Favorites of 2025 (On Reflection)

​Contributing to The Comics Journal’s year-end best-of list has become something of a tradition with me. So has apologizing for my list and complaining that I cannot quite do the job. This last time, in December, I said:

I can’t keep up! The sheer variety of “comics,” its profusion of genres, formats, presses, and publishing sectors, frustrates any bid for comprehensiveness. Each year, I end up reading more of the year’s recommended comics after I file my list with TCJ than before, and even at Eisner-voting time (months later) I feel behind. 

​Too true. It’s the ides of March, St. Paddy's Day even, and still I’m getting to grips with what 2025 brought us, comics-wise. Still I’m working to borrow or buy, and read, some of the most acclaimed titles from last year. I joked in my TCJ piece that my comics year “runs from roughly May to May,” but even that’s too optimistic. Basically, comics, or even book-length comics in English, is too big a field to ever cover entirely – not even for a mere year’s worth.

​Below in slideshow format are 33 comics from 2025 that turned my head. This list differs from what I offered TCJ (though 21 of the titles are the same). I’ve read quite a few recommended comics since TCJ’s deadline. Not many titles here are obvious KinderComics material — that is, young readers' comics. I did review a couple here, though.

I note, with a great heaving sigh of gratitude, that the tireless Jamie Colville has once again published his combined list of the year’s "Best Comics & Graphic Novels," a compilation of rankings from myriad sources — this time out, "284 different URLs" and "over 4,500 different listings." This is a great resource; readers, you should definitely check it out! FWIW, more than twenty of my choices can be found in Colville's list of "books with 5 mentions or more," and three of my choices are in his "Top 10."

I apologize in advance for the lack of webcomics, but refer readers to K-Comics Beat's list of Best Webtoons and Webcomics of 2025, which I’ve begun to study.

(Note: Clicking on a comic's slide below will, in most cases, take you to a publisher's or creator's webpage.)

Notes: 

• My list contains, I think, nine translations, including four volumes of manga, four Continental works, and Quino's Argentine classic, Mafalda. Apart from these translations, most of the works here are all-new (not previously published).
• The Mafalda volume is loooong overdue. I wish it offered some historical apparatus and an even bigger sampling!
• At least four titles in my list are periodicals or particular issues of periodicals.
• I've enjoyed quite a few monthly superhero franchises lately, but only one, Absolute Wonder Woman, made my list.
• I count six "pure" memoirs here, as well as two books (Passmore; Pond) that rely upon autobiographical personas. Kayla E.'s Precious Rubbish is, for me, the most daring and devastating of the memoirs.
• I count three biographical or historical works (Delisle; Pond; Lupano & Fert), all of them playful and speculative to some degree yet rooted in serious research.
• Brosi and Fricas defy the gridding conventions of typical comic book layout. OTOH, the Ernst, Lonergan, and Nilsen books are gridded tours de force. Some books, like Precious Rubbish and Milk White Steed, may appear traditional at a glance, but are bracingly original and even disconcerting in the way they upend convention.
• Eleven of the comics listed here are by creators that were new to me.
• My books of the year? Hard to narrow down. I expect that readers will still be talking about Black Arms to Hold You Up, Drome, The Ephemerata, Ginseng Roots, Milk White Steed, Precious Rubbish, and Tongues ten years from now...

Readers, tell me which worthy titles I have missed! What would YOU put on your list? Please comment and help me learn!