Reflecting On My Relationship with Comics In 2024

Especially so when these liberals guise themselves further under the pretense or even delusion of ‘leftism’ or purport to leftist causes all the while clinging to imperial ideas and assumptions and a warped idea of progressive values that in any other sane place would be considered right-wing or center at best. None of this is new, of course. To even pretend it is would be the greatest delusion and ignorance. None of this began on October 7th. It began decades ago when Palestine was occupied. It began centuries ago when Turtle Island was colonized. None of this is started here. It’s merely a continuation of a long-process of Western Supremacy and Imperialism. This is just simply what the West has always been, and these imperial justifications or conditioning aren’t terribly new. It’s just that when you watch a year of live-streamed genocide, day after day, night after night, whilst all these Westerners maintain a strategic silence or post like callous PR motherfuckers or outright go into vile horseshit for imperial self-interest, something snaps.

It’s hard not to feel something shatter in you as you sit there and see such ghoulishness.

Human life matters, sure. But Our Lives Matter More. We Are More Real. We Are More Human. Our Suffering Is More Important. We Are The Most Affected.

America on top. The West on top. Life itself reduced to a rankings list and a hierarchy.

All these people who had quite willingly made the choice to put themselves over the Palestinians, and had accepted the terms of a bipartisan genocidal electoral system as well as its co-signment of the Palestinians’ Genocide in exchange for supposed American ‘rights’ and ‘safety’, were shocked. A shock-wave that didn’t stop as for weeks, news story after news story followed on the mishandling of the DNC donations/funds, with which many enriched themselves, the real BTS truths of both candidates and their insane campaigns, and a shock that kept going going up when Biden/Harris kept on signing and enabling horrific shit even on their way out. Proving once and for all that they cared about nothing except themselves and also brutal mass-murder, which they’d expressed in blunt terms for ages. Yet so many were shocked.

Shocked that people who had repeatedly told them they were happy to engineer the genocide of an entire people ‘over there’ in the middle-east would be comfortable co-signing their own American citizens to a horrific fate. Making pikachu-surprise faces at picking a Hitler and being shocked that a Hitler is never gonna do a damn thing for you if you accept his terms as he massacres an entire people before you. These are the supposedly smart, principled people we have to respect. These are principled ‘artists’, apparently.

They made their choice for no one but themselves, even when the Palestinians on the ground made things very clear.

Because deep down they believe in the settler-colonial lie they’ve been conditioned to all their lives. They accept The Hierarchy Of Lives they’ve been fed. They accept that their imperial lives, their American lives, ‘matter more’ and ‘are more real’ than some brown or black child in the Global South. They’re more important. They come first. America First, but with a blue motif and a rainbow flag.

And worse–while they made their monstrous choice, they kept on framing it constantly as the one true moral and principled choice. And that anyone who didn’t make that choice to participate and back this bipartisan genocidal project was actually the real ‘selfish’ one who just sought ‘comfort’ and ‘absolution’ for themselves, and didn’t understand how the real world worked. That they were the ones who were making the world worse, while these hitler-backers were clearly making it a better place. Choosing selfishness but framing it as virtue, abandoning principles to vote for a hitler-cop and decrying anyone who doesn’t as the ones without principles. How truly American.

What is there but horror?

It was a whole period of time that was perfectly summed up by the ‘progressive’ westerners mourning the infamous war criminal Jimmy Carter, with Trump and Obama paling around at his funeral. It was appropriate punctuation to a whole year of delusional propaganda about how the Democrats were nothing like Republicans. And how the former would ‘save’ people from the latter.

That they ARE the Get Out Guy. They’ll never realize that. That they are racist scumbags and Blue Cultists who are as monstrous as any fascists. That they are everything Malcolm X said they were. Even if they try and use the word ‘leftist’ to disguise their wolfish monstrosity.

The dire horrors of living through this moment have been written about by many principled writers, but I thought Palestinian writer Steve Salaita perhaps nailed it best in his essay Let America Be Your Periphery:

We’re a year into unspeakable brutality, so let’s keep it simple:  there is no electoral solution to the problem of Zionist genocide.  If anything useful comes about in the United States, then it will be at cross-purposes with all these silly dreams of American redemption.  

If you want to talk about Democrats as a better alternative to Trump and polish up the other talking points that arrive in four-year increments, then sure, fine, go for it (although this too is a waste of time).  Just don’t use Palestine as a rhetorical device in your capitulation to imperial common wisdom.  Declaring that Palestinians face threats greater than actual genocide or that Palestine must remain secondary to domestic issues (as if it isn’t fully domesticated already) is a slovenly argument that only generates embarrassment and ill-will.  Embrace your liberalism and be off so those of us who refuse to sacrifice Palestine for access to an inhospitable system can be marginalized in peace.  

