The Avant-Guards Complete Collection

The Avant-Guards (collected editions) #1-3

by Carly Usdin, Noah Hayes (illustrator)

Charlie was determined to leave sports behind when she transferred to the Georgia O’Keeffe College for Arts and Subtle Dramatics, but perky and very cute barely-a-basketball-team captain Liv has other ideas! With a ragtag crew, a persistent streak, and the future of the whole league on the line, Charlie and the Avant-Guards must come together to figure out who they are on-and-off the court! Charming and hilarious characters with a lot of heart shoot their shots until the final buzzer in this hit series about love, teamwork, and basketball! Collects the complete series by acclaimed writer Carly Usdin (Heavy Vinyl) and artist Noah Hayes (Wet Hot American Summer) in one volume for the first time! Collects The Avant-Guards #1-8 and The Down to the Wire.

296 pages, Paperback

Published June 3, 2025

About the author

Carly Usdin is an award-winning filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Her first feature, Suicide Kale, won the Audience Award for Best First Feature at Outfest 2016. After playing over 30 festivals worldwide the film is now available on iTunes and Amazon Prime. In 2017 Carly served as showrunner and director for the scripted series Threads, produced by New Form for Verizon’s go90 platform. The 20-episode horror and comedy anthology series brought to life outrageous stories from internet forums like Reddit.

Carly is also the creator and writer of two comic book series for BOOM! Studios: Heavy Vinyl (in stores now) and The Avant-Guards (out in January 2019). Heavy Vinyl was nominated for a 2018 Prism award, honoring the best in LGBTQAI+ comics.

Carly has spent years making short-form narrative and branded content for clients like Funny or Die, CollegeHumor, Amy Poehler's Smart Girls, World of Wonder, CBS, Fullscreen, Astronauts Wanted, Portal A, TruTV, Viacom and YouTube. Most notably, she directed the third season of Awkwafina’s digital series Tawk. Her promo campaigns for RuPaul’s Drag Race have won One Show Awards and Promax BDA Awards.

Carly has recently completed post-production on her short film Misdirection, created as part of the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women, class of 2019. Currently she is developing several projects through her production company Scheme Machine Studios, which she owns with her wife, photographer and producer Robin Roemer.

Reviews

[Jade · Rating 3 out of 5]

The drama was so ??? Like she did mention a sister. Literally some pages before the blow up.