After committing harder to tracking the year’s best comics than any other year of Comic Book Herald, I’m mostly spending this month using any free time on everything but comics before I dive back in headfirst in the New Year. I’ve particularly enjoyed Marvel Rivals (what’s up Jeff the Land Shark’s big moment!) and finally cracking The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Plus, I started reading Adrian Tchaikovsky’s One Day All of This Will Be Yours on a whim, and it’s a good time. Despite my best efforts, I did also read some very good comics, and those are highlighted below, along with my 2024 comics awards!
Don’t hesitate to let me know any of your favorites I may have missed via dave@comicbookherald.com!
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Publisher of the Year: Silver Sprocket
I was quite surprised that only a handful of Silver Sprocket comics made their way into my 50 favorites of 2024 because it felt like every time I picked up a new book from the publisher this year it was a favorite (technically, Image’s 5 made them my leading publisher, although Top Shelf with 3 selections inside the top 35, including my #1 book of the year, is my number two pick). The independent publisher’s focus on supporting diverse, queer voices and their authentic visions really came to fruition this year, with an incredible slate of releases. There’s such an earnest delivery of creators telling stories the most creative ways they can, without guardrails, without overly cautious boundaries. I’m very excited about Silver Sprocket’s future, and they are my publisher of 2024. Works I recommended this year from them include: Influenca, Putty Pygmalion, Peepee PooPoo, and Bloody Mary!
Writer of the Year: Ram V
I try not to suck up to creators right to their face when I interview them, and inevitably I fail miserably. Fortunately, with Ram V, I baked this failure into my questions and just asked him straight up how he planned to celebrate his 2025 Eisner for best writer. Pitiful attempt to tell Ram how cool I think he is? Of course! It’s also 100% what I believe should happen, as no individual writer had as knockout a year as Ram V.
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My own 2024 favorites included Ram’s Rare Flavours and Detective Comics, and nearly included Dawnrunner. Mix in The One Hand/The Six Fingers gripping cyber-noir mystery and this week’s New Gods #1 (I am SO ready for this to be new favorite superhero book), and it’s an award-winning year, no question about it.
Artist of the Year: Martin Simmonds
2024 was – thank god – the year superhero fans finally remembered comics should look cool as hell, as Nick Dragotta, Hayden Sherman, Sanford Greene and Peach Momoko worked their asses off to shake up the mediocrity and raise expectations for what comes in those little pages after the cover we like to call “the story”. Any one of them would be deserving winners of this award – particularly Sherman who also excelled elsewhere – but I always factor in volume across multiple series, and for that, I can’t top the work of Martin Simmonds.
Simmonds kicked off the year with a great issue in the collected Swan Songs written by W. Maxwell Prince, before their symbiosis with James Tynion IV led to a renewed The Department of Truth and gorgeous retelling of Dracula.
Mangaka of the Year: Taiyo Matsumoto
With three volumes of Tokyo These Days – my 8th favorite comic of the year! – translated into English via Viz Signature this year, it’s an easy win for Matsumoto.
Newcomer of the Year: Patrick Horvath
Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees is a damn perfect 6 issue debut, merging Dexter and the Berenstain Bears into an unwholesome masterwork of comics-making. Can’t wait to see what Horvath brings to the table next.
Superhero Comic of the Year: DOOM (2024)
The proper contenders for supes comic of the year are Ultimate Spider-Man, The Ultimates, Absolute Batman, Detective Comics, Fantastic Four, Aliens vs Avengers, and my winner, the DOOM one-shot by Sanford Greene and Jonathan Hickman. I’d be happy with any of those as winner, but I have to give it to Greene’s ability to fully capture the potential of Doctor Doom and Marvel Comics if an artist is allowed the appropriate latitude to be themselves. Narratively, DOOM is a bit of Jonathan Hickman’s greatest hits packaged into a neat cosmic What If, but it’s Greene’s mastery of explosive panels, cosmic perspective, and Doom design that transforms this into an all-timer for the all-time greatest villain.
