Battling Boy #[nn]

Paul Pope's Battling Boy arrives from First Second in 2013 as a genuinely fresh take on the superhero concept — Entertainment Weekly called it "a new generation superhero," and the cover makes that case immediately. A determined blond boy in a white t-shirt, his wrists wrapped in animal-totem bracers, leaps forward with fists clenched over a massive fallen creature wreathed in flames, purple wings splayed beneath him against a striking red backdrop. Pope's kinetic linework, brought to vivid life by colorists Hilary Sycamore and Sky Blue Ink, crackles with energy and makes this one of the most visually arresting graphic novels of 2013.