Is this the first Spring 2025 publishing round-up we’ve run this year at BF? Expect a flurry incoming weeks but today it’s NBM with their book line-up for the first part of next year.
NBM Announces Spring 2025 Publications!
NBM Graphic Novels is delighted to announce our Spring 2025 line-up including a biography of country-western icon Willie Nelson, a collection of true-crime stories, a historical tale of great importance in the civil rights movement, an overview of the inception and development of punk rock, and a biography of a pioneering environmentalist!
WILLIE NELSON: A Graphic History
T.J. Kirsch (writer), various artists
Now in paperback with bonus material! Country music icon Willie Nelson is recognized all over the world for his music, philanthropy, and unmistakable look.
Since he was a child in Hill County, Texas, he has been writing and performing for adoring crowds. Though his mainstream success did not come until later in his life, he has been determined to take his unique sound and voice to the people even before he was a household name. There have been tragedies, missteps, IRS troubles, good times and bad along the way, but Willie continues to shine his positive outlook and project his humble voice out into the world.
In this graphic novel biography, all the chapters represent a different era of his life and struggles – each illustrated by a unique indie comics talent.
7 ½ x10, 88pp., B&W, trade pb., $14.99
ISBN 9781681123325
PUBLICATION DATE: January 14
A TREASURY OF XXTH CENTURY MURDER: Compendium II
Rick Geary
Including Sacco & Vanzetti, The Black Dahlia, Lovers Lane, Famous Players.
400 pages of real murder cases from the 20th century! From the famous Sacco & Vanzetti story through the ever-intriguing renowned Black Dahlia murder of a striking aspiring actress in Los Angeles, the mysterious murder of silent movie director William Desmond Taylor in early Hollywood to that of a preacher and his lover found murdered in a park, here is a collection of scandalous murders which were never solved or marked the century. Meticulously researched, they are presented in Geary’s inimitable tongue-in-cheek style.
6×9, 400pp., B&W trade pb., $24.99
ISBN 9781681123332
PUBLICATION DATE: January 14
SURROUNDED: America’s First School for Black Girls, 1832
Wilfrid Lupano (writer), Stéphane Fert (art)
In 1832, in Canterbury, Connecticut, a “charming and picturesque” little school for young girls opens to accommodate around twenty residents.
Educating girls is a bit ridiculous and useless, they think in the area, but harmless enough. Until the day when the “charming school”, led by Prudence Crandall, announces that it will now welcome Black girls….
Thirty years before the abolition of slavery, some fifteen young people in the Crandall school are greeted by a wave of hostility of insane proportion. White America is afraid of some of its children.
The story of this school and its legal legacy for civil rights cannot be understated. Crandall v. State (of Connecticut) was the first full-throated civil rights case in U.S. history. The arguments by attorneys in the Crandall case played a role in two of the most fateful Supreme Court decisions, Dred Scott v. Sandford, and the landmark case of Brown v.
Board of Education. It catapulted Ms. Crandall into a Civil Rights pioneer.
8 ½ x 11, 144pp., full color HC, $24.99
ISBN 9781681123486 eBook: $16.99, ISBN 9781681123493
PUBLICATION DATE: February 11
PUNK ROCK IN COMICS
Thierry Lamy, Nicolas Finet (writers), various artists
Here is the can’t-miss overview of the punk rock scene from its early inception in the seventies in New York and the UK. Includes chapters on The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, and more. Punk was also the flex point for women in rock like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Blondie, The Runaways, Patti Smith and The Slits that paved the way for the Riot Grrrl movement.
Flashing the finger against the slick corporate rock of the ’70s, punk was faster, messier, and louder than anything before it. Covered here with the same raw energy, look, and attitude as the
music itself!
7 ½ x 10, 176pp., full color HC, $27.99
ISBN 9781681123509 eBook: $16.99, ISBN 9781681123516
PUBLICATION DATE: March 18
JOHN MUIR: To the Heart of Solitude
Lomig
What pushed John Muir to become the pioneering environmentalist and founder of the Sierra Club?
1867: A sawmill is running at full speed with a terrible noise when suddenly, workers run to rescue a man on the ground. He has seriously injured his eyes. John Muir is twenty-nine years old and has to be confined in a dark room: it is likely that he may remain blind. But miraculously, after months of an almost mystical convalescence, he regains his sight.
This episode convinces him he’s going to leave everything behind and embrace his lifelong dream: head south to meet the wilderness. Armed with only his courage, his youth, a magnifying glass and a botanical book, he treks hundreds of miles on foot from Indiana to Florida. Imagine an almost pristine wilderness, where only a few dangerous ex-soldiers from the South and former slaves thrown out of the old plantations roam…
This biography also covers his other life-changing pioneering trek along the Sierra Nevada Trail which now bears his name. Here, in breathtaking vistas, is the inspiration he got to found the Sierra Club, create the first national parks, and become one of America’s first and foremost environmentalist champions.
8 ½ x 11, 176pp., B&W HC, $19.99
ISBN 9781681123523 ebook: $9.99, ISBN 9781681123530
PUBLICATION DATE: April 15