Humor Award: I Heart Skull-Crusher
I’ll tell you what, if you can find me a funnier first issue than I Heart Skull-Crusher #1, I’ll hand you this award with a smile on my face. But I don’t think you can!
The One Piece Award for Most Slept-On Long Running Comic: Monstress
The problem with consistent excellence in comics is it gets ignored come award-season. This is nothing new – there’s a reason Karl Malone won a 1997 NBA MVP award over Michael Jordon, and it ain’t cuz he was better! – but it’s worth highlighting a direct-market comic kicking ass at 50+ issues because what even is that list right now? Don’t worry, I made it:
Saga – 71 issues in Jan ’25
Monstress – 55 in Feb
Savage Dragon – 274 in Feb
Spawn – at 360, but I did say “kicking ass”
And then there are two 50+ issue runs I don’t know anything about in Grimm Fairy Tales #91 and Exciting Comics #50. The point: It’s a short list, and Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda are doing my favorite work on it.
(If you’re wondering, Ice Cream Man is at issue #43 in Jan and Something is Killing the Children is at 40. Those are your “over 40” issue non big IP runs!).
The What If?! Award for Biggest What If of the Year: What if Donny Cates hadn’t gotten injured and ran the Ultimate Line?
Apart from Ryan North and Jonathan Hickman written comics, Marvel’s Ultimate Line is the thing sustaining my interest in my longtime favorite publisher. And man is it wild to consider how different it could have been! Writer Donny Cates finished his Venom run with a massive teaser regarding The Maker, and his return to what appeared to be the original Ultimate Universe. Seeing as Cates and Stegman’s Venom played most heavily with the Maker, presumably Cates would have been the one leading up Ultimate Invasion, the four issue miniseries that Jonathan Hickman and Bryan Hitch used to kick off this Ultimate 2niverse. Indeed, thanks are given to Cates on Ultimate Invasion‘s credits page, but unfortunately he suffered a severe head injury, to the point of extreme memory loss. On a human level, I hope Cates is recovering as well as he can, and it’s been nice to at least see him getting some at bats on the Sony Spider side of things with the inclusion of Knull in the latest Venom movie.
If I ever talked to Cates, I’d be most curious to hear just how different his plans for the Ultimate 2niverse would have been. Because Ultimate Invasion feels very much like a Hickman’s greatest hits (Shadowy Cabals making plans for the world in secret), with no mention of how the Maker got from the conclusion of Venom to this new universe. Would Cates have actually played more with the OG Ultimates line? When he’s well enough, that would honestly be a great What If book for Marvel to publish in its own right.
The Chicago Bulls/Bears Award for Biggest Disappointment: Fall of the House of X
I almost can’t believe that Krakoa X-Men comics were still coming out earlier this year. It’s not a dream if it’s real, I suppose. I’ve said more than my fair share on the end of Krakoa and what it signified, so it’s quite easy for me to pick Fall of the House of X as the biggest comics disappointment of the year. At the moment, it’s my 6th least favorite comic of all time, just edging out Dazzler the Movie.
Much like my terrible sports teams, it’s looking like we’re gonna be stuck here for a while, too. It was fun while it lasted X-fans!
My Favorite Comics of the Month!
A sweet, thoughtful, charming look at middle-grade romance and how love of books can form lifelong, meaningful bonds. Jeremy Whitley, Cassio Ribeiro and Nikki Foxrobot deliver a proper middle-grade / YA graphic novel that feels like a deeply lived in romance full of diverse sexuality, gender, and disabilities. It’s the kind of comic where I’m first and foremost swept up in the tensions of new teen friendship (and maybe more!), while simultaneously learning about a form of cerebral palsy and how lead character Neesha navigates. Being tricked into learning and expanding my horizons while reading comics? The audacity!
Best of all – there’s meta Manga within the comic! I’ll never say no to comics within comics, and Neesha and Gabby’s hunt for their long lost manga is the perfect recipe for teen questing. Really enjoyable queer romance that takes full advantage of the medium, and is highly recommended for younger readers who may need to see these aspects of themselves on the page!
