Review: Hand-Me-Down: A Graphic Memoir by Damian Alexander

Damian grew up with his grandmother after losing his mother as a baby, and this graphic memoir traces what gets passed down when someone is gone, the objects, the stories, the love that travels across generations even when the people carrying it cannot. It is a companion to Other Boys in the best sense, the same honest voice but deeper. I cried at the end. Damian Alexander has been an auto-buy, even before his debut, Other Boys, landed. Hand-Me-Down, out now, is his most personal work yet. Check out my full thoughts below!

Hand-Me-Down: A Graphic Memoir

by Damian Alexander
Published by: First Second
on July 28th, 2026
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From the author of the highly praised debut Other Boys comes a moving graphic memoir about the love we pass down across generations. Perfect for fans of Hey, Kiddo and Flamer.
Damian’s mother died when he was a baby, and he has lived with his grandma ever since. Now, all he has left of his mother are old photos and the stories Nanny shares with him. Nanny has a lot of stories, some about his mom and some about her own childhood growing up in foster care.
When Damian feels lonely, he imagines what life was like when his mother and grandmother were middle schoolers like him. Through memories, stories, and daydreams, he feels closer to the mother he lost and begins to see the mother he found.

Review

I have loved every Damian Alexander graphic novel and Hand-Me-Down might be the most personal thing he has shared yet. That is saying something, because Other Boys, his debut, was already one of the bravest graphic memoirs I have read, a deeply honest look at growing up queer and the specific loneliness of not fitting into the world around you. Hand-Me-Down goes somewhere different and somehow somewhere even more tender.

Damian’s mother died when he was a baby. He grew up with his grandmother, Nanny, and what he has of his mother is secondhand: old photos, objects, and the stories Nanny tells. But Hand-Me-Down is not just about grief or absence. It is about the way things get passed down, literally and otherwise. Damian brings home secondhand items even now, finding meaning and comfort in objects that had already lived a life before they reached him. That practice becomes a lens for the whole book. The things we inherit from the people we love, their stories, their struggles, their ways of moving through the world, are their own kind of hand me down. Nanny’s childhood in foster care. His mother’s too short life. The love that traveled across generations to reach him even though the people who carried it are gone.

Damian shared in a letter that his grandmother encouraged him to write and share his stories. She passed away in 2024, while he was still working on this book. Knowing that, and then reading this book, is its own kind of experience. She knew what he was making. She wanted it to exist. That Hand-Me-Down exists at all feels like a gift she helped pass down. I loved getting to know her in a small way.

If you have not read Other Boys, start there and come here next. If you have, you already know that Damian Alexander writes from places most people keep private, and that the result is absolutely worth it.