But remember:  nobody in Gaza is expecting American salvation.  They don’t dream of an audience with the genocidaire.  They dream of life.  They dream of justice.  They dream of freedom.  Each of those dreams is seeded in the gardens of the Eastern Mediterranean. 

It’s just a matter of honesty for me. Honesty about how something hit me, why, and the way I end up seeing it. I want to be able to look back on these entries like journals, particularly given my dreadful long-term memory, as time-capsules charting through a whole period clearly. It’s all for me, in relation to the world as it stands at this point in time. Whatever else someone besides me gets out of it, well, that’s up to them.

If there are absences, odds are I probably read the books you’re thinking of and wondering about not seeing here. For instance–I read the new Schrauwen, the new Burns, and the new Tsuge. None of them are here. That’s not ignorance. That’s a deliberate choice in curation and taste. Conversely, there’s stuff that isn’t here that I DID miss, like Yasmeen Abedifard’s When To Pick A Pomegranate, which I really wish I got to and that not being here is a genuine ‘I wasn’t able to read it, damn’ situation. So there’s a bunch like that, like Atillio Micheluzzi’s The Farewell Song of Marcel Labrume for instance, which do stem from me not getting to read them, but by and large, I’ve read a lot this year, and read widely, so the curated list below is a series of deliberate choices from that reading.

It has always stuck with me since I first read it. I’ve tried to live up to it, and I don’t think I always have. In fact, most of my ‘critical’ career, I look back on quite harshly on, probably harsher than any hater one can conjure up. And that’s important, for me. Particularly given I am not a critic anymore– I write for no outlets, I get no money, I benefit in no way, having retired completely. Yet amusingly, I find I have better critical judgement now. My critical faculties are probably the best they’ve ever been. And only now in recent times do I feel able to realize the promise of what it is a capable critic should be doing and ought to accomplish– Considered Curation. The irony being, of course, I had to quit and let it all go to get there. Hah.

I’m glad though. I’m happy. I’m no longer a critic. That’s a role that comes with a real responsibility and burden, one I take very seriously and hold to a high standard. My time trying to live up to that standard is up. But that’s okay.

But the question is–can he? As we walk through his life and the streets of Tokyo, seeing him connect and re-connect with a great many people, we’re given snapshots of a whole host of people who are also in trying to let go or move on from something, but are tested by that same eternal question. Can you?

It’s deeply human. The inability to let go. The desire to cling on. And it’s a comic entirely dedicated to those messy human feelings and how people react to being presented with the choice of perhaps returning to that thing they thought they’d left behind. It’s a comic about comics, but frankly it needn’t be. It could be a comic about cooking and chefs, sports and athletes, it all works. It’s a comic about the things that haunt us, the things that possess our souls, the things we can’t let go. Some are able to let go, fully, truly. Others aren’t. No matter how much they say they will or can.

Inarguably the greatest comics take on Dracula. It’s not even a contest. It’s not even funny how much it’s not a contest. Sakamoto is just that fucking good. What we have here is a spell-bindingly gorgeous Gothic masterpiece of a comic. It’s put together with so much care, consideration, and attention to the most minute details. It’s maddeningly well crafted and executed. The only way to describe the experience of this comic is that almost every page or every other page had me going ‘oh shit, oh shit’ and just freaking out over something it was doing. And it’s doing A LOT. I genuinely haven’t had such a euphoric comics reading experience since I first binged through Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond, which at the time felt life-changing.

And if I’m not telling you shit about its premise/pitch or WHAT exactly it’s doing, it’s because I think it’s best to go in blind. Just know that it’s not a traditional or typical adaptation and it’s doing its own fresh thing. And get ready to be surprised by striking visual after striking visual that’ll make you fall to your knees. It’s a damn near overwhelming sensory experience, reading this damn thing. It’s genuinely a masterclass in comics construction. Sakamoto doesn’t use onomatopoeia in his work at all on principle, because it clashes with his personal philosophy of comics and the mode of realism he’s trying to achieve. And the rhythm his comics tap into, the internal ‘sound’ he consistently builds with his pages, the sheer musicality of his work, it’s a delight. Honestly this could have been the first pick above all else, it’s just that good. The only reason it’s not is Tokyo These Days is an actual completed work unlike this, which is still ongoing and a long-form saga. But goddamn is it a good one. I had the time of my life reading this.

And what you end up with is a wild European-Fantasy world of terrors and tumult, in a place with an impossible emperor, a sacred prophecy of doom, a forever war over borders, and the strange ancient creatures that haunt the lands and the sea. And navigating all of that is our deeply traumatized lead Julian, a boy trying to find a reason to live, a purpose by which to still go in a world that has only hurt him and given him endless cruelty.

