I read two Marvel and DC volumes this month (Ultimates Vol. 3 and Absolute Superman Vol. 2) that won’t make the list of recommendations below (they’re both very readable with some strong moments, just not among my favorites), but they did inspire some larger thoughts on Ultimate 2niverse vs Absolute Universe. First off, it’s a wild time to be alive when the go-to thinly-veiled real world inspiration for Superman and Avengers comics is fighting the rise of authoritarianism in America. The metaphors are not subtle, my friends! Ultimates was a little ahead of the curve on how deliberately Camp was able to finetune Hickman’s premise into commentary on guerilla resistance with the deck stacked against you, but it does now seem to be the stock-in-trade of any relevant superhero work (see also: The superior Absolute Batman Annual #1 for the best example on either side of the ball). And it’s interesting to find Ultimates – seemingly built for this moment – losing significant steam, as Absolute Superman wields the fears of the zeitgeist for its own narrative growth.
Big picture, the dueling trendlines (Ultimates on the downswing, Absolute Superman rising) illustrates the overall impression of the lines. Absolute is built for a longer haul, whereas the Ultimate 2niverse was always built for an 18 month adrenaline shot (it’s quite literally in the premise of the Maker locked in his lil’ sci-fi dome for 18 months!). I aggressively disliked the first volume of Absolute Superman (admittedly, a lot of this was driven by comparisons to Absolute Batman and Absolute Wonder Woman), but the second volume’s showdown with Ra’s Al Ghul trying to Big Daddy supes (and Rafa Sandavol’s continued evolution into a talent worthy of the Absolute format) has me fully on board with the series. It’s still lower rung, but that means there are 5 of 6 Absolute titles what I am truly excited to read (of all the Absolute titles, Absolute Flash is certainly the 6th of them!). That’s a wonderfully strong position as these books hit one of the most dangerous moments in any superhero titles life (their 20s!).
Meanwhile over on the 2niverse, Ultimate Endgame is in the midst of a semi-controversial conclusion, and the flagship Ultimates suggests the timing is right. Camp is simply doing more compelling work now for the competition, whether its Absolute Martian Manhunter or the freshly relaunched Vertigo work with Stipan Morian. I’m still very interested in reading new Ultimates collections as they release (I’ll save my Hickman/Checchetto Ultimate Spider-Man conclusion thoughts for the trade write-up!), but not quite to the degree of anything in Absolute, and far less than I was when the first volume of Ultimates had me thinking the book was among the best in *all of current comics*. And then when you consider the rest of the line, Ultimate X-Men remains a fascinating Peach Momoko project with borderline zero shared DNA with the universe, Ultimate Wolverine is steady but unremarkable, and I’ll forget Ultimate Black Panther by the time I finish writing this… where was I?
It’s been cool to see competing universes at DC and Marvel really gunning for some “best in superhero comics” heights. But who won? Right now, it feels Absolutely clear (bazinga!).
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Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum
Sorry, you thought the creative team behind Ice Cream Man was going to publish a DC Black Label Superman book and it wouldn’t lead this month’s favorites? Have I taught you nothing?! The full creative suite behind the world’s best ongoing comic book – W. Maxwell Prince, Martin Morazzo, Chris O’Halloran, and Good Ol Neon – are here for a five issue Supes saga featuring the introduction of – drumroll – new colors of kryptonite! This being a Superman book, the work lacks the lightly hope-twinged nihilism of ICM, opting instead for lightly doom-flavored hope! Given that there’s an excellent issue of Ice Cream Man that works as homage to All-Star Superman, it’s no surprise to see Morrison/Quitely’s DNA in the approach here, gravitating to Silver Age infused impacts instead of anything attempting to modernize or overthink the way these freshly vibrant rocks change Superman (for example, one of them simply makes him reallly, REALLY big). I feared the restrictions on Clark might neuter team ICM, but instead it just allows them a likely needed breath of fresh Metropolis air.
If you’re hoping for meta-commentary and deconstruction, check your bags at the door. Team ICM plays this Black Label success straight, leaning into what it means for Superman’s greatest weakness to be “his home.” In the words of Blink 182, “This house is not a home,” ya know? Honestly, the approach here plays neatly with the James Gunn-verse, with an irrationally optimistic Superman, Lex Luthor as a highly literary Legion of Doomer, a comic-yet-in-character Batman, and on and on. The point in any Superman story when the 5th Dimension takes over is typically when I raise my hand to please leave the ride, but I’ll admit the boundless mischief of Mxypytlyk, Bat-Mite and newcomer Kal-Elf does at least afford Morazzo and co. some fun opportunities to play with form and style.
