Phuong Le    Popular manga characters receive their first film adaptation as they seek out a villainous colonel and an elusive dessert, brought off with great style by director Takashi KatagiriAfter a successful TV adaptation, the popular characters of the bestselling manga Spy x Family are ready for their big...

Anita Chaudhuri    As retirement approached, Nancy Beiman wanted to do something creative. Before long she was sketching out the story of a very unusual blended familySign up for Well Actually: a free weekly newsletter about health and wellnessWhen Nancy Beiman was and contemplating retirement from her job as a...

Rachel Cooke    A painfully funny cartoon about a neurotic graphic artist deftly explores the themes of self obsession and ecological disasterEnter the Faber Observer Graphica graphic short story prize I’ve read Luke Healy’s new graphic novel twice: first, on screen last October which was long before we asked...

Rachel Cooke    The annual award for aspiring cartoonists offers the chance to be published in the Observer and win , , with past winners landing book and film dealsCalling all aspiring graphic novelists: time to stand by your drawing board as once again we open entries for the Faber Observer Comica graphic...

Rachel Cooke    This richly evocative tale part of a project drawing on the work of long forgotten contemporaries of Dostoevsky bears repeated readingsEveryone knows even if they haven’t actually read them about the fat novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy. But The Russian Detective, a remarkable...

Richard Brooks    Remarks scribbled in a Finnish copy of the much loved book, to be featured in an exhibition on the author, reveal how the story was misunderstoodIt is Raymond Briggs’s most loved book, notching up sales of . m, while the TV adaptation is a hardy perennial in the Christmas schedules. However, the...

Amira Harris    My father, Lee Harris, who has died aged , ran what is believed to have been London’s first headshop, selling cannabis related accoutrements. He established the business in the early s in London, and called it Alchemy. Attracting customers from all over the world, it was a popular...

Angelique Chrisafis    As a new wave of protests sweep Iran, the author explains why she has returned to drawing. Plus: an extract from her new collection of protest cartoonsWhen Marjane Satrapi began drawing again, depicting the violence recently enacted by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, she was so disturbed that she felt...

Larry Ryan    The Simpsons’ roots run deep. And as Matt Groening’s early collaborators explain, it owes its global success to a perfect storm of punk zine attitude and TV professionalism In an early episode from the first series of The Simpsons, Homer is seen reading a publication called The Bowl Earth...

Michael Sun    Japanese artist remembered for his unique world of creation’ including comic series that spawned films, video games and TV seriesAkira Toriyama, the influential Japanese manga artist who created the Dragon Ball series, has died at the age of .He died on March from an acute subdural haematoma....

Rachel Cooke    The American cartoonist’s story of a trip to tackle her frail mother’s needs is funny, wise and magicalDenise Dorrance’s graphic memoir, Polar Vortex, is enchanting, every page lovely to look at, so funny and plangent and full of sly wisdom. But it’s also dread word strikingly relevant. Its...

Benjamin Lee    The two actors will be joined by The Bear’s Ebon Moss Bachrach and Stranger Things breakout Joseph QuinnMarvel has announced the cast for its much anticipated reboot of Fantastic Four: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss Bachrach and Joseph Quinn.The film, about a quartet of superheroes with...

Phil Hoad    The market for bédé visual storytelling almost doubled over the course of the pandemic, but can the birthplace of Asterix continue to nurture creators Like thousands of French people, Sylvie Pinault discovered comic books during the pandemic. Though bandes dessinées literally meaning drawn...

Rachel Cooke    The latest instalment in Abouet’s brilliantly illustrated series about the lives of three friends in Abidjan is as funny and sharp as everThe Aya story began two decades ago, when Marguerite Abouet, a Parisian legal assistant with roots in Ivory Coast, got together with Clément Oubrerie, an...

Phuong Le    A sublime score from Hiromi Uehara drives this coming of age anime, which brings three young jazz musicians to life with spectacular imageryIs jazz dead Yuzuru Tachikawa’s Blue Giant certainly begs to differ. Following three year old boys who doggedly pursue their musical dreams, the film hits...

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris    Award marks first time a British artist and author has won Grand Prix at International Comics festival in AngoulêmeThe graphic novelist Posy Simmonds has won the Grand Prix at France’s Angoulême International Comics festival the first time a British artist and author has been awarded the world’s...

Ella Creamer    The record price was set by one of only two copies rated near mint mint in an auction alongside issues of Superman No and All Star Comics No which featured Wonder Woman’s first appearanceA rare copy of the first issue of The Amazing Spider Man has sold for more than m.The comic, published in...

Ella Creamer    The Canadian actor has allowed the sci fi novelist to adapt his BRZRKR comic series about a warrior on a journey to understand immortalityCanadian actor Keanu Reeves will publish his first novel this year in collaboration with British author China Miéville.Their joint novel is titled The Book of...

Sam Jones in Madrid    The Abyss of Forgetting chronicles a woman’s struggle to find remains of her father who was murdered after civil warAt the beginning of the new Spanish graphic novel El abismo del olvido The Abyss of Forgetting , a murdered man climbs out of his grave, lights a cigarette and takes stock of the...

Steve Rose    The musician, activist and writer’s lo fi superhero drama I’m A Virgo is so radical it’s the epitome of anti Marvel. He talks mental health, battling Amazon from within and keeping it janky’ My whole thing was, I want it to be janky, says Boots Riley, talking about the ramshackle imperfection...