The best comics of 2025 keep getting stronger, as this month’s list is full of banger after banger, including three new graphic novels inside my top 15 of the year.
In addition to this month’s favorite reads, you can also check out Comic Book Herald’s official Mid-Year top 30 comics.
You can find the (near) full 2025 list of all my favorite comics this year on Bookshop. I’m up over 85 for the year! Don’t hesitate to let me know any of your favorites I may have missed via dave@comicbookherald.com!
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Gaza in My Phone
For 120 pages, Mazen Kerbaj holds up the horrors of Gaza and the ongoing slaughter, one brutal political cartoon at a time. Kerbaj is a Lebanese cartoonist and musician, born in Beirut, and tackles the “complexity” of Gaza with clear-eyed humanist simplicity. Sometimes Kerbaj simply states a factual detail so horrifying it leaves me nauseous – a doctor amputating his own son’s leg without anesthesia, and his son dying during the operation – and sometimes the page is boiling with rage, tears and righteous indignity – “They cannot silence us all”. For the duration, Kerbaj makes one demand of his readers: Don’t look away from the horror. Don’t get used to it. This cannot stand.
The Knives (Criminal)
It’s been true for a while, but evaluating Brubaker and Philips annual graphic novels is more an exercise in comparisons to their own incredible catalog than it is “the field.” Passing on an entry in their noir-comics perfection is the equivalent of passing on pizza for dinner. The question isn’t whether you want pizza; it’s how does *this* pizza compare to *other* pizzas (I swear I’m not writing this from a Lou Malnati’s, although now that you mention it…).
While less overtly “comics about comics” than the excellent “Bad Weekend,” The Knives pulls from Brubaker and Phillips experiences with Hollywood adaptations, and the allure of thinking you made it in Tinseltown. It’s an interesting way of circling back with the Criminal Universe that’s been in our lives now for nearly 20 years, but I had a strange sensation of the work feeling almost too close to autobiography. Like… I think I’d rather listen to Ed Brubaker talk about these Hollywood experiences in real life. Maybe I’m too inside baseball, but honestly, I just learned who Cal Releigh was yesterday, so that can’t be right.
For me, The Knives is at its best focusing on Angie, making huge mistakes, running prank Black Cat burglaries, and falling into vast criminal networks. I do feel like her relationship with Jacob is a little too close to what this duo produces in Reckless, but honestly, when it’s this expertly crafted, how about we just enjoy the ride.
Listen, The Knives is good. I love reading anything by this creative team. It’s not among my favorites of their work, though. The expectations are SKY HIGH. I bet the next one will hit.
Also, if you’re going to have a character working on a comic strip called ‘Basil Beaver, Private Eye’ about a Beaver detective, you should be legally obligated to produce versions of that strip within your graphic novel. I’ll see the entire Criminal team in court.
Trouble! At Coal Creek
The older I get, the more value I see in adages. Doomed to repeat history feels particularly pertinent these days, as American regimes of power favor muting, silencing or outright censoring history instead of the hard work of learning from it and improving. It’s an embarrassment, but on a personal level, curiosity and discovery can help me mitigate the feelings of hopelessness. Austin Sauerbrei’s new graphic novel Trouble at Coal Creek is an effective antidote in this regard, telling the story of the 1891 Coal Creek War in Tennessee.
Sauerbrei’s cartooning roots the seemingly complicated historical rebellion of Tennessee coal miners in personal relationships, combining the factual with relatable imagination. The long and short of the history here is the Coal Creek miners were abused and forced into awful contracts with the mining corporations, who had the full backing of the Tennessee government’s overreliance on a massive coal economy. When the miners went on strike, predominantly (entirely?) black prison laborers were brought in as forced labor in part of a “convict leasing system” that was as good as slavery.
It’s impossible to avoid the modern parallels of this saga – now 135 in our nation’s past – whether rooted in Ava Duvernay’s 13th documentary, or the ways big money shape policy. If it was just an interesting historical situation, though, I could just tell you to read up like an old history dad. Sauerbrei brings excellent pacing and storytelling to the graphic novel, particularly during a primarily wordless sequence highlighting the life and abuses of one of the “convicts’ forced into scabbing. A high quality piece of work about a story that shouldn’t be forgotten.