Is “The Kryptonite Spectrum” shaking up the canon and entering the best Superman graphic novels conversation? Maybe not. But it wouldn’t feel entirely out-of-place on a modern faves list. At a minimum, it’s another argument for Black Label books outside of Gotham.
Gay Mormon Dad
You probably think you know this story. And in many ways, you might. I see Gay Mormon Dad and I’m immediately thinking about a man raised in the Mormon community, not allowed to be who he is, and only in adulthood finding a way to reconcile his truth and all that trauma. And… that’s not wrong. But what Chad Anderson and Remy Burke are so effective at here is cutting through those macro-level assumptions with searingly sincere inner truth. It is easy to places stories in categorical buckets – it is not easy to truly see an individual.
Anderson’s exploration of his journey is insightful, earnest and heartbreaking, with a unique knack for pacing that expertly weaves between flashbacks and present day. Structurally, Anderson and Burke are quite smart here, breaking up the heaviness of a religion and family that disowns their own children with regular one-page illustrated poems, heightening the work’s themes and struggles. There are quite a few standout moments throughout a well-crafted graphic novel, including Anderson’s willingness to show his own (now regretful) mistreatment of a sister coming out, and his wife’s reaction to him coming out (multiple times!). The realities of Gay Mormon Dad are quite sad – as the work highlights, these stories are common in Mormon communities of Utah, not to mention religious communities the world over – but the journey is a hopeful one.
Asadora Vol. 9
Imagine Alan Moore was working on a graphic novel at least in conversation with Watchmen. The American comics apparatus wouldn’t be able to shut up about it. Meanwhile, Naoki Urasawa (Pluto, 20th Century Boys, Monster) is nine volumes into a work playing all the legendary mangaka’s greatest hits (grand mystery! giant mysterious creatures and robots! complete and utter obsession with made-up singles from the 60s!) and it’s practically crickets over here.
Admittedly, to-date Asadora lacks 20th Century Boys intrigue, Pluto’s adaptive-efficiency, or Monster’s urgency. But still, bro, it’s good! Asadora is Godzilla Minus One, minus the Godzilla (obviously our mystery Kaiju here is sliiiighly different), and with a much cooler protagonist, ace-pilot Asa Asadora. Like any Urasawa work, it’s amazing how adeptly he builds beyond the core of the work, with subplots here involving a young Japanese woman’s Marilyn Monroe inspired showgirl career, the Japanese government’s refusal to call in the military to deal with the ‘Zilla because that might mess with hosting the Olympics (lol), and the ways performance-enhancing drugs will always – always – transform you from marathon runner into cult-leader. If you’ve enjoyed anything Urasawa’s done, this continue to be a must-read. And if you haven’t, I’d have words with thee!
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
Anaïs Flogny’s graphic novel debut from Abrams follows an Italian-American immigrant’s journey into the American gangster machine, from Chicago’s late stage prohibition through the Italian mafia’s role in WWII era New York City. The protagonist, Jules, is brought into the life by an older lover, Czar, in a relationship that quickly enters murky power dynamics and both overt and more subtle forms of abuse. It’s a carefully considered, emotionally vulnerable rumination on power and organized crime’s dangerous reactions to queer love.
Flogny works light, drawing flowing, purposefully emotive characters who always occupy center stage. The work lives and dies by how clearly Flogny can sell their various reactions and interactions, and she’s more than up to the challenge. In a genre frequently full of desperate would-be Godfathers, it’s refreshing to see a creator take a new lens to these rich worlds.
Benjamin
I’m not saying I alone know the secret to your comic succeeding in today’s marketplace (although a place on the Comic Book Herald best of the year list is obviously *the* place to start), but I’m confident that in the era of multi-word comics titles, Benjamin stands alone as one of the least communicative book titles in years. Sight unseen, it’s either an overly self-serious biography comic of Benjamin J. Grimm or Cumberbatch’s long awaited tell-all memoir. It is of course neither, and instead the singular work of a purportedly deceased cult classic sci-fi author waking up in a hotel room with no memory of how he got there or why he seems to be, in fact, alive. Ironically this means that an old-timey sci-fi book title like “The Man With No Past” would have worked perfectly, so credit to everyone involved for sticking with the conviction to avoid the Dude Where’s My Car-ification of comics titles and stick with the borderline un-googleable Benjamin.
