A coyote, a dilapidated camper and a tramp are touring the desert landscape and canyons of Arizona and Nevada in the 1970s. Hippie it is none, because to it the flowers, the long hair and the guitar are missing.

We only slowly learn who Joe used to be when a couple of sinister characters start following his heels. As a former mob boss who, having ratted out his partners and enemies, is now under the U.S. government’s witness protection program, he has to be on his guard. But the murder of the only key witness for another trial forces Joe to return to the past and leave his camper life. But that’s exactly what his enemies are waiting for.

What is typically only the reading of judges, police and prosecutors became an unexpected bestseller in 2006. First in Italy and then worldwide, Roberto Saviano’s first book Gomorrha stormed the bestseller lists. In it, the Neapolitan described the workings of the Camorra mafia organization in his hometown from his own experience and with a great deal of research, naming the leaders and perpetrators by their full names.

Because of this attention, he became a target of the mafia and has lived under constant police protection ever since. And it is precisely this, his own threatened and isolated life, that is depicted in the comic strip “Je suis toujours vivant” (“I am still alive”), impressively staged by cartoonist Asaf Hanuka.

The mute vacuum cleaner mechanic Jacques Ramirez wants nothing more than to do his job in peace. And he does it very well. For this, he is named employee of the year after years at his company Robotop, shortly before the building blows up along with his boss and the journalists gathered there.

Ramirez has been caught up in his dark family history, which he never wanted to have anything to do with and had taken a completely different path. But a Mexican drug cartel, a cold-blooded killer and the two Thelma & Louise characters Chelsea Tyler and Dakota Smith cross his path and leave a bloody trail. But Jacques Ramirez’s past is not quite so blameless either, and the story complicates.

An industrialist is found choking on his own blood on a stranded yacht, and the police are in the dark. Because actually Alexandre de Breucq was popular with everyone.

Inspector Broyan, of the Paris police, sets out to find the murderer and in the process comes across deeper and deeper abysses of the killed and is confronted with his own family history.

If you appreciate The New Yorker or The Chicagoan as magazine lovers of the jazz age for their excellent reporting and artistic covers, you will enjoy the two-volume Gentlemind comic album series.

The story is set in the 1940s, where showgirl Gina Navit serves as muse and love interest to aspiring illustrator Arch Parker. Plagued by money troubles, Arch decides to go to Europe to cover the war. Gina, who can’t save herself from admirers, breaks heart and marries wealthy entertainment magnate Powell. When he dies, Gina inherits his estate, including a moribund men’s magazine, which she turns into a success by successfully altering its reports and graphics.

Holding up a mirror image to society is a recurring motif in literary history. What reached a high point in the Middle Ages with Dante’s Divine Comedy continued all the way to Honoré de Balzac, who drew a picture of the mores of high French society around 1830 with his Mad Tales.

Twin brothers Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi, born in Italy, raised in Paris, only to emigrate to Hollywood in 1994 to work for Disney Studio, Pixar and Sony, now took on three of Balzac’s stories in a very lighthearted comic album. Kept in monochrome, they lead the reader:inside in an entertaining way and a brisk drawing style through the world of the 1830s and skillfully take in their drawings the society, the church and morality on the shovel.

Who hasn’t? You rummage in a bookstore, and a work catches your eye that appeals to you and whose creator is unknown to you. Igort – short for Igor Tuver – an Italian comic artist born in Sardinia, was responsible for Japanese Notebooks: A Journey to the Empire of Signs. In it, the artist documented his years in Tokyo, where he has been drawing very popular mangas for various publishers since the 1990s.

And Igort’s style is versatile, as you can see in his Japanese notebooks. Half comic, half narrative, he guides us through his personal experience with his longer and shorter stays in Japan, and introduces us to Japanese history, stories and special features. He changes his drawing styles to match the respective narrative level.

A young girl with a rare gift makes one cut after the other to a priest to bleed him as painfully as possible. This is the introduction to a story by the bustling French scenarist Christophe Arleston and skilfully staged by Adrien Floch.

What begins with amazing brutality at the hands of the young Sangre has a history that goes back years. Her parents, who were wine merchants, were massacred by the Dark Skimmers, along with their caravan, in the fantastic world. The Skimmers use flying dragon creatures to attack their victims, slaughter them with magic and traditional weapons, and steal their belongings.