I Ate The Whole World to Find You
Two out of three pull quotes on Rachel Ang’s Drawn & Quarterly graphic novel debut describe her work as “strange,” which is a good signifier of Ang’s surrealist approach to storytelling and making comics entirely her way. I Ate The Whole World to Find You is a collection of 5 stories – which I personally read as connected across different points in a central character’s life – which glide in and out of humor, darkness, and unreality with ease. Ang is focused here on a poetry of expression, both in a deliberately loose penciling and elimination between the barriers of linear narrative. Recapping plot here would be about as valuable as Elvis Costello’s famous “dancing about architecture.” The point is the feeling evoked in an unrequited fetish, in a cousin’s sexual abuse, and the dissolution of a relationship during pregnancy.
Drawn & Quarterly owns the corner on meditative, challenging graphic novels about relationships, and though they’re always respected, they don’t always have the steam to captivate for a whole book’s worth of attention. Ang doesn’t have that problem, with a truly unpredictable muse making for fascinating decisions over and over.
Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theatre
I’m just going to say it: This s****’s better than League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Do you really need cartoonist Tom Scioli’s Kirby-obsessed retro version of Godzilla landing smack in the middle of the Great Gatsby? Yes. Yes you do.
There’s a loving absurdity of literary I.P (hang on, let’s give F. Scott a moment to roll over in his grave) smashing together this recklessly, accompanied by the purity of a 4 year old suddenly inserting a giant dinosaur-dragon into every opportunity. For my money, the incredibly talented Scioli is always at his best at least a half-step removed from Kirby, which is probably why his IDW mash-ups are such a good time (Transformers vs G.I. Joe was another great ride before it was cool). Gatsby’s the driving center of our theatre here, but Scioli also finds time for Sherlock Holmes and H.G. Wells The Time Machine.
Now, you may be asking yourself… why? What the hell does Godzilla have to do with literary classics. And reading these issues, I was served a glorious reminder. Sometimes, the thrill of making great comics is about asking the more important question: Why the F*** not?!
Absolute Martian Manhunter
When it was announced Deniz Camp (20th Century Men, The Ultimates) and Javier Rodriguez (Zatanna: Bring Down the House, Defenders) were teaming up for the second wave of DC’s Absolute Universe, there was no doubt that their take on Martian Manhunter would be the most idiosyncratic, high-art rendition within the smash-hit line. True to form, Camp and Rodriguez mindmeld to form a hallucinogenic kaleidoscope story about FBI agent John Johns discovering a “Martian” living inside his head, working against the oncoming threat of the White Martian (ironically, this is also what the guys in my men’s league call me on the court, but that’s neither here nor there).
Camp’s at his most Morrisonian here, particularly mirroring Marvel Boy and that oddly concerning gift of Morrison’s to speak distant space alien just a little too convincingly. Camp’s one of the few writers in the Big 2 umbrella who can effectively blend the pop-action sci fi of superhero comics with a seamless integration of what it’s like to be alive in 2025. Not surprisingly, Camp’s current independent work, Assorted Crisis Events, is more direct in its zeitgeist reflection, whereas Absolute Martian Manhunter feels positively 70s Kirby New Gods or Madbomb. Reverence for the King is hardly a bad thing, but it all feels a little more celebratory of what comics have been as opposed to what they could be. Of course, even as I right that, I have to admit Absolute Martian Manhunter pushes more boundaries than anything else in the line. The bar is high for this one.
In an Absolute line defined by the visuals of Nick Dragotta and Hayden Sherman, Javier Rodriguez is the first contender to really answer the challenge, somehow seemingly improving with each new critically acclaimed venture. I’ll never really understand how Rodriguez hasn’t accelerated to Marcos Martin or David Aja style heights in popularity (maybe if we gave him a fun nickname like J Rod? It’s worked before!). Alongside Camp, Rodriguez is free here to really, truly push for unrestrained expression – unlimited Martian vision – making the rest of the Absolute line look downright traditionalist by comparison. It’s a funky fit for the nascent universe – in some ways like Peach Momoko’s untethered approach on Ultimate X-Men – although ironically, I think it’s also the first Absolute line book to directly collide with the Darkseid of this universe’s origins. Would it have been better as a Black Label standalone work? Perhaps. I’m more of the mindset that you need these kinds of curveballs in the hot young universes to give newer readers their first explosive taste of Bachalo on Shade, The Changing Man or Sienkiewicz on New Mutants. You need that book that has readers tearing at their hair thinking “I don’t know what’s happening but I love it!”
