20 new comics in Catalan to give as gifts this Sant Jordi

BarcelonaLast year, 11.3% of the books sold for Sant Jordi were comics. Graphic novels, children's comics, classics, comics journalism, literary adaptations... the offering is numerous and diverse. And if we narrow it down to Catalan comics, there are more and more: the variety of proposals and genres is unstoppable. The festival is one of the best moments of the year to stop by a bookstore and check it out.

The 1951 tram strike is one of those moments when, paraphrasing Brossa, people realize the power they have. In a Barcelona still suffocated by the miseries of the postwar period, the increase in tram fares provoked an unprecedented citizen revolt that put the dictatorship on the ropes and pointed the way to rebuilding the labor movement and antifascist resistance. Xavi Roca's script, a fine exercise in historical synthesis that conveys his experience as a cultural journalist, paves the way for Xavier Sagasta's excellent illustrations, which capture the gray atmosphere of the era with appropriate pictorial references.

In the last issue of Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man, that second-tier DC universe superhero entered the British writer's home to discuss for 24 pages the nature of his existence as a fictional character. Something similar happens at the end of the fabulous fourth volume of the series about Martí, the boy who has impossible adventures thanks to the magic book he inherited from his grandfather. Marc Brocal puts on a display of imagination in an absolutely free work that provides convincing arguments to defend that the most daring comics being made today are children's comics. From 6 years old

The album Soc el seu silenci (Norma, 2024) already hinted that Eva Rojas, the psychiatrist with bipolar disorder who starred in that criminal intrigue between wineries, was a character too juicy not to exploit her extravagant charisma in more adventures. In Soc un àngel perdut, a patient of Rojas, a footballer, is kidnapped and she finds herself involved in a skinhead crime against sex workers around a football club. Jordi Lafebre, who continues to work in the Franco-Belgian market, once again demonstrates that he plays in the league of the best European illustrators.

One of the turning points in the history of comics is the 1978 publication ofA Contract with God, the extraordinary work with which a mature and full Will Eisner prefigures the path of the modern graphic novel. These stories by the creator of The Spirit about grief, faith, and racism continued in two sequels, Life Force (1988) and Dropsie Avenue (1995), which Norma Editorial now publishes for the first time in Catalan in a special edition that collects the three works in a box. A great opportunity to discover a fundamental work in the path of comics to achieve its current cultural prestige at the end of the 20th century.

If the television series Max Headroom were a comic book, it would be Droga a la lluna, where Marcos Prior imagines a futuristic dystopia to examine in satire the power of audiovisual media in society and the manipulations to which they subject us. Narrated in the form of a parody information flow and full of visual ideas, the comic jumps from one news item to another in a kind of apocalyptic science fiction pandemonium. A political comic in form and substance that shakes social structures and narrative conventions without ever losing its sense of humor or its bite.

Based on the acclaimed animated series of the same name created by Émilie Tronche herself, this extraordinary children's comic captures the transition between childhood and adolescence with a plastic and effective black and white, through the story of Samuel, who is 10 years old and has a hidden secret: he likes a girl in his class. The boy writes in his diary everything that comes to his mind, from reflections on friendship and love to the discovery of his musical tastes, in a precise and delicate portrait of the emotional hurricane that growing up means. From 9 years old

Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the “worst nuclear disaster in history”, as the subtitle recalls, Finestres is reissuing for the first time in Catalan the graphic novel Chernobyl, which Glénat published in 2011. This impressionistic account of three generations of Ukrainian families affected by the tragedy serves as a reminder of the dangers of nuclear energy, and also testifies to the evolution of Natacha Bustos's drawing, fifteen years ago almost a debutant who imbued the black line with strength and expressiveness, and today a renowned author who signs the poster for the upcoming Comic Barcelona.

One of the comic strips published in the collection of the best works presented at the Premi ARA de Còmic, captured the images and sensations of a first trip to Japan. It was only a taste of Aina Riu's first graphic novel, which starts from the frustrating experience of an internship in an architecture studio, which the protagonist abandons immediately, to recount the cultural and sensory shock of a bumpy landing in Japanese society. The protagonist's inner dialogue finds its best ally in Riu's impressive drawing, who is full of graphic resources and bold enough to change the reading direction halfway through the book.

When the magazine Reader’s Digest asked Jean Giono to write a text about “the most extraordinary man” he had ever met, the French author concocted an allegorical tale, already a classic, about a shepherd who, by planting oak saplings in the mountains where he grazed his flock, had managed to reforest the landscape and revitalize the region. The comic adaptation now published by Símbol is a delight, especially due to the temper of Daniel Casanave’s drawing, quite classicist but touched by the verve of the Nouvelle BD, and for recovering the translation of the tale that Isabel-Clara Simó made back in the day.

It all begins like a story by Paul Auster or a tale by Kafka. One fine day, on her way to work, Carme loses her shadow. After the initial bewilderment, both she and others get used to it, until, a few months later, the shadow returns, but changed. The work that won the Young Talent Mention at the Finestres Comic Award in Catalan delves into the layers of identity hidden behind monotony and coexistence with oneself and others. And Larrosa, screenwriter of the also brilliant The Kiss of the Mermaid (La Cúpula), draws it all with a soft stroke and a color treatment that elevates the poetic flight of the text.

