A surrealist tale by the creator of neo manga, the critically-acclaimed Yuichi Yokoyama. His frenetic visual style contrasts with the taciturn pace of the story and dialogue as a group of friends wander the high-latitude areas of the strange icy Far North looking for someone. Readers of Yokoyama's other stories may even recognize some characters. (Source: Retrofit Comics)

With this book, Hirata set out to draw a passionate critique of discrimination against the Japanese outcaste community, known as the burakumin, around the character of Gennosuke, a young buraku whose mission to avenge and uplift his people through the sword goes horribly and gorily wrong. Though clearly intended as an anti-discrimination broadside, Bloody Stumps Samurai rubbed the Buraku Liberation League the wrong way, leading to copies being confiscated and burned and Hirata temporarily blacklisted. (Source: Retrofit Comics)

This collection of three stories by Akino Kondoh presents some of the cartoonist and animator's best known work for Ax, Japan's premier venue for alternative manga, and a recent story about life in New York City. Quiet stories of contemplation, mixed with the surreal strangeness just beyond conscious thought: pushing events into the background until you forget what they were, a girl feeling a strange presence as she goes to sleep, and losing part of yourself in preparing for someone's return.

From Retrofit Comics: A collection of some of the best stories by Baron Yoshimoto, one of the Japanese manga artists who helped develop the graphic novel form in the 1960s and 1970s by targeting an older audience with scintillating and exquisitely drawn stories about class, gender, ethnicity, and race. With an essay by noted manga historian and translator Ryan Holmberg. The stories included are “Eriko’s Happiness”, “High School Brawler’s Ditty”, “Insect”, “The Gambling Stripper”, “Nostalgia”, and “The Girl and the Black Soldier”.