Jan Bachmann: "The mountain of naked truths"

Jan Bachmann can't let go of the anarchists. In "Der Berg der nackten Wahrheiten" (The Mountain of Naked Truths), he turns his attention to Monte Verità in 1900, or more precisely to the community of dropouts who caused quite a stir there near Ascona. With an expressive line reminiscent of the French artist Joann Sfar, Bachmann traces historical events - albeit less true to the source than with his own touch and a lot of humor in words and graphics. All this makes you want to see this prequel to Bachmann's comic "Mühsam" completed.

- Barbara Buchholz

Julia Bernhard: "How good that we talked about it"

In short episodes, Julia Bernhard tells of failing communication, of the impositions and absurdities of social conventions. Whether love, family planning or career: she confronts us with traditional expectations of young women in biting dialogs and pointed inner monologues. Bernhard connects the clear and pared-down episodes with a protective sofa into which the female protagonist crawls towards the end in order to finally escape this world, which seems to be anything but the best of all worlds.

- Stefanie Stegmann

Sascha Dreier: "The Paper Man"

The Papierene, that was the nickname of Austrian soccer legend Matthias Sindelar. The comic now tells his story, stylistically adapted to the era - the thirties of the 20th century in Vienna. The careful and extensive research as well as the inclusion of the political and social circumstances of the time, beyond the person himself, make this comic an exciting and informative read.

- David Basler

Oliver Grajewski: "A year in the moor"

Oliver Grajewski's "Moor" trilogy promises an extraordinary comic narrative experiment. In the forthcoming centerpiece, "Ein Jahr im Moor", he continues the exploration of his alter ego in Schleswig-Holstein, the childhood region of the first-person narrator, and once again autobiographical, essayistic and fantastical elements come together. They open up an atmospheric space that finds a graphic representation in the dense, black and white page architecture that corresponds to the depth of self-exploration.

- Andreas Platthaus

Jakob Hinrichs: "The Landscape"

From the announced, "nested" narrative structure to the range of characters and the way in which text is intertwined with images and images with images: Jakob Hinrichs wants to take a risk with his comic book. What we have so far of "Die Landschaft" makes us extremely curious for more.

- Brigitte Helbling

Lukas Jüliger: "unfollow"

In his comic "unfollow", Lukas Jüliger takes on a highly topical subject: the staging of a young social media activist who becomes a globally effective influencer through his ecology app - and a kind of guru. The dichotomy between social commitment and private sensitivity and the resulting disenchantment are told from the perspective of several of his followers, in images that develop a graphic life of their own in terms of color and form, making them appear as almost organic structures.

- Andreas Platthaus

Ansgar Reul: "I would let forests grow for you"

Ansgar Reul's work impresses with its enchantingly beautiful, almost floating pictorial worlds, in which a double loss is alluded to: the loss of a loved one, accompanied by an increasing loss of self. In searching movements, surreal encounters and memories, drawn with delicate strokes, he combines figures, motifs and structures in warm tones to create his very own pictorial compositions, supplemented only by a few individual sentences.

- Stefanie Stegmann

Patrick Spät (manuscript) and Bea Davies (illustration): "Gregor Gog - The Vagabond King"

The volume "Gregor Gog - The Vagabond King" takes us into a chapter of the Weimar Republic that has received little attention: the organized movement of vagabonds. The focus is on the historical figure Gregor Gog, founder of the "Brotherhood of Vagabonds", among others, into whose everyday life struggle we are immersed. The virtuoso exuberance that characterizes Patrick Spät's script finds a vivid counterpart in the black and white ink drawings by Bea Davies.

- Florian Höllerer

Franz Suess: "Schlieren"

In three "short stories", Suess tells of the loneliness and attempts at love of three unhappy loners. Despite their brevity, the episodes bundle the fatality of three fates: obsessively, honestly, and without any complaisance, yet with humor. The aesthetics are simple and seemingly unambitious: Pencil on white paper, the (apt, dense) dialog typed rather than lettered. Nevertheless, all three stories unfold a great power and immediacy, because they are radical, precise and strikingly pointed.

- Petra Mosbach