The Best Comics of 2024

Listen, I appreciate that you’re taking the time to read this intro, but every second you waste here is a second you could have spent reading one of the many great new comic books in 2024. So, again, thank you for considering that I might be able to write something here worth reading, but in the name of Jack Kirby, let’s get moving to the best comics this year!

The list rules: I’m keeping the picks to my favorite 50 completed graphic novels and trades released in 2024. This means favorites I’ve been reading entirely in single issue (Juni Ba’s The Boy Wonder or The Ultimates) are absent (but will definitely be on next year’s list!). Likewise, I ruled out including any compendiums (what’s up Sex Criminals: The Cumplete Collection) or favorite reads that came out late in 2023 (sorry Mobilis and Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey!). As always, the list is also limited to works that have been written or translated into English, and somehow found their way into my hands.

This approach is most difficult for long-running ongoing comics, or even newer ongoings like Ultimate Spider-Man, where I’m ranking and considering the first collected volume (Ultimate Spider-Man #1 to #6), but have read the first 11 issues of the series in single issues. It’s impossible not to let feelings about the run as a whole trickle into my evaluation of a particular collection – this is especially true of a work like Monstress which has been a favorite since 2015! – so I do grant a bonus for how hard it is to *stay* great for longer periods of time. Nonetheless, longtime readers will note a distinct absence of Ice Cream Man on this year’s selections, and although that’s been my favorite ongoing comic book for years, the 2024 collection of issues #37 to #40 is not among my favorite issues in the run (listen, I still love the comic – this year’s just that damn good!). Hopefully that makes everything clear as mud, but the important thing to remember is if the book ain’t been collected in 2024, it doesn’t matter one single solitary darn how much I enjoyed the single issues!

I’ve actually recommended over 100 new collected comics to CBH Patrons throughout 2024, and narrowing this list to *only* 50 was a painful challenge. I wish I hadn’t done it to myself!

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Otherwise, without further ado, check out the best comics of 2024, listed from my 50th favorite to my absolute favorite below!

50) Judge Dredd: A Better World

2000 AD promotes A Better World by Rob Williams, Arthur Wyatt, Henry Flint and team as a modern Dredd classic, and while I’m perpetually behind on the exploit’s of Mega-City One’s lead grimjaw, I’m hard-pressed to imagine they’re wrong. Take it from a guy who read America and a boatload of Garth Ennis Dredd for the first time this year: this is Judge Dredd at its serialized best. A Better World focuses on one Judge’s best efforts to make Mega-City One a better place to live through data-driven social programs instead of the brute force the Judges are known for. It’s a deliberately on-the-nose exploration of “law and order” and how challenges to that established norm rankle the politicians and media personalities whose power derives from fear, anger and fists. Williams and Wyatt don’t shy away from obvious modern political parallels, to the point that the messages are admittedly somewhat hamfisted (the judge in charge of reform even looks like AOC). The real trick is navigating these themes in what still feels very much of Dredd’s world, even as the title character is reduced to a side player mostly speeding around on his motorbike out of the action.

This being Mega-City One, it’s best to keep your guard up with all this talk of progress and hope. Flint’s pencils sell the enormity and scale of Dredd’s world, where social programs could roll out sector by sector but stay contained through the Judges iron force (it’s reminiscent of the Wire’s Hamsterdam as well). My hope here would be that Williams, Wyatt and Flint keep pushing on these ideas and integrating them into Dredd, lest they fadeaway like yet another forgotten dream.

49) 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.

48) 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.

47) Chainsaw Man Vol. 14 – Vol. 16

You can tell Tatsuki Fujimoto is playing a jazz solo only he can hear right now because for long stretches of Chainsaw Man’s 2024 translations, one of the biggest mangas in the WORLD goes an entire volume without a SINGLE chainsaw. While the early thrill of Chainsaw Man was Fujimoto’s explosive, hyper-dynamic horror-action, recent volumes have amplified the idiosyncrasies of a creator trying to make sense of landing on top of the world. I’m consistently in awe of just how strange Chainsaw Man can be in part because it’s so difficult to imagine any of the top superhero comics with the courage to sideline their own main players for such extended periods of time (at least without the tired death and rebirth cycles). It’s also tremendously rewarding to see audiences willing to ride out Fujimoto’s quirks, and to evolve with the work through an on-the-fly creative rebirth. Don’t worry, there’s still a fair share of demon-monsters and the dry-as-desert-sand humor that the book has excelled at since jump, but again: A whole volume. No chains!

How is he getting away with this?!

46) 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.

45) Victory Parade

When Leela Corman sets out to make a graphic novel, she makes a graphic novel built to win awards. The early 2010’s Unterzakhn is a tremendous work, following twin sisters navigating New York’s Lower East side as Jewish immigrants circa 1910. Corman wields an innate ability to transform history into an emotionally resonant present, with casts of fierce women encompassing the full spectrums of humor, heart, and heart of fully realized lives. Victory Parade walks a similar emotional path, following the lives of Brooklyn women navigating World War II in America as German-Jewish refugees.

In Victory Parade, Corman eschews the black-and-white thick inks for a lush and times surreal palette of softly melting watercolors. The oversized Pantheon Graphic Library hardcover allows for a wider canvas, which Corman uses to full effect, particularly during hallucinogenic dream sequences full of dissected anatomy depicting subconscious trauma in the lives of these characters. Even so, the ‘realism’ of the history is only augmented through fever dreams and flashbacks, whether it’s memories of pre-Nazi Germany or Sam’s nightmares of seeing the post-liberation Buchenwald concentration camp. Corman’s quite carefully considered in depicting the rampant blend of misogyny and xenophobia of the era as well, even down to lettering that snakes around a lead character’s neck like a noose of jeers.

Corman’s ambitions – in tone, pacing, character focus – all seem larger than the inevitable Unterzakhn comparisons, and not always to her benefit. Ruth’s journey into women’s professional wrestling of the era could likely have been a whole graphic novel of its own, but within Victory Parade, it’s a bit clouded in all the moving parts. Nonetheless, this is fascinating work from an incredible talent, and well worth seeing in print.

44) How It All Ends

This will come as a shock to many of you, but I am not a teen girl about to enter high school. And I think I’ve been frank in these monthly reviews, that the shine of the middle-grade / YA graphic novel market has worn thin for me lately, with too many Telgemeier clones playing it safe with a formula of recycled emotive Issues(TM) that has worked for these younger readers. So believe me when I say How it All Ends by Emma Hunsinger is an absolutely joyful breath of fresh air.

It’s a deeply inhabited, laugh-out-loud funny journey into the window of a teenage girl skipping straight from 7th-grade to high school. There’s not a lot I’ve read that more effectively captures the anxiety of starting high-school, the pressures of looking cool, or the sheer charm of making a new best friend (and maybe more). I loved this book – this should be a middle-grade staple for years to come.

43) Polar Vortex

You ever stare down some art you know could be damn good, but sounds way too hard? It could be intellectually or emotionally, but sometimes I’ll look at a graphic novel that I know full well could be one of the best books I read this year, but topically feels like something I’ll never want to sit down and actually read. Denise Dorrance’s Polar Vortex: A Family Memoir sets up exactly this trepidation, with a work recounting a women’s time spent helping her older mother as her dementia progresses. It’s not just that it sounds sad (in places it certainly is) it’s also a bit too close to home having just lost a grandparent, and remembering full well how it felt to watch my grandmother taken by Alzheimer’s.

Dorrance pulls off something of a miracle, then, with a heartfelt yet at times whimsical cartooning style that sells all of the emotion and absurdity of a woman flying from London to Ohio to be with her mom as she transitions out of a phase where she can live by herself. I was astonished reading Polar Vortex how relatable Dorrance’s experience felt, either through the conversations around living situations and hospital stays that I’ve lived, or through the way Dorrance’s frayed relationship with her sibling mirrors situations I’ve seen. One of the realities of aging parents is nobody wants to think about it or prepare for it until its way too far down the line to do anything other than rapidly react to what feels like a million new developments. Polar Vortex captures this expertly, and no, it’s not “too hard.”

42) The Deviant Vol. 1

Even though I’ve had at least one James Tynion IV creator-owned work on my annual favorite lists since 2020, throughout 2024 I’ve started worrying that the back-to-back-to-back Eisner winning writer was stretching himself far too thin. Tynion’s Substack grant has turned into a Tiny Onion Studios looking to take over the media landscape, and listen, as modern catalogs go, Tynion’s got the goods: Something is Killing the Children is a bonafide smash hit, and The Department of Truth and The Nice House on the Lake are two of my favorite works this decade. But how many lasting ongoings can one person sustain while simultaneously keeping up with the pressures of MORE new ideas, filling out MORE media opportunities. Because if the books stop launching, the script treatment offers stop coming in, and suddenly the Studio is – gulp – just selling comics!

Honestly, the jury’s still out on whether Tynion is Jeff Lemiring himself. Reading the second volume of WorldTr33, I’m left thinking I’ve seen all these ideas and characterizations better substantiated in The Department of Truth and Nice House. But then I read the first volume of the serial killer murder-mystery The Deviant, and damn, maybe this guy can pull this off.

Every work of Tynion’s has an author stand-in of a sort, but The Deviant takes it head on with Michael, a queer lead character interviewing a queer convicted serial killer for his semi-autobiographical comic book. At one point, the lead and his partner are griping about interviews with “shitty comics bloggers” (HA!) and talking about the soul-sucking nature of corporate IP comics. I suspect Tynion might know a thing or two about these topics. Of course, the key to Tynion’s rise as an unstoppable Eisner machine is that he has impeccable taste in collaborators. On The Deviant its Joshua Hixon, artist of the underrated The Plot, who imbues flashback panels of a truly creepy Santa Serial Killer with all the creeping dread the mystery calls for. Hixon’s attention to detail is crucial, too, spotlighting the MAGA coffee mug of the ex-cop wounded by the original serial killer to wordlessly convey the shift in tone and environment during his interview with Michael. It’s a tight, suspenseful, impossible-to-put-down work, with its final of 9 issues scheduled to drop in December of this year. I don’t know how you could be expected to wait for the second trade collection!

41) How to Baby

As a father of three boys, I’ve obviously mastered every facet of parenting, but I’ve never seen an author (and a cartoonist to boot!) so effectively capture what it’s like to go through every phase of BABY, from consideration to birth to walking reality! Liana Finck combines wry observations and loose, humorous figures and diagrams in a truly masterful, engaging depiction of motherhood. I recognized many similar elements my wife and I went through, and was freshly reminded of the many, many experiences I don’t understand especially well.

Finck is careful to avoid crafting an advice book, instead focusing on the lived experience, and the variety of topics and issues you’re likely to experience. I’d expect the work resonates far more with fairly recent or soon-to-be parents, but again, purely on a craft level, I’m awed by the mileage Finck can get out of a jumbled anatomy-free penned sketch of a frazzled mother. It’s a Scott McCloud-esque testament to the power of forms and icons, and Finck wields that ability with understated power.

40) The King’s Warrior

Speaking of my small-press indie comics era, Huahua Zhu’s The King’s Warrior is my favorite comic yet from Bulgilhan Press, like Berserk by way of Zelda, as a young warrior seeks their lost brother with the aid of a Lionsteed (a Lion-horse companion they bested in gladiator-esque combat, of course!). Zhu’s vision is pure indie fantasy, with a tactile, textured style and coloring that feels like your picking up the pieces of an epic quest directly off the artist’s workspace floor. The work alternates modes of supernatural grotesquery, sword-and-shield action, and monster-hunter warzones, but it’s in Zhu’s understanding of pacing and perspective that I found myself actively dreading the end of a mere 74 pages. Whether through coloring, layout, or angles, Zhu finds a way to cram (complimentary!) a full graphic novel’s worth of framing into a novella.

39) Age 16

At an absolute minimum, I love Rosena Fung’s structural ambition and scope in Age 16, out now from Annick Press. The gorgeous graphic novel tracks one Chinese-Canadian family line, a grandmother, mother, and daughter, with chapters of what each of them were like and experienced at the Age of 16. So we begin with 16-year old Roz, in the more familiar (for me at least!) setting of Toronto in 2000, before cutting back to her mother’s time in 1972 Hong Kong and her mother’s time in 1954 Guangdong. It’s a brilliant way to examine why parents act the way they do, and what forces shaped them to fixate on the things that occupy their brains. Fung not only expertly illustrates how Roz’s mother (Lydia) plays into her developing eating disorder, but how Lydia experienced similar cutting comments from her mother about her weight and eating in Hong Kong. Fung draws consistent mirrors between the women’s experiences at 16 despite their vast regional and cultural differences. It’s the kind of rare insight every 16 year old craves when they look at their parent and shout “Why are you like this?!”

Fung is a wonderful artist, capable of expressive character action and strategic yet captivating color choices dictating the flavor of each shift in era. The Toronto era teenage angst reminds me in part of the recent, critically-lauded Roaming by Mariko Tamaki, with the blending backdrop of history that made Feeding Ghosts one of my favorite graphic novels from earlier in the year. Age 16 is a striking portrait of 50 years of shared family history, and how the past shapes behavior and relationships across generations.

38) Lunar New Year Love Story

A new First Second graphic novel from Gene Luen Yang (American Born Chinese, Dragon Hoops, Shang-Chi) is one of those “pencil it onto everyone’s best of the year list” books, so it’s no surprise that this near-perfect teen rom-com with LeUyen Pham is a preposterously well-constructed read. Yang’s ability to capture teenage emotion and dialog only continues to grow, but for me, it’s Pham who stole the show with a deeply versatile style. Pham’s supernatural St. Valentine is the wonderfully gothic old horror spirit, while her Lion Dancing (a Vietnamese and Korean cultural element this book taught me about for the first time) is pure Kirby monster energy. Pham utilizes a unique tactile approach where images are frayed at the edges, where uncolored slots of white seem to reveal the page beneath – it’s the kind of AI-assassinating artistic effect that subtly iterates, yes, a real person made this with their own two hands.

37) Death Strikes: The Emperor of Atlantis

Purely based on graphic novel title and publication by Dark Horse, you’d be forgiven for assuming Death Strikes: The Emperor of Atlantis is a well-worn genre thriller looking to expand upon the sandy shores of Aquaman and Namor. Cursory inspection reveals it’s anything but, though, as Dave Maass and Patrick Lay are actually adapting a suppressed 1943 opera by Jewish artists created inside a Nazi Germany concentration camp. The history alone, and the miracle of any retained art surviving the Holocaust is worth the price of admission. The comic looks to adapt Der Kaiser von Atlantis, created by Peter Kien and Viktor Ullman from within the Terezin concentration camp, and seeks to share how “beauty and humor can be found even in the face of doom.”

A work like this is in danger of flatlining at curious historical project, but Maass and Lay modernize and elevate the opera for comics with tremendous, care, relevance and precision. Death Strikes is funny, at times like Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (a personal favorite), and the ink-washed grays are gorgeous. You’ll want to read the historical analysis that bookends the comic, but readers could pick this up without any of that context and simply enjoy a parodic dig into the rise of fascism and the endless ills of war. This is genuinely special work from Maass and Lay, living up to the weight of adapting something created in such historically harrowing circumstances.

36) Frogpocalypse

I think I might just really like comics about frogs? Matt Emmons The Council of Frogs is a recent favorite, Walt Simonson’s Frog Thor is always near to my heart, and damn, I’m even giving that Battletoads relaunch another look. Matt Rockefeller’s Shortbox 2024 entry Frogpocalypse joins the frog army, and then some, with one of my favorite comics of the whole year. It would be perfectly understandable, perhaps even honorable, for a cartoonist to fully commit to the sheer glory of “what if the frogs rose up and attacked humanity?” You don’t necessarily need more than that! Where Rockefeller excels is in tying the frog uprising to social commentary of impending climate collapse, and the fear and hopelessness it leaves in anyone paying attention.

Plus, uh, these frogs rule? Like, I would absolutely join in them in taking control of the climate from humanity (we suck at it!). Rockefeller’s cartooning is gorgeous, swirling odes to the environment, and Bullfrogs that will absolutely whip your ass.

35) Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1: Married With Children

I went into Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto’s Ultimate Spider-Man, the launch series of the Ultimate 2niverse, and one of the most successful Marvel Comics of the last decade, with grand dreams. This is, after all, the Jonathan Hickman who wrote the best Marvel event of all time, and redefined what X-Men comics could be, if only fleetingly in the grand scheme. What sci-fi twist would Hickman unleash upon the Spidey mythos to do something no one had ever tried before? The surprise, then, is not any particular high concept, but the subversive approach of telling the grounded story of a Peter Parker getting his powers not at 15 but at 35. When Peter first gets his powers he’s married to Mary Jane Watson, with two young children, and well-ensconced at the Daily Bugle as a working class professional. It’s Miracleman by way of The Incredibles, and what it lacks in freshness it more than makes up for in a playfully earnest desire to recapture everything we love about Spider-Man, but with 60 years of those experiences under our belts.

The “mic drops” here are all rooted in the familiar – If Peter Parker doesn’t get his powers at 15, Uncle Ben is still alive and kicking, as a gloriously charming journalist-in-arms with his best friend (and perhaps more) J. Jonah Jameson. We get to experience the Ditko / Lee / Romita classics – Peter meets Harry, Peter meets Gwen, Peter meets what may well be this universe’s Venom (ok that came later) – in a world controlled by the Maker’s hand-chosen Shadow elites, who eagerly count down the 18 months until this Universe’s Maker is freed. Hickman and Checchetto – fresh off an excellent stint on Daredevil, and born to draw web-slinging – approach the big picture from a distance, with Peter first going up against Wilson Fisk, involved but a mere pawn in the schemes of the Maker. There’s the thrill of the original Ultimate Universe comics attempting to truly recreate the OGs for a modern era – how will Hickman and Checchetto do the Sinister Six is pure plain spider-fun – alongside the thrill of delivering the Spider-Family fans have clamored for since 2007’s One More Day. At the end of the day, though, it’s fan-service with purpose, behind the hands of two comics creators (alongside David Messina filling in on art for issues 4 and 5 of the first volume) who are among the best working regularly in the Big 2 superhero landscape. For my money, the work has only gotten better into the second volume, and Ultimate Spider-Man has been one of my favorite monthly reads of 2024.

34) In Utero

I was on the fence about trying In Utero, but the pull quote from Jeff Lemire on the back cover calling Chris Gooch “his new favorite cartoonist” convinced me. I’m glad because Gooch’s In Utero is “best of the year” stuff, a masterfully in control, tense, creeping sci-fi, with enough youthful lightness to keep from sinking into the monstrous muck. The graphic novel takes place a decade after a mysterious massive explosion shook Australia, in a dilapidated old shopping mall now overrun with… well, something mysterious! It’s a heartfelt and earnest story with expert creative design and tonal control. Gooch is an artist I’ll be following into the future.

33) 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!

32) Fantastic Four by Ryan North Vol. 4

Much like Ram V’s Detective Comics, I had the humbling experience this month of thinking I had a pulse on the Ryan North era of Fantastic Four, only to binge the series in full and realize it’s far more elite than I realized. North’s approach to the first family has been Planetary by way of the Magic School Bus, mashing heaping doses of imaginative science into one-off adventures that tap into the full gamut of genre (riffs on Star Trek, Doctor Who, The Maltese Falcon and on and on!). The end result is a run not only unique among contemporary superhero comics, but wholly unique in the 60+ year history of the Fantastic Four. The most recent fourth collected volume takes you through issue #22, and this run is already in the running for my third favorite FF series of all time (it’s a shame Kirby/Lee and Hickman, et al. is such an irrefutable 1-2 or this could get interesting!).

The core limitation to the work is the relative instability of North’s collaborators, and an inability to capture more daring and expressive visuals (in the way that Ram V’s loaded Detective Comics partnerships miraculously achieved, for example). To date the run is a bullpen by committee predominantly split between Iban Coello, Ivan Fiorelli and Carlos Gomez, all skilled draftsmen who never lay claim to personal idiosyncrasies and styles that make us fall in love with cape artists (look at the accolades for Nick Dragotta on Absolute Batman for example). It’s less that I’m lamenting the days of the same creators on a work for 3 straight years (I’ve accepted this loss!), but more that I’d like to see makes each of these artists their own force, rather than trying to feel of a lessened piece with the same standardized Jesus Aburtov colors. North and these collaborators can be so inventive with the Fantastic Four’s powers – Reed’s body is twisting, splitting and expanding in ways I’ve never even considered – and it’s a shame we don’t get to see more creators exploring unique ways of selling that invention (Alex Ross at least gets in on the party with his Blood Hunt tie-in cover of Reed’s face being gnawed alive by Vampires!).

Through sheer creative willpower, FF exceeds these limitations, and North’s charming understanding of character – and heightened emphasis on a completely rejuvenated Alicia Masters-Grimm – is second to none. We’re at the point in fully buying in to a vision where an entire issue can commit to Johnny and Ben getting jobs at a local grocery store and fighting tooth-and-nail to outdo the other for the coveted cashier of the month award. The mystery of a space station stuck in time for centuries is what gets my attention with the Fantastic Four, but the bickering dynamics of these found family brothers is where I fall in love, and North has that on LOCK. At this point, my only concern with Fantastic Four is I’m so wholly into North’s vision that I’m starting to buy into the 2025 Marvel event One World Under Doom (spearheaded by North). Somebody stop me before I make another reading order!

31) Batman Detective Comics 3: Gotham Nocturne: Act II

It’s not like Detective Comics slipped under my radar. DC’s Batman comics are among the most familiar works in the American direct market, and Ram V is one of my favorite modern writers (see last month’s Rare Flavours write-up for proof!). Nonetheless, I certainly whiffed on seeing the totality of vision, scope and craft in Ram V’s Detective Comics. The literal operatic structure, tone-cementing Evan Cagle covers and all-around style oozes ambition, but it wasn’t until the run ended this month with Detective Comics #1089 that a full read-through revealed the aims of that ambition to me. And in sinking into Ram’s vision for Batman more fully, I realized a truth about myself: I’d completely lost sight of what I desire in superhero comics.

I didn’t know you could make a long run like this any more.

Detective spans 2 and a half years, and over 30 issues, including annuals (plus, note here that single issues of Detective all include relevant backup features written by Si Spurrier and Dan Watters). In its totality, Detective Comics reveals a truly remarkable case for the long-form ongoing comic book, and the value of empowering a wide variety of creative voices to fulfill their visions. Yes, Ram V is directing, but it’s the astonishing blend of so many artists – Stefano Raffaele, Ivan Reis, Dustin Nguyen, Francesco Francavilla, Caspar Wijngaard, Hayden Sherman, and on and on and on… – that embodies a refusal to pursue anything less than creative excellence (not to mention a herculean feat of editorial scheduling!). In a Batman run in conversation with the greats of the past – including Grant Morrison first and foremost – you have a spiritual successor to early Vertigo Hellblazer, or Mike Carey, Dean Ormsten and Peter Gross’s Lucifer. It’s a gloriously patient work that reminds me: Ongoing superhero comics can be this good!

The most recent volume collects Detective Comics #1071 to #1075, but again, I would highly encourage a read-through the run as a whole, which is clearly how it’s meant to be read. This is why comic book fans clamor for the days of the years-long ongoing, and reject the obsession with the 5 issue miniseries. Artists giving themselves to a meal this satisfying is simply why I read these stories in the first place. And in the struggle of Bruce Wayne and the Orghams a second truth emerges too: There are long-term benefits to the corporate overlords when a run builds new characters, designs and plot so successfully. Crass commercialism and authentic art intersect to make everyone happy!

30) Brittle Joints

Maria Sweeney’s debut graphic novel from Street Noise Books is one of the most striking, earnest works I’ve read this year, an incredible window into invisible illness, living with disability, and the American healthcare experience. Sweeney’s gorgeous painted autobiography of living with an exceedingly rare Bruck’s syndrome finds a challenging balance between completely foreign daily complexity and deeply relatable struggles that follow from those around you questioning how “real” your pain and ailments may be. Sweeney lives with impossibly brittle bones and constant pain, but finds a way to communicate her life with poetic empathy that never drifts into hollow platitude or exaggerated optimism. Told in bite-sized chapters, Brittle Joints is an effective, memorable meditation on the value of a life often consumed by chronic pain.

Given my own struggles with migraines that leave me frustratingly dizzy and limited for days on end, I found Sweeney’s ability to push through decidedly more invasive pain recognizable and encouraging, even in their deep frustration. In depicting the specifics of a Doctor that ignores her symptoms and chart, and denies hope of new solution, Sweeney taps into an all-too familiar experience of many Americans let down by medical systems. Sweeney is not simply driving awareness for Bruck’s syndrome either; Brittle Joints is a call to consider the internal ails of all those around you, to hold back your own judgments about others medical needs, and to remember that yours is not the only battle.

29) Food School

Jade Armstrong’s 2022 Shortbox Comics Fair entry gets a physical graphic novel release from Conundrum Press, and it’s another common win for the Zainab Akhtar curated comics fair. Food School is Armstrong’s self-described Josei slice-of-life look at young non-binary character named Olive as they navigate a three month stint in a program designed to help with their eating disorder. Armstrong treats the illness with compassion and careful examination, but also finds plenty of space for comedy, characterization, and relatable relationship drama. Armstrong’s cartooning is simple which belies the complexity of facial expression selling emotion and feeling. Likewise, the clean panels help exaggerate the Manga-influenced explosion of emotion during pivotal scenes.

At 78 pages and an adorably wee package, it’s a literal light read, but perfectly satisfying in narrative density. Armstrong is an immensely talented cartoonist, and when I wasn’t laughing or learning, I was impressed by Armstrong’s subtle ability to weave in gender dysphoria into a work already full of complicated, sensitive topics.

28) Single Mothering

I expected to find Anna Harmala’s semi-autobiographical Single Mothering an emotional gut-punch, but instead Harmala’s delightful cartooning is one of the funniest and cutting works I’ve read in comics this year. Single Mothering is an informative look at what it’s like to be the (oft) lone new single mother in a group of parents, but Harmala’s quips cut both ways, targeting the misbehaviors of those around her as often as she’s revealing her own navel-gazing faux-pauxs. Set in Helsinki, Harmala also offers a strong glimpse into world culture for this dumb American (I showed my wife a scene of parents leaving their babies in strollers to nap outside a café like I’d just discovered a conspiracy of heretofore unimaginable grotesquery! She calmly informed me that apparently this is quite common!).

Gorgeous, smart, insightful to a specific point-of-view, Single Mothering has everything I look for in a comic book, and it made me laugh out loud to boot. Highly recommended.

27) Nights

I’ve heard so many good things about Nights this year, and it did not disappoint. Wyatt Kennedy’s writing is the kind of skillful mastery of comedy and human dialect that reminds me just how far great dialog can carry a comic. Sure, the worldbuilding of Nights is a wonderful mix of familiar elements (vampires!) placed in unfamiliar situations (there’s only one in a Spain-controlled Florida, and she’s an unemployable kletopmaniac!). And sure, Luigi Formisano sells the expression of everything from a Ghost out for a jog to a star-nosed mole named Starven (like Steven but he’s a star-nosed… you got it). But sometimes it’s that good old-fashioned ability to put words in bubbles and make you laugh. It’s so simple, but it’s so hard to do well!

Even more than that, Kennedy and Formisano transcend concept, taking a coming-of-age teenage wasteland set in a casually supernatural Florida, and infusing it with abrupt page turns, non-sequitur panel visions, and all manner of “wait, what was THAT” moments. In the wrong hands this could be chaos, but I get the feeling Nights Season One is a special moment for both creators, and they’re completely at ease with the confidence it takes to break rules like this. I don’t want to get in trouble, but yeah, it’s Morrisonian. Can’t wait for season two.

26) Zodiac

Like most deep philosophical art critics, I picked up Ai Weiwei’s graphic memoir Zodiac because the cover is very pretty and shiny. I’d love to say here that this is another one of my many classic jests, but I’m 100% sincere. I had no idea Ai Weiwei was a legendary Chinese performance artist (not to mention political prisoner & exile) – I just really loved the gloss on Ten Speed Press’s hardcover design, and the feel of Gianluca Costantini’s pencils from a quick scan.

I’m glad I’m so easily impressed because Zodiac is a fascinating read, oscillating between meditative and almost surreal discussions of art, politics, and human purpose. The memoir is structured via 12 chapters, each corresponding to the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac. At times this framing is very intentional, with Weiwei and Costantini sharing the folklore inspirations of the zodiac, but more often than not it’s a metaphorical framing tied to discussions of everything from the Chinese Cultural Revolution to Chairman Mao to Weiwei’s most famous works. Unlike most memoirs that trade in linear autobio, Zodiac walks a fine line between history and theory, between concrete and ethereal, and somehow Costantini’s lines are so precise yet tactical the pacing never feels stodgy. A highly compelling work that I’d recommend.

25) 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.

24) Putty Pygmalion

Every new release from Silver Sprocket offers the possibility of greatness. Obviously, not everything can be a favorite or an instant classic, but the publisher’s ethos of expressive, unadulterated creativity from a wide variety of diverse creators is bursting with potential. Lonnie Garcia’s Putty Pygmalion is one of my favorite works of the year, in a 70+ page graphic novella I absolutely couldn’t put down.

Impossible mash-ups of vintage photos, clay dogs, Misery-vibin’ root vegetables are like putty in Lonnie Garcia’s hands, in this story about a lonely nerd who (illegally) Frankenstein’s to life a companion made from misuse of an old children’s putty product. Imagine play-do creations could come to life, and a deeply sad individual used it to replace their roommate/crush! Narratively, there’s a great deal of Black Mirror tension in this poor creation infused with an adult-male consciousness but unable to leave the house for fear of being undone. The real trick to Garcia’s work is in the details, though, with an inimitable style of relatively simple characters standing in stark contrast to washed out old photos of familial spaces (in the liner notes that conclude the work, Garcia reveals the photos are from a miniature playhouse he bought on Facebook marketplace! One horror story straight into another!). It would be so easy for Garcia to lose control of clarity amid all the ambition, but honestly, that only really happens during the work’s climax, and that’s by design! Putty Pygmalion is truly excellent arthouse comic-making, and well worth your time.

23) The Werewolf at Dusk: And Other Stories

I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on the major celebrated works of the 2010’s, but then here’s David Small, an artist I’ve never encountered before, with a graphic memoir, Stitches, so beloved it’s blurbed by R. Crumb and Stan Lee! Small’s so good he has Gene Luen Yang saying, “David Small is among the most masterful storytellers alive today.” I don’t know anything about anything. It’s great!

Small’s latest is a series of three short stories: The Werewolf at Dusk, A Walk in the Old City (the only of the three also written by Small), and The Tiger in Vogue. The works are compulsively readable, and compulsively inspiring, with Small working in an almost child-like partially sketched pen that makes me want to stop what I’m doing and draw my own aging werewolves. The difference of course is that Small knows what he’s doing with the absence of a line, or a detail-less grocery aisle, allowing character expression and a laconic narrative do the heavy lifting. For my money, The Tiger in Vogue is the standout, a surreal adaptation of Jean Ferry’s story about the rise of fascism in early 1920’s Germany, as told by a man attending a musical with a woman and a literal tiger as the star attractions. It taps into the same themes as the previous works – aging as the world changes and shifts the ground beneath your feet – but while also capturing the madness inducing fear that comes from watching a small mustached man controlling a crowd in ways only you seem to fully understand.

22) Swan Songs

If you’ve followed my picks for favorite comics at any point over the last 6 years, you’ve probably gathered that I am decidedly in the bag for W. Maxwell Prince. Ice Cream Man has been my favorite ongoing comic book for about 5 years, and the spiritual (and final-issue crossover!) sibling Swan Songs was among my favorite works of 2023. I don’t think anyone in comics is more thoroughly and effectively dedicated to the art of the single issue than Prince, giving every 20+ page floppy work its own flavor, approach and experience. Alongside some of the best creative collaborators in the business, Prince justifies monthly comic shop sojourns better than anyone in the business.

Swan Songs is a series of 6 one-shots with a new artist on each issue (Martin Simmonds! Caspar Wjingaard! Filipe Andrade! Caitlin Yarsky! Alex Eckma-Lawn! And Ice Cream Man‘s own Martin Morazzo), and each issue is about the end of… something. We get the end of a life, the end of the world, the end of a marriage, the end of a sentence, the end of depression, and in a parody of Shel Silverstein, the end of the sidewalk. In Prince’s manner, each issue offers something entirely new, while trading in black humor, existential dread, and sneaking, buried, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it hope. Issue two reimagines the end of a marriage as a series of genre-laced battles between the splitting couple, issue 5 reimagines therapy as a hypnotic sojourn into a collaged dreamscape, and issue 6 reimagines the aforementioned Silverstein.

It is dark, it is funny, it is imaginative, and always, always, always: it is what comics were meant to be.

21) Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees

Man, this comic is so good, I put it on the CBH mid-year favorites list after only three issues, breaking all of my thinly protected “rules” in the process (how will the people retain their faith in institutions! This damage may be irreversible.) I had such a good time reading Patrick Horvath and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou’s Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees that I had to immediately put it on the list. Horvath combines the warmth of small-town anthropomorphic forest creatures with the cold, calculating serial killing of Dexter. Except unlike Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, Horvath is in complete command of the tone and pacing of the work, allowing it to traverse a read that is at once as charming as it is deadly mysterious.

20) In Perpetuity

Maria and Peter Hoey’s In Perpetuity, out now from Top Shelf Productions, is a brilliant exercise in comic-making restraint. Stylistically like Chris Ware’s slice-of-life decompression meets the staccato movements of Robot Chicken figures, In Perpetuity is told primarily through stilted, matter-of-fact third-person narration. “Jim walked over to his car.” “He took the bus to make it more believable.” “Kimberly continued on and did not look back.” The repetition and simplicity captures the mundanity of In Perpetuity‘s Afterlife, a vision not of heaven nor hell, but instead one of tedium and limited pleasures. The lead character works as a gas station attendant, with days largely broken apart by crossword puzzles and cigarettes, until an old acquaintance from life pulls him into a criminal enterprise contacting the living from the A.L.

As In Perpetuity develops, its reimagining of the Greek afterlife mixes in noirish mystery, conspiracy, and ultimately a confrontation with the ruler of the A.L, Hades. It’s a masterful mixture of genre, both compelling as narrative and contemplative of the joys we take for granted of in this life.

19) Final Cut

There’s a real comfort, an excited relief, in sinking into the work of a celebrated comics master. I find this especially true for living legend cartoonists who so clearly see the literary potential of graphic novels, and trod along at their own pace and process far outside the week-to-week grind of the direct marketplace ecosystem. It’s the feeling I have with new comics by Chris Ware, Emil Ferris or Lynda Barry, last year’s Monica by Daniel Clowes, and now Final Cut by Charles Burns. Readers most likely know Burns via Black Hole, an all-time great work completed from 1995 to 2005. Otherwise, apart from the oft-overlooked X’ed Out trilogy, Burns’s oeuvre is a bit less clear than say Clowes’ or Ware’s, making them a more mysterious, seemingly reclusive cartoonist. That changes to some extent in 2024 with two releases from Burns: Kommix, a series of comic book covers from imagined comics of the Silver Age, and Final Cut, a full graphic novel released via Pantheon.

In Final Cut, Burns returns to the lens of confused young adults set amid a backdrop of nostalgic vague Americana. The work centers on a young man’s artistic obsessions, and how these dreams interfere with human connection. Through the lens of Brian, the young would-be filmmaker, and his lead actress, artistic muse, and crush, Laurie, Burns subtly blends reality and filmmaker’s visions into a coalesced whole where it’s not always clear what is or isn’t happening. Unlike the X’ed Out trilogy, though, Final Cut never fully succumbs to Burns’ more surreal nightmares. There’s ample tension created by the B-movie horror obsessions, particularly with Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, but Burns never quite lets on whether or not the work is about to go full pulp. It’s a challenging blend, adding a layer of gripping uncertainty to what would otherwise be a fairly straightforward story of young artists finding their way through a project that can never quite measure up to the visions they have for it. Burns fully inhabits Brian in particular, through gorgeous alien invaders and versatile sketchbook drawings of everything from alien self-portraits to lushly rendered sketches of Laurie. It’s a lived-in, esoteric and compelling work that encourages re-reads.

18) I Heart Skull-Crusher

The awards for 2024’s best first issue, best sports manga (American Edition), and funniest comic book go to… I Heart Skull-Crusher by Josie Campbell, Alessio Zonno, Angel De Santiago, and Jim Campbell! No comic brought bigger smiles to my face this year, which is mildly concerning considering Painball played in the American Waste is the most violent sport I’ve even seen!

Campbell and Zonno tap into the chaos energy of all your favorite manga both in visual aesthetics and willingness to make an actual Bear named David (never before have I been so fully realized on the page) the Podunk Lil Team’s goalie. It’s Fullmetal Alchemist by way of Slam Dunk by way of Mad Max, and the creative team knows exactly how to override the darkness with wit, charm and comedy. There’s a deliriously infectious confidence to this comic, from the moment it begins that makes me want to follow it for years – even if that seems HIGHLY unlikely in a sport where all my faves could be murdered for points at any moment.

If that hasn’t sold you yet, and you’re not familiar, Josie Campbell was the head writer on Adventures with Superman, She-Ra, and Jurassic Park: Camp Cretaceous, and has written jokes for Norm Macdonald! She’s a hilarious and intensely skilled creator, and this book deserves all the love.

17) Do Geese See God

Let me start you off with a Flash Fact so you don’t feel as dumb as I did: Do Geese See God is a palindrome. In fact, it’s a pretty well known one, to the point that if you search the name, you’ll get an anthology of palindromes! Cartoonist Nicholas Offerman is aware of this as well, structuring this heartfelt, inspiring, cathartic graphic novel with a palindromic color chart, and at times what seems to be a palindromic layout, although seeing as I wasn’t looking for that at all, I suspect there are more formalistic secrets that I missed!

Of course, none of that is really critical to getting Offerman’s Do Geese See God (and no, as far as I can tell, there’s no relation between this Offerman and Parks and Rec‘s woodsman). This work is a deeply felt meditation on loss, both in the death of a friend, but also in the death of a friendship, in becoming adults and growing apart and sacrificing those eternal bonds of insane bike rides through the rain for the adulthood you think you’re supposed to achieve. Despite that heaviness – and make no mistake, it’s an emotional journey, and one that resonates intensely – Offerman finds a sly humor, particularly in the lunatic bus driver, Bob, that helps keep the work afloat in would could become a lake of despair. Offerman’s cartooning is paced with great care and his character’s expressions are clear and engrossing. With a shifting two or three-tone color palette, Offerman completely controls Otto’s journey looking to reshape his life following the suicide of his best friend. It’s a critical darling indie film waiting to happen, and it does so with a full embrace of comics as a medium.

I went into Do Geese See God with no idea what to expect, pursuing it solely based on inclusion in the New York Public Library’s list of favorite 2024 graphic novels for adults. I leave it having enjoyed one of my favorite graphic novels of the year.

16) Big Jim and The White Boy

The thing that I appreciate most in the telling of David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson’s remix of Huckleberry Finn is how structurally it’s so much more than a remix. I anticipated a retelling of Twain’s classic novel – the one that sparked more conversations about the n-word in my high school than Kanye West’s Late Registration – but from the perspective of the runaway slave, Jim. This reframing would grant Jim an agency the character lacks in Twain’s work, likely at the expense of Huck, the titular White Boy.

Now, Walker and Anderson certainly reframe, but what they also do is engage heavily with the question of how stories are told, who gets to tell them, and what impact that has across generations. Likewise, Big Jim and The White Boy jumps across eras and perspectives, capturing moments from the novel, but never devoted to recreating all of it. This allows for conversations between Jim and Huck well after they’ve lived through Twain’s world, creating a humorous, charming, beating heart of a relationship between the duo. Anderson’s characterizations are pitch-perfect at capturing emotion and mood, and the early transition between the cartooning style of Huck told from Twain’s perspective, vs the Jim-centric vision of this work is a testament to Anderson and colorist Isabell Strubble’s tremendous versatility.

Walker and Anderson have proven their excellence at celebrating and protecting black history with the Eisner-Winning Black Panther Party graphic novel, but whereas that plays as a needed history lesson, Big Jim is a metafictional, emotional thunderbolt. At times it’s quite hard to tell where American history ends and where the fiction of Huckleberry Finn begins. Truly excellent work – I’m not sure these creators are capable of anything less.

15) Rare Flavours

It’s so exciting when creators pair-up and form an instant sure thing for great comics. It’s why comics fans perk up for Morrison/Quitely, Brubaker/Phillips, and Gillen/McKelvie. Certain teams can build a reputation that assures some of the best of what comics have to offer, and Ram V and Filipe Andrade are on the fast track to locking in one of comics’ greatest modern partnerships. Following up on the massive success of the EXCELLENT The Many Deaths of Laila Starr, Ram and Andrade return with Rare Flavours, a six issue series from Boom Studios about a demigod/daemon who eats people and consumes their stories but is now hellbent on making a documentary about, uh, food.

There are sensational supernatural hooks we demand of comics – Cannibal Gods! Bounty Hunter assassins! A completely full theater to watch a documentary! – but the genius of Rare Flavours lies in structure and message. The creative powerhouse strike this stunning balance between filmmaking, flashbacks, and recipes, with each of the six issues centered around the ways certain dishes are routed in human lives and stories. This leads our lovable cannibal-god Rubin Baksh to wax poetic about the beauty of being human, as Ram and Andrade powerfully hammer home the value of adding your own depth of flavour to any art you create. It’s an inspiring, melancholy and cathartic work that belongs alongside The Many Deaths of Laila Starr as a modern classic. Best case, you’ll leave Rare Flavours inspired to create your own great works, and worst case, you’ll leave with a better understanding of how to make great triple schezwan rice.

14) Young Hag and the Witch’s Quest

One of my favorite things about exploring comics is the medium is so full of incredible, varied work that I can go from never-heard-of-em to Isabel Greenberg is one of my favorite contemporary graphic novelists in the span of 2 months. My local library turned me on to Greenberg’s The One Hundred Nights of Hero, an instant classic about a lesbian couple that has to keep an abusive oaf distracted with fairy tales for 100 nights, and because of that recent luck, when I saw Young Hag and the Witch’s Quest in the new releases, my eyes lit with excitement. Greenberg’s latest follows a grandmother, mother and daughter (the titular Young Hag), Britain’s last witches as magic has left the land. The story is told 50 years after the fall of Camelot, tying its history to King Arthur, Merlin, Morgan Le Fay, and all the great mythologies you’ve encountered in some version across so many tales.

Greenberg shares a Vertigo-infused love of stories-within-stories, all captured through her exuberant cartooning and command of narrative structure. This allows Young Hag to flow through the familial witch’s quest and intertwining Arthurian legends, but all told through Greenberg’s feminist interpretation of stories left untold. Greenberg’s approach gives her a great deal of imaginative terrain for characters like Morgan Le Fay and The Lady of the Lake (she had a name!) who get short-shrift as betrayers or plot devices in many versions of the legends. It’s a smart, captivating journey, with deeply relatable relationships between the likes of Young Hag, Ancient Crone, and eventually even Tom.

13) My Favorite Thing is Monsters Book 2

I sat intimidated by Emil Ferris’ long-awaited follow-up to 2017’s much-celebrated My Favorite Thing is Monsters for weeks. The massive tome lurked on my shelf like a sentient homunculus taunting me with jeers: “Don’t bother picking us up, you’ll never finish this great work before the library due date any way! Mwahahaha!” I can’t say I’ve been waiting 7 long years, but it’s hard not to feel the weight of Ferris’ journey to seeing Book 2 to publication (especially given what I know about the literal lawsuits Ferris and publisher Fantagraphics fought through along the way). It’s the sequel to an instant comics canon classic, and that’s actually quite rare in the critically-acclaimed graphic novel space – there’s simply a heft to a work like this that is rare in comics.

So naturally, once I started, I finished the whole thing in three days, and it went down smooth as a nice Chianti.

Ferris’ notebook journaling remains an incredibly effective storytelling device for the charming Karen Reyes, our would-be young lesbian werewolf detective. This work lives and breathes Chicago, July, 1968 so effectively, it’s impossible not to feel yourself transported like Karen and Deeze taking the el to the Art Museum. The core cast of characters – the Brain, the memory of Anka, the addition of Karen’s new girlfriend, Shelly – are bursting with their own worlds of story and perspectives on the scene. You take all that, and Karen’s continued efforts to solve Anka’s murder as she navigates the world after the death of her mother, and you add-in Ferris’ generationally unique densly-hatched Monster Mag covers interspersed purposefully throughout the narrative, and you have everything that made this book such a massive hit in 2017.

The worst thing I can say about My Favorite Thing is Monsters Book 2 is that it’s more of the same. But considering “the same” is perhaps the most unanimously praised graphic novel of the last decade (I have Book 1 ranked inside my 20 favorite comics of all time!), that doesn’t seem like an especially effective slam. The one pervasive question I can’t shake is whether a Book 2 is especially additive, and on those grounds, I’m conflicted. Plot-wise, the answer is no – the murder-mystery aspects of Monsters aren’t that compelling or frankly even that ambiguous. So I suppose if you’re a reader deeply invested in Anka’s past, and Deeze’s exact, specific, spelled-out role, Monsters Book 2 is especially unsatisfying. For my money, all those details are functionally just an excuse to live in Karen’s world, to see through her eyes, and to watch Ferris’ reinvent her storytelling style every third page.

Ironically, Book 2 ends on even more of a cliffhanger than Book 1, and although I’m sure the work could end here, Ferris has left the door wide open for a Book 3. I wonder if Ferris will have a hard time letting this world go. I couldn’t blame her. After all, we extend comics of all kinds the endless shelflife of ongoing continuities – but Ferris has to wrap up Monters with a tidy bow in two books? If I let go of the idea of a smoking-gun conclusion that pulls everything together, and open myself to the possibility of revisiting this world every few years, well, let’s just say it doesn’t sound especially monstrous. My Favorite Thing is Great Comics. Why not enjoy some more?

12) Gleem

Originally published in 2019, Freddy Carrasco’s “selection of spectacular short stories” is so good Drawn & Quarterly picked up the out-of-print work for a new edition this year. I’m very glad they did, as Carrasco’s fully-realized sci-fi worlds walk an incredible blend between Taiyo Matsumoto’s Tekkon Kinkreet and the cosmos-shattering spiritualism of Jim Starlin reincarnated in the pen of Ronin-era Frank Miller. Gleem is composed of three distinct stories, one a bored kid’s accidental spiritual journey at a future megachurch, another what happens when bored kids add a defective robot AI to their crew, and a final that I can best describe as what it’s like for bored kids to do future-drugs at the coolest rave I’ll never get invited to.

Carrasco’s cartooning is confident and inspiring, the kind that often invites you to make your own comics even as its displaying a control of the page that can only come from immense creative experience. In his book blurb, Michael DeForge writes, “Nobody’s doing space and time the way Freddy Carrasco does space and time,” and it’s hard to argue otherwise. Sequences where a teen at church loses himself in a swirling fever dream made up of lust and a fish asking him if he’s paid his taxes are, uh, hard to pull off! Within Gleem‘s walls it all makes a delirious amount of sense.

From here on out, I’ll be reading anything Carrasco releases, no questions asked.

11) Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir

For vast stretches of its 300+ pages I was convinced Feeding Ghosts is the graphic novel of the year. Tessa Hulls’ multigenerational memoir, tracking the lives and relationships of her grandmother, mother, and herself, is an almost impossibly ambitious document of Chinese history, immigrant experience, mental health, generational strands of trauma, and therapeutic self-examination. Hulls treats the entire work with a laboriously designed swirl of creeping ink, a descending black-and-white instability ready to spin the entire work of its axis but never giving way to outright madness. Put another way, Feeding Ghosts can be out of this world gorgeous, and designed unlike anything else I’ve read this year.

At the same time, Feeding Ghosts is dense. You feel the weight of the labor, the toll of the personal introspection, the weight of every family tree branch crashing from the ether into a fully formed published document. It’s not just that the book isn’t light reading; it’s that information often feels repetitive, or tediously drawn out. Feeding Ghosts is so much from start to finish that it seems inevitable the work will oscillate between the most fascinating examinations in comics and stories a close friend has told you several times before.

For a work this personal, though, I’m more than willing to look past the rocky stretches, and celebrate the magnificence of Hulls’ accomplishments. Much of Feeding Ghosts is among the best memoirs I’ve read, whether we’re talking Fun Home, Blankets, The Best We Could Do, or anything else in comics (and beyond). I learned so much about Mao’s China, and the psychological toll that took on generations of Chinese, and Hulls benefits from the unique existence of her grandmother’s memoir about escaping Mao’s China to Hong Kong! It’s a must-read, and will be for years to come.

10) 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.

9) The Gulf

Comics are full of teenage coming-of-age journeys where an otherwise mundane experience is amplified by the angst and promise of youth. For obvious reasons, cartoonists love tapping into this emotionally resonant adult ground zero, from Craig Thompson’s Blankets, to Mariko and Jillian Tamaki’s This One Summer or Roaming, to Tillie Walden’s catalog, and on and on (This year’s Loving, Ohio is another great example!). Adam de Souza’s The Gulf is the latest standout in the genre, a masterfully put together graphic novel about high school friends seeking the idyllic promise of a Canadian commune over the stale possibility of a life spent collecting paychecks for insignificant contributions to the capitalistic machine.

de Souza’s work excels due to an excellent lead character, the wise-cracking, fiery, complex Oli, who steps right up to the legacy of Enid Coleslaw as memorable comics creations. With one brilliant exception, de Souza avoids the spectacle of the supernatural, and plays the journey straight: these are just three high school graduates navigating the woods and trails of Canada over the course of two days. There’s the messy backdrop of high school sexuality, bullying, and parents with no idea how to parent teens, but at the end of the day, it’s just a few awesome, confused kids finding their way and asking the question we’re all asking regardless of age: What is all this for?

8) Tokyo These Days

Honestly, all I needed to know was Viz Signature was releasing a new series from Taiyo Matsumoto (thanks to Ritesh Babu for that nudge!). I’m a manga noob sure, but Matsumoto is one of the artists I’m most caught up on, having read both Tekkon Kinkreet and Ping Pong within the last year.

This is “Inside Manga” from a celebrated master, a slice of life manga about a lifer who retires from his job editing manga, and the writers, artists, editors and “jobbers” that surround him. The work begins as a character study taking us behind the curtain of how comics are made, but evolves into both an inspirational reflection on artistry, aging, and how we choose to spend our days. Through three volumes released in English, Tokyo These Days is only getting better, and is well on its way to going down as another all-time classic.

7) Blurry

Fun fact: For the first 30 pages of Blurry, I confused Dash Shaw with Dax Shepard, and was therefore furious that the actor married to Kristen Bell was this good at making comics out of the gate. I don’t have strong Shepard opinions (I guess other than his parents forgot an ‘r’ in his first name), but I do bristle at the idea that somebody already granted success in one medium could step in and produce something this… undeniable. Don’t worry, Blurry isn’t the work of some Hollywood-come-lately (you already knew that), instead the carefully considered progression of Shaw’s 20+ years cartooning and releasing critically-acclaimed works primarily through Fantagraphics.

More succinctly: Blurry‘s right in the conversation for graphic novel of the year. Shaw pulls off one of the trickiest feats in comics – a perpetual reset of starting new stories within stories – with such smooth skill I never once got tired of the trick. Every time two characters meet and ask about each other, it’s a chance to jump from one carefully considered life to another, feeling the weight of each individual’s own unique path and the choices that led them to this point. The end result is 10+ character’s who could fill a graphic novel on their own, from an art professor in a failing marriage to the queer black model in his art class to a novelist in search of a second book… the possibilities are endless, and Shaw devotes fully to each slice-of-life quest. The throughline is thematic, centered around a woman’s inability to choose flavors of ice cream, as each character faces life-altering choices of their own. I’ll be reading everything else Shaw has ever done, and never mistaking him for Dax Shepard again; this is instant classic work right here.

6) Attaboy

Holy Samus Aran, I love this comic. Attaboy is the self-published graphic novella of cartoonist Tony McMillan, now given wider publishing by Mad Cave Studios, and it’s the secret in-depth history of a classic video game that may or may not be real. The author sets out to describe and document an instruction manual of their memories of the childhood favorite, unlocking the unreality of the mysterious classic as the book progresses. It’s a gorgeously illustrated love letter to Megaman and Metroidvania, with an unexpected gut-punching message at the center.

McMillan works in the DIY tactile style of Michel Fiffe (Copra) or Jesse Lonergan (Planet Paradise), with this brilliant blend of childlike enthusiasm of taking colored pencil to paper, and the completely untouchable skill of a tenured professional. Attaboy is awash in swirling, kinetic dreams of a videogame universe, as the narration builds towards deeper meaning and understanding how art helps us process the real struggles of our day to day. It’s particularly focused on absent father figures and single mothers, and how children relate to both, but even more broadly Attaboy uses its svelte weight to reiterate the power of our entertainment at its best. This is one of my absolute favorite comics of 2024, and I can’t wait to read more from McMillen in the future.

5) Self-Esteem and the End of the World

Luke Healy’s latest graphic novel is a hilarious, heartfelt, contemplative look at aging into catastrophe, both expected and otherwise. It’s a reflection on family, on finding yourself, and (“he loves that meta sh**”) trying to make it as a cartoonist. More than any of that, Self-Esteem and The End of the World, out now from Drawn & Quarterly, is one of the best comics of the year, as well as one of the best comics of recent years.

Healy’s rigid 6-panel structures at times play like newspaper gag strips, and at times like long-form memoir, blending the best recurring comedy of the former with the pathos of the latter. Once you get in Healy’s rhythms, and adapt to the unique blend of self-lacerating wry humor, it’s a laugh out loud funny work that doubles as some of the best mother-son relationship work I’ve read in the medium. Plus, as a fellow sucker for the meta, Healy includes an honest-to-god reproduction of the fictional work he references as the comic of his that gets adapted into a movie. That’s commitment to the bit, and a damn fine read in and of itself. I love this comic, and I’ll be recommending it for a good long while.

4) 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.

3) The Jellyfish

One of my favorite surprise graphic novels of the year, simply due to my lack of familiarity with the artist Boum and Pow Pow Press. The Jellyfish is a gorgeous, touching, queer work, and one of the better explorations of what it feels like when doctors can’t tell you what the hell is wrong! The premise is that Odette, a young Canadian woman, develops a unique condition where she has a… Jellyfish… in her eye. This condition is stated as both unique and completely matter-of-fact, as Boum depicts literal floating black spots of jellyfish circling around Odette, growing in number as Odette’s condition worsens. Doctor visits confirm Odette does in fact have Jellyfish in her eyes, but aren’t able to offer much by of solution, apart from more doctor visits and prescriptions that maybe might help but who really knows (I’ve been there so hard!). In the midst of all this, Odette falls for another young woman experiencing the traumatizing abuses of her father/boss. It’s a sweet, touching romance in the face of impending health failure and resonates deeply.

It’s a hyper-specific thing, too, but I love how The Jellyfish seamlessly incorporates a sick mid-aughts indie dance rock playlist of songs by groups like Gorillaz and The Rapture. Obviously comics can’t capture sound, but I do find that reference points are an effective way to present scene, tone and time period. This is especially true when all the songs are tracks I know – I danced to Gorillaz in 2006 too! – but plenty of times it’s led to discovery (I’m thinking here of when I interviewed Stephen Franck and discovered “Honky Tonk Hardwood Floor” in his L.A. country bar noir). Again, the end result is a work of art that feels intensely lived-in, and intensely relatable, only adding to the ways it completely pulled me into this world of all-consuming Jelly.

2) Tender

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.

1) Mary Tyler Moorehawk

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.