My Favorite Graphic Novels of May 2024

I would simply request that all of comics slow down releasing so many interesting graphic novels and collected editions. Despite my many substantial gifts and abilities, at the end of the day, I am only one innocent man.

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Hobtown Mystery Stories: The Case of the Missing Men

If you told me Kris Bertin and Alexander Forbes were adapting a popular series of middle-grade novels from the 1970s, the Hobtown Mystery Stories, I’d fully believe you. The serialized title and small-town America environment feel pulled out of time from used book store shelves, dusting off their thrills, horrors, and downright strangeness for a new comics audience in the 2020s. Yet in reality, the Hobtown Mystery Stories (which as far as I can tell ran for two volumes) are being reprinted by Oni Press after their release via Conundrum in 2017.

At times, The Case of the Missing Men feels like reading an adaptation of Boxcar Children directed by Twin Peaks-era David Lynch. Or like if Ed Brubaker was writing Friday with Dan Clowes instead of Marcos Martin. The premise is a high school group of teens form a detective club and are pulled deeper and deeper into a deeply strange town-wide conspiracy. While this is ripe for simple pleasures, Bertin and Forbes imbue the work with such tension, nightmare, and surreal imagery that The Case of the Missing Men is hard to put down.

Bad Dreams in the Night

I start at least one comic review every month with a reflection on my own ignorance about the world of comics, and this month it’s webcomics superstar Adam Ellis’ Bad Dreams in the Night. Despite tremendous popularity (dude has over 1 million followers on every social platform), I of course had never heard of Adam Ellis. It’s yet another fantastic reminder that staring too hard at the bullpens of Marvel and DC can make you intensely ignorant of where people are actually reading their comics.

Bad Dreams in the Night is a collection of short horror stories, oscillating between humorous depictions of millennial fears and genuinely unsettling body horror. The tenor, pacing and characterizations of all these initially innocuous settings building to their ultimate dread reminds me of Junji Ito filtered through the artwork of Chip Zdarsky. You can feel Ellis trying on different styles and approaches here as well, in a refreshingly honest display of an artist not afraid to experiment in a published graphic novel. Frankly, this is my kind of horror – too grim and unsettling to be considered exclusively YA, but often with just enough nod and wink under the surface that I don’t lose sleep (with the exception of Ellis’ brief recounting of a harassment campaign levied against him in 2017 – as always, real life monsters are the scariest of them all). It’s great work from Ellis, and I’m eager to explore more.

Influenca

It’s a danger to give a comic too much credit just for its premise, but Influenca‘s is so damn good. In Jade LFT Peter’s graphic novella from Silver Sprocket, a zombie apocalypse marks the 7th apocalypse the world has been through (and can remember!), and the story follows the online influencers (named here for a combination of Influenza and Influencer) who hunt zombies. It’s an erotic, queer, funny and at time tense look at the ways we both fight and post our way through what feels like the end of the world, and the relationships that help us do it.

The Harrowing

One of the easiest, surface-level lines of critical thinking in comics is identifying and celebrating when a story looks different than the norm. This can be a very simple positive – nobody paints figures like Alex Ross in Marvels, therefore it stands out to all sorts of readers – but it can also lead to some of the most reductive complaining. Name an artist, now matter how good or critically adored, and I guarantee you there is somebody (probably somebodies) calling their art trash on a pirated comic site, message board or Youtube comment. While it is not an inherent net positive, I am always, and increasingly, more partial to storytelling that feels unique, authentic and personal. Blend that with a style and approach that fits the collaborative narrative, and you have what makes comics special.

On The Harrowing, Rye Hickman and Kristen Kiesling seem to understand this. I have read so many versions of this exact YA graphic novel told with flat 6-panel grids and lifeless characters. Yes, it’s Minority Report meets One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest meets Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. But that doesn’t mean anything until we see the subtle use of color to highlight memory and premonition, or the way these teen girl’s faces scrunch into knowing panic when they brush hands with would-be assailants. Rye Hickman captures a full suite of emotion from the main cast of characters, while also recreating some haunting and violent visions of murders-to-be. Together with Kiesling, the creators build a fully-realized world around Rowan, including a full school full of girls who can predict violent crime. And then, when you inject Philip K. Dick into X-Men, with a book with this much style? Now we’re talking!

King in Limbo

Ai Tanaka’s King in Limbo, given an English translation for the first time by Kodansha this year, feels like post-pandemic science-fiction. I was fully ready to kick off this introduction talking about my limited appetite for pandemic-fiction, and how hard it is to pull that off in comics, only to realize that Tanaka first released the manga in Japan in 2016! While it’s hardly the first sci-fi to deal with the horrors of rampant disease (what’s up junior high Dave reading Andromeda Strain!), King in Limbo is just prescient enough to anticipate elements of social upheaval caused by the mass casualty of a pandemic. Better yet, Tanaka’s sci-fi is a calm, meticulous exploration of Andromeda Strain meets Inception, with The Sleep as the big virus, and “Dream Divers” as the only individuals who can help pull the infected out of their sleeping death.

