Are comics and manga your bread and butter? Here are this summer’s hottest queer graphic novels, manga and comics to keep you eyes out for…
Check out our fiction & poetry list too, and watch out for our non-fiction list coming soon!
if you want to stock your bookshop shelves with anything on this list then please reach out to your local Turnaround sales rep! 💖
Gatsby
By Jeremy Holt & Felipe Cunha
9781953165480 | AWA Upshot | PB | Out Now | £18.99
An epic, queer rager based on a timeless classic — welcome to the Roaring Twenty-Twenties with GATSBY!
When middle-class Singaporean student Lu Zhao is invited to spend a summer on Long Island with his rich cousin, Tommy, before attending Columbia University in the fall, his assimilation into the opulent American lifestyle straps him into a collision course fuelled by designer drugs, sex, deceit, and murder. Set in present-day Long Island, Gatsby reimagines F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel as an LGBTQ-tinged, multicultural thriller for the Internet age.
I Hear the Sunspot: Four Seasons Volume 1
By Yuki Fumino
9781642732337 | One Peace Books | PB | Out Now | £13.99
Kohei Sugihara, college student with hearing loss, and Taichi Sagawa, his ever-optimistic former classmate, met in a chance encounter that ignited an undeniable spark that would eventually blossom into love.
Now it’s spring and as Kohei nears graduation, his search for a job begins. Meanwhile, Taichi finds himself in charge of someone new at work. Life is busier than ever, but all in all, things seem to be looking up for the pair. That is, until the sudden appearance of Ena, one of Kohei’s old flames.
The Sucker
By Elle Shivers
9798886200188 | Silver Sprocket | PB | Out Now | £15.99
A surreal graphic novel weaving the fates of the environment and humanity.
In this moving graphic novel by cartoonist Elle Shivers, two estranged friends discover a mysterious underwater creature, setting off a collision of passions and wants. On an assignment to survey an uninhabited Philippine island marked for commercial development, a jaded marine biologist and a guileless underwater photographer are surprised to find themselves thrust back together after losing touch. The straightforward mission gets complicated by their discovery of a strange giant squid that was thought to have gone extinct. As tensions rise over the fate of the creature, EJ and Dani must make their own choices about what’s right, and what they owe to each other. Originally published in the 2021 ShortBox Comics Fair.
Twilight Out of Focus 1
By Jyanome
9781647292331 | Vertical | PB | Out Now | £12.99
Two university students set some ground rules to make living together more bearable, but things do not always go to plan.
Second-years Mao Tsuchiya and Hisashi Otomo make three promises: 1) That Mao will never tell anyone that Hisashi is gay and has a boyfriend, 2) That Hisashi will never think of Mao ‘in that way,’ and 3) That they’ll always knock before entering, in case someone is having some ‘private time.’ The two’s ground rules should ensure a peaceful life together in their dorm, but life is never as simple as it should be, and some things are not so easily promised…
Light Carries On
By Ray Nadine
9781506726373 | Dark Horse | HB | Out Now | £18.99
An unmissable graphic novel that balances out themes of trauma, grief, and toxic relationships with radical empathy, queer joy, and healing.
When Leon’s camera unexpectedly breaks, he is forced to borrow a used one from his mom’s antique store. As he snaps the first picture, the ghost of the camera’s former owner is released and the two are inexplicably linked. After taking Leon’s body for an accidental joy ride, the ghost introduces himself as Cody, a queer punk rocker who died decades ago. Of course, he doesn’t remember how he wound up dead but the two decide investigating might be the only way to end the haunting. Leon has been reeling from a recent break-up with his boyfriend, recovering from his time in the military, and trying to become a photographer who can afford to take pictures of something more than high school proms and weddings. So being the only one able to see and talk to a ghost that died before mobile phones, Wikipedia, or iTunes seems like a great way to fill his ample free time!