It’s great. Kuramori draws some amazing monsters and eldritch ass entities, which is perfect for a dark fantasy series, and when the battles pop off, it’s astonishing. It’s just deliciously well drawn dark fantasy battle comics, and appropriate to its terrain, it does not ever try to maintain some comforting ‘status quo’ or get too precious with its characters. It’s slow, but the journey is super worth it, and the 30+ issues of it are so satisfying. You don’t have to believe me though. You can take the word of Chainsaw Man’s Tatsuki Fujimoto. Or perhaps you can even take the word of Dandadan’s Yukinobo Tatsu.

Kuramori worked as an assistant to Fujimoto, and let me tell you, it shows in the best possible way. I cannot wait to read more of this. It’s one of the best comics being published right now.

Our lead is Hiroto, in his late 20s, taking care of his college-aged cousin in the city, and the people in his orbit, all trying to live however they can. It’s a comic entirely about the little moments, and Shinzo’s cartooning is such a joy. Taiyo Matsumoto has specifically cited him as an influence at this point, which totally makes sense to me. Shinzo isn’t as good yet, but you can absolutely see why Matsumoto would read his work and find it inspiring. There’s absolutely stuff to take from here. A love of people, in all of their intimate smallness. If you like stuff like MIDNIGHT DINER, I think you’re sure to dig this.

It’s just people trying to survive in the hustle-and-bustle of the modern city life under capitalism, and find some semblance of happiness. Whatever the hell that looks like.

I can smell this comic. Okay, that’s probably a weird thing to say. What I mean to say is–this is a food comic set in India, and I can fucking smell this shit. I can hear this comic, smell it, I know the places it’s describing, I’ve tasted the dishes it’s illustrating. And as such, there’s an intimate comfort in seeing these things put to the page and captured in an artform like comics. It’s new to me. I’ve never seen this, and it’s kind of a pleasure. Is this how those Americans feel all the time? Goddamn lucky bastards.

But seriously, this is my favorite Ram V comic now, I think? Not the best, but certainly my favorite. You could consider me biased, maybe I just love Indian cuisine. And you’d be right. But also, this is a beautiful, earthy reversal of V/Andrade’s prior book Laila Starr. A demonic demonstration of human beauty and the capacity of human art–the difference between mere consumption and appreciation. Between Content and Art. Between Hack and Artist. It’s about what it means to express yourself and why you do so at all in this world, what makes it worth it.

Every scene with Baksh and Mo traveling India and having their back and forths reminds me of my own father and me, sitting somewhere, arguing about something, him trying to explain something to me, detailing things he knows about this region of India. So much of this comic feels familiar to me, it’s like home. What a strange thing to feel from a comic. But I’m glad I get to. This is brilliant stuff, with each issue structured around a single dish that is thematically appropriate and also culturally specific, it’s a love letter to not just the Indian food that it showcases, but the very places, culture, and context that birthed them. Here I am reading a comic that mentions Shah Jahan!! Hell yeah dude. But even besides the familiarity and comforts it evokes, it’s a comic that smartly uses its structure and limited space to tell contained singular short-stories of different people across each issue. The kind of people you would overlook and never think much of. The people who are never the stars of stories, but are shadows in the distance. And as such, each issue has a glorious episodic quality to it with a lived-in texture. It works on like 5 different levels as a book, and is endlessly re-readable.

Cheers to Ram and Filipe, they’ve got another classic in the bag.

Honestly just a masterclass in tone-management and mood-building. Kazuo Umezu passed away this year, RIP king, so you might think this is a tribute to honor the man. But no, he doesn’t have this slot because of that. He has it because My Name Is Shingo is absurdly well-put together and is just damn fucking good. There’s just no denying it. That second volume in particular is such a tight-rope and by the time it ends, you’re like ‘Sonovabitch’.

This guy man. He was really one a kind. What a master. No wonder they called him The God Of Horror Manga. He was singular, and his library of work speaks for itself. I hope you’re at peace, old man. Thank you for all your work, you gave countless people joy and scares, and inspired legions of great artists across generations. Hard to imagine a finger legacy.

Can’t wait for more volumes of this weird freakish little manga that’s at once hilarious and horrifying the way a great thriller ought to be. 

Nobody makes angry punk action comics like Atsushi Kaneko. He’s a clear Western Alt Comix guy. You can tell, and he’ll even talk about it at length. But the way he blends those influences of his, as well as his general love of punk, into the manga influences of the scene he was raised in? It makes him special. He’s one of one, and his work is just electrifying. There’s such rage to it. His leads are always loners against a dire world, with such burning fire in their hearts. His current comic EVOL might be one of the best things coming out right now, but it’s really his reboot of Tezuka’s Dororo that’s made him recognizable to the English audiences at last. Mangasplaining and Fantagraphics have teamed up to publish this, and I’m so glad.

