Skating Wilder

by Brandon Dumais, A.J. Dungo

A poignant non-fiction comic that sheds light on the inclusive and life-changing world of skateboarding featuring brand new art from award-winning creator of In Waves, AJ Dungo.

Skateboarding is hard and it hurts.

No one can tell you exactly who invented it, but it has inspired generations of brave warriors to hit the curbs. This book flies through skateboarding’s weird history, and grinds through AJ and Brandon’s best (and worst) skateboarding memories. They’re not experts, but they know how much this sport means to the communities that have embraced it and made it their own.

From the first boards to the handmade zines of the punk movement, weaving through the VHS heydays and landing hard in the glitzy video game era, we’re going to take you on a ride through the ages. Special shout-out to the pages where we attempt to tell you how to do tricks through the medium of comics. It’s wild.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Nonfiction, Bande Dessinée, Comics, Sports, History, Graphic Novels Manga

264 pages, Paperback

First published March 3, 2026

Reviews

[Pierre-Antoine · Rating 4 out of 5]

AJ Dungo est trop cool, j'ai envie de le lire avec des lunettes de soleil 😎

7 ans après In Waves 🌊 qui m'avait chambouleversé (c'était en 2019 ça commence à faire), il est de retour pour un hommage à la Skateboard culture 🛹

je parle jamais de BD (encore) mais exception parce que voilà

pour les copains skatos et les hoodies Element® à l'ancienne 💪

[Dakota Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of skateboarding melded with personal memories of a youth spent shredding. The history pieces are engaging, if widely covered, but the memoir elements bring it home. Solid, dynamic artwork keep things rolling.

[Library 87]

Comics Librarian pick: Skating Wilder blends skate culture, heart, and visual storytelling in a way that begs for a reread. What do you love most in comic memoirs—style, story, or both? Follow @Comix4All for more!

[Lo · Rating 3 out of 5]

j'aurais trop aimé être une cool skate kid

[Moka Aumilieudeslivres · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Reste-t-il des endroits inexplorés?"

[Abigaëlle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Après In Wave sur le surf on y découvre l’histoire d’une autre planche, de skate. Ici AJ aide un ami dans son déménagement et c’est l’occasion pour eux de replonger dans leurs souvenirs liés au skate tout en abordant son évolution, ces inventions, la culture autour et sa perception global. C’est d’une grande fluidité et passionnant même quand on a pas spécialement d’appétence pour le skate. Le lexique à la fin rend accessible la bande dessinée à tous.

[Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a funny one for me because I first read In Waves a couple of years ago, five years after its initial publication. I've been fiending for a new book ever since but he hasn't even given us crumbs... And when I started following AJ Dungo on instagram, all I found was his new wife, and a whole lot of skateboarding stories. And suddenly he puts two new books out in the span of a few months ! And quite unsurprisingly, one of them is about skateboarding.

Skating Wilder chronicles the ins and outs and ups and downs of skater culture through the ages, with the backdrop of AJ helping Brandon empty his parents' house and reminiscing on their early skating days.

It doesn't quite have the heart of his first one, for better or worse since In Waves was built on an terrible tragedy. But it does share the same passion for the sport it's showcasing.

While I thought Wake Now in the Fire was an important book, this one feels less like a work for hire and more of a passion project, despite him supposedly only illustrating it (although his fingerprints are all over the writing as well I think). It absolutely gorgeous throughout, switching styles but always ostensibly inspired by graffiti aesthetics.

I don't think it's going to speak quite as much to people as In Waves did, but I had an absolute blast with it

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Les illustrations et tout le travail de couleur ça m’a vraiment fasciné, par contre j’ai un peu moins pris de plaisir a découvrir cette histoire du skateboard….

Ça reste un très bon ouvrage mais peut être que c’est juste le sujet qui ne me touchait pas, je pense que si c’est quelque chose qui intéresse ça peut être top !

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great art - learnt some things!