In truth, my biggest hesitation with the new standalone graphic novel from DIE creators Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans (letters by Clayton Cowles) is that I didn’t get it, and it feels like I should! In a post-apocalyptic rapture, Gillen and Hans create a world of strange giant, celestial (in both the literal and Kirby sense) alien invaders, roving wolfpacks, and tiresomely violent Mad Max gangs. We follow three women seeking to survive a madcap landscape where almost everyone disappeared, and these giant aliens are here for something. It’s Arrival by way of The Iron Giant, and Hans cyber-paintings have never looked better, particularly as her color palate here rivals Christian Ward’s finest explosions of pinks and blues.
But yes, by book’s end, I’ll admit I felt mildly annoyed that Gillen’s themes didn’t hammer me over the head with revelation. I didn’t sit down in my reading chair with Aphex Twin roaming the airwaves around me in order to not have my life changed after all. Make me cry, dammit!
Looking back, this is a ridiculous critique of a work I couldn’t put down, and that actually states its thesis very directly by book’s end (“the time we have is the time we have”). So I have two options here: Shrug my shoulders at the graphic novel, or admit I was being a bit dense and recommend it wholeheartedly to you. Honestly, I can’t decide. Guess you’ll have to read for yourself and see.
Shouts to Arpad Okay for turning me on to Rafael Zaiats gorgeous, expressionistic Makinaphobe, a self-published work of pure action-adventure vibes and the power of a cartoonist following their own direction. Every page of Makinaphobe offers some of the most exciting indie cartooning you’ve ever seen – it’s like turning to look at your high-school desk neighbor’s notebook and discovering their Dragon Ball fanfic is the coolest thing anyone’s ever made. I’ve spent a lot of this year waxing poetic about small-press indie works, and so much of the time it’s how directly the connection feels between pen-to-paper to my hands. Makinaphobe is clearly months of labor, but the purity feels like you could have watched Zaiat draw these pages at a table in artist alley at your favorite comic con. I can’t draw for anything, but Makinaphobe makes me want to grab paper, markers and create. What’s the story about? I have no idea! I don’t care! I still want to flip through these pages forever.
The first thing that stands out to me about Rick Parker’s Drafted is how Parker infuses humor and self-deprecation into the Vietnam era graphic memoir genre. It’s not all a laugh riot, but Parker’s explorations of what it was like to get drafted for Vietnam and learn to drive a tank emphasizes the absolute absurdity of the whole affair for the then young man. Vietnam memoirs are decidedly not my genre, but this honest, at times quite vulnerable account of simply being drafted for this insane war – to my knowledge, Parker never served in the ‘Nam – is sturdily and compellingly told. Perhaps the highest praise is that in a literary genre so well-worn, Parker’s accounting feels genuinely unique.
I’ve written a lot this year about all the inane and ludicrous reasons I’ll take a shot on reading a comic I know nothing about (these have ranged from “shiny cover” to “referenced My Bloody Valentine in the author bio”). For Who Killed Sarah Shaw, the only reason this fell into my hands was because I connected with author Frankee White on Bluesky and knew he’s from Chicago. So when I saw White asking if critics wanted a copy, I lucked out!
Who Killed Sarah Shaw is true crime through the lens of a flailing podcast, where documenting cold cases spirals into an honest-to-god last ditch attempt to solve a decades-old murder. White and Adam Markiewicz (art/letters) capture a heartfelt, deeply lived-in small town, with all the comforting familiar beats of a murder mystery. The secret sauce in the early going is how White and Markiewicz develop charismatic, emotionally invested leads, undergoing their own personal, relational, and professional challenges in the midst of one town’s emerging secrets. As a whole it reminds me of one of the best films I watched this year, Vengeance, ways of emphasizing the very human motivations behind the interest in real stories that have caused such pain.
Blacksad: They All Fall Down Pt. 2
There are two kinds of comic book fans: Those who love Blacksad, and those who haven’t yet heard of the neo-noir cat detective. If you’ve already fallen for Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido’s intricate Chinatown reimagined with a wizened black cat in the role of expert P.I., then let this serve as an announcement that a new volume is now available in English. You already know you must read it.
