books, becoming a publisher himself.