Tarot always tells a story — many stories, in fact, in its rich symbols — and this gorgeous deck illustrated by Nina Bunjevac (author of the graphic novels Bezimena, Fatherland, and Heartless) offers an alchemical lens through which to interpret the 22 cards of the major arcana. Along with the cards, whose illustrations manage to be both lavish and stark (minimally colored, black and white with gold), Bunjevac wrote and illustrated the accompanying 178-page guidebook, which summarizes the symbology of each card while incorporating a wide swath of esoteric knowledge. The result is, as she describes, “an interactive alchemical document” that is accessible and fun to use.

With all the risks artificial intelligence may pose making constant headlines, this nuanced and highly personal graphic memoir by the author of Flying Couch ponders how technology might also hold our shared stories and humanity. When Kurzweil’s father, a renowned inventor, creates a chatbot from journals belonging to his late father — who escaped Vienna just before Kristallnacht — the author finds herself encountering the traumas of her family’s past via a conversation with a simulation of her dead grandfather. Along with documenting this unusual method for preserving the past, Kurzweil’s poetic text and emotive drawings unspool her struggles being an artist, a daughter, and a partner, weaving together the threads of her life with deep philosophical concerns. This is a book that will surely stay with you long after you’ve read the last page.

This book was originally procured for my 11-year-old, but I found myself reading this cover to cover, charmed by Lin’s breezy tone and her beautiful, lush illustrations as she, like a friend sitting next to you in the restaurant booth, breaks down the cultural history of some of the most iconic Chinese American dishes. From various teas and how to drink them to the origin of fortune cookies, this is storytelling at its best, giving us a window into history, myth, and human complexity by way of the belly.

Anyone interested in the history of women in comics — or pop culture — will love this huge collection of newspaper comic strips from the late 1930s to the early 1950s, a golden era of adventurous female protagonists in the funny pages. Edited by the grand dame of underground comics, Trina Robbins (with imprint editor Peter Maresca), this big book is barely enough to contain all the fabulous women!

Like the duo’s best-selling Muhammad Ali book, this graphic biography of activist, abolitionist, philosopher, and all-around icon Angela Davis is rich and dynamic in both storytelling and style. There are some big departures in terms of biographical convention, like creating composite characters to help tell the story, but these literary devices are at the service of an important project: an attempt to convey, in words and art, the real complexity and danger of a life lived in resistance. Hopefully, this highly accessible book will inspire readers to delve deeper into the works of Ms. Davis herself.

“It’s said that sex is healthy, and yet how can it be healthy if half the people I know have been raped?” is one of the many haunting questions that the French author and artist Julie Delporte (whose other works include the graphic novels This Woman’s Work, Everywhere Antennas, and Journals) asks in this incredibly powerful memoir. Alongside gorgeous colored pencil drawings of things like rocks, flowers, and bodies, Delporte explores what it means to be in a queer body in a patriarchal society, the changing nature of desire, embodiment after trauma, and so, so much more.

Is there anything more romantic than being a young adult discovering New York City for the first time with your best friend? Maybe adding an unexpected fling with one of her new college friends? Complications ensue in this lushly illustrated story of young, queer love and lust, which captures all the joys, frustrations, and many blisters of wandering around New York with little money and lots of wonder. The third collaboration between the Caldecott Medal-winning Tamaki cousins, this moody and magnificent graphic novel is the pair’s first foray into adult fiction.

Like Roaming, this beautifully drawn story centers on young women traveling — on a road trip through the desert rather than a week in New York. As is suitable for such a mystic locale, there’s a spiritual dimension to the trek, including a bend in reality that connects their journey (with panels full of desert pastels) to past lives and deaths (rendered in black, white, and grays). Pérez’s illustrations are gorgeous, and the dark and dreamy puzzle of a story will surely keep you occupied.

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Andrea Richards is a Los Angeles and North Carolina based writer and the author of five books.

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