It’s pure signature Kaneko comics, and it’s honestly way better to me than the original Tezuka. Which I realize is probably sacrilegious to say, but also I was never a Tezuka guy, I’m much more partial to Yokoyama and Ishinomori. A comment I realize would enrage Tezuka, because it enraged the aptly named ‘Jealous God’ of manga even while he was alive. But hey man, it’s true. And Kaneko’s cyberpunk sci-fi revamp of Tezuka’s work just lands for me so much more. It’s just totally my jam. I can’t wait for more volumes to come out, it’s gonna be so much fun.

Paco Roca is probably THE Spanish cartoonist of the modern era, I think? Certainly given his prolific output, the sheer quality of it, and the way he keeps evolving, he’s an artist one cannot afford to miss. He just always delivers. Whether it legal dramas about lost treasures or labor histories in Spanish comics publishing, the man just delivers. He has yet to miss in my book and is one of the finest European cartoonists.

But if there’s perhaps one key obsession that Roca returns to, it is (rather appropriately) the Spanish Civil War and its haunting influence. He’s broached the subject before in his books, getting at it in various ways. But here he does so in perhaps the most viscerally direct way, telling the story from his mother’s point of view, as she lived through Francoist fascism.

And just the opening of this book alone on the very idea of image-making, image-construction and memories, it’s a formalist tour-de-force in exactly the way you’d expect from Roca. It’s arguably his most personal book and it’s a hell of a read, as he digs into his own family history to explore a trying time in both Spanish and European history.

Bertram remains one of my favorite artists, very much cut from that Moebius-inspired Quitely school of illustrious, textural detail wherein you can feel very fold of cloth and every wrinkle on the skin. But his figures bend and twist more, they’re most ghastly and gangly. And together with DVP, he delivered his finest work via Little Bird a couple of years back. I really dug Little Bird.

And this prequel is arguably even more beautiful and well-crafted, as Bertam and Hollingsworth together have never looked better. The pages are gorgeous, and getting to revisit this world ruled over by the Christo-Fascist Imperium Of Americas felt well-worth the trip.

I initially intended to just flip through this. Y’know, I’ll take a look at the interiors for a bit, get to it later. Whatddya know, that was impossible, because once I started, I couldn’t stop. I was locked the fuck in.

A tightly wound dark fantasy fable about the futility of of capitalist work-practices, and the absurd world of excess and ritualistic cruelty that it exists within, as the hedonistic capital class lives it in up in monstrous ways. Now, that can seem didactic, but thankfully, this isn’t that kind of comic. It’s just a damn good tragedy of this little delivery man, this poor gig-worker trying to deliver his package and get his damn signature so he can get back to his work.

Too bad his delivery is to a place no soul should have to go, much less endure. Set in a nigh-labyrinthine house of horrors, it’s a great bit of horror with fantastical absurdities all over the place from one of our finest working cartoonists. Dahm just kills it on this. I’m surprised it’s not on more end-of-the-year lists this year. It really should be.

A tremendous tone poem about the experiential horror of living amidst an apocalyptic world with an oppressor who just will not listen or change. The kind of thing that could easily be annoying or boring in other hands is transformed into a sweeping, emotionally rich, and evocative piece of comics poetry that relentlessly reinforces a tonality and a horror that feels all too-real and of this moment in the 2020s. It’s about all the experiences of reaching out and dreaming of a better world, and seeing those dreams eviscerated. It’s about extending help, only to find you are unwanted and in fact blamed for the problems to begin with. Until of course the time to pretend there is no problem at all starts, of course.

More than anything, it’s a comic rooted in feeling. It’s why though it is quite short, no longer than 30 pages, it hits. Every page is working towards that feeling. Every page is a unit in the larger composition here like a beat in a great track. It’s short, it’s bleak, and it’s just right. Stephens remains one of my absolute cartoonists working today, and I really do wish more people read her work.

The title really does say it all in this case. A charming Lesbian romance comic that begins with misconceptions and misunderstandings, like all good romcoms do. I grew up on Romance manga so I’m a total mark for a good one, and Arai has such a sense for strong characterization. She just knows how to nail a person effectively and immediately, without them feeling like a dull card-board cutout archetype in the way that it can be easy to.

Beyond that, the way this uses color is remarkable. Arai sprinkles in green so deliberately and so effectively that it’s stunning when it appears, and it creates for such clear and memorable aesthetic identity that defines the whole book. But even beyond that, its structured into these little vignettes and short-stories that are perfect little comics on their own but collectively build and build into a serialized drama that really delivers, and is paced super-well both in the micro and the macro. This blew up big time in the manga world, and it’s easy to understand why. It’s just damn well executed. I love good romance comics, especially when they’re put together with such slick craft.

We were talking about romance comics, weren’t we? This is a pretty good one. Rooted in Yang’s recurring interest in cultural syncretism but taken to a new place and outlet by teaming up with LeUyen Pham, we’re treated to an Asian-American romance drama about two unlikely people.

