Here are Avery Hill Publishing’s submissions for the 2027 ComicScene awards! You can still submit your books until December. Details here
We are keen for you to tell us if you have read these books and what you thought of them in the comments below.
Here are the submissions and synopsis of each title for Super Comic Thursday – get these books for Christmas here https://averyhillpublishing.bigcartel.com
Was That Normal by Alex Potts
“It was like he’d missed the main part of the story and arrived between the big climax and the end credits. A new order had established itself and everyone, apart from him, was living happily ever after. Nothing interesting could possibly happen between now and the ending.”
Philip is searching.
For meaning. For connection. For someone to share a moment with.
By day, he works from a rented room. By night, he drifts through cafés and bars, dodging awkward chats with his landlady and hoping for something more. When he meets Gina, a local musician, things begin to shift. But relationships are messy, and Philip’s discomfort grows as he stumbles through miscommunications, emotional misfires, and the looming presence of Gina’s intense ex.
Add in a crumbling tower, gong baths (whatever they are), and the quiet ache of modern life, and you have a story that’s tender, funny, and deeply human.
A beautifully observed graphic novel about connection, confusion, and the spaces in between.
John of the Night by Darryl Cunningham
At the centre of all creation lies Far Eternity, where universes converge and reality is kept in balance. Scientist John of the Night and his daughter Ayshea uncover a plot by The Perfection—a fanatical cult—to kill God and reboot the “flawed” multiverse into something supposedly perfect. As if that’s not enough, Medea—Ayshea’s mother and a witch‑queen with a flair for drama—plans to sacrifice her to recharge her magic and avert an invasion. With cosmic forces closing in, John faces an impossible choice: save Ayshea or risk the collapse of all existence.
Inspired by Jack Kirby’s grand cosmic epics, John of the Night blends humour, myth, and multiversal mayhem with themes of sacrifice, destiny, and the baffling indifference of higher powers. A cosmic adventure driven by a fraught but fiercely loyal father–daughter bond against reality‑shattering odds.
Oracles by Olivia Sullivan
Overwhelmed by the weight of everyday life, our narrator leaves the familiar and steps into the wild unknown.
From forests to deserts, oceans to mountains, each landscape reveals hidden truths that reshape their understanding of grief, healing, and who they are becoming. As they travel, sage creatures, whispering mushrooms that glow with memory, and churning whirlpools guide them through moments of fear, wonder, and quiet reflection. The journey becomes a deeper reckoning with loss — and a search for meaning in what remains.
With evocative artwork and lyrical, contemplative prose, this graphic novel charts a path from uncertainty to connection, and from being lost to finally being found.
Orlando by Jules Scheele
Virginia Woolf’s classic novel Orlando tells the story of a poet adrift in time; he starts out his life as a nobleman in Queen Elizabeth I’s court, and her story concludes as a thirty-six year-old woman in the present.
Jules Scheele’s graphic novel adaptation of this important queer work tells the complete story of Orlando’s journey through history that examines the shifting and changing ideas of gender and sexuality, and plumbs the depths of the human heart. Taking us through love affairs, betrayals and exiles, struggles against conformity and poetry through the ages, Orlando is a fantastical adventure filled with satirical wit.
A powerful and essential graphic novel adaptation of a vital British classic.
Another Realm by Kristyna Baczynski
A vibrant, career‑spanning celebration of the work of British‑Ukrainian illustrator and cartoonist Kristyna Baczynski, bringing together her acclaimed graphic novel Retrograde Orbit with a rich selection of her self‑published comics and illustrated zines.
This collection showcases Baczynski’s unmistakable visual voice—pages alive with colour, emotion, and intricate characterisation. Drawing on inspirations that range from nature and folklore to 1990s pop nostalgia and gentle sci‑fi atmospheres, her work creates worlds that are warm, strange, imaginative, and deeply human. Readers will find tender autobiographical pieces, exuberant short comics, playful experiments in risograph printmaking, and the full sweep of Retrograde Orbit, her coming‑of‑age tale of identity, heritage, and finding one’s place in the cosmos.
Across more than a decade of making, Baczynski has built a body of work that bridges independent zine culture with mainstream publishing, collaborating with houses such as Penguin Random House, Hachette, 2000 AD, Carlton, and Canongate. This volume gathers the very best of her small‑press output alongside her major long-form work, offering a definitive introduction to an artist whose storytelling is as heartfelt as it is visually distinctive.
A richly illustrated, genre‑blending collection for fans of contemporary comics, risograph art, and creators with a singular, imaginative world of their own.
Infinite Wheatpaste Vol. 2 – Universe. Sol. Remote. by Pidge
This science fiction graphic novel follows an ensemble cast of characters through time, space, dimensions, spirituality, and everyday life.
An android monk and a newly minted goddess go on spiritual walkabouts. An human-ape hybrid navigates domestic life, parenting, and neighbours. Monsters and aliens seem to crash in wherever they are least expected.
These interconnected stories are set on the edges the galaxy and human experience.
Leave a comment