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The Secret Coders series is the first collaboration between author Gene Luen Yang and artist Mike Holmes. The first book—with further adventures of Hopper, Eni, and Josh—will be available September 29th from First Second.

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Anda loves Coarsegold Online, the massively-multiplayer role playing game that she spends most of her free time on. It’s a place where she can be a leader, a fighter, a hero. It’s a place where she can meet people from all over the world, and make friends. Gaming is, for Anda, entirely a good thing.

But things become a lot more complicated when Anda befriends a gold farmer—and Anda soon comes to realize that questions of right and wrong are a lot less straightforward when a real person’s real livelihood is at stake.

You can also read an except of In Real Life here.

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Decompisia is the underworld’s most stressed Princess—she has plenty of her own work to do but always seems to find herself doing her layabout father’s job, as well. To help in the understaffed kitchens, Princess Decomposia has hired Count Spatula, the vampire chef with a sweet tooth. He’s a charming go-getter of a blood-sucker, and pretty soon the two young ghouls become friends. Together, can they keep the kingdom running smoothly?

Tor.com is pleased to present The Fantôme Ball, an original comic set in the world of Andi Watson’s Princess Decomposia and Count Spatula, a sweet and mildly spooky tale of friendship, family, and management training for the undead!

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But things become a lot more complicated when Anda befriends a gold farmer—and Anda soon comes to realize that questions of right and wrong are a lot less straightforward when a real person’s real livelihood is at stake. 

From acclaimed teen author Cory Doctorow and rising star cartoonist Jen Wang, Con/Game is an original comic story set in the world of Doctorow and Wang’s In Real Life, a sensitive, thoughtful look at adolescence, gaming, poverty, and culture-clash.

You can also read an except of In Real Life here.

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Leking Snipes has been turned into a bug.

A bug with a gun.

This isn’t making the apocalypse—already filled with nightmarish soul-sucking creatures, loss, and abandonment—any easier to deal with.

But at least in the apocalypse, there’s always something new to fight—whether it’s demons or the insanity of the world he lives in.

Read Remainder, a short story from the world of Farel Dalrymple’s graphic novel The Wrenchies.

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If all things were normal, Stuart would be considered quite a catch.

In this short (romance?) comic by Barrie Potter and Wesley Allsbrook, things are not normal.

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Today, Alan Turing is considered the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. The mathematician, born on June 23, 1912, was a brilliant World War II codebreaker and parlayed that insight into theorizing and creating the first stored-memory computers. Unfortunately, this Officer of the British Empire was persecuted by the British government of the time for his homosexuality and suffered through chemical castration before ending his life.

The Imitation Game by Feynman author Jim Ottaviani and Resistance illustrator Leland Purvis chronicles the life of Turing in a full-size graphic novel. Check back every day this week as Tor.com releases the entire graphic novel in four parts.

Update: Tuesday June 24: The next installment has been posted! In the box below type in “60” to jump right to it.

Update: Wednesday June 25: The next installment has been posted! In the box below type in “117” to jump right to it.

Update: Thursday June 26: The final installment has been posted! In the box below type in “168” to jump right to it.

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Trigger warning for self-harm and implied violence.

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The comic had a short run before lapsing into obscurity, but the acclaimed author of American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang, with artwork by Sonny Liew, has finally revived this character in a new graphic novel that creates an origin story for the Green Turtle.

The following seven comic strips, originally published in black-and-white in the Shattered comics anthology, are collected here in color for the first time. Thrill to this short adventure of the Green Turtle, which takes place shortly after the events of the graphic novel!

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We know you’ll want more of her comics after this, so let’s just take care of that right now. Read her takes on: A Wrinkle in Time, Alien, Fullmetal Alchemist and more! Her comic Friends With Boys is also out now as a graphic novel from First Second.

[Read on!]

The post The Hunger Games Movie Reviewed in Comic Form appeared first on Reactor.

Faith Erin Hicks has plowed through a ton of YA novels recently, and she wanted to share her thoughts on two of them: Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Boys and The Dream Thieves. Check out her comic strip about them below!