And it centers around the tradition of Lunar New Year, as well as the ceremonial dances and performances around it, with our messy duo discovering who they are both together and apart. It’s Classic Romance, it’s the kind of ‘go get ’em!’ esque sweeping thing, and it’s sweet, charming, well-drawn, and a surprise after Yang’s Dragon Hoops. It’s likely not where anyone would’ve expected the prolific cartoonist to go. But it’s a joyous tale full of generational trauma, messy Asian-American families, intra-community drama and a whole lot more that feels wholly appropriate and exactly what you come to a Gene Yang comic for. But even more than Yang, LeUyen Pham kills it. There’s such striking spreads and splashes in here that express love and myth in symbolically slick ways that are memorable. And she carries the whole book with her cartooning strength.

Adam De Souza’s been killing it for a couple of years now. Between Blind Alley, the webcomic that’s always funny and charming, and the Ish collection of experimental work, I’ve always been a fan.

But this is probably the most single piece of sustained work Adam’s done, and it’s a delightful coming-of-age yarn that looks like nothing else on the stands and is so much fun to read through and go over again and again. If you missed it, I say give it a shot. It’s a great time.

The King’s Warrior by Huahua Zhu

I dig a good Dark Fantasy, and at 74 pages, this is just that. Zhu creates a lovely hybrid that takes as much from manga as it does european cartooning to create a lovely, tight little fable with tragedy all over it. It’s a Great Quest narrative inter-cut with backstory that wraps up neatly by the end, and it looks utterly gorgeous while doing it. It’s like a splendid BD Album. What a treat.

Bhanu Pratap is an interesting one. I’ve always wondered what do comics from our region of the world look like? What do they mean? What does it entail to be ‘Indian’ comics? Or ‘Pakistani’ comics? Or ‘Bangladeshi’ comics? Or ‘Kashmiri’ Comics or ‘Nepalese’ Comics or ‘Sri Lankan’ comics, on and on.

It’s difficult given our region’s history as a once-colonized place, particularly as you see the places with big, storied comics eco-systems and scenes are often explicitly imperial and colonial states that have benefited from resource extraction and being ahead via the very history of printing/publishing and how access/wealth fit in with that.

It’s no accident that America, Japan, France, and Britain, and other imperial peers are the ones with the ‘biggest’ comics eco-systems. Their histories explain why they have it, including the powers of their currency.

But still, art persists, as it always has in colonized places, wherein people made their own to the best of their ability. And we see that all over the world, including here. Political cartoons in papers to long-form work, it has all been done, despite the difficult circumstances. But really, when you say ‘Indian comics’, usually three things come up:

a) Tinkle Comics (Gag Cartoon Strips)
b) Amar Chitra Katha (Hindu Mythological Retellings)
c) Raj Comics Superhero Garbage (Terrible American mimicry material)

‘Indian’ comics has no such thing. It is, to me, a wide-open space. The most interesting work is being done now, with major Indian creatives working for publishers abroad, making books for different international markets, given the Indian comics scene is not a conducive space for them to be able to do what they do. Ram V, Anand RK, Sumit Kumar, Aditya Bidikar, are at the forefront of this at the current moment, though there’s many more. They’re probably the biggest.

But none of them are as experimental or as wildly out there or weird as Bhanu Pratap. Pratap’s work is so clearly drawn from a love of alternative comix and refuses to conform to be anything mainstream. He’s so unlike anything that came before in Indian comics, and feels like the face of the ‘alternative’ vision of Indian cartooning.

His figures bend and twist in unusual ways, he makes striking use of color, and his work has such adoration for abstraction, with fierce purpose and pointed humor being found in it. I have such fun reading comics, and he reads like nobody else. He’s a fascinating hybrid comics artist who I frankly could not get bored of. A whole bunch of his short-stories are collected in this collection by Fantagraphics and they’re a riot. In a landscape wherein it is easy to be generic, Pratap and his work standout. He’s gloriously weird, and the world needs more of that. Weird cartooning is cool.

I could go on and on about this one and turn in a whole essay reflecting on Pratap’s work in relation to ‘Indian Comics’, and this entry betrays my impulse to do so, but alas, I’ll have to keep this short and cut it here. But yeah, very quick read and very enjoyable read.

An apocalypse as lived. Emma Rios is one of the sharpest cartoonists working right now, and her crafting this weird, wild book of people trying to survive the end of things is simply one of the most memorable piece of comics work I’ve read this year. The painted-water colors, the delicate lettering that looks like hand-writing, every aspect of this feels so naturally crafted by hand, by a singular voice.

And there is simply no other comic out there this year that looks anything like this. It is so utterly distinct. There are images in here seared into my head, and in terms of sheer image-making, and memorable, distinct image-making, this is up there as one of my favorites this year.