So what happens in Absolute Martian Manhunter? I don’t know. But I kinda love it!
This Place Kills Me
I’m starting to think the Tamaki’s might have had complicated high school experiences. This Place Kills Me joins writer Mariko Tamaki’s resume of instant classic teen dramas that includes This One Summer, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, and Roaming, this time out with Nicole Goux. Whether it’s with her cousin Jillian, Rosemary Valero-O’Connell or now Goux, Mariko Tamaki writing a new graphic novel is one of the surest bets in comics, particularly if you enjoy emotionally fraught teen dramas with captivating queer leads.
This Place Kills Me is told at an all girl’s prep school, where the newcomer Abby Kita stumbles upon a murder mystery that spirals into a larger school conspiracy among the Wilberton Acadmey drama society. The infusion of Nancy Drew genre into Tamaki’s now familiar skill building character and navigating sexuality is welcome, with just enough red herrings to keep the death of the story’s Juliet up in the air throughout. The lead Abby Kita, new to this school, ostracized and bullied, is arguably my favorite new character in a now loaded bibliography, and Goux is the perfect collaborator to bring her to life. Goux is a trained expert at character acting, with an innate understanding of just the right amount of orange-pink blush to add to cheeks to convey romance, embarrassment, and teen angst. Goux’s palette and approach is less splashy than Valero-O’Connell’s starmaking turn on Laura Dean (for my money, still the best of a great crop), but this duo is adept at playing to each other’s strengths to create a near 300 page work that never falters.
This Place Kills Me works as a standalone, but it also opens the door for an ongoing series of mysteries in a way Tamaki’s previous non-DC work does not. Hopefully, the work’s inevitable position among many critical year-end best of lists ensures we’re on our way to This Place Kills Me Too.
The Confessional
2025 is a bit of a downer (wah wah!) for a lot of very large and meaningful reasons (personally, I would like to live in a period of history where the words genocide and authoritarianism were significantly less applicable), but the reported downfall of Silver Sprocket is the smallest niche bummer that upset my comics equilibrium the most. I fell hard for the publisher last year, selecting them as my favorite publisher of 2025, and whether or not an individual work made it onto my personal favorites, I always enjoyed making time for a house that so effectively curated predominantly queer, diverse cartoonists telling stories *their* way. When Sprocket launched a fundraising campaign last year I bought *two* annual subscriptions. I really believed in the product.
Then, as so often happens, the beauty of the art ran into the reality of mismanagement and – that old saw – MONEY. Rumblings of late/questionable creator payment approaches exploded into an expose by Zach Rabiroff on The Comics Journal. I talked to several Sprocket cartoonists at CAKE, and all of them expressed a sense of unease, and uncertainty whether or not they’d work with the publisher again. There’s a lot more to say, but all of it cemented something I’ve been growing towards: Believe in and support creators and editors, not the institutions they serve.
As I alluded, the reason Silver Sprocket’s troubles are such a bummer is because they were/are an institution with incredible taste and ability to foster fantastic alt-comix. That’s fully on display in the amazing debut graphic novel The Confessional by Paige Hender. Set in 1922 New Orleans, 2 years into Prohibition, Hender’s stunningly illustrated work follows a young vampire Cora and her sisters/colleagues/friends as they work (and feed) at a local brothel. Cora is particularly uneasy with the state of vampiric feeding on humans (especially because she can’t feed without killing) and begins seeking the church for absolution and the hot priest (shouts to Fleabag!). Everything takes a turn when hot priest reveals he’s using patrons confessions to seek out and dispose of the worst sinners, enlisting Cora in an increasingly unhealthy relationship as they hunt together.
Hender’s fully in control of a gripping work, blending a light pink base tone with explosively sensual or violent reds, and comfortably alternating in and patiently building to the earned transformations of Cora in her full vampiric form. There’s an impressive narrative patience here as well, where Hender doesn’t play her hand too overtly until its clear hot priest has gone too far. It’s really an astonishing debut – debut! – from a cartoonist I hope to see published by anyone and everyone reading!