For those less familiar with Blacksad, here are the words one uses in a Blacksad recap: noir, anthropomorphic, sexual, gorgeous. Don’t start here: but do start your Blacksad journey today.
I’m a sucker for “how the hell did Albert Einstein come up with the theory of relativity” books, and Ken Krimstein’s Einstein in Kafkaland comes up with a unique angle I certainly haven’t read before. Krimstein’s abstract water colors depict a period of time from 1911 to 1912 when Einstein and family moved to Prague, then home of Franz Kafka. If finding a way to historically and playfully merge the lives of emerging giants of their respective fields wasn’t enough, Krimstein also layers in a strong undercurrent of Alice in Wonderland to add to the surreality of the entire enterprise. The end result is an endlessly compelling history of dueling mad scientists, appropriately avant-garde considering the nature of Einstein’s quest to undo the foundations of physics. I know substantially less about Kafka, so it may just be my own gap in knowledge, but the work reads like a history of Einstein with a strange cameo appetizer of Kafka. There’s interesting history here to be sure, but the real star of the show are Krimstein’s mad swirling abstractions, rarely settling for standard comics page layouts, and instead merging equation and smeared color to ensure a sense of lively pace to conversations between physicists. Every page has the potential for something fundamentally new, Einstein’s desperation to solve gravity gains weight with every turn. Wonderful read!
Naoki Urasawa is the first Mangaka I fell in love with (the list is now Urasawa, Fujimoto, Miura, Inoue, Matsumoto, Akasaka and Arakawa), and I currently have Pluto ranked as my 12th favorite comic OF ALL TIME (one spot ahead of Calvin and Hobbes, my god!). Reading all 18 volumes of Monster is the longest I’ve committed to a single manga this side of Berserk (and Chainsaw Man is catching up!). 20th Century Boys is quite literally the comic I haven’t read that I’m most excited to make time for. I’m saving it like I imagine fancy people save old-ass wine. In fact, in the time it took you to read that last sentence, I finally said, “What am I waiting for!” and went to Ebay and bought a complete set for under $200.
All of which is to say that despite that love I’ve been oddly lax, and the comics community as a whole seems oddly removed from the fact that Urasawa is on volume 8 of a new work right now. Admittedly, Asadora! is the least of the Urasawa I’ve read, but my least favorite Pavement album (what’s up Terror Twilight) still has earned repeated listens. Conceptually, Asadora! follows one remarkable young girl’s life as it’s impacted time and again by a mysterious Kaiju haunting Japan. In its way, this is Godzilla Minus One but replacing the lead with a prodigy pilot with a heart of gold. Asa gets pulled into the Japanese government’s covert operations to keep the Kaiju from interrupting their plans for the 1964 Olympics (historically, the first to be held anywhere in Asia) without sparking an international incident (most concerningly, only 20 years removed from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, America’s predicted use of nukes on a monster they don’t understand).
It’s a compulsively readable work, increasingly thrilling as Urasawa teasingly embraces monster splash pages and drug-induced mecha-robot throwdowns with said Kaiju! I realized while reading that in addition to impeccable storytelling and design prowess, Urasawa rarely fills any single word balloon with more than 10 words at a time (at least translated into English!), maintaining pace like a steam engine racing you from front-to-back (or is that back-to-front?). Urasawa’s Kaiju is part Godzilla, part dinosaur, part sea monster, and every time Asa and her wizened mentor seek to chase it off in their lone plane is as heart-racing as the last. Heading into volume 8, it seemed clear that Urasawa’s action sequences and mystery had run into a corner, so of course Urasawa flips a switch midway through the volume to avoid going stale. I’m not sure how many times we can watch Asa take on a Kaiju alone. The real center of the work is built on the backs of the supporting character work, as all Asa’s young contacts chase their dreams of pop stardom, ladies wrasslin, or running the marathon in the ’64 Olympics (with or without the aid of mystery drugs!).
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