What do you do if the family you’re born into or the life people expected for you don’t fit? If you’re lucky, you find a place like Castle Waiting. Lucky comics fans can enjoy Linda Medley’s comic of the same name in a beautifully produced new collection from Fantagraphics.

Castle Waiting makes the wonderful argument that new beginnings and second chances are waiting for anyone. It begins with a slightly skewed retelling of the Sleeping Beauty legend. Charming as Medley’s revisions are, they’re really just a way to clear out the conventional fairy-tale figures and make room in the castle for the endearing oddballs who make up Medley’s cast.

First among them is Lady Jain, a pregnant noblewoman for whom “happily ever after” turned out to be anything but. She flees an abusive marriage for the safety of Castle Waiting. Before she even reaches it, she begins to get a sense of her own resourcefulness in some misadventures along the way. When she arrives, she finds the kind of warmth and security that family and home promise but sometimes don’t deliver.

It reminds me strongly (and favorably) of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City books. Both celebrate the power of the family of choice and feature rich casts of characters. Medley pulls bits and pieces of classic fairy tales together to build a world as real and endearing as Maupin’s 28 Barbary Lane.

Instead of dwelling on the princesses and wicked queens, Medley populates her world with characters from the fairy-tale margins. The castle was founded by Sleeping Beauty’s abandoned handmaidens, now well into their dotage. It’s occupied by an eclectic group – a fastidious stork, a flirtatious horse-man, a bearded nun – who all offer Jain their own unique forms of friendship and welcome.

Medley focuses on quiet moments that reveal character rather than constructed intersections of fairy-tale tropes. Her small observations about human (or mostly human) nature are always warm and potent, whether the castle residents are celebrating the birth of Jain’s child or just sitting around coloring each others’ hair.

The long sequence starring the bearded nun is easily my favorite, as it embodies so many of Medley’s essential themes. Sister Peace may have taken the vows, but she wasn’t born in a habit, and her path from a girl with facial hair and a restless spirit to woman of substance is funny, twisty, and fascinating. She’s spent a lifetime turning disadvantages into strengths and helping others find their own place in the world, like a one-woman Castle Waiting on the march.

I love Medley’s classic-but-modern style of illustration. She has a particularly splendid way with facial expressions, which are always funny, telling, and real. And Fantagraphics has put Medley’s comics into a beautiful package, courtesy of designer Adam Grano. The book looks like a classic fairy-tale tome, hard-covered and complete with a sewn-in bookmark. It’s the perfect physical vehicle for the story.

I’m always looking for re-readability in comics – stories I can pull down from the shelf and enjoy again and again. With its great characters, charming spirit, and wonderful execution, Castle Waiting has landed squarely on my list of all-time favorites. I can’t wait to catch up with Medley’s world with the new ongoing series.

Megan Kelso’s The Squirrel Mother Stories (Fantagraphics) have a wonderful combination of sweetness and bite. She has a real knack for investing everyday moments with multiple layers of feeling and meaning.

Take “Kodachrome,” where Kelso juxtaposes the posed prefabrication of a family slide show with the reality of the experience the family is remembering. Do the posed, frozen moments do justice to the reality? Or do they just distill it and act as touchstones for more detailed and personal remembrances?

My favorite pieces in the collection are three different views of Alexander Hamilton, “Publius,” “The Duel,” and “Aide de Camp.” The first sees the noted constitutional scholar through a kind of teen idol haze. A high-school student invests her paper on Hamilton’s political philosophy with the passion of a crush, and the resulting counterpoint of intellectual and visceral admiration is imaginative and very, very funny.

In “The Duel,” Kelso moves further along the lifespan to a more rock-star phase, and “Aide de Camp” reaches the point of mature reflection without losing any of the fancy or fervor of the previous two. Taken individually, they’re delightful. The cumulative effect of seeing a shared passion from three distinct perspectives and places in life is even more engaging.

Kelso varies her storytelling approach as well. Sometimes a piece is a straightforward examination of an experience. In others, she invests them with expressive visual imagination, taking the mundane someplace wilder. The book as a whole shows Kelso to be a storyteller of wonderful range.

Her style (or styles) of illustration is very appealing. Her images have a natural warmth and sweetness, but she picks unusual, even awkward camera angles to give individual moments more depth and interest. Some pieces are in black and white, others in full color, while others feature carefully chosen splashes or washes of specific hues. She varies her line and level of detail as well, always to good effect.

Kelso has demonstrated versatility and skill in service of emotional precision with The Squirrel Mother Stories. Each story is entertaining and successful in its own right. The whole package reveals a tremendous talent and makes me eager to see what Kelso does next.

R. Kikuo Johnson’s Night Fisher (Fantagraphics) is kind of like a piece of jewelry where the setting has been crafted with artistry and imagination, but the stone it surrounds is lackluster. Kikuo Johnson demonstrates considerable skill as an illustrator, but he does so in service of a rather mundane coming-of-age story.

Loren, the protagonist, is nearing the end of his studies at a prestigious private high school. His connection to best friend Shane is in one of its waning phases. They used to spend nights fishing together, but Shane has moved on to other nocturnal activities that include petty theft and amphetamines derived from rat poison.

Shane reappears to invite Loren along for his nightly rounds. Maybe he misses his longtime friend. Maybe he just needs a lift. Whichever it is, Loren agrees. Agreeability seems to be one of Loren’s defining characteristics. He’s an honors student to please his father. He lies about his sexual experience to fit in with schoolmates. He smokes batu (the rat-poison crank) and plays look out to spend time with Shane.

Essentially, Loren is along for the ride. While it’s an entirely believable stance for an adolescent to take, it’s not a particularly engrossing one. His emotional reticence is understandable, given his age and situation, but I never felt like I got too deeply into Loren’s character. Even his narration seems disconnected and dryly observant.

The banality of the material gets a lift from its setting, Hawaii. Loren is an import, having moved from the mainland as a child. Bits of culture, environment, and history are woven into the narrative. But Kikuo Johnson takes a restrained approach, never letting details overwhelm his story. It’s a backdrop, and an effective one, but Night Fisher isn’t a travelogue.

And if Loren is bland, some supporting characters make distinct impressions. With some well-chosen details and careful dialogue, Kikuo Johnson portrays Shane as a charismatic, elusive figure. Eustace, another classmate, blends stoner comedy with hints of thug menace. Loren’s father is both decent and interesting. He tries to connect with his son, but he’s reluctant to push. He’s sacrificed for Loren, and at times the resulting weariness is palpable, even heartbreaking.

But the real attraction here is the illustration. There’s real creativity and fluidity in the ways Kikuo Johnson renders his story. Straightforward narrative sequences are interspersed with unexpected moments of flashback. Money shots of shadowy landscapes have real impact. There’s playful use of maps, diagrams of knots, and other unexpected imagery.

I’m particularly taken by the lettering. At times, Kikuo Johnson plays with the visual shape of words to highlight the emotion behind them. He also peppers his images with sound effects, from Loren nervously clicking the door lock on his car to the hiss of a cigarette. It’s lovely, grounding work, the kind of distinct details that help build the world of the story and define its visual language.

I just wish the story, the stone of this piece of jewelry, showed the same depth of imagination and craft as the way it’s told. Ultimately, the impression for me is that Night Fisher is an exercise in style. While it’s an impressive exercise, I can’t help but wonder what kind of breathtaking heights Kikuo Johnson could reach in service of meatier material.