Mudfish — Ed Piskor

Mudfish is a revealing biographical study of one boy, Rod Spike. It's an unflinchingly unsentimental depiction of the confusion and anxiety brought on by adolescence; a frank depiction of growing up in a mixed race household in a predominantly African American neighborhood in Pittsburgh; a harrowing story of suffering from a long-undiagnosed disease that at times seemed certain to cut a life way too short; and a story of a young man whose burgeoning intellectual and creative curiosity makes him acutely aware of a deck stacked against him despite his determination to transcend those limitations. It is one of the most brutally frank and darkly comical depictions of childhood and adolescence ever depicted in the comics form.