Not to brag (warning: impending nerd brag incoming!), but I’ve been really up to speed on the latest and greatest in graphic novels of the 2020s. In fact, I keep tabs on my favorites every month right here on CBH and in the CBH monthly newsletter. One thing I can say with absolute certainty is that keeping up to date with all the best new graphic novels and collected editions is a LOT of reading. Which of course means the 2020s are full of LOTS of great graphic novels to explore. For this exercise, I tried to pick the 25 personal favorites I’d most highly recommend.
As far as list rules and rationale, the big one here is I made myself stick to self-contained works that fit neatly in a graphic novel. So my favorite ongoing runs of the decade – Ice Cream Man, Bitter Root, Immortal Hulk, The Department of Truth, Chainsaw Man, Kaguya-sama … hey, maybe this should be its own list? – are not included below. Otherwise, a collected work published anytime after 2020 is fair game, including the collected House of X / Powers of X (even though single issues started releasing in 2019). As always, the list is limited to graphic novels I’ve read and that have been translated into English!
There are definitely plenty of critical darlings that do not make my personal top 25. I expect to hear the most about Barry Windsor-Smith’s Monsters, Daniel Clowes’ Monica, and Emil Ferris’ My Favorite Thing is Monsters Pt. 2 (if you’re starting to think that releasing a Monster-themed long graphic novel from Fantagraphics is the key to success, I can see why!). Those are interesting comics from incredible talents. They aren’t on my list! Deal with it! Or don’t! I hate conflict!
As a final note, I have no idea why I limited this to 25 graphic novels, it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever done to myself. There are so many good comics I wanted to include here, but you can find them all on the list of my favorite comics of all time, or of course, each list of my favorites for each year since 2020! I have no idea what I’m going to do when I need to update this list for the full decade, aside from probably include 100 graphic novels to save myself the stress!
Further Reading:
Honorable Mentions (AKA I can’t believe I couldn’t find space for these comics!)
Drome (2025)
The Jellyfish (2024)
Why Don’t You Love Me? (2023)
Mobilis: My Life with Captain Nemo (2023)
Roaming (2023)
Catwoman: Lonely City (2022)
The Nice House on the Lake (2022)
Thieves (2022)
25 Best Graphic Novels of the Decade!
#25) Squire
Year Published: 2022
For more, check out my interview with Nadia and Sara!
#24) Impossible People: A Completely Average Recovery Story
Year Published: 2023
#23) The High Desert: Black. Punk. Nowhere.
Year Published: 2022
James Spooner’s The High Desert is one of the most striking and memorable graphic memoirs I’ve read in years. In The High Desert, Spooner (creator of the documentary Afro-Punk) writes about finding his identity through the punk scene in high school, and how that intersects with race, culture and geography. The recollections are remarkably precise, evocative of neo-Nazi racist extremes, but also the more subtle ways racism can be tolerated by minorities for convenience and sometimes just getting through the day. Plus, the work is beautifully rendered, with rare sense of pace and spacing, and enough punk rock recs and annotations to fill up a sick playlist.
For more, check out my interview with James Spooner.
#22) The Magic Fish
Year Published: 2020
Trung Le Nguyen’s graphic novel debut is an astonishing elevation of YA coming-out stories, gorgeously rendering the story of young Tien’s struggle to share his queerness with his family. Le Nguyen merges classic fairly tales into the story to elevate the narrative beyond familiar YA tropes, imbuing it with the flowing timelessness of recent standouts like Jen Wang’s The Prince and the Dressmaker or Isabel Greenberg’s 100 Nights of Hero. The innovative narrative structure and Le Nguyen’s unique gifts as an artist allow for a deeply emotional and visually stunning work, with essential conversations around language barriers, intergenerational understanding, and the courage it takes to be yourself.
#21) The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist
Year Published: 2020
Adrian Tomine’s autobiographical depiction of losing his mind and shouting “I’ll spank YOUR ass!” at a stranger lives rent-free in my head, all day, every day. This singular, cringe-inducingly honest moment perfectly encapsulates the book’s raw vulnerability and Tomine’s unflinching self-awareness as he navigates the often-absurd world of public appearances and personal anxieties. As a history of Tomine’s experiences in comics, there are some mild shots fired at bad actors in the industry (as usual, Frank Miller takes another common L), but mostly Tomine has the scope set right at his own heart and ego.
