Etelka Lehoczky

The comics renaissance continues this season with all sorts of great graphic novels in every genre imaginable — from Below Ambition to The Night Eaters to All Your Racial Problems Will Soon End.

Kate Beaton, the mind that gave us perky revolutionaries and a roly-poly Napoleon, now tells the darker side of her life story: how she suffered during the two years she worked in Alberta's oil field.

At a time when comics and graphic novels were seldom released by mainstream publishers, Gina Gagliano worked tirelessly to put the genre on the radar. Now she's head of the Boston Book Festival.

Eric Orner's book isn't just a great story, it's an enveloping visual experience crafted by a terrific artist; even if one paged through it without looking at the words, it would be a good read.

Okupe incorporates African myth and history into his books –- his "YouNeek YouNiverse." Here he weighs in on creating Afrocentric comics for a global audience — and on his new book WindMaker Vol. 1.

Our Creators on the Cusp series brings you people revolutionizing the world of comics and graphic novels. Mariko Tamaki's won a slew of awards for graphic novels and has worked in mainstream comics.

Through her work, Israeli comics artist Rutu Modan suggests that only cartoon characters can possibly reflect the cartoonish levels of greed and self-deceit revealed as her tale unspools.

Among the flood of titles aimed at the high-school set this fall, a few stand apart for their unorthodox stories, deft artwork and potent themes.

Rachel Smythe's smash hit webcomic, out now in graphic novel form, transports the follies of the Greek pantheon — particularly Hades and Persephone — to a modern setting of suits and sports cars.

Manuele Fior's latest, Celestia, is set on a far-future Earth, wracked by climate change — but the terrors of flood and fire stay under the surface of his dreamy, hazy, philosophical story.