Maia Kobabe's graphic novel Gender Queer is widely hailed as one of the best and most influential comic book memoirs ever published. It also has the unfortunate distinction of consistently being one of the most-banned graphic novels in the US. Thankfully, that's not stopping Oni Press from rereleasing the book in a new hardcover version called Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition.
With Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition available in stores now, IGN can exclusively debut a new preview of the book. Check it out in the slideshow gallery below:
Gender Queer is written and illustrated by Kobabe. This annotated version features new commentary from Kobabe eirself, as well as annotations from a variety of cartoonists and scholars like Jadzia Axelrod (Galaxy: The Prettiest Star), Ashley R. Guillory (Queers At The Table), Justin Hall (No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics), Kori Michele Handwerker (Tiny Book Science), Phoebe Kobabe (Gender Queer: A Memoir), Hal Schrieve (Fawn’s Blood), Rani Som (Spellbound: A Graphic Memoir), Shannon Watters (Lumberjanes), and original acquiring editor Andrea Colvin.
Here's the official description for Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition:
In 2014, Maia Kobabe—who uses e/em/eir pronouns—thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Then e created GENDER QUEER: A MEMOIR. Maia’s autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fan fiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, GENDER QUEER is more than a personal story: It is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.
“For fans, educators, and anyone else who wants to know more, I am so excited to share the Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition,” said Kobabe in a statement. “Queer and trans cartoonists, comics scholars, and multiple people who appear in the book as characters contributed their thoughts, reactions, and notes to this new edition. There are comments on the color design process, on comics craft, on family, on friendship, on the touchstone queer media that inspired me and countless other people searching for meaningful representation, and on the complicated process of self-discovery. It’s been almost seven years since I wrote the final words of this memoir; revisiting these pages today, in a radically different and less accepting political climate, sparked a lot of new thoughts for me as well. I hope readers enjoy this even richer text full of community voices.”
Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition is avialble in bookstores now. You can order a copy on Amazon.
For more, find out what to expect from Marvel's Star Wars: The Fall of Kylo Ren and see which books and creators were nominated for the 2026 Eisner Awards.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.