I really loved Heikkilä’s Second Safest Mountain from last year. And Home By The Rotting Sea feels very much like a spiritual successor to that. It continues Heikkilä’s recurring interest in exploring female companionship amidst oppressive patriarchal systems designed to destroy them. Both of them are set in fantastical dark fantasy settings, of strange celestial creatures and fictional beings like the Giants. And over and over, across both, we see the common, everyday violence that is ever-present and ever-expected, as well as how these women cope and have coped in the face of that.

There is a Content Warning for this with regards to Sexual Assault, so do go into it knowing that.

At about a 100 pages, this is roughly a OGN/Two BDS/a mini-series length exploration of two women who’ve been sent away by The Human King to the settlement of the Giants and must try to survive there. It’s all about living and adapting in a different culture, particularly as people who’ve lost all there is to lose over and over again, having been objectified and discarded by the monstrous machine of human society.

One of those comics that when it ends, it made me go ‘Oh! It’s over already?? Damn. I’d have happily read more’. I really look forward to Heikkilä’s offering next year.

For sheer visual flair, this might be my favorite thing this year. It’s a bit over-written for my tastes at points, so it drags to a halt at points in those specific sections, but once it gets out of them and out its way, it’s simply a visual feast. And the kind of thing designed to be read more than once, over and over, which is also why I understand those dense sections being what they are.

I can’t describe it any better than it describes itself- ‘A trans/(anti-)military/sci-fi comic set in four timelines. Jack, a genetically modified supersoldier, and Nour, a displaced sniper, find each other on opposite sides every time. Unknown to them both, their lives are defined by the existence of a weapon that puts the worlds into motion.’

And that is indeed what it is. And it is at its most glorious when Dáire just cuts loose as a cartoonist and runs wild with the visuals.

One of our most talented cartoonists sits down to draw a spectacular sci-fi about labor in a techno-dystopia, and the result is a really satisfying, lived-in piece of work. I’m not super fond of the chibi-figures approach here, but the actual backgrounds, vehicular design, and dialogue alongside what the overall text is doing really did keep me engaged. And I can safely say no one else in Western comics is perhaps doing it like Singelin is here.

Super fun, sci-fi comics that’s just a good human drama about people being weighed down by the capitalist rituals and reduction they have to endure.

Dante’s Inferno by paul and Gaëtan Brizzi

Veteran animators Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi team-up to tackle the iconic poem, and the results are simple gorgeous image after gorgeous image. In what is surely one of the most visually striking and evocative adaptations of the material, it is a tremendous artbook of Black/White pieces that I could just stare at forever. I really do hope more of their comics work gets translated to English, beyond this. Their compositional skill is superb.

Honestly, reading this just pissed me off [highest compliment]. In that, how have we been locked away from Chantal Montellier’s work for so goddamn long? Reading the foreword of this alone, describing how English Translations of her work botched things, it feels like borderline sabotage. It’s goddamn criminal that one of the most vital cartoonists and a pioneering artist like her was denied a wider readership via proper translation.

Montellier is a feminist trailblazer of French comics who made sharp political work, and this collection of a number of her stories is tremendous. WONDER CITY is one of the best short-comics I’ve ever read and might genuinely be the best of its type. The cartooning in this man. Man. The use of color alone. Montellier is maddeningly fucking good. It feels like downright robbery that her work was kept away from non-French speakers for so long and denied a greater audience and applause. Because it deserves it. It absolutely deserves it, far more so than so much of the crap we’ve seen paraded about for decades. This came out in late 2023, and I only got to check it out in 2024, but it was so worth it. It gets my highest goddamn recommendation.

The ultimate modern revival of the greatest phantom criminal. Bocquet and Rochelaeu do a deliciously enjoyable presentation of one of the most deadly fictional figures to emerge from the pulp scene, preserving all his monstrosity and macabre sensibilities. This is not the charming Arsene Lupin. God no. This is Fantômas. He’ll kill you and skin you.

And Rocheleau’s work here is some of the most gorgeous you can find in comics. This has to easily be one of the best lettered comics I’ve ever read in my life. It’s not even a contest. It’s ridiculous how much personality there is in the lettering, and the way it’s customized to each moment or character or mood, particularly combined with the magnificent colors. The colorwork on this is out of this world. Rocheleau is simply marvelous.

So my good pal Serge put me onto this given he’s in France. He asked me ‘Have you read The Chimera Brigade?’ and I was like ‘No! Let me look this up!’. And I did. And I was struck by having heard no peep on it. And as is my nature, whenever I find a blind-spot, I try and do my level best to correct it and fill-it up. So I went in. I went all-in and did my research and worked my way into it.