If you like comics about life in comics (check please!), The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist is one of the funniest, most intimate autobiographies I’ve read. The work pairs neatly with Tomine’s more recent book, Q&A.
#20) Goodbye, Eri
Year Published: 2023
If we can’t cheat the rules to make room for Chainsaw Man (and, I mean, I could but I won’t!), I’m just glad Tatsuki Fujimoto can be represented with one of two excellent graphic novels this decade (You could just as easily make the case for Look Back, and I wouldn’t fight you too hard). Both works showcase Fujimoto’s distinctive blend of raw emotion, meta-commentary, and dark humor (what’s up Chainsaw Man fans!), delivered with a cinematic flair leaving them ripe for an A24 adaptation. Goodbye, Eri in particular focuses on a young would-be filmmaker, left suicidal after the death of his mother and his classmates derisive reaction to his filmed portrayal of her final days. Then he meets Eri, and suddenly a second film is in motion. It’s a gripping story of memory, filmmaking, and the blurred lines between reality and fiction, but with Fujimoto’s defining willingness to take stories in completely unexpected explosive directions.
#19) Pulp
Year Published: 2020
The relaunched Criminal was among my absolute favorites of 2019, and Brubaker and Phillips show no signs of slowing with Pulp, a standalone graphic novel that takes the “comics about comics” candy of Bad Weekend
I suspect a number of Brubaker/Phillips fans (Brulips? Phlakers?) would argue for Reckless among the decades best reads as well, which is a testament to the consistent excellency of the collaboration.
#18) Tender
Year Published: 2024
Beth Hetland’s graphic Fantagraphics debut looked me directly in the eyes, crawled under the lids, and rooted around in the slimiest corners of my brain all night. If that’s a little too gross, Tender might not be for you! This astounding work combines modern social pressures, body horror, fever dreams, expectations, grief, eating cats, and trauma like nothing I’ve ever read. Ok, fine, that’s a pretty specific combination, but hot damn if it doesn’t work under Hetland’s carefully constructed nightmare.
Tender effortlessly oscillates between the familiar patterns of adulthood (first comes love, then comes marriage, then a baby in a baby carriage!) and a creeping, sinister darkness under the current that grows to a nauseating critical mass where there’s no hiding it. Hetland isn’t the first artist to try and turn suburbia into horror, but the blend of yearning for a perfect family you can brag about onto Instagram alongside exaggerated truly grotesque scenes of self-mutilation is a rare kind of resonant. Hetland shows a confident grasp of restraint, setting scenes of suburbia in ink-washed grays and blues, but unleashing the destructive forces of angry reds and yellows during 12+panel pages of psycho-kinetic terror. I couldn’t put Tender down, even knowing it would wreak havoc on my dreams, and I’ll be reading anything from Hetland in the future.
#17) Cyclopedia Exotica
Year Published: 2021
The satire is incredibly strong – there’s a page in particular about who gets to write minority literature that I haven’t stopped thinking about – but honestly, it’s the structure that blows me away the most. Cyclopedia Exotica is almost entirely two-page vignettes, oscillating between the lives of various Cyclops, and the majority of the time it’s set-up, set-up, punchline. There are exceptions that elevate the work, but the bulk of its 225 pages find Dhaliwal trying to land a comic strip gag every two pages, and the success rate is astonishingly high for that kind of volume. Easily one of the best graphic novels of the year, and one I expect we’ll see on ‘must read’ lists for a long time to come.
#16) A Map To The Sun
Year Published: 2020
#15) Chasin’ The Bird
Year Published: 2020
Dave Chisholm’s graphic novel about the life of jazz legend Charlie Parker is one of the best dramatic biographies I’ve ever read, at once celebrating Parker’s legacy and influence while wrestling with the musician’s demons. The work is broken up according to different POV characters such as Dizzy Gillespie or John Coltrane, keeping the narrative balanced, fresh, and stylistically engaging as Chisholm shifts in and out of genre. The story itself is more than worth the asking price, but it’s Chisholm’s inventive artistic approach to conveying music and emotion on the page that makes this an immediate stand-out. Chisholm has gone on to almost single-handedly raise the bar for depictions of sound in comics – Miles Davis and The Search for Sound and Spectrum are particularly strong examples – but for me Chasin’ the Bird is the perfect setting for such remarkable visual acuity and abiding love for jazz.
