Barry Windsor-Smith has for over three decades, been working on Monsters. Almost twenty years ago I read an unfinished version and was shocked and astonished at the power and delicacy of the storytelling, by the honesty of the family relationships, by the feeling that this was being created by someone willing to reveal too much and go too deep in order to tell the story he had to tell. That it is completed and that it will be released to the world is something that's genuinely exciting for any of us who care about comics, or stories, or the place where art and imagination meet

Nearly 40 years in the making, Monsters is surely Windsor-Smith's magnum opus. It demands re-reading, not only in order to take in the intricacies of the densely constructed narrative but to marvel further at the meticulously crafted artwork.

It's been 16 years since Barry Windsor-Smith's last book and in Monsters, you can see the work of those days and years on every page and panel... His classically influenced style...fills the pages with drawings and sequences you can easily lose yourself in the depths of... he has now created a work that his legacy will be forever tied to, melding his stylistic artwork with a story that explores trauma and grief in ways that he has never been able to before.

Forcefully told and thoroughly affecting drama. Windsor-Smith's return is big news... Monsters hums with suppressed violence and regret, and Windsor-Smith renders both with real power. His command of pose and gesture...brings his cast to life.

Monsters is drawn and inked with extraordinary delicacy, its pace is often meditative and it is just as interested in family relationships as it is in superpowers. Monsters is weirdly sweet.

Monsters is a big book dealing with difficult subjects, and one that I would recommend.

Monsters is likely to be his [Barry Windsor-Smith's] defining work... [a] big, bruising epic.

This exquisitely illustrated epic bursts with emotion, insight, and empathy. Five decades into his already influential career, Windsor-Smith has created his magnum opus

For over a century children have loved getting a Rupert or Beano annual as part of the season's largesse. This year a lot of grown-ups should feel similar delight when Grandville Mon Amour turns up under the tree.

This ripping yarn of mystery, murder and the machinating arms tycoon Baron Krapaud of Toad Hall is both irresistibly exciting and sumptuously designed.

Grandville is a favourite of ours.

A multi-layered book that is both wildly witty and deeply wise.

A tender, witty and poignant look back at a lifelong obsession with fitness.

An astonishing graphic novel/memoir whose precise drawings capture Bechdel's life-long hunt for transcendence through physical exertion.

The biggest event of the year was the return of Alison Bechdel... Bechdel's previous books have made her one of the superstars of graphic fiction, and this funny, perceptive and merciless account shows that...her talent remains undimmed.

The Secret to Superhuman Strength... demands to be reread immediately... and does the reader far more good than a Peloton class and a cup of turmeric tea.

A joyful book, a feast of colour, wit and ideas about living in ever-changing times

The brilliant cartoonist traces her own history of (sometimes obsessive) exercise in this stunning graphic memoir.