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

superb! this made me want to pick up my board or strap on my rollerskates again. i love learning about skate history and this gave a wonderful overview of just that. it touched on the different eras, evolutions and sub cultures that exist within the community while weaving in pieces of the author and illustrators own skate history together. skating is hard and it hurts but it will always have a piece of my heart.

now go out and skate!

[François Guevremont · Rating 4 out of 5]

J'ai vraiment aimé les dessins et la portion historique. On sent l'amour que l'auteur porte au skate. Mais à ce compte-là, j'aurais pris 50 pages de plus de ses propres anecdotes de planche, pour avoir un côté plus personnel.

[Peter Derk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great art, good overview of skating from the last 50 years? Is that possible?

I still want to know more about the hostility between rollerbladers and skateboarders. I'll never really understand it. I mean, I've done both, badly, and I understand the difference between the sports, but I see the two subcultures as a lot more similar than different. For the record, I had fun doing both. Probably more fun rollerblading because that never resulted in a pretty serious concussion, unlike skateboarding. But, you know, that's not about skateboarding, that's about me being shitty at it.

It's kind of like skiers versus snowboarders. Your boy Pete is old enough to remember when snowboarding was NOT ALLOWED at a lot of ski resorts, for no real reason other than skiing was elegant and for rich people, while snowboarding was like the skating of snow sports. Which is super fucking stupid because it's not like snowboarding was cheap, any cheaper than skiing.

I used to ski when I was a kid, then I switched to snowboarding, then my family combusted and I haven't been on skis or a snowboard since. I kinda doubt I'll ever do it again. It's just SO expensive, you guys, you have no idea. And your choices are to sit in traffic for hours, like 5 hours, or to stay overnight near a ski hill and pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Both terrible options.

Anyway, if I was doing my mini investigation on it, I'd guess that snowboarding became allowed at resorts once the people running them were like, "Shit, we don't actually have to change a single thing about how we do business or how lifts work or whatever, and we can charge people the same amount...and it's not like we're allowing punk kids on the slopes, I mean, we are, but how different are they from the punk kids who are rich and currently skiing and doing shooters on the chairlift?"

Rollerbladers and skaters, though, I feel there's even less difference. I guess it's just human nature that if a sport involves a THING for each foot, it's for uptight preppy assholes, and if it's one thing for BOTH feet, it's the sport of the punks.

[Amande · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pour tous ceux qui skatent ou ont skaté dans leur vie, ce roman graphique est une lettre d'amour à la culture et à l'histoire du skate !

Ce n'est pas une bd sensationnelle, les auteurs nous parlent de leur amour du skate en contant son histoire, les époques, les innovations, les figures, la communauté !

Comment ça a façonné les jeunes de toutes ces générations et comment ils s'en sont emparés, comment le skate est devenu une part de leur identité.

Je pense que ce roman graphique (pas tout à fait documentaire mais quand même très éducatif avec une ambiance hyper colorée et pétillante, pleine d'amour pour ce sport) parlera essentiellement aux skateurs ou ceux qui en ont fait dans leur vie.

En en ayant fait, ayant mon adolescence qui a été aussi marquée par le skate, leur amour pour celui-ci a ravivé l'amour que je lui portais et comment ça m'a moi aussi façonné d'une certaine manière.
Ça m'a fait me souvenir de moments précieux et toujours aussi beaux et pétillants dans ma tête où avec mes copaines on skatait ensemble tous les mercredis après-midi entre la pause du midi et le cours de musique ou encore les weekends le long de la plage. Ou tout simplement les rues où j'ai appris à en faire et où c'était aussi social.

Non mais non le skate a marqué une trop belle période de ma vie, où ça m'a aidé à aller mieux avec ce truc d'essayer encore et encore, de tomber, d'être avec les autres et juste de se laisser aller !

Grosse lettre d'amour à ce roman graphique qui porte ce même amour !