Faith has covered a wealth of subjects on Tor.com in comic strip form, from The Hunger Games to Prometheus to Toronto and more. Check them all out here.

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The post An Illustrated Review of The Raven Boys and The Dream Thieves appeared first on Reactor.

In honor of Banned Books Week, we’re rerunning Faith Erin Hicks’ loving comic tribute to A Wrinkle in Time, detailing her favorite part of the book. It is honestly the most adorable thing we’ve seen in a long time.

Faith Erin Hicks is the author and illustrator of a number of webcomics, including Demonology 101 and Zombies Calling. Her comic Friends With Boys is available as a graphic novel from First Second.

Banned Books Week 2013 is being celebrated from Sept. 22 to the 28; further information on Banned and Frequently Challenged Books is available from the American Library Association.

The post Exactly What Happened in A Wrinkle in Time appeared first on Reactor.

Tor.com is delighted to give you a sneak peek at the entirety of “Baba Yaga,” as interpreted by illustrator and author Jillian Tamaki. Check out the entire collection on September 24th, from First Second Books.

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Graphic novelist, First Second Books author, and illustrator of all the things Faith Erin Hicks was a Guest of Honor at this year’s San Diego Comic Con! Because she is awesome (proof!) she drew up an action-packed six page comic about what it’s like to go behind the veil and be up on the same stages with the creators you adore. (Featuring special guest appearance by Joss Whedon!)

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This error was brought to my attention during an episode of Jerzy Drozd’s Comics Are Great podcast. He was interviewing Calista Brill, the sensible and insightful editor at First Second with whom I worked on Delilah Dirk. She was explaining the type of give-and-take an editor may have with an author, and said, “for example, I would not ask Tony Cliff to replace the character of Delilah Dirk with a cat.”

Hearing this and knowing it could only possibly be a passive-aggressive airing of grievances, I have tried to correct the error with this short comic, “Delilah Dirk and the Easy Mark.”

Enjoy! Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant arrives on August 27th from First Second Books.

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This error was brought to my attention during an episode of Jerzy Drozd’s Comics Are Great podcast. He was interviewing Calista Brill, the sensible and insightful editor at First Second with whom I worked on Delilah Dirk. She was explaining the type of give-and-take an editor may have with an author, and said, “for example, I would not ask Tony Cliff to replace the character of Delilah Dirk with a cat.”

Hearing this and knowing it could only possibly be a passive-aggressive airing of grievances, I have tried to correct the error with this short comic, Delilah Dirk and the Easy Mark.

Enjoy! Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant arrives on August 27th from First Second Books.

The post Delilah Dirk and the Easy Mark (Original Comic) appeared first on Reactor.

Our resident space blogger and graphic novelist Alison Wilgus got to visit NASA this year for a rocket launch and recently completed a full comic book about her experience!

Flip through and read about what it’s like to actually work at NASA, how Twitter works in space, and what it’s like to know that everything you do is pushing the human race forward bit by bit.

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The post Experience NASA Firsthand—Rocket Launch Included—In This New Comic appeared first on Reactor.

Fans of Terry Pratchett, the quirkier bits of The Hobbit, and tongue-in-cheek fantasy should take a peek at this original short comic by M.K. Reed and illustrator Jonathan Hill, the authors of the recently released graphic novel Americus.

(And not because it also contains the latest issue of Lady Bosoms….)

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Every so often, comic artist John Bonner reviews books, audio, and more, then turns his reactions into a comic strip. You can check out many more of them at Bonner’s site and more of them here on Tor.com.

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The post Iain M. Banks’ Culture Novels: Star Wars For Adults? appeared first on Reactor.

Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 (of ∞) continues to rampage as the number one movie in America, and while the success of the movies and books comes as no surprise, no one has addressed the most important question surrounding that success: Why?