The Mongoose
I’ve been really impressed by the taste and young talent being developed by Montreal’s Pow Pow Press, including last year’s Eisner-winning The Jellyfish by Boum among my favorite comics of 2024. They’re back in the conversation for best of the year with Joana Mosi’s The Mongoose, an award-winning Portuguese graphic novel from 2023, now translated into English.
Mosi’s effortlessly easy style and focus on character psychologically reminds me of Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina, here in a story about a woman struggling in the aftermath of losing her husband, now obsessed with what she has decided is uprooting her small backyard garden: A questionably real Mongoose. Mosi’s cartooning is initially almost too minimalist (we may be setting a record for the sheer number of faces with zero detail on them – just blank circles of void), but quickly offset by two incredible gifts: formal innovation and pitch-perfect character-building dialog. Mosi uses panel layouts to convey invading thoughts, whether it’s that dastardly (fictional?) Mongoose, or Julia’s memories of a walk on the beach with her husband. The instincts for pacing are incredible, with Mosi completely unafraid to commit pages to two spread out panels of a garden-bed at rest.
Julia’s family is incredibly well detailed here as well, with a brother struggling to get back in a changing job market, and a “means well” but constantly critical mother masquerading critiques as aid in the way only moms can. Meanwhile, Julia gets more and more obsessed with Mongoose facts, reminding me of the way my kids get when they get a new animal facts book, but without all the clear trauma displacement. Julia’s growing obsession is this incredible line of darkly funny – panels of that cute lil’ imaginary Timon-lookin’ goof underlined by Julia’s internal “I’m going to kill him” – and increasingly tender and sad. Mosi avoids easy answers, or grand epiphanies, and roots the story in the real. Sometimes in this life, we never find that damn Mongoose after all.
Drome
I interviewed Jesse Lonergan in 2023, and while preparing for that interview, I read through the in progress pages of what would become Drome (Droma/Prime) via his Patreon. I was blown away, and more or less guaranteed that whenever the full work saw the light of day, it would be the best comic of the year.
Did Lonergan deliver on my high praise? He’s certainly close! Where past Lonergan releases have showcased a uniquely analytical visionary applying their skillset to sci-fi (Hedra, Planet Paradise, Man’s Best), on Drome Lonergan fully embraces mythology, fantasy, and a delightful love of creature design. The result is a Kirby/Starlin infused creation myth full of warriors, epic fights, and the bitter resentments of humanity.
Lonergan thinks in grids more than perhaps any comics artist I’ve ever seen, and Drome is pointedly broken into a 5×7 panel structure (even the cover displays the grid template!). If you’ve read Hedra or Planet Paradise, you know that Lonergan utilizes his panels unlike anyone, conveying movement across borders and fluent action described on the page in a way most artists leave to the imagined movement of the gutters. Drome takes the same approach but on an epic scale, carrying 300+ pages of primarily wordless story in such a way that I was completely absorbed. There’s a danger for silent comics to slip into “fast” reading, flying through pages without full immersion. Lonergan avoids that with a complexity of decisions going into every battle, every scene, where the reader needs to give themselves to the approach or be left under the cosmic stars confused and cold.
While visually stunning – just look at what comics can do! – I’ll admit the approach does come at the cost of character. Lonergan’s figures are memorable, and intriguingly crafted, but ultimately, there’s a flatness. I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say Lonergan is too calculated – there’s a tenderness to the Blue and Red Warrior’s romance, and a “somebody yeet this man into the sun” energy with the toxic masculinity of the villain. Nonetheless, there’s a layer of emotional resonance missing from Drome. Kirby’s 4th World manages it with familial drama, and Scott and Barda – but in general that’s tough to pull off with creation myths. We don’t crown our kings for nothing I suppose.
In terms of vision, ambition and sheer love of what comics can be, Drome is a triumph, and Lonergan’s most impressive work to date. If you’re a fan of the aforementioned cosmic OGs, or Copra, or anything that celebrates cartoonists putting pencil to paper and imagining new ways for lines to form, Drome is a must.
Catch up on all CBH’s favorite graphic novels of 2025 right here!
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