[YSBR · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skating Wilder is part memoir, part history lesson, and part love letter to skateboarding culture. The illustrations have a distinctly skateboard-esque style, with strong punk and street art influences. The book uses color thoughtfully: memories and historical sections are illustrated in orange tones, while present-day reflections appear in purple. There are also black-and-white cartoon-style sections that break down skateboarding tricks, adding another layer of visual interest.

Dumais and Dungo guide readers through the different eras of skateboarding, from its first surge of popularity in the 1950s, when it was known as a laid-back form of “street surfing,” to its current iteration shaped by social media clips and highly technical tricks. Along the way, they explore the enduring appeal of skateboarding, highlighting how skaters find independence, confidence, community, and a unique way of seeing the world through the sport.

The book emphasizes that skateboarding is for everyone, not only through its discussion of who participates in the culture but also through the diversity represented in the illustrations. As someone with only a basic understanding of skateboarding history and culture, I found this book genuinely fascinating. Link to complete review: https://ysbookreviews.wordpress.com/2...

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

The work covers briefly the history of skateboarding - from the creation of the board and skate parks to influential skaters and societal disagreements over liability - and the author/illustrator's personal connections to the sport/community/past-time/toy, especially growing up. The fonts drawn for each chapter were cool! I really appreciated the use of color - purple for current day, orange for their past/history of skateboarding, and black for history inserts on specific skateboarding tricks. The ending is cool - the adult friends (author/illustrator) skateboard through the neighborhood where they boarded as kids with the little versions of themselves right behind them in orange. 

It's not a very in-depth work in terms of the history (took me about an hour to read?), but I appreciate that about it - it encompasses a love of skateboarding and the culture that often comes with it, and it includes light information about some of the main tricks, influential people, dates (60s, 80s, 90s), and places (CA!). The work emphasizes how skateboarding can hurt and be painful but that there’s so much love for the sport and that it only continues to evolve.

I love the back matter - black and white photos of the author and illustrator skating as kids, a glossary of slang terms, and the list of skaters, works, and filmers/photographers/artists that influenced them and the work!

[Paulibrarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

LA skater boys Dumais and Dungo retrace the freaks and geeks driving the revolutionary history of skateboarding. Two tone narrative graphic pages are interspersed with monotone asides describing ollies and other tricks, creating an ode to the pastime just as Dungo created previously with the atmospheric 'In Waves', his ode to surfing. The story arc angle is Dumais moving house when older, and finding his childhood memories in boxes. If you had a skateboard like me when younger - a skinny orange fibreglass Lightning Bolt model in my case - you are at once back to your riding memories. And with that, your crashing memories: shards of glass in your hands; trying not to get your trucks caught up in old airplane fuselage parts; skateboarding in the gritty backstreets of Hamburg; busting the back section off the board on the train tracks. Dumais and Dungo create their own illustrated stories whilst you conjure your own skating history - what every nonfiction graphic novel should be like. Magic.

[Billy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a concise history of fifty plus years of skateboarding and the ever-shifting culture surrounding it in a graphic novel, interspersed with personal recollections of writer Brandon Dumais and illustrator A.J. Dungo, who are real-life friends and skaters going back to childhood. The framing is the guys reminiscing while A.J. helps Brandon move his stuff out of his childhood home, and it features great illustrations and fun little spreads were cartoon versions of the guys try to explain some of the most important tricks in skateboarding (and joke about how they can't do some of them). This one is clearly a passion project, and it's hard not to get caught up in the guys' excitement (I think it's reasonable to assume Dungo contributed to the text to some extent given their friendship). This is a fun one that deserves to be hyped up.

Man, A.J. Dungo really did illustrate two great graphic novels back to back, huh?