Luckily, Lucy Knisley (illustrator and author of the forthcoming First Second graphic novel Relish: My Life in the Kitchen, and the webcomic Stop Paying Attention) recently cracked the complex mathematical formula behind the franchise’s mammoth success. She undertook months of painstaking research to achieve this hard-won goal, but she’s feeling much better now.

Check it out in comic form below and walk away enlightened.

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In Legends of the Joystick, the greatest video game stars of yesteryear look back on their heyday. It’s not always pretty…

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Comic artist John Bonner recently reread Olaf Stapledon’s science fiction classic Odd John, one of his father’s favorite books, and possibly found a bit of his own history within the book.

Every so often, comic artist John Bonner reviews books, audio, and more, then turns his reactions into a comic strip. You can check out many more of them at Bonner’s site and more of them here on Tor.com.

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The post Finding Your Namesake in a Classic Olaf Stapledon Classic Novel appeared first on Reactor.

So… we recently asked cartoonist and Friends With Boys author Faith Erin Hicks if she had any strong opinions about steampunk. The answer quite literally speaks for itself!

What you’ll read below is Faith’s intense and lovely comic strip letter celebrating the existence of Fullmetal Alchemist. Once you’re done squeeing in boisterous agreement, you can check out Faith’s comic strips about The Hunger Games, Prometheus, and way, way more here. She and Prudence Shen are also currently serializing a new graphic novel about cheerleaders versus robot builders at www.nothingcanpossiblygowrong.com!

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Enjoy this original comic by cartoonist and author Mark Siegel, who’s first graphic novel Sailor Twain, or The Mermaid in the Hudson comes out next Tuesday, October 2nd, from First Second Books.

In “Steamboat Willy,” a lovesick sailor requests divine help in showing his affection to a beautiful mermaid. What the sailor receives is… exactly what he asked for.

(Note: Mermaid nudity ahead! Mildly NSFW.)

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Does William Gibson’s now-classic Neuromancer, the book that coined the term “cyberspace,” hold up to a reread now that a lot of the tech and social structures it depicted have been realized in real life? John Bonner put on his fedora and set off to see (in comic form).

Every so often, comic artist John Bonner reviews books, audio, and more, then turns his reactions into a comic strip. You can check out many more of them at Bonner’s site and more of them here on Tor.com.

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The post Does Neuromancer Hold Up Now That its World Isn’t as Unique? appeared first on Reactor.

Faith Erin Hicks saw recent stop-motion animation flick ParaNorman (brought you by the same studio that created the Coraline movie) and it sent her into a spiral of thought about the state of animation today (for good and ill). Check out her comic strip about it below!

Faith has covered a wealth of subjects on Tor.com in comic strip form, from The Hunger Games to Prometheus to Toronto and more. Check them all out here.

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The post Appreciating the Animation (and Story) of ParaNorman appeared first on Reactor.

Today, June 25th, marks 30 years since Blade Runner debuted in theaters. This film adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is now considered a staple of science fiction film, so for the anniversary comic artist John Bonner visualizes what PKD might have thought about Blade Runner had he gotten the chance to see it.

Every so often, comic artist John Bonner reviews books, audio, and more, then turns his reactions into a comic strip. You can check out many more of them at Bonner’s site and more of them here on Tor.com.

The post Blade Runner Debuted 30 Years Ago Today. What Would PKD Have Thought? appeared first on Reactor.

Check out Faith’s comic strip review for Prometheus below. You might also appreciate her takes on A Wrinkle in Time, Alien, and a very personal reflection on The Hunger Games book and movie. Or her illustrated recap of the Toronto Comic Art Festival! Her comic Friends With Boys is also out now as a graphic novel from First Second.

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The post Prometheus Reviewed in Comic Form appeared first on Reactor.

Every so often, comic artist John Bonner reviews books, audio, and more, then turns his reactions into a comic strip. You can check out many more of them at Bonner’s site and more of them here on Tor.com.

He recently reread Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama and tried to imagine how Hollywood would turn it into a film that held as much wonder as the book. The verdict?

The post Could a Rendezvous With Rama Movie Capture the Scientific Wonder of the Book? appeared first on Reactor.