By Zack Quaintance — Today we’re wrapping up our series looking at the best gifts for comics fans in 2021 with a feature on graphic novels. Now, some of our favorite graphic novels appeared earlier in our DC Comics and our indie comics lists, but this one is still robust. It features publishers like Drawn and Quarterly, Fantagraphics, and others, all of which would look great on a comics fan’s shelf.

Enjoy!

Best Gifts for Comics Fans in 2021 - Graphic Novels

Upgrade Soul: Collector’s Edition
Writer/Artist: Ezra Claytan Daniels
Publisher: Oni Press
For their 45th anniversary, Hank and Molly Nonnar decide to undergo an experimental rejuvenation procedure, but their hopes for youth are dashed when the couple is faced with the results: severely disfigured yet intellectually and physically superior duplicates of themselves. Can the original Hank and Molly coexist in the same world as their clones? In Upgrade Soul, McDuffie Award-winning creator Ezra Claytan Daniels asks probing questions about what shapes our identity-Is it the capability of our minds or the physicality of our bodies? Is a newer, better version of yourself still you? This page-turning graphic novel follows the lives of Hank and Molly as they discover the harsh truth that only one version of themselves is fated to survive.
Who It’s For: This one is for anyone and everyone, an instant classic that even folks who don’t read many graphic novels can enjoy.
Price: $29.99
Buy It Here: Upgrade Soul - Collector’s Edition

In
Writer/Artist: Will McPhail
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company
Nick, a young illustrator, can't shake the feeling that there is some hidden realm of human interaction beyond his reach. He haunts lookalike fussy, silly, coffee shops, listens to old Joni Mitchell albums too loudly, and stares at his navel in the hope that he will find it in there. But it isn't until he learns to speak from the heart that he begins to find authentic human connections and is let in-to the worlds of the people he meets. Nick's journey occurs alongside the beginnings of a relationship with Wren, a wry, spirited oncologist at a nearby hospital, whose work and life becomes painfully tangled with Nick's.
Who It’s For: Your loved one who is always sharing the cleverest New York cartoons (McPhail actually draws some of those), as well as anyone who enjoys too-hip coffee shops and love stories that explore the intersection of romance and alienation.
Price: $28.00
Buy It Here: In by Will McPhail

The Secret to Superhuman Strength
Writer/Artist: Alison Bechdel
Publisher: Mariner Books
Comics and cultural superstar Alison Bechdel delivers a deeply layered story of her fascination, from childhood to adulthood, with every fitness craze to come down the pike: from Jack LaLanne in the 60s ("Outlandish jumpsuit! Cantaloupe-sized guns!") to the existential oddness of present-day spin class. Readers will see their athletic or semi-active pasts flash before their eyes through an ever-evolving panoply of running shoes, bicycles, skis, and sundry other gear. But the more Bechdel tries to improve herself, the more her self appears to be the thing in her way. The gifted artist and not-getting-any-younger exerciser comes to a soulful conclusion. The secret to superhuman strength lies not in six-pack abs, but in something much less clearly defined: facing her own non-transcendent but all-important interdependence with others.
Who It’s For: This is another everyone pick, but specifically the folks in your life who have gotten really into CrossFit…and peleton…and rock climbing…and pilates…and before that P-90 X. This is also of the most relatable graphic novels I’ve ever read, and it’s slowly appearing on basically every Best Graphic Novels of 2021 list.
Price: $24.00
Buy It Here: The Secret to Superhuman Strength

Monsters
Writer/Artist: Barry Windsor Smith
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Created over a period of 35 years, Barry Windsor-Smith' Monsters is a tour de force of visual storytelling. Part family drama, part espionage thriller, part metaphysical journey, it is an intimate portrait of individuals struggling to reclaim their lives and an epic political odyssey across two generations of American history. Monsters is rendered in Windsor-Smith's impeccable technique, the visual storytelling being the most sophisticated of the artist's career. There are passages of heartbreaking tenderness, of excruciating pain, and devastating violence. It is surely one of the most intense graphic novels ever drawn.
Who It’s For: Students of comics history and folks who have an interest in dense and complex stories about the military industrial complex. This book was created over a period of 35 years — and it shows — and one could not be blamed for suspecting it was never going to come out. But here it is.
Price: $39.99
Buy It Here: Monsters

Night Bus
Writer/Artist: Zuo Ma
Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly
Night Bus blends autobiography, horror, and fantasy into a vibrantly detailed surreal world that shows a distinct talent surveying his past. Nature infringes upon the man-made world via gigantism and explosive abundance - the images in Night Bus are often unsettling, not aimed to horrify, but to upset the balance of modern life.
Who It’s For: Folks in your life who enjoy a little horror, a little fantasy, and something wholly new that blends the intersection. I’ll have a full list of all my favorites, but it’s no spoiler to say this was one of my favorite comics reading experiences of the past year.
Price: $34.95
Buy It Here: Night Bus

Cyclopedia Exotica
Writer/Artist: Aminder Dhaliwal
Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly
Following the critical and popular success of Woman World-the hit Instagram comic which appeared on 25 best of lists-Aminder Dhaliwal returns with Cyclopedia Exotica. Also serialized on instagram to her 250,000 followers, this graphic novel showcases Dhaliwal's quick wit and astute socio-cultural criticism.
In Cyclopedia Exotica, doctor's office waiting rooms, commercials, dog parks, and dating app screenshots capture the experiences and interior lives of the cyclops community; a largely immigrant population displaying physical differences from the majority. Whether they're artists, parents, or yoga students, the cyclops have it tough: they face microaggressions and overt xenophobia on a daily basis. However, they are bent on finding love, cultivating community, and navigating life alongside the two-eyed majority with patience and the occasional bout of rage.
Through this parallel universe, Dhaliwal comments on race, difference, beauty, and belonging, touching on all of these issues with her distinctive deadpan humour steeped in millennial references. Cyclopedia Exotica is a triumph of hilarious candor.
Who It’s For: Witty comics fans who prefer their poignancy with a bit of really clever satire.
Price: $24.95
Buy It Here: Cyclopedia Exotica

Crisis Zone
Writer/Artist: Simon Hanselmann
Publisher: Fantagraphics
In March 2020, as the planet began to enter lockdown, acclaimed cartoonist Simon Hanselmann set out to make the greatest webcomic ever created! As the Covid-19 pandemic continued to escalate, Crisis Zone escalated right alongside with daily posts on Instagram. Crisis Zone is presented here, unabridged and uncensored, with a slew of added pages and scenes deleted from the webcomic, as well as an extensive "Director's Commentary" from Hanselmann himself. Bouncing rapidly between comedy, horror, action, and relational soap-operatics, Crisis Zone refuses to take the pedal off the gas as we all hurtle towards unknown destinations.
Who It’s For: Your friend with the big heart who often tells you to cut the bullshit and makes the best raunchy jokes. This book to me is the best piece of pandemic fiction anyone has made so far.
Price: $29.99
Buy It Here: Crisis Zone

Graveneye
Writer: Sloane Leong
Artist: Anna Bowles
Publisher: TKO Studios
What if a haunted house was not the horror, but the people who dwell within it ...
Isla's house has seen its share of blood horror, and the depths of the human soul. Cursed with sentience, it is destined to observe the terrors that lurk inside each and everyone of us.
Acclaimed author Sloane Leong (A Map to the Sun, Prism Stalker) and renowned artist Anna Bowles in her debut graphic novel deliver a dark and beautiful tale of hunger and obsession.
Who It’s For: Horror aficionados looking for something that feels as different as it does new. This has been a solid year for horror comics, but this one certainly stands out from the pack.
Price: $19.99
Buy It Here: Graveneye

Save It For Later
Writer/Artist: Nate Powell
Publisher: Abrams ComicsArts
From Nate Powell, the National Book Award–winning artist of March, a collection of graphic nonfiction essays about living in a new era of necessary protest In this anthology of seven comics essays, author and graphic novelist Nate Powell addresses living in an era of what he calls “necessary protest.” Save It for Later: Promises, Protest, and the Urgency of Protest is Powell’s reflection on witnessing the collapse of discourse in real time while drawing the award-winning trilogy March, written by Congressman John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, this generation’s preeminent historical account of nonviolent revolution in the civil rights movement. Powell highlights both the danger of normalized paramilitary presence symbols in consumer pop culture, and the roles we play individually as we interact with our communities, families, and society at large. Each essay tracks Powell’s journey from the night of the election—promising his four-year-old daughter that Trump will never win, to the reality of the Republican presidency, protesting the administration’s policies, and navigating the complications of teaching his children how to raise their own voices in a world that is becoming increasingly dangerous and more and more polarized. While six of the seven essays are new, unpublished work, Powell has also included “About Face,” a comics essay first published by Popula Online that swiftly went viral and inspired him to expand his work on Save It for Later.
Who It’s For: This another everyone pick, but most specifically for new parents and the people in your life who worry about the future of the planet and our country.
Price: $24.99
Buy It Here: Save It For Later

Factory Summers
Writer/Artist: Guy Delisle
Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly
For three summers beginning when he was 16, cartoonist Guy Delisle worked at a pulp and paper factory in Quebec City. Factory Summers chronicles the daily rhythms of life in the mill, and the twelve-hour shifts he spent as a boy amongst men through the universal rite of passage of the summer job.
Who It’s For: Anyone whose balanced artistic aspirations with a day job. This is also a great pick if you’re doing a secret santa exchange this year in your office and you just so happened to end up shopping for your boss (provided said boss has a good sense of humor).
Price: $22.95
Buy It Here: Factory Summers

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.