[Margaux Chvl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coup de cœur
Bien plus qu'un récit sur le skateboard, Skating Wilder est une plongée lumineuse dans son histoire et son esprit. A travers les souvenirs de Brandon, on découvre les origines de cette culture, ses figures emblématiques et ce qu'elle représente pour celles et ceux qui la vivent. Le trait d'AJ Dungo sublime le tout avec une palette de couleurs vibrante et évocatrice, qui donne au récit une chaleur et une énergie incroyables. C'est un livre pour les amoureux du skate, mais aussi pour tous ceux qui aiment les histoires de transmission et de passion. Un roman graphique aussi beau qu'émouvant, qui donne envie de monter sur une planche et de partir à l'aventure.

[Matt Glaviano · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well executed mixture of personal history and the history of skateboarding. Dumais does a really good job of giving effective history without getting in the weeds; their efforts to connect skating with music (hard core in the 80s, hip-hop in the 90s) is convincing. The little sections illustrating how to do basic tricks are also good. As are the glossary and source lists at the end. And most convincing of all is the relationship between author and illustrator as skaters and long time friends.

Oh, and the art's killer.

No complaints.

[Michael Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun graphic novel going over how skateboarding has evolved over time. I really liked the art and how you get the themes of rebellion and invention in the early days. It really makes you want to go out and skateboard.

[lucy black · Rating 3 out of 5]

Skating Wilder is a great idea for a book and it has eye catching dynamic illustrations. The story is engaging and well paced but the tone is off. I can’t put my finger on it but it felt a bit exclusive and braggadocios. I wanted more heart, more girls, more silly fun.

[Jace Beleren · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐

[Maurine · Rating 5 out of 5]

J'attendais avec grande impatience cette nouvelle œuvre d'AJ Dungo. J'avais adoré In Waves, et j'ai pris énormément de plaisir à lire Skating Wilder. 🩷

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great recap of the skateboarding industry while also tieing it into friends who grew up skating. It reminded me a lot of my friends.

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nonfiction graphic novel on skateboarding

[Kakikrok · Rating 3 out of 5]

BD qui se lit facilement mais reste assez superficielle sur ce qu'elle raconte.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

🛹 Informative, colorful, cultural, and full of aesthetic, I loved it. Plus, it’s short enough you can finish it in one sitting.

[Zay · Rating 3 out of 5]

A trip down skateboarding lane about the history , the little things and most importantly the good times.

[Ancolie · Rating 3 out of 5]

À la manière de In Waves, AJ Dungo se livre au double exercice de raconter l'histoire du skate et de raconter sa propre relation avec la planche à rouler qui a envoyé des générations de gamin à l'hosto. Lui et son ami d'enfance Brandon Dumais réalisent un ouvrage tour à tour instructif, tendre et mélancolique.
Il y est raconté les premières manifestations de la culture skate, la naissance de ses premiers héros, ces années d'existence dans les marges puis comme de nombreuses contre-cultures ayant gagné en popularité, l'appropriation par un capitalisme débridé qui tente de la vider de sa substance.
Visuellement, c'est magnifique comme l'était In waves. On y retrouve le style si reconnaissable de Dungo. Le dynamisme, la fluidité du dessin semble animer les lignes sous nos yeux.

[Alisha (booksmellz) · Rating 4 out of 5]

No one can tell you who exactly invented skateboarding, but generations of skaters have been rolling on four wheels. In Skating Wilder, Brandon Davis and AJ Dungo reminisce over their own best (and worst) skateboarding memories as well as going through skateboarding history - from the first boards to handmade zines, the VHS heydays and video game era, they go through it all.

This was such a fun read, especially for someone who has been kind of on the outskirts of the skating community for years. I've watched a lot of skating videos, both past and current releases, so it was fun to see and read about the build up for VHS tapes and such.

The artwork throughout the novel has a distinct skateboard-style feel to it with orange tones being for memories or a dive into history, purple tones are for present day, and black and white are for demonstrations for simple skateboarding tricks. 

Overall, this part memoir, part history, part love letter to skateboarding culture graphic novel will capture the attention of anyone who has ever been impressed by those who can get around on the four wheeled piece of wood.