Year Zero Vol. 0
By Daniel Kraus
9781953165459 | AWA Upshot | PB | Out Now | £9.99
See how everyday people from all walks of life try to survive in a new world where the dead eat the living in this epic global look at a zombie apocalypse.
In this action-packed prelude to the hit series, acclaimed horror writer Daniel Kraus (George Romero’s The Living Dead, The Autumnal) unveils four globe-spanning tales from the earliest days of the zombie apocalypse when even the wildest rumours couldn’t measure up to the horror to come. A streetwise Russian cop patrols the back alleys of the opportunistic black market that emerges in response to the crisis… a North Korean soldier observes strange happenings on the DMZ… An E.R. nurse in the rural South fights to protect her hospital from threats without and within… A transgender flight attendant who has observed disturbing clues as she criss-crosses the globe keeps a wary eye on the passenger in seat 23C…
Enlightened Transsexual Comix
By Sam Szabo
9798886200171 | Silver Sprocket | HB | 28/06/2023 | £23.99
Trippy, hilarious, and insightful comics about trans life.
‘Subversive, cerebral, and most of all hilarious comix!’ — Gina Wynbrandt. The definitive collection of Sam Szabo’s ‘ETC’ comics series, serving up a psychedelic stew of social satire and gonzo gender theory! The year is 2023. The astral plane has entered a tailspin. Fortunately, an ancient cosmological entity is on a mission to spread her fluidity across the galaxy. Our raw, uncut heroine roams the wasteland in defence of trans rights and trans wrongs. Will the Enlightened Transsexual convince humanity to chill out at last? Or will the planet choke on her filthy gags?
Queen in Comics!
By Emmanuel Marie & Sophie Blitman
9781681123110 | NBM | HB | 22/06/2023 | £26.99
The latest comics biography in NBM’s successful series turns its gaze to the legendary rock band Queen!
Brian May, Roger Taylor and Freddie Mercury form one of the greatest rock bands in the world. Under the leadership of its charismatic singer, Queen is a planetary success for each hit with its decadent shows, inimitable aesthetics and style. ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, ‘We Are the Champions’, ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ or even ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ are just some of the hits! Discover the great stories and little secrets surrounding the legend!
Basil and Oregano
By Melissa Capriglione
9781506728704 | Dark Horse | PB | Out Now | £18.99
Mix two parts The Great British Bake Off with one part magical boarding school plus a generous dash of romance and you’ve got Basil and Oregano, a sweetly delicious lower young adult graphic novel.
Porta Bella Magiculinary Academy is the finest school for the art of cooking with magic, and Basil Eyres is determined to be the top student. On the first day of her senior year, Arabella Oregano, the daughter of a renowned chef, joins the academy for her senior year as well. The two are instantly smitten with each other, but Basil senses there’s something Arabella is hiding from her. Still, the two work together to stand out from the class as the end of year culinary festival approaches. But when Arabella’s secret is revealed, Basil is faced with the hardest decision of her life, which has the potential to throw her future aspirations in jeopardy.
LSBN
By Emma Jayne & Sloane Leong
9798886200218 | Silver Sprocket | PB | 14/06/2023 | £14.99
A sci-fi sapphic romance graphic novel.
A lesbian mech rom-com graphic novel by Ignatz and Prism Award-winning cartoonist Emma Jayne! After many gruelling years of defending against colossal, violent creatures, the machine that will turn the conflict in humanity’s favour is nearing completion… until the war unexpectedly comes to a sudden, peaceful resolution. The world rejoices. However, two women fall into crisis as their life’s work becomes obsolete. Commander Sugimoto and her lead engineer Mischa Polyakov have spent nearly every waking moment together since the project’s inception, but without the pretence of their careers and world-ending calamity, do they have a reason to stay in one another’s lives?
Prokaryote Season
By Leo Fox
9798886200225 | Silver Sprocket | PB | 14/06/2023 | £18.99
A queer fable about the dangers of obsession.