#14) The Waiting
Year Published: 2021
Kim Seuk Gendry-Kim’s follow-up to 2019’s widely acclaimed Grass
#13) Kent State: 4 Dead in Ohio
Year Published: 2020
Derf Backderf’s deep dive into 1970’s Kent State massacre of college students by the United States National Guard is touching, harrowing, and 50 years after the incident, tragically relevant. The events of Kent State are both essential history and shockingly full of dramatic suspense, despite the known outcome. Even if you think you know the story, I recommend Backderf’s investigation and portrayal, and if you don’t know the story, prepare to mutter “no way” for 250 tight pages.
#12) Cornelius: The Merry Life of a Wretched Dog
Year Published: 2025
Marc Torices’ Cornelius, translated from Spanish by Andrea Rosenberg, is full of best-of-the-year ambition from top to bottom. Describing Torices’ vision here is a bit like writing a song that smells like a rainbow, but here goes: Cornelius The Dog is a cultural comic strip icon, and this book (the first of 40 volumes lol) compiles the comic strip history of the world famous character. None of this is true – of course – but these are the rules of Torices’ work, where Cornelius is deeply tied to the fictional Maiame’s cultural and political nationhood, and has been for a full 300 years. Through a chameleonic blend of cartoon styles, this volume eventually settles into a narrative in which Cornelius witnesses the abduction of Alspacka (too good for this world!) and then proceeds to botch and obfuscate all attempts to rescue her. Honestly, chameleonic is too soft a word-choice – Torices draws like his nib is caught in a time-warp flitting in and out of comic strip styles. Each panel is drawn like if he misses one the Maimese government will sue him for another lifetime of unpaid comics-making.
#11) 20th Century Men
Year Published: 2023
Deniz Camp and Stipan Morian set out with no less of a goal than putting a final rubber stamp on the superhero comics of the 2000s, transforming the influence of The Authority, The Ultimates and the MCU into the comic book equivalent of a redacted government secret history, stained in shame. 20th Century Men is an oh-so-familiar alternate Cold War, with superpowered political figures like Russia’s Iron Star playing key roles in the centralized 80s invasion of Afghanistan (A la Doctor Manhattan in Moore/Gibbons/Higgins’ Vietnam). Morian’s refusal to follow any of the clean, Jim Lee inspired rules of superhero comics grants the work authenticity, a freedom from the sanitized slop, and permission to see where all this power would truly lead. There’s a confidence of expression in Morian’s muse as liberating as Camp’s mandate to well and truly redefine what we talk about when we talk about paramilitary superhero forces.
Together, Camp and Morian are able to look directly into the eyes of empire and find it severely lacking. Perhaps well-financed militarized forces drawn by Bryan Hitch aren’t what’s best for the people. Perhaps we should wonder what blood soaks into the Earth while we look admiringly to them in the sky.
#10) Tongues
Year Published: 2025
Anders Nilsen’s Tongues wants to rise to the level of the greats, and it has all the tools to get there. Ostensibly, Tongues is a reimagining of the myth of Prometheus, the prisoner of the gods chained to a mountaintop for eternity due to his overeager infatuation with the disease of humankind (or so his family of jailors would tell you). The story of Prometheus on the mountain and the viability of the human experiment is only one of three core narratives, though, as the work spans near-present-day Central Asia with a cast of children, soldiers, monkeys and god-chickens. The scope is astonishing; it’s a challenge not to get lost in superlative. It’s the kind of work earning a pull quote referencing Maus, Fun Home, Persepolis, and Jimmy Corrigan in a single breathless name-check. Nilsen’s modern mythology possesses Moebius’ soft touch and Art Spiegelman’s experimental ambition, with the world-weary design of Frank Quitely and the panel-defying layouts of P. Craig Russell.
Honestly, the biggest thing holding back Tongues from a higher ranking is the fact that this is only part one! Hopefully by decade’s end we’ll have a complete story to consider.
