Posted in: Comics, Solicits | Tagged: acme novelty library, chris ware, Drawn and Quarterly
Acme Novelty Library #21 In Drawn & Quarterly November 2026 Solicits
Chris Ware Returns With Acme Novelty Library #21 out from Drawn & Quarterly as part of their November 2026 Solicits and Solicitations
Article Summary
- Chris Ware returns with The Acme Novelty Library #21 in Drawn & Quarterly’s November 2026 solicits.
- Acme Novelty Library #21 packages three 24-page comics and a foldout newspaper in a 90-page deluxe folio.
- Drawn & Quarterly also brings Yamada Murasaki’s Sassy Cats to English in a new Ryan Holmberg translation.
- Yoshiharu Tsuge’s A Nobody Artist collects 1981–1985 alt-manga stories in D&Q’s November 2026 lineup.
Drawn & Quarterly publishes three major literary comics releases in their November 2026 solicits and solicitations. Chris Ware returns with long awaited The Acme Novelty Library #21. Ryan Holmberg translates Yamada Murasaki’s Sassy Cats and Yoshiharu Tsuge’s A Nobody Artist.
Acme Novelty Library #21
Acme Novelty Library #21
The Acme Novelty Library #21
(W/A) Chris Ware
Artist, writer, and ink pundit F. C. Ware returns to the high-stakes, hard-hitting pageantry of the American comic book. This new, unasked-for number of the late 20th century experiment The ACME Novelty Library continues its winning run as the time-tested vehicle for delivering sheer disappointment, disgorging wedges of several in-progress stories, possibly cogent in their completed forms, but here rendered disorienting and dissatisfying as fragmentary, incoherent excerpts. Mirroring the disintegrating nation which coddled both the artist’s preadolescent delusions if not the very 20th century fashion for cartooning itself, the 21st volume of The ACME Novelty Library comes of age just in time to stress-test the 250th anniversary of America’s ongoing indulgence of humanity’s most venal appetites behind a threadbare scrim of lofty and perfidious constitutional ideals. A remedy for those weary of regular stage-four cultural botox injections and a last hurrah for sensitive bipeds who have fallen through the cracks of life and who would prefer to stay home with a booklet of cheerfully colored picture stories, it’s what all the kids are talking about. Three (3) securely bound and unaccountably legible 24-page saddle-stitched comic books accompany a large foldout comic strip newspaper section, the whole conveniently compacted into an attractively designed keepsake folio allowing for easy disposal and/or tindering in the event of sudden societal collapse. Alice White, The Last Saturday, and a cast of unnamed and almost completely unfamiliar protagonists are all here in little hand-drawn boxes to keep you company on that upcoming rainy afternoon when you watch your hopes, dreams, and perhaps even your country go up in smoke. Onboarding everything Mr. Ware and his team of vendors and their internationally recognized brand have honed for years to aesthetic lethality, The ACME Novelty Library #21 is certain to be this season’s biggest hit, should the season last long enough. 90 pgs • $30 USD / $35 CAD, On Sale November 2026
Sassy Cats
(W/A) Yamada Murasaki
Translated by Ryan Holmberg
Sassy Cats by Yamada Murasaki
Sassy Cats by Yamada Murasaki
Sassy Cats by Yamada Murasaki
Sassy Cats by Yamada Murasaki
Sassy Cats by Yamada Murasaki
Sassy Cats by Yamada Murasaki
Sassy Cats by Yamada Murasaki
Sassy Cats by Yamada Murasaki
With those piercing eyes and flicks of the tail, house cats observe domesticity poetically, and with sass. “Have you ever given birth before?” “Me..? No, not yet.” “When it happened to me for the first time, it wasn’t just kittens that I birthed, but also me as a mother. So now, as I’m raising them, I am also raising myself as a mother…And it ain’t no joke! So, no! I don’t really have the luxury to think about things like whether my children are ‘cute’ or not.” These are the simple musings of a house cat, sprawled on a veranda in the sun, while birds flit and flutter by, as she nurses her most recent litter and chats with a curious yearling. But these are also the musings of Yamada Murasaki. Sassy Cats was the pioneering manga artist’s bold return to comics after a yearslong hiatus, during which time she gave birth to two girls. Engaging sensitively and poetically with domesticity, motherhood, and gender relations, Sassy Cats is the work of a master cartoonist, evident in the silky lines of these felines and the textural play at work on the page. Originally serialized in the legendary alternative magazine Garo between 1979 and 1980, Sassy Cats is translated by Ryan Holmberg and includes an essay by the cartoonist’s daughter Yamada Yu about her mom, cats, and growing up with a cartoonist. 160 pgs • $22 USD / $26 CAD, On Sale November 2026
A Nobody Artist
(W/A) Yoshiharu Tsuge
Translated by Ryan Holmberg
A revealing glimpse into the life and times of alt-manga’s most intriguing comics auteur. Tsuge Yoshiharu, one of manga’s last living legends, remains an elusive and highly influential character as he moves into the final phase of his career. A Nobody Artist features a number of loosely (and disputably) semi-autobiographical vignettes often concerning a young cartoonist trying to make a go of it in the shifting manga market. True to form, Tsuge delivers much more than a straight accounting of a cartoonist’s life. Lust routinely distracts our young artists while older artists again and again provide a model for what not to do, or more likely, where a cartoonist’s life will lead you. Fleeting moments of domestic happiness are upset by bouts of self-doubt. As always, Tsuge’s art is succinct and glorious—a beautiful document of a changing Japan. This penultimate volume in Drawn and Quarterly’s complete collection of the legendary manga-ka’s oeuvre collects richly-detailed and deeply human comics stories originally published between 1981 and 1985. Translated by prolific manga scholar and art historian Ryan Holmberg. 304 pgs • $30 USD / $40 CAD, On Sale November 2026
A Nobody Artist by Yoshiharu Tsuge
A Nobody Artist by Yoshiharu Tsuge
A Nobody Artist by Yoshiharu Tsuge
A Nobody Artist by Yoshiharu Tsuge
A Nobody Artist by Yoshiharu Tsuge
A Nobody Artist by Yoshiharu Tsuge
A Nobody Artist by Yoshiharu Tsuge
A Nobody Artist by Yoshiharu Tsuge
A Nobody Artist by Yoshiharu Tsuge
A Nobody Artist by Yoshiharu Tsuge
A Nobody Artist by Yoshiharu Tsuge
A Nobody Artist by Yoshiharu Tsuge
A Nobody Artist by Yoshiharu Tsuge
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