It’s a relatively slow burn, but builds to an intriguing world of conspiracy and Big Pharma secrets without sounding like Aaron Rodgers after a weekend at a darkness retreat.

Transformers Vol. 1: Robots in Disguise

Daniel Warren Johnson and Mike Spicer are a walking advertisement to pursue your creative vision without compromise. This is perhaps surprising given their latest entry – an instantly Eisner-nominated Transformers run – is part of the hottest corporate IP synergy in 2024 comics, with the Robert Kirkman driven Energon Universe. Yet even within those boundaries, Johnson and Spicer produce a work akin to their masterful catalog of gems like Murder Falcon, Do a Powerbomb, and Extremity. It’s the platonic ideal of how big-name comics should work – all the audience of a nostalgia-franchise with all the creative freedom of a creator-owned book.

I’ll tell you right now: they’re gonna win a damn Eisner for best ongoing comic with this formula. Marvel and DC, where’s your head at?

Personally, I don’t get the same charm and literally out-of-this-world characterization as Transformers: More than Meets the Eye by James Roberts and Nick Roche, and if I’m being well and truly honest, Johnson’s very much in danger of repeating himself to the point of cliché (he’s Jeff Lemire’ing all over these sad Dad stories!). Nonetheless, there is an unquestionable thrill in the tactile, pen-to-paper sheer style, and the way Johnson and Spicer make you believe Cybertronian wrestling makes metal look like it’s made of Gumby. The approach injects Optimus Prime with pathos, isn’t shy about sidelining or destroying your childhood faves, and is the kind of comic you can hold up and wave about at a protest of AI taking over the creative arts. It’s good. And I’ll tell you again: It’s gonna win a damn Eisner!

The Ribbon Queen

With Hellblazer, Preacher, and The Boys to his name, Garth Ennis is widely regarded as one of the best and most successful comic book writers of the past 35 years. Post-Boys, though, I was under the impression Ennis had fully retreated to his love of War Comics, a genre I simply didn’t care to follow. So just like that, a modern master completely fell off my radar: I haven’t read a Garth Ennis book since the spiteful cynicism of a Boys binge turned me off to the comics well over 6 or 7 years ago.

After reading The Ribbon Queen, I suspect I have a lot of catching up to do. Ennis partners with Jacen Burrows (speaking of underrated recent resumes) on The Ribbon Queen, via the “oh yeah, remember them!” AWA publisher, and it’s a gripping smooth ride through terror, revenge, and more flayed skin than New 52 Joker could even stomach. It’d be one thing if Ennis and Burrows were just flexing on all the ways to set up evil men getting their skin peeled off layer by layer by an ancient spirit, but the ambitions of The Ribbon Queen are astonishingly multifaceted. Ennis and Burrow’s lead, Detective Sun, is an Asian woman on the NYPD, and the book bounces back and forth between issues of policing through Black Lives Matter, institutional racism, patriarchal society, and a host more. They’re the kind of issues that Boys era Ennis would have treated with all the wrong amounts of Juvenile shocks, and the kind Preacher era Ennis and Steve Dillon could have lent a needed outside viewpoint towards. The Ribbon Queen leans more towards the ladder, rarely overstaying the length of the sermon, and organically weaving it into what is ultimate a horror-comic asking the question: could a human jaw go down a bath drain? Deeply impressive work from masters I’ll be reading more of as soon as I’m able.

Singularity

Singularity is a concept comic from composer Bear McCreary (who scored everything from God of War to Outlander to The Rings of Power) with scripting from Mat Groom and more art teams than you could fit inside a black hole (including personal fave Rod Reis). The 144 page comic released via Image is a companion piece to the concept album of the same name, and while this would normally make the comic an afterthought, it’s actually quite good. I read the whole thing in a single sitting and love the sci-fi premise, the use of new art teams for every reincarnated life, and the message on the ultimate question: what’s all this for?

So here’s the challenge: For a Jonathan Hickman scholar (see also: nerd) like myself, Singularity reads like a greatest hits of Hickman’s works across Powers of X, Decorum, Secret Wars, and beyond(er). There are two ways of interpreting this. One is some nebulous accusation of plagiarism, which I don’t buy (Bear McCreary might not even known who Jonathan Hickman is!). The other is that some Hickman comics are a source of inspiration, in much the same way Claire North’s The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August inspired Hickman’s own narratives for Moira in House and Powers of X. All art is influenced one way or another, this one simply wears it on its sleeve very openly, or shares DNA with a very popular source. But within those inspirations, everyone involved does great work!

