UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Graphic Mundi, a new graphic novel imprint from Penn State University Press, will release its inaugural volume, "COVID Chronicles: A Comics Anthology," in February 2021. Edited by Kendra Boileau, imprint publisher and PSU Press assistant director and editor-in-chief, and Rich Johnson, founder of Brick Road Media LLC, the anthology collects more than 60 short comics from indie and mainstream artists. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the book will go to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc) to support the employees of bookstores and comic shops and brick-and-mortar stores affected by the pandemic.

“A real community has come together in the process of compiling this anthology,” said Boileau. “In response to our call for COVID comics in the spring of 2020, writers, artists, and letterers came forward in force with short pieces that express succinctly and viscerally in their medium how profoundly our lives have changed as a result of this pandemic. I am grateful to each and every one of them for their dedication to the cause.”

Contributors to the anthology include American Book Award winner Thi Bui; National Cartoonist Society President Jason Chatfield; Graphic Medicine luminaries MK Czerwiec and Ian Williams; Eisner Award-winners Sarah Firth, John Jennings, Janet Lee and Terry Moore; and dozens of other talented creators. They tell eminently relatable stories about adjusting to working from home, homeschooling their kids, the failures of government leaders and the social safety net, and the racial bias and systemic inequities that this pandemic helped bring to light.

Pam French, Binc’s executive director, said, “The generosity of Penn State University Press is greatly appreciated. As we move into 2021, we anticipate the level of need among booksellers and comic store staff will continue to be extraordinary. We thank PSU Press for helping booksellers and comics retailers who are experiencing emergencies that place them in difficult situations."

Graphic Mundi expands on the current list of critically acclaimed graphic novels published by PSU Press, in particular its "Graphic Medicine" series, which launched in 2015 with the Eisner Award–nominated "Graphic Medicine Manifesto." With the stated mission of “drawing our worlds together,” the imprint will feature both fiction and nonfiction narratives on subjects such as health and human rights, politics, the environment, science, and technology.

Other Spring 2021 titles for Graphic Mundi are:

• Three graphic narratives of personal trauma: A sudden diagnosis of quadriplegia in "Twister," by Roland Burkart; an overwhelming eating disorder in "Fat," by Regina Hofer; and a child’s account of living with a mother with bipolar disorder in "The Parakeet," by Espé.
• "Crude: A Memoir," by Pablo Fajardo, Sophie Tardy-Joubert and Damien Roudeau, recounts the fight for social and environmental justice in the Amazonian oil fields.
• "Dirty Biology: The X-Rated Story of the Science of Sex," by Léo and Colas Grasset, called a "laugh-out-loud exploration of the biology of sex"; and "The Body Factory: From the First Prosthetics to the Augmented Human," by Héloïse Chochois, called a "sublimely hilarious history of human amputation and augmentation."