Now that winter is over, it’s time to stop hibernating and get outside. And if, while outside, you happen to end up near your friendly neighborhood comic store, here are a couple notable titles that have hit the shelves in recent weeks.

La Perdida
“La Perdida,” Jessica Abel’s stunning graphic novel based on her two years living in Mexico City, is now available in hardcover from Pantheon Books. Carla, the book’s protagonist, ventures to Mexico City in an effort to “find herself.” Along the way, she ends up connecting with her Mexican heritage, only to find that, no matter what she does, she can’t truly connect with the country. “La Perdida” is reminiscent of Craig Thompson’s “Blankets,” but stands totally on its own, thanks to Abel’s deft dialogue, ever-evolving characters and expert storytelling.

One Year Later (DC Comics)
If you missed the opening salvos of DC Comics’ next big event, you’ll get a second chance over the next two weeks. Now that the “Infinite Crisis” mega-event is winding down, almost all of DC’s books have jumped ahead one year in their respective storylines. And almost all of the books taking part in the “One Year Later” (OYL) storyline, which debuted in mid-March, have sold out at the publisher and have gone back to press.

DC initially billed OYL as a perfect jumping-on point for new readers. But since the writers are all taking such great pains not to spoil what happened in the year between the end of “Infinite Crisis” and the OYL issues, readers will probably be left with a lot more questions than they’d like.

Geoff Johns and Kurt Busiek are doing a great job with both “Superman” and “Action Comics,” taking on an eight-part storyline that finds Clark Kent sans super-powers and targeted by Lex Luthor. Johns and Busiek have a great sense of characterization (their de-powered Clark Kent is probably the most interesting iteration in years) and, in this case, present a great opportunity for old and new readers to come back into the fold.

Unfortunately, not all the OYL books are that good. Writer James Robinson’s “Face the Face” storyline, running through both “Batman” and “Detective Comics,” re-sets Batman’s status quo to where it was a decade ago, but it feels kind of stale. Commissioner Gordon is back, the police love Batman and Gotham isn’t so dangerous. It’s a shame, because writers Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka, in the series “Gotham Central,” had done a fine job in building up Batman’s supporting cast and his uneasy relationship with them.

The other OYL titles are fair to middling. “Birds of Prey” continues to be an exciting, straight-up action/adventure book with some great writing by Gail Simone; however, the latest issue of “Green Arrow,” in which the Emerald Archer has become the mayor of his hometown, is slow and plodding—and derivative of “Ex Machina,” another comic published by DC.

Whatever the case, OYL is, overall, a good storytelling exercise, but whether the sweeping changes it proposes actually stick (remember, Superman only stayed dead for about a year) remains to be seen.