Following in the footsteps –perhaps unconsciously– of Jordi Labanda, Moderna de Pueblo, or the Juanjo Sáez of the early fanzines, Martí Melcion's debut in comics is inscribed in the very Barcelonian tradition of satirizing the vices and customs of modernity. He does so through large panels that he reproduces with slight variations and that retain the ethical and aesthetic codes of Instagram, where Melcion first made a name for himself as an illustrator. His drawing, an expressive economy marked by copying and repetition, is always at the service of languidly humorous situations that call for an exercise of complicity on the part of the reader.

Jean-Christophe Deveney's L’altra cara del futbol (Garbuix) and Meteoros (Salamandra) adapts a good handful of Haruki Murakami's stories into comics with the help of cartoonist PMGL (Pierre-Marie Grille-Liou), who imbues the Japanese author's stories with a volatile and caricatured immediacy that mutates according to the tone of the story, be it a radical reinvention of The Metamorphosis (Samsa enamored), a surreal fable (Mr. Frog Saves Tokyo) or a mysterious evocation of childhood trauma (The Seventh Man). The clash between Murakami's sensibility and the Western expressiveness of the French cartoonist –aided in the Japanese onomatopoeias by Misato Morita– is the most interesting aspect of this volume.

The fashionable author of Catalan comics is named Berta Cusó. Weeks after winning the first edition of the Vinyeta Ficomic Award with the six stories of women and war in La conca dels àngels (Pagès), the cartoonist changes register and publishes with Andana L’extraordinària història del Circ Cric, which recounts the vital and artistic career of Tortell Poltrona, from his beginnings as a conscious clown in the democratic recovery to the solidarity adventures that led to the creation of Clowns Without Borders. Cusó's drawings are increasingly free and luminous, with very creative narrative solutions that make the comic a very personal work.

Blue Pills was one of those works that, at the beginning of the 21st century, shattered prejudices and transformed the way many readers perceived comics. Based on his relationship with a woman with the AIDS virus, Peeters tells a story of love and life whose greatest virtues are tenderness and humor. Always shying away from sensationalism, Blue Pills shares the everyday reality of the illness with its ups and downs, an exercise in normality that was groundbreaking in its time. The Catalan edition by Astiberri includes the eight extra pages that updated the protagonists' situation thirteen years after the comic was created and two pages previously unpublished in print.

After publishing Mònica in Catalan, Finestres is releasing another of Daniel Clowes's latest works, Patience, a science fiction thriller with time travel in which the author of Ghost World realized that his interest in the malaise of suburban life combined perfectly with existential terror. Patience marks a turning point in Clowes' career, more ambitious in the dimension of the story, with a complex structure and psychedelic escapes, but more intimate and humanist in the way he portrays his characters.

What does the Lightfall saga have that the hundred or so epic fantasy series flooding the children's comic market don't, mixing influences from Tolkien, Dungeons & Dragons, and Harry Potter with more or less success? For starters, the painterly feel of the landscapes drawn by Tim Probert, a very effective storyteller with a sense of spectacle and good timing for humor. The story of the girl searching for her adoptive grandfather in the company of the last galdurian is not the most original in the genre, but the innocent tone of the first pages is balanced with touches of darkness and a treatment of nature that is reminiscent of Miyazaki's work. From 8 years old

With only three references, the collection La Rectificadora from the small publishing house La Topera is gathering an exquisite catalog. To Orlando (2024) and El desconegut (2025) is now added the minicomic En Travessaparets, a delightful story about an office worker who suddenly acquires the power to walk through walls and begins to explore the possibilities of his abilities. The Quebecois Diane Obomsawin narrates the adventures with a style greatly influenced by graphic humor and reminiscent of the fondly remembered neat and mischievous drawings of Jean Laplace, whom we met through the 8 errors game he published for decades in La Vanguardia.

Beyond the cry of “Guillem Agulló, neither forgetting nor forgiveness” and of the Valencian boy murdered by neo-Nazis turned into a symbol of the anti-fascist struggle, El diari de Guillem seeks to explain who Agulló really was and what made him an anti-fascist militant. Through the narration of his sister Betlem Agulló and the pages of the diary he hid behind the drawers, Cèsar Martí and Daniel Olmo reconstruct the protagonist's family and sentimental life, but also the environments of the independentist left in Valencia in the late 80s and early 90s. The comic is an exercise in historical memory, therefore, but tinged with many emotions: nostalgia, rage, sadness, and pride.

The comic subgenre known as graphic medicine has become in recent years an increasingly useful tool for health promotion and empathetic dissemination of information about diseases. An example is the work of Elisabeth Karin Pavón Rymer-Rythén, a Swedish author who in Eating with Fear offered an empathetic portrait of her own eating disorder using a visual metaphor in the form of a monster to convey the contradictory complexity of the emotions she felt. In Caring with Fear she continues to bet on dissemination, but now focusing on the role of friends and family in the healing process. From 14 years old

The great classic of Catalan children's literature published by Sebastià Sorribas in 1966 already had a film adaptation and had been performed in the theatre, but it still lacked a comic version. Carles M. Miralles signs the script and Galleta Maria –pseudonym of Maria Martínez– the drawings for this inclusive and diverse adaptation that updates Pitus's world and his friends' to the social reality of 2026 without disowning Sorribas's work or the mischievous spirit of Pilarín Bayés's original illustrations. From 8 years old