when your books do that thing

I really love it when books I'm reading in some coincidental order (availability, whim, etc) turn out to have some interesting theme or common thread together. Cairo by G Willow Wilson and MK Perker and The Nameless City by Faith Erin Hicks are graphic novels about metropolis cities and the people who come to them and through them and how they're able to ally in hope of a better future. Cairo is Wilson's first work, before Alif the Unseen (which I still haven't read) or Ms. Marvel, and is a standalone; this is the first volume of Nameless City and it says it's continuing in volume two, dunno how long it's intended to be. I would recommend both, if you like comics - Nameless City is maybe an easier read, it's colorful and the pacing is more decompressed, more manga-influenced in its wordless action panels. They have interestingly contrasting takes on who should get to speak, who gets a place at the table - Cairo took a sharper stance on, like, white people should shut up and listen, Israel should be rejected (at least in its military-occupation aspect), the only voice that matters is the ordinary citizens of Cairo, while Nameless City, maybe because it has the freedom of being set in a fictional world, seems to be taking more of an "everybody gets a place at the table, the way forward is for conquerors and conquered to work together" approach that I find very appealing but would probably make a lot of people mad if it was about a real city's history.