It’s the final month before best of the year lists are finalized! Whereas other lowly comics critics suddenly have to organize their favorites, I’ve been been preparing all year! Take that you fools!
This month’s selections include a few fine graphic novels that will make their way onto the big list, as well as a few great reads that arguably didn’t even come out this year (I have my reasons!). If I play my cards right, this will mark the monthly finale of my favorites this year, as I plan to spend all of December 2025 finishing 20th Century Boys, starting Vagabond, and banging my head against the wall while playing Silksong.
In addition to this month’s favorite reads, you can also check out Comic Book Herald’s official best comics of 2025.
You can find the (near) full 2025 list of all my favorite comics this year on Bookshop. The annual list is right around 100 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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Bridge Planet Nine
Jared Throne’s Bridge Planet Nine from Top Shelf Productions is a shot of straight sci-fi pumped directly into the Asimov and Le Guin receptors in my brain (ask me anything about brains, I know tons!). At my most critical, I could argue Bridge Planet Nine is predictable, hardly doing anything ground-breaking. At my most relaxed… who cares?! It’s a sci-fi heist onto a supposedly dead planet that unravels a grand corporate conspiracy… in space! Throne’s careful black-and-white cartooning is clear and expertly paced, reminiscent of Phil Hester or early Invincible era Cory Walker. It’s a grand old time, and Throne will be a fun one to watch.
The Once and Future Riot
Joe Sacco is firmly entrenched now as an all-time comics hall-of-famer, with a personalized form of investigative journalism now reaching millions of new readers in the vital Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza. Sacco brings Hunter S. Thompson to Comix, while retaining a focus on exploited, undervoiced global communities. This has meant actually speaking in depth with the people of Palestine, the indigenous Canadian Dene, and now in The Once and Future Riot, the Hindu and Muslim communities of India’s Uttar Pradesh. The work centers around the event and fallout of 2013’s Muzaffarnagar riots, which led to the registered deaths of 42 Muslims, 18 Hindu Jats, hundreds more injuries, and a calculated 50,000 Muslims displaced or left without their homes. Sacco’s work effectively illustrated that although these events took place 12 years ago, the tensions between religious communities in the region are still hotly felt and unresolved.
Whereas Paying the Land allowed Sacco’s art to breath and testify to the beauty of nature, The Once and Future Riot is *crowded,* overflowing with bustling movement and furious rioters united in their rage. Like most of his work, this graphic novel is driven through a wide-variety of conversations with various community leaders, and in some cases victims. One of the trickiest parts of The Once and Future Riot is that perspectives and misinformation shift depending on which side of the violence a speaker falls, meaning various claims about the actual fallout are shrouded in heaps of lies (from both religious leaders and politicians!). Sacco works to poke through these fictions – by tracking and speaking to the actual victims – but I’ll admit, his characteristic sarcasm made it especially hard to follow given my lack of familiarity at the outset. Nonetheless, in a world where genuine journalism is harder to come by than ever, I’m especially appreciative of the orders of magnitude harder Sacco works than most to get his stories. Even if there are layers missing from this particularly depiction, the work raises awareness and calls for your attention.
We All Got Something
Comics does not lack for autobiography about broken hearts and failed relationships, but the thing that sets Lawrence Lindell’s new graphic novel apart is the *pacing* and trust in the reader. Lindell’s graphic stand-in is maddeningly tight-lipped when it comes to details – it’s a long story, he repeats – as we’re left to wonder what exactly happened that ended his relationship, brought him home from abroad, and put him in a deep depression. In a tight 150+ pages from Drawn & Quarterly, Lindell proves himself as a cartoonist capable of unique storytellling choices that immerse us in the specifics of a bi-polar fueled crisis of confidence, while remaining widely applicable to the full human experience.
While it’s perhaps a platitude, Lindell also does a great job exemplifying the inner depths of “we all got something,” or the simple notion that each and every one of us is fighting some kind of battle. Perspective is certainly a must, but this can also go too far the other way where we start to think our own struggles don’t matter, or aren’t worth attention, simply because they are not as apocalyptic as some perceived “real problem.” For Lindell, this manifests as self-awareness about the impact of bipolar mental health, and the ways that shapes a willingness and desire to pursue creativity. None of this is overt – it simply pulls through an expertly crafted series of conversations and memories, into a slice of life fully felt.
A Strong Woman and Other Stories
Valentine Gallardo’s collection of 9 short stories is my favorite entry in Fieldmouse Press’s experimental, supremely well-curated Winter selection of comics. Gallardo’s chameleonic cartooning flits in and out of styles and degrees of realism, but perpetually retains extremely relatable neurotic concerns that we’re probably not doing life right. The selection could be roughly categorized as experimental slice-of-life, with Gallardo showing a particular knack for distilling the internal worries of modern technology and social pressure. I gravitated towards the stories that slipped in a dose of magic, whether in Super Secret Werewolf Club (I’ll be honest, cartoonists drawing awesome wolves is like 90% of the key to my heart) or My Trusted Assistant (which expertly dissects AI/Voice assistants and their impact on cognitive function and creativity).
In general, I find comics reliving the pandemic unreadable, but Gallardo’s The Lockdown Party defies expectation, escalating into a bad trip mixed in with the mess of complicated relationships in your twenties. This is a really impressive display of flexibility from a talented cartoonist I’m excited to follow into the future.
Bandette Volume Five: The Wedding of B.D. Belgique
Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover’s Bandette has been one of the most charming, skillful all-ages works in comics for over a decade, and the tales of the effervescent titular French thief and her cadre of colorful allies are as strong as ever in 2025. Bandette’s B.D.E. (Bande dessinée Energy) is infectious, balancing Coover’s gorgeous digital watercolors and Franco-Belgian inspired visuals with Tobin’s keep-em-laughing gag-a-minute approach to Bandette’s impossible magnetism.
While it’s perpetually delightful to watch Bandette steal the mustache off a detective, Tobin and Coover are particularly adept here at the right balance of threat and suspense with a lead as in-control and unflappable as the likes of Sherlock Holmes. The threat of The Voice very much feels real – feels menacing – right up until the moment that Bandette, Matadori, Pimento and the most wonderful cast of characters are making a mockery of his evil schemes. Any year that features new Bandette comics is a gift.
Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio by KC Green
One of the best developments of the My Marvelous Year podcast is getting to know members of our reading club through the MMY Patreon exclusive Slack channel. In addition to a strong community of delightful, funny, gorgeous (I assume) comics fans, this means I also get an extra sounding board for questions about comics without turning to the potentially quagmire-laden depths of *shudders* social media. Recently, when I asked the MMY community about possible picks for my selections of the best graphic novels of the 2020s (so far!), ClanDustin (ifykyk) chimed in with what I assumed to be a gag: Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio by KC Green.
And now, for a brief list of things I didn’t know anything about:
- Carlo Collodi’s original 1883 novel, The Adventures of Pinocchio
- Cartoonist KC Green, the creator of the “This is Fine” meme!!!
Now technically, this Kickstarter was completed in late 2023, but seeing as the whole work remains available online and that I didn’t realize it wasn’t Kickstarted this year until I was several hundred words deep into this review… I’d say it’s fair game to be included in 2025! Green takes Collodi’s Pinocchio and brings all the absurdist humor and mildly dark life lessons to the page, in a work that at a minimum, makes me feel like a fool for every buying the Disneyfied version of the story!
Fox Bunny Funny
I’m slightly breaking the “new” gimmick here yet again, but at least Fox Bunny Funny is seeing a 20th Anniversary deluxe edition re-release from Uncivilized Books. Andy Hartzell’s black-and-white silent graphic novel is a simple concept – a Fox wishes he could be a Bunny, in a world where Foxes are expected hunt and eat Bunnies – executed with such conviction and unpredictably Loony Toon pacing (both in the sense that it’s unexpected, and in that it’s Loony Toons-esque!) that it’s one of the more powerful reads I’ve experienced this year.
For those who haven’t read before, give Hartzell’s work a look. There’s something so cathartic about breaking societal norms to become who you truly are. For those who have read, the deluxe edition includes an interesting look into the creative process, and how the original ending differs from the final version. It’s a great example of a massively significant creative choice that completely shifts the final weight of the work.
The Last Band on Earth
E.M. Will’s self-published/Kickstarted The Last Band on Earth is an excellent graphic novel exploring one Noise Rock band’s (I’m imagining like late 80s Sonic Youth meets Liars meets Bardo Pond) attempts to escape a literal demon-occupied town for the supernatural wastes that lay outside the city they’re mysteriously trapped inside. The metaphor is quite nail-on-the-head (nothing says ‘We All Have Demons’ like actual Cthulu tentacled pits full of demons!) but Will’s dedication to the characters and complexity of what it means to actually confront our darkest fears is masterfully executed. Whether it’s the raw emotional struggle of a flailing band on the road, a willingness to flirt with Ditko meets Dali layouts and design, or simply the fact that Will draws some rad-ass demons, The Last Band on Earth is one of my favorite reads of 2025.
Catch up on all CBH’s favorite graphic novels of 2025 right here!
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