#9) The Many Deaths of Laila Starr
Year Published: 2022
Ram V’s one of the most exciting creators in comics (you could make a case for These Savage Shores, Blue in Green, and several more belonging among this class), and this Boom Studios collaboration with Filipe Andrade is a certified classic right from the first issue. There’s much more going on here than a creative unit playing with mythology, as Ram and Andrade center in on the goddess of death about to put out of a job by the invention of immortality. The synergy between V’s lyrical writing and Andrade’s ethereal artwork merges for a beautifully contemplative exploration on the value of life. In many ways, V and Andrade are just as excellent on 2023’s Rare Flavours, but for me it’s The Many Deaths of Laila Starr that feels like a timeless classic passed down for generations.
#8) Ducks: Two Years In the Oil Sands
Year Published: 2022
As far as I can tell, Kate Beaton’s Ducks is the only graphic novel on this list with the kind of crossover literary appeal to make both Comic Book Herald’s best comics of the 2020s and Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2022. Step it up other comics! Beaton’s remarkable memoir about her time working in Canada’s oil sands is almost universally recognized as one of the best graphic novels of the decade, which alone speaks volumes about Beaton’s rare ability to completely and utterly pull in a wide variety of readers.
Beaton offers a deeply personal yet relatable look at the harsh realities of work in the oil sands, the environmental impact, and the complex humanity of those led to seek these opportunities. It’s a masterclass in autobiographical storytelling, both heartbreaking and profound.
#7) House of X / Powers of X
Year Published: 2020
Listen, just be thankful I didn’t put this number one. House / Powers is the coolest comics moment I’ve ever been a part of, as Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz, RB Silva and Marte Gracia redefined the X-Men for the Krakoa era. I’ve read these twelve issues more than anything else on this list, and even though the “era” itself didn’t pan out as hoped (I’m working on my gift for understatement!), the event still works as a standalone template of what superhero comics could be in an alternate universe.
#6) Sunday
Year Published: 2024
Holy hell, this comic. Olivier Schrauwen’s window into a single day in the life of his cousin is ambitious, hilarious, and downright Joycean. Sunday is a massive document of a single day, and every single thought of Oliver’s cousin Thibeault, as the 36 year old spends a day alone in his apartment achieving precisely nothing! I’m not saying this goddamn spectacle of a masterpiece is better than Ulysses, but corner me at a con sometime and buy me a beer, and I’ll happily tell you this is so much more fun than reading James Joyce.
It’s the ambition of the thing that got my attention, but it’s the humor and character that kept me through 500+ pages. Schrauwen captures this fictionalized cousin T in all his uncomfortable honest truths, and he’s both obviously awful and one of the most relatable characters I’ve read in comics! If left to our own devices, how many of us wouldn’t get loaded, fantasize about lost loves, and overthink texts with loved ones? (Cousin T’s bathtime text leads to one of the most sublime belly laughs I think I’ve ever had reading comics.)
Schrauwen’s flurry of slice-of-life, hazy memory, and cross-country escapes keep the insular thought-stream from collapsing in on itself, and wisely gives us a chance to better understand the circle of friends or acquaintances occupying T’s thoughts. Likewise, the approach allows Schrauwen to finetune an almost endless array of character acting, whether it’s depicting the actual moment or Cousin T’s half-drunk inner monologue rendition of his faux career as a (terrible) stand-up comedian.
I love this comic. I’m just saying, I’d read Sunday twice before I read Ulysses again.
#5) A Guest in the House
Year Published: 2023
Emily Carroll is on another level. Works like Through the Woods and When I Arrived at The Castle are the kind of formally inventive modern horror comics that are almost without peer. Carroll’s blend of lush, unknowable horror, tense erotica, and innate sense of spatial variance makes her one of the most fascinating storytellers in all of comics.
So naturally, for 2023’s A Guest in the House, Carroll decided to level up.
This book grabs you by the shoulders and holds you underwater until you’ve finished, alternating between the repetitive mundanity of homelife and the shocking impossible expansion of the ethereal. Put less pretentiously, it’s a ghost story, and a damn good one. The work follows Abby, newly married to a successful dentist, and the mystery and legacy of the Dentist and her new stepchild’s mother’s death. Carroll’s much too clever to play this by-the-numbers, and by the end of the book it’s quite clear that the mystery is never the point at all! It’s a thrilling, scary journey tightroping across the wobbly foundations of sanity, and exactly the kind of book that demands an immediate second reading.
But that’s just the story! Carroll’s found an incredible balance here between the black-and-white familiar comforts of dinner with the family in front of the TV, and dreams of dragons, knighthood and ghosts that explode with viscera-reds and lady-in-the-lake glowing blues. Every page turn offers a daring reveal, every choice measured and no space wasted for effect.
#4) Mary Tyler Moorehawk
Year Published: 2024
Right up front, I’ll admit that the mere suggestion of a comic pulling from David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves is exactly the kind of English Major snobbery lab-tested to impress me. At the same time, those are outlandish claims to make about your graphic novel, especially for an up-and-coming creator like Dave Baker. Heading into Baker’s Mary Tyler Moorehawk I was both prepared to be floored and pretty skeptical that the work could live up to its own literary ambition.
Mary Tyler Moorehawk is my favorite comic book of 2024, and on the shortlist for my WIP Mt. Rushmore of vital reads this decade. Baker’s combination of DIY adventure comics, like a fanzine riffing on Alan Moore and co.’s Tom Strong, and magazine columns from a not-so-far-flung American future where physical media has been purged, wears all its ambitions so earnestly that I couldn’t help but fall in love. It captures one of the underlying similarities of all my “Mt. Rushmore” contenders this decade: Naked, raw ambition and the bravery to say, ‘This is what comics can be in MY hands.’ It’s the kind of comic that makes me want to make comics, read comics, live comics, breath comics.
#3) Shubeik Lubeik
Year Published: 2023
For an English translation of a modern masterwork, we have Deena Mohamed’s Shubeik Lubeik, now translated from the original Arabic via Pantheon (the series originally ran as 3 distinct parts from 2017 to 2021). Mohamed’s carefully constructed economy of magic wishes drives an astonishingly rich not-so-alternate reality where the wealthy can afford “1st Class” wishes that can grant them nearly anything, and those in need are left to take their chances with risky “3rd Class” wishes. Through all the detailed exploration of wish manufacture, sale, and legality, there’s a character driven, intersecting story of a Kiosk vendor with three licensed first-class wishes just waiting to be sold and used.
Shubeik Lubeik draws from Salman Rushdie, Arabian Nights, modern marketing techniques, and Jonathan Hickman-esque infographics to craft something wholly unique and captivating. It’s a brilliant use of fantasy to elucidate a metaphor so plain it’s like staring out the window. Even after 500+ pages, I still wish there was more.
#2) Superman Smashes the Klan / Dragon Hoops
Year Published: 2020
Combining two works into one entry for my second favorite graphic novel of the 2020s feels like an appropriate way to recognize Gene Luen Yang’s 2020 heater.
With Superman Smashes the Klan, Yang and Gurihiru take inspiration from the incredible 1940’s radio show “Superman vs the Clan of the Fiery Cross,” and deliver a modern yet timeless tale of social injustice and doing what’s right in the face of great hate. From the gorgeous all-ages designs of Gurihiru to the essays about America, racism, and life as an Asian-American by Yang at the end of each issue, this is as essential a comics work as you’ll find.
Elsewhere, all I needed to hear was Gene Luen Yang and “basketball comic” before trying to jam my credit card into the closest apparatus I could find. Published by First Second, Dragon Hoops is an autobiographical account of Yang’s time teaching at a California high school on the verge of their first state championship.
Essentially, Yang is not a sports fan, meaning that even though I am, his focus is on the character’s, the struggles of crafting new stories, and the way legacies can influence our present. Every moment spent reading Dragon Hoops is pure joy, making it my favorite comic of 2020!
#1) It’s Lonely At the Centre of the Earth
Year Published: 2022
Zoe Thorogood’s remarkable honesty regarding depression and suicidal thoughts is elevated through wry humor, inventive formatting, and just absolutely unfettered creativity. It’s a graphic novel that instantly enters comics’ formidable autobiography cannon, and holds its own with the likes of Fun Home, Persepolis, and yes, Maus. Thorogood blows the roof off what is expected of the form, with so many stylistic twists and turns it’s like David Bowie’s career synthesized into 200 pages. The entire time I was reading I just kept wanting to turn to my neighbor (usually a toddler) and dumbfoundedly remark, “This is utterly incredible.”
Simultaneously, all of this also feels like celebrating Thorogood’s very serious mental health challenges, on full display no matter how uncomfortable. I think for that reason, I don’t want to see another work that’s anything like this from Thorogood! But given the reinvention and ability to channel raw hopelessness into something so beautiful, I have no doubt whatever comes next will be a new kind of remarkable.
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