The Jellyfish

Boum, trans. from the French by Robin Lang and Helge Dascher (Pow Pow)

The cartoonist behind the delightful Boumeries webcomic delivers a poetic graphic novel, which applies her nimble, fluid art style to a lightly uncanny tale about a bohemian young woman who suffers from a jellyfish floating in her eye. The creature isn’t imagined, it’s diagnosed as such by an optometrist. As the floating blobs multiply, she tries to hide her affliction from the cute girl she’s crushing on—until she can no longer ignore the oddly beautiful darkness coming for her.

Maple Terrace

Noah Van Sciver (Uncivilized)

A trove of pristine comics hidden by a bully get scooped up by young Van Sciver in this early 1990s period piece, setting off his ill-fated dreams of making a fortune in collectibles. It’s an alternately goofy and gut-punching graphic novella trip back into the chaos and poverty of Van Sciver’s overextended Mormon family, which he drew so poignantly in One Dirty Tree. The over-the-top pathos and deadpan sight gags are uncomfortably hilarious in the best way.

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Mothballs

Sole Otero, trans. from the Spanish by Andrea Rosenberg (Fantagraphics)

Otero’s English-language debut, an Audience Award winner at Angoulême, is a brilliantly colorful whirlwind that will transport readers to Argentina. The story alternates between the present day of Ro, a young woman navigating fraught relationships and an uncertain future against the backdrop of political unrest, and the tumultuous history of her Italian Argentinian grandmother, who escaped Mussolini to set up the home that Ro inherits.

The Science of Ghosts

Lilah Sturges and El Garing (Legendary)

In this thriller drawn in a campy throwback art style, a trans forensic psychologist with paranormal visions (she’s writing a scholarly tome about them, natch) chases leads from apparitions who replay their dying moments. Her investigations involve the scandalous secrets of a corrupt family whose fortune was built on firearms, a wrongful accusation of murder that may have been committed by a ghost, and oodles of sexy seduction. This is escapism at it’s savviest.