Angela Montoya, Aimee Phan, Nikhil Prabala, Andrea L. Rogers

If the world was ending, we’d want to be next to these dystopian reads that also warm the heart! The Art Thieves, a work of Cherokee Futurismby Andrea L. Rogers, begins amidst a climate crisis in 2052, when a high-school museum employee becomes entangled in a mission to save the world around her from imminent implosion. A different kind of darkness permeates the vampire-plagued pueblos in Angela Montoya’s A Cruel Thirst, in which headstrong Carolina Fuentes rejects settling down with a husband to join her family in hunting down bloodthirsty monsters. Blood is thicker than water, as high school sophomores Jolie and Huong realize when they discover that they are the reincarnates of the Trung Sisters, legendary queens and goddesses of ancient Vietnam, in Aimee Phan’s The Lost Queen. Another series debut featuring royalty is The Duchess of Kokora by Nikhil Prabala, where long-brewing political tensions simmer beneath the surface of a marriage competition in the fantasy kingdom of Ryene. Though they hail from different realms, the protagonists in this delightfully dreadful panel, moderated byauthor and columnist Charlie Jane Anders, share one thing in common: they would do anything it takes to save their fantastical worlds.