‘A single-celled organism doesn’t toil. It doesn’t stare at the ceiling and cry. It doesn’t have ill-fitting clothes. It doesn’t do anything, that’s the whole point. It just is.’ Sydney and Laurelie are best friends searching for the contentment of oblivion. Failing that, they’d like to be adored. Laurelie, by their caustic boyfriend Trip, and Sydney by Laurelie. On a typical night partying in the woods, Sydney grows frustrated with their unrequited obsession for Laurelie, and asks for a wish to be granted by the curious cosmic creature Starman. Not only will Laurelie love Sydney, but Laurelie will be dependent on them — will need to be saved by them. When the wish becomes deadly serious, Sydney and Trip will be forced to figure out how to save Laurelie for real, or risk losing the person most important to them both.
Last Gender 3
By Rei Taki
9781647292164 | Vertical | PB | 15/06/2023 | £12.99
A manga exploration of gender identity.
The stories of sexual minorities gathering at a chic spot called BAR California looking for their sexuality and love. Welcome to ‘BAR California’, a place where people with different genders, propensities, and sexual orientations gather to find a certain ‘something’. A transgender bisexual who has been hurt by the voices of others, a pansexual looking for true love, and a person who identities as both male and female. There are as many sexualities as there are people.
Us
By Sara Soler, Silbia Perea Labayen & Joamette Gil
9781506734187 | Dark Horse | PB | 25/07/2023 | £18.99
Us is Sara and Diana’s love story, as well as the story of Diana’s gender transition.
What happens when the life you thought you had does a 180 turn? Everything, and yet… nothing. Us is Sara and Diana’s love story, as well as the story of Diana’s gender transition. Full of humour, heartache, and the everyday triumphs and struggles of identity, this graphic memoir speaks to changing conceptions of the world as well as the self, at the same time revealing that some things don’t really have to change. Written, drawn, and coloured by Sara Soler, with English translation by Silvia Perea Labayen and letters by Joamette Gil.
Blessed Cure
By Mário César
9781908030542 | Soaring Penguin Press | PB | 18/06/2023 | £24.99
Blessed Cure is an awarded LGBTQ+ graphic novel by Brazilian author Mario Cesar that portrays what it is like to have a life marked by homophobia and the effects of sexual reversal therapies that try to cure something that is not a disease…
Since he was a child, Acacio do Nascimento was a different boy from others. He’d rather play with dolls than play soccer; the hula hoop interested him more than cowboy pistols. Scared by the possibility that their son was a homosexual, Mara and Galdino had submitted Acacio, since he was five years old, to several treatments for him to become a normal boy like the others. In 1990 the World Health Organization (WHO) stopped considering homosexuality a disease. Based on this understanding, a 1999 resolution by the Brazilian Federal Council of Psychology prohibited professionals from applying therapies to try to change sexual orientation in Brazil. Even so, the so-called ‘gay cure’, time and again, comes into the spotlight due to the greed of those who aim to profit from ignorance and prejudice. Conservative groups want to subject perfectly healthy people to abusive treatments and, often, homosexuals themselves subordinate themselves to medieval methods to live up to the expectations of others.
Otherside Picnic (Manga) 05
By Lori Miyazawa, Eita Mizuno & Shirakaba
9781646091300 | Square Enix Manga | PB | 29/06/2023 | £12.99
A manga adaptation of the hit light novel series.
In this sci-fi/fantasy survival thriller, the dangerous and deadly realm of the Otherside — where urban legends roam — calls to two women, both in search of something. As they set out to sate their curiosity and explore this other world, will the most earth-shattering thing they discover on the Otherside be their feelings for each other? Sorawo and Toriko head deep into the Otherside to save some old friends none other than the American marines who wandered into Kisaragi Station and got stuck in what they call the Beyond! The pair, dubbed ‘the girls’ by the Okinawa base troops, hatch a plan to rescue the trapped soldiers. Will everyone make it out alive and unscathed? Or will the Otherside claim new victims along the way?