At the end of the day, here’s what matters: At its best, Singularity improves on some of Hickman’s concepts, and on average, lovingly recreates visual spectacles of a reincarnated life across the multiverse. It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of other sci-fi reference points outside of Hickman anyway: It’s Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow but across alien planets throughout the entire multiverse, with a heaping dose of Jim Starlin’s cosmic entities mixed in for good measure. It’s a really satisfying graphic novel executed through an anthology approach that makes narrative sense. And yeah, RIYL Hickman comics!

Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey

Like a lot of Americans, I’ve come to two realizations as I’ve entered my 30s (I should hope I’ve come to at least two revelations, but let’s not get cocky): 1) There are chasms of American history that we barely grazed in school and 2) Holy mother of Topanga do immigration stories call into focus how effortlessly I take my lot in life for granted. Edel Rodriguez’s Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey, an autobiographical, gorgeously articulated account of Cuban history, leaving Cuba during the 1980s, and making a life in America, is the latest wonderful example of art that helps close those gaps.

Through evocatively textured reds and blacks, Rodriguez expertly blends the rise of Fidel Castro’s communism with his lived experience growing up in Cuba, and the terror-tension of trying to get out. As a generation removed from truly understanding the pressure of Cold War communism, I’m often somewhat skeptical of the vilification of the ideology. Is it really so cut-and-dry evil, or is that just the American propaganda version of events? Works like Worm (and recent favorite reads like Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir) to highlight life from inside the red walls, and how desperate Rodriguez’s family was to escape the tyrannical control of materials and the constant, prying eyes into their every movement. It’s miraculous perseverance, unthinkable choices for a parent to have to make, and essential comics-making.

Hexagon Bridge

Like any sane comics fan, I passed on Richard Blake’s Hexagon Bridge because the clean, striking covers looked like Jesse Lonergan’s work on Planet Paradise or Hedra, and I thought maybe they were an egregious form of imitation. Ya know, instead of getting excited about a new artist sharing Lonergan’s sense of space and design. As usual, I’m an idiot, and Blake’s Hexagon Bridge is one of my favorite comics in recent years.

Hexagon Bridge is glorious cartoonist sci-fi, and the single closest approximation of a Christopher Nolan film via comics that I think I’ve ever read (complimentary!). The fact that this is Blake’s graphic novel debut is concerning. No one should be this good this fast unless they’ve already been replaced by the advanced AI navigating the mysterious maps of Blake’s work! Yes, Hexagon Bridge has huge RIYL Hickman/Nolan/Asimov energy, but it captures a wholly unique atmosphere, not to mention a rare innate ability to trust the reader to take care of the damn exposition themselves. It’s AI sci-fi but without any of the ripped-from-the-headlines ham-fisted approaches the genre is currently overwhelmed with. Much like Adley’s parents, Hexagon Bridge is a whole world to get lost in, and if you’re like me, the only time you’ll feel dissatisfaction is when the work suddenly ends against all your wishes.

DOOM (2024)

Sanford Greene and Jonathan Hickman’s DOOM one-shot is my favorite Marvel comic book of the past 4 years, and in a perfect world, would serve as the launching template for a Marvel Black Label series of creator-driven out-of-continuity prestige comics. Tying Hickman to a project will get the lion’s share of attention – especially on a character he’s so well known for across Fantastic Four and Secret Wars – and he plays to his love of Valeria Richards and Doom’s relationship, calling back to many of his Doom’s greatest hits moments.

The real star, though, is Greene, the artist of the excellent Bitter Root, making a star turn as co-plotter and artist across 48 pages of Marvel cosmic glory. The premise is hardly unprecedented – Doom vs Galactus at the end of the Marvel Universe as we’ve known it – but Greene’s virtuosic visualizations give the rarest of joys across modern Marvel Comics: an artist fully empowered to explore their own style with the full use of these toys we’ve built such adoration for over decades. It calls to mind the potential of Peach Momoko’s Ultimate X-Men, or better, Tradd Moore’s artistic showcase on Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise.

It is joyful, it is so rich and living with detail you could pour over these pages for a full childhood, and by DOOM, it’s why I can’t quit Marvel Comics.

Punk Rock Karaoke

If Bianca Xunise’s Punk Rock Karaoke was just a playlist of punk rock deep cuts interspersed with canon classics by X-Ray Spex and Fugazi, it’d still be one of my favorite comics of the year. Fortunately, the “now playing” soundtrack recs are mere icing on a beautifully designed world of punk rockers and Chicago friends navigating the steps from high school to adulthood. Xunise’s Southside is full of a lived-in amateur music scene, wondrously full queer characters, and a fluid style of Chibi by way of Bryan Lee O’Malley. Punk Rock Karaoke is bursting with charm, radiant colors, and the importance of the bonds of community.

No joke, queuing up the referenced punk cuts while I read this graphic novel was one of my favorite comics experiences of the entire year. The only good reason to stop reading at any point is if you’re not in a good place to blast Ministry. Punk Rock Karaoke is one of my favorite comic books of the year.