From Oni Press, Ben Winters and Leomacs, this tight graphic novella is a gloriously meta exploration of authorship and self, with a hearty side of sci-fi adoration. You can practically smell the old bookstore’s shelves as the titular Benjamin J. Carp scrolls through the unending array of paperbacks he’s written and can’t remember, like a resuscitated Kilgore Trout on the hunt for how he staged his own resurrection. It’s a strong sci-fi mystery with the kind of unexpected turns – and message – that help it avoid the trappings of readers who’ve been overexposed to authors writing about authors.
News From the Fallout
There’s something instantly inviting about Zombie stories, but that same genre-comfort can signal over familiarity. Its hard to do something different in a genre this overexposed, especially in comics where The Walking Dead became *the* cultural signifier of indie comics success. For the most part, your zombie comic won’t win because of an idea, or just the right mash-up of slightly altered ingredients. But, it can win with style and conviction. And that’s what Chris Condon and Jeffrey Alan Love tap into in News From the Fallout.
Narratively, News From the Fallout is about a 1962 atomic test turned zombie-virus outbreak, and the ways the secret history of that virus has shaped the small town. But that’s not what’s important. Love tells the terse horror entirely in black-and-white, inking nearly everything deep black with just enough give that it occasionally looks like characters are shimmering like Ditko’s Eternity. The intensity and commitment of the style is so thoroughly heavy that I kept waiting for it to break – surely at some point they’ll show us the details of this world like a regular-ass comic book! – but it never does (unless I’m avoiding a spoiler and it actually does! Who’s to say?!).
Condon matches the visual conviction with his own endearing love of backmatter ephemera, the kind of writer who read Alan Moore’s Minutemen biographies and said “I’m going to do that every time.” If you’ve read That Texas Blood you know what I’m talking about, and Condon brings the same energy here to Nevada diner menus and military missives adding color to a world without. The end result is classic zombie horror immersion and a great read.
Fantastic Four Vol. 1
For me, the health of superhero comics is understood through how many runs have a legitimate chance to go down as all time greats, or contenders for the franchise’s best. When I think of the times I most enjoyed Big 2 comics, it’s usually because the year or era has multiple contenders at a time. Whether or not something actually surpasses the impossibly high bars of Kirby/Lee Fantastic Four or Claremont and friends on X-Men isn’t really important. The point is that something’s making me think it has a chance. That’s the thrill.
I was nervous to jump back into the Ryan North written Fantastic Four, which doesn’t make much sense (FF plus One World Under Doom were among my 2025 favorites) but Marvel made the predictable-yet-obnoxious decision to relaunch the 30+ issue run with a new #1 issue (while simultaneously tying into One World Under Doom), and just… like, bad vibes, ya know? That North and new FF collab Humberto Ramos are able to muscle their way past those barriers to entry is just another reason to believe this run is something of a miracle.
I’m pleased to report that North’s time on the first family remains a modern miracle, and among my favorite Fantastic Four runs of all time. North continues the approach of placing the family in short-burst impossible sci-fi scenarios, and then scientifically familying (a word! shut up spellcheck!) their way out. Here, the challenge is first escaping from Doctor Doom scattering the 4 through different points in time, and *then* outthinking Doom’s Sorcerer Supreme infused ability to “savepoint” and rewind every battle/interaction like it’s a video game.
I’m not willing to solidify and rankings, but I will say I’d rather read this run a second time than read Hickman’s Fantastic Four a fourth time. Does that mean *anything*? Who’s to say! It’s a run in contention with the greats, though, and we need more of those!
The Shadower
You’re excited to read The Shadower by Peter and Maria Hoey. Their graphic novel In Perpetuity was one of your favorite graphic novels of 2024. You pick up your tablet to read The Shadower. It’s a water-marked review copy not fit for horizontal reading on a tablet. One strike. You forge ahead because the wait time at your local library is too long. You begin to read The Shadower.
You observe the Hoey’s working in their patented style, an emotionless, descriptive form of mathematical world-building that effectively evokes sinister dread lurking underneath. The Shadower focuses on a young actress pulled into a world of espionage as her role takes over more and more of her reality. You think of comparing the work to John Le Carré by way of Chris Ware constructing a biography of Nathan Fielder, but realize this may be a function of a limited referential palate. You consider reading a wider range of spy fiction but acknowledge this is unlikely.
You occasionally find yourself growing tired of the narrative – yes, yes, this role is consuming her – but are a devoted reader, and the Hoeys always pull you out of the doldrums just in time. Good thing. You read the ending. It’s the best ending of a graphic novel you’ve read this year. You sit down to review The Shadower by Peter and Maria Hoey.
The Voice Said Kill
One of the first comics review gigs I landed (for a now long-defunct site!) led me to an editor who pushed me to personalize my reviews. “Anyone can describe a comic, but only you can describe what *you* felt,” I imagine he said. “You’re so smart and cool. You’re destined for great – possibly the greatest – things,” I imagine he continued. The advice stuck with me, as did the comic where I first applied those lessons: The Empty Man #1 by Cullen Bunn and Vanesa Del Rey. Apart from a legacy as one of the wildest comics-to-movie trivia blurbs in history (The film version was one of the first to hit pandemic theaters in October 2020… you’re not gonna believe this, but it performed horribly!), The Empty Man introduced me to the gorgeously idiosyncratic visual stylings of Del Rey. I identified an artist due for superstardom, and while that hasn’t quite played out (if only the world at large could catch up!), Del Rey’s continued achieving critical adoration via 2018’s Eisner-winning Redlands, a cult-favorite Scarlet Witch run with James Robinson, and now one of my early favorite comics of 2026, The Voice Said Kill with Si Spurrier via Image Comics.
Spurrier’s post X-Men comics career has elevated the writer to another tier. For my money, this is effectively through Spurrier’s ability to work against type. If I’d had to describe Spurrier previously, I’d point to his work writing John Constantine or Dr. Nemesis, verbose-literary characters who never pass by an opportunity to bludgeon you over the head as the smartest guy in the room. Yet, in Step by Bloody Step with Matías Bergara, Spurrier ceded a silent work to Bergara’s visualizations, and in the most notable example of growth yet, In The Voice Said Kill, Spurrier channels Elmore Leonard with a perfectly cast Del Rey to bring the sweltering Flordia swamps to life.
Spurrier nailing a work that sidesteps Justified, Ozark and southern-broiled crime fiction felt about as likely as Taylor Swift’s Screamo-era, but here we are! The work centers around a pregnant not-technically-a-cop wildlife protection officer, as she’s embroiled deeper and deeper in webs of competing criminal plots. Told less abstractly, the work might feel too familiar – with a centerpiece you may well see coming – but fortunately Del Rey won’t allow that. You feel the dark of the marsh, the menacing shadow of the crocs, and the impossible challenge of escape with your life. Tight, beautiful, and just strange enough to keep you guessing, The Voice Said Kill is one of the year’s best.
The Woodchipper
Joe Ollman’s new collection of short stories (5 stories, at a 9-panel a page pace essentially makes for 5 compelling graphic novellas!) shows just how far empathy for the inner lives of the average American can take a master cartoonist. In each of the five stories, Ollman dives headfirst into the heads of the working class, waltzing up to slightly sensationalized moments that – with one exception! – never even come close to escaping the bounds of reality. As the narrator puts it in the work’s first story, “The Woodchipper”, nothing actually happened. And yet. As we come to find in this story, the narrator’s whole life is upended, he’s unable to function near the sound of chainsaws or electrical equipment (quite essential for construction!) after he *nearly* turns on a woodchipper before checking and finding a dumb-as-rocks colleague with his hand in the equipment trying to get out his phone. Sure, nothing actually happened. And yet.
Elsewhere we meet a bookstore employee trapped in the office bathroom during Christmas or a landlord who discovers his rental property was the site of a brutal homicide. The scale and scope of the work is relatively small (we spend most of one story in a bathroom after all!) but the urgency of what these moments mean for each character are gripping. The lone exception is the collection’s middle piece, the longest of the five, centering a security guard for a highly questionable mega-corp that experiments on animals. The curiosity for the inner life of Kara is no less rich, but as Kara befriends the vegan animal rights protestors, the work builds to the most dramatic action (and reveal!) of any story here. It’s the only one of the five works that borders on the supernatural. And yet… maybe not. Like most of Ollman’s endings, no morals are overtly declared. It’s up to us to decide what just happened.
Catch up on all CBH’s favorite graphic novels of 2025 right here!
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