Merry-Go-Round
By Sergio Rossi & Agnese Innocente
9781506736594 | Dark Horse | PB | 04/07/2023 | £18.99
Life as a teenager is full of challenges and learning moments, from love triangles to missed appointments and beyond.
Merry-Go-Round features the stories of a group of young people just trying to get through their day-to-day life, all while romance and simply growing up are throwing roadblocks along the way. Based on the Arthur Schnitzler play by the same name, this volume is a perfect encapsulation of growing up, and trying to figure everything out.
What Did You Eat Yesterday? 20
By Fumi Yoshinaga
9781647292218 | Vertical | PB | 25/07/2023 | £12.99
A casual romance between two 40-year-old men and the many meals they share together.
What Did You Eat Yesterday? is best described as part comic, part cookbook — it depicts the romance between two 40-year-old men and the many meals they share together. In the narrative, a hard-working middle-aged gay couple in Tokyo come to enjoy the finer moments of life through food. After long days at work, either in the law firm or the hair salon, Shiro and Kenji will always have down time together by the dinner table, where they can discuss their troubles, thrash out their feelings and enjoy delicately prepared home cooked meals!
Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard? 8
By Yuu Toyota
9781646091607 | Square Enix Manga | PB | 22/08/2023 | £14.99
It’s complicated: A thirty-year-old virgin gets more than he bargained for when his newfound magical power reveals he’s the object of his male coworker’s affections!
Four months into his transfer, Adachi is surprised to find that he and Kurosawa aren’t that far apart after all! Kurosawa travels to Nagasaki whenever he can, and the pair spend weekends together on the regular! It’s almost as if they’re settling into life… like a married couple?! So when the two decide to get engaged, it seems like the most natural move of all! But while Adachi and Kurosawa have overcome some huge obstacles to their love, the next challenge awaiting them might be the toughest yet: breaking the news of their engagement to their parents…
Eden II
By Kenny Wroten
9781683967583 | Fantagraphics | PB | 29/08/2023 | £39.99
Deft cartooning and virtuosic storytelling combine in this blistering critique of digital media and a kaleidoscopic depiction of consumer culture.
In the grungy, punk-inflected world Kenny Wroten creates, a cast of disaffected young characters struggle to find their purpose in life. Faced with a dying Earth and numbingly useless jobs, protagonists Ellis and Dr. Otis Heck invent an immersive virtual reality game, Eden II. But when Heck betrays Ellis and sells the game to a mysterious corporation, the lines between fantasy and reality begin to blur. As each chapter highlights a new character in the ensemble, the game’s impact grows as the world becomes consumed by fantasy. Coming off the heels of their acclaimed queer comics Cannonball and Crimes, Eden II is Wroten’s magnum opus, establishing them as a breakout graphic novelist. Philosophical, sarcastic, self-assured, Eden II is a vital work of the moment that positions Wroten alongside recent comics luminaries like Emily Carroll, Caroline Cash, Isabel Greenberg, Melanie Gilman, and Tillie Walden. Reminiscent of the stylised angst of Gregg Araki and Jamie Babbit’s works, Wroten’s imagery in reflects the blighted pastiche of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979) — and they have suffused that pastiche with a dark sense of humour and technologically enhanced moral ambiguity.
Paper Planes
By Jennie Wood & Dozerdraws
9781952303548 | Maverick | PB | 18/07/2023 | £14.99
Two former best friends try to save their friendship and survive a camp for troubled teens in this queer coming-of-age graphic novel.
Former best friends Dylan Render and Leighton Worthington attempt to successfully navigate their way through a summer camp for troubled youth. They both need a good evaluation at the camp. Otherwise, they’ll be sent away, unable to attend high school with their friends. While participating in camp activities and chores, Dylan and Leighton re-examine the events that led up to the incident that sent them to camp, the incident that threatens their futures and their friendship with each other.
