Fights: One Boy's Triumph Over Violence

Joel Christian Gill writes and illustrates this graphic memoir from Oni Press, a single-issue comic that recounts his own childhood journey from a bullied kid in a small Massachusetts town to a young man learning to navigate a world shaped by violence. The story spans his adolescence through early adulthood, using the metaphor of a fight to explore how he confronted the cycles of aggression and trauma around him. It’s a deeply personal, unflinching look at growing up Black in America, rendered in Gill’s expressive, cartoony style.