Serge Lehman, Fabrice Colin, Gess, and Céline Bessonneau together ask a simple question– What if the world’s first super-humans emerged during The First World War via Marie Curie’s Radium Research?

Jokes aside though, the team, in pursuing this period drama what-if, chart the chronicle of the European pulp figures from the end of the First World War up to the Second World War. And they do it while taking a clear and distinct French perspective on the whole thing too, which is worth noting.

A comic perhaps not unlike The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but different in that a) it doesn’t suck shit b) it doesn’t piss me off with absurd levels of racism and imperialism c) it’s not all over the place and actually feels focused and purposeful, with a clear mission/remit that it fulfills by the end.

It’s a comic with clear Alan Moore influences, from Miracleman to Watchmen all clearly lain-bare, while the aesthetic powers of Mike Mignola are clearly a huge influence on Gess in this period and project. And above all, as any comic of this terrain ought to be–it’s a comic about failure. And it is strikingly honest and bleak in its admission of that and exploration of that, of European complicity, cowardice, and failure, in a way so much American material around WW2 just never is, going for a ‘yeaaaahhh wooo, da american heroes punch out hitler!!’. There’s none of that self-congratulatory, back-patting hero-myth shit to ‘uplift’ the audience and a nationalist myth. It’s instead all about how all this shit ends up serving fascism. It’s precision-engineered pulp work rooted in both very real history and pulp history in such a way that it works.

When I read it, it fit like a glove for me alongside the likes of other texts in this terrain, like Watchmen, 20th Century Men, The Winter Men, and so on.

Beginning life initially as an Iron Man pitch for Marvel set during WW1, the project morphed when that fell through and Marvel pulled back from its European endeavors. That’s when Dorison tweaked it and really set out to make something unique and deeply French, and when he got out and got Breccia onboard.

The end-result? A proper masterpiece. Breccia drew all 4 volumes in his 60s and it may be some of my favorite work from him, particularly his painted-on colors which are just stunning. It is mature work from the experienced master, before he enters his 70’s and experiences the lull he’s kind of been in since. So this really does feel like a special last treat.

A shame that it is incomplete and is open-ended, with no definitive conclusion, and Dorison/Breccia never got to cover the entire 1914-1918 period of the war across every volume, charting various regions and campaigns. But I am glad we got what we did, and it works really nicely, as each volume feels pretty complete, and where it leaves us IS satisfying and closure enough.

What a bleak, fucked up comic about ‘heroes’ who are as monstrous as any fucked up bastards they fight, about how power corrupts and erodes humanity, all brought to life by one of the greatest artists to ever pick up a pen.

If you’re looking for a reading order, try The Sentinels–>The Chimera Brigade–>Watchmen–>20th Century Men–>The Winter Men.

That should make for a hell of an experience.

I finally got around to this after ages, and honestly, it raised my estimation of Sloane Leong so much higher. I adore Leong’s A MAP TO THE SUN. Probably one of the finest comics, esp sports-related comics, to come out from the American scene, cartooned wonderfully well. But cartooning yourself and scripting for another artist are different jobs entirely. And the fact that Leong can do both impressed me, particularly given Leong does it so damn well.

This is a proper Gothic horror piece, with Anna Bowles’ art going obscenely hard. And it’s frankly one of the best comics I’ve seen come out of the DM period. It’s a shame more people have not read it, and that I had not up until now. It’s so tightly wound and so sharply executed. Its usage of captions and simulated sound (or lack there of) is so well done, and it’s such a complete package. God this rules.

Hands down one of my favorite discoveries of the year. Thank to pal squarehead333/robin of the GHR blog fame for putting me onto this. Rodrigo is simply put one of the best artists to ever grace the pages of the artform. The sheer compositional freedom, the technical skill and detail, the free-flowing figurework that never feels stiff or static, full of such lively people bursting with life, and a clear architectural background that makes his settings feel really textured and lived-in and tangible. My god. What a draftsman. It’s downright criminal that such a magnificent queer artist has not been reprinted damn never everywhere, particularly since a) he’s so bloody good but also b) Manuel is a silent comic! You really don’t have to do much work to reprint it in terms of translation, re-lettering or what have you. It’s almost good to go.

And it’s such spell-binding comics, too. Just thunderously impactful drawing after drawing, with a range that is wild, and it is simply breathtaking work. I’m so glad I got to experience Rodrigo’s work. And I hope one day more people will too. One of the great masters, truly. It still feels insane to me that this book came out in 1985, because it feels so ahead of its time. Like the best of Toppi, Breccia and other great masters, Rodrigo transcends. He feels as cutting edge NOW as he must have done decades prior. And that truly is special, folks.

This is the zone where ‘diversity’ goes to die and should frankly never be expected. And the very rare ‘diversity’ that you do get is often the most hackish bullshit. Like the terribad or forgettably mediocre YA sludge equivalent. Just the same ol’ boring white writer IP Mining shit, except y’know, with a different identarian filter. Which just sucks. Like, sure, yes POC talent ought to be able to do mediocre shit like all the crackers too, sure. But also, I’m not here to care about boring and mediocre ass art. They can make that and get their bread. I’m just not obliged to care about it.

It’s why by and large, all the exciting diverse talent is self-publishing, in the book market, in webcomics, or in other global markets. The DM is a deadzone that has only gotten more and more insular, priced out more and more folks, with a shrinking demographic of oldheads, designed to sell IP over art. I have no hope for it in the long-run. It’s a shitshow.

You have the Millarverse (moved from Image to Dark Horse), the Hellboyverse (Dark Horse), the Black Hammerverse (Dark Horse), the Massiveverse (Image), you have the Energon Universe (Image), the TMNTverse (IDW), The Rangerverse (BOOM!), The Nacelleverse (Oni), The Thunderverse (Dynamite). On and on. There’s more I’m not mentioning here.

Everybody and their mom wants to be Mini-Marvel and Mini-DC. The IPverse as their primary breadwinner and Thing. Which is to say…everybody wants to be fucking Wildstorm all over again.

Even Kieron Gillen/Caspar Wijngaard’s The Power Fantasy which I was once excited for (I’m an optimistic fool) has effectively turned out to be their version of that. Their Astro City, their Black Hammer, their Invincible, effectively. Just, y’know, with X-Men instead of the usual JLA/Superman/Spider-Man/Batman. This is effectively Gillen doing his purest, truest ‘Image’ title in the ’90s vein. And frankly, the landscape itself does feel very 90’s, this IP rat-race. Particularly with The Substack Grants and the likes of 3W/3M being another World-building Enterprise not unlike these.

I’m tired of the most boring white creatives on the planet being pitched as some exciting talents or ‘rockstars’ or whatever in this tiny pond. That said, amidst the endless piles of rubbish, there are books and a few creators who go against the tide to deliver good work on occasions.

The big ones for me are Ram V, Juni Ba, and Deniz Camp. As such, their specific upcoming projects are what I’m looking forward to in 2025:

Monkey Meat: Summer Batch by Juni Ba

Assorted Crisis Events by Deniz Camp/Eric Zawadzki

absolute martian manhunter by deniz camp/javier rodriguez

Camp working with Javier Rodriguez is really the draw here for me. Don’t care about anything else at this point. I love the weird freakish design that looks nothing like your usual superhero shit, and the whole pitch sounds rather like in the vein of Vertigo’s SHADE THE CHANGING MAN. And while unlike most, I don’t care for that book or just Milligan in general, I can appreciate the distinct lane it wants to slot into. Should be fun, I think. Especially given it’s just a 6-issue run at least for now. Limited, complete seasonal story, sweet.

Ram v/evan cagle’s the new gods + ram v/anand rk’s resurrection man

Ram V is probably the best and most consistently engaging creator in the Direct Market period at this point. I will show up to try anything Ram does at this juncture. And his revival of Kirby’s The Fourth World is off to a strong start, while his Resurrection Man maxi-series reuniting the Grafity’s Wall/Blue In Green team looks sick as hell.

The Absence of the original ongoing serial (with sauce)

Beyond these, I’m basically out of this space for the year. I was hoping Gillen/Wijngaard’s The Power Fantasy would deliver, because more than anything, I would have loved to have a monthly ongoing that I actually enjoyed, with some ambition in there, which also was not an anthology. The Original Ongoing in the DM is something that has practically died afterall, at least outside of anthologies. That sort of proper long-form thing is now relegated to like 6 people:

-Lemire
-Gillen
-Remender
-Tynion
-Liu
-BKV

There are others, of course, like Fraction, Hickman, but none of those guys really do that anymore. They’re kinda past that. And everybody else just cannot afford it.

Monstress is gorgeous and a deservedly run-away success, being basically a messy queer-women led western battle manga (Takeda is a japanese artist afterall) that really is rare and occupies a unique niche. There’s no other book like it in the DM, certainly none that look as good, and feel as well-designed. It’s the kind of thing that feels like it could’ve been at Karen Berger’s Vertigo once upon a time. But at the same time, its dialogue tends to be a bit too YA for my tastes. Never quite as polished as I’d like, though it is a solid book. And it’s also not really built for single issue reading either, I find? It’s much more of a Trade Read. There’s no real impulse or draw to read it in singles, I feel.

Lemire bores me. Remender is also boring. BKV is unreadably dogshit. Tynion, hell no. So that just leaves Gillen for me. In that sense, TPF was very much my last hope of an actual honest to god ‘man, this fucks’ long-form serial in the DM.

Alas, it has ended up being a twee Jupiter’s Legacy for people who would not want to be caught dead with a Mark Millar