Comet Club
Yi Yang
Translated by Jaime Richards
Fantagraphics Books
Age 13+
Available September 29, 2026

Skeptical and sarcastic 14-year-old Yang Kuaikuai reluctantly joins the school’s Comet Club, an organization dedicated to seeking out aliens and UFOs, after his best friend Li Yu goads him into it. When the club ventures into the wilderness near their Chinese mountainside town to investigate presumed alien contact, they uncover something more dream-shattering and sinister that puts their lives at risk, leaving them forever transformed.  

Yi Yang emphasizes that even when things look picture perfect from the outside, family and friendship dynamics can be complicated. One of the ways Yang captures this is when Kuaikuai eats chicken, a food he openly despises, at his mother’s insistence, as his parents argue at the dinner table. While Li Yu states how his friend’s dream is “coming true” in his speech bubble, Kuaikuai eats the meat in hopes to not lose her again after being absent for all his life. Kuaikuai’s reflection in the mirror is opaque while the rest of his body is clear, showing muscle and skeleton, indicating how invisible and alien he feels in the moment. Yang’s use of shadows, black backgrounds, and narration boxes further exemplify what seems to be normal and heartwarming only to later reveal something suspect or tragic later in the story.   

Yang includes blunt depictions of weapons and their impact with cold reality to shock readers. It also has a bittersweet ending that drives home the book’s message that there is no such thing as a perfect family/dream. Comet Club reflects the ugliness of human nature but also the finest parts that lie beneath the grungy exterior.