Riot New Media

Rowan Sterling lost her mother to violence two years ago. At this point, she’s hoping to just into a normal groove of things. But she can’t stop having visions of violence and blood. When she tells her dad, she expects to get help. She does not expect to be drugged, then kidnapped and taken to Rosewood.

Rosewood is a training center for teens who, like Rowan, have these bloody visions. The facility trains them to become Harrows, or people who use those skills to anticipate violence and put an end to other people’s actions before the worst happens.

It sounds great. But…is it even ethical? Can you cry crime before one is even committed? Rowan will have to face these questions when she returns home and her best friend/maybe more than best friend ignites her visions—is he truly capable of committing the violence she’s picturing?

I had the opportunity to read and blurb this incredible comic late last summer and I want to press it into the hands of every single person who wants a powerful, engaging, and enlightening work about teen mental health. It’s rooted in Bean’s own experiences with her brain, and it dives into all of the different components of our mental health. This includes looking at what’s normal and what happens when our brains take a path different from the “normal” one.

The comic format is the perfect medium here, as it’s relatable, super-readable, and yet packed with facts and insights that will help any reader—teen or adult—better understand their brain.

This is a memoir about Parish and their experience growing up and navigating their nonbinary identity. The focus is on the thousands of binary experiences that so many of us who identify on the binary take for granted.

At 19, Carlos’s mother decided she needed to El Salvador and begin fresh in the United States. Carlos doesn’t want to go, but he also doesn’t want his mom to go alone, so he joins her. This is a comic/memoir-as-told-to-Carlos’s-cousin about the experience of migrants from Central America and all that they experience on the harrowing journey.

This looks like such a fun comic, and I have definitely put it on my to-read list. Grace Mendes is a college freshman and despite not wanting to, she makes the decision to try out for the Pillow Fight Federation (PFF). This is part roller derby, part professional wrestling. Despite her own reservations about her body and her skills, Grace makes the team, and she quickly becomes one of the fiercest PFF fighters on her team and in the league.

Summer is here, and Ariel Grace Jones has one goal: get her friends jamming again with their garage punk band Baby Hares and see their band launch out of the south side of Chicago and into the bigger world.

But having just graduated has made things so much more complicated. Everyone’s realizing that this summer can’t be one like every other. There’s not necessarily a new school year to look forward to. Is it too late for them to make their dreams happen with so many questions about what’s next?

But then Ariel meets a fellow punk rocker and local music industry legend. It might not just be a chance to break into the music world. It might be what saves her and her bandmates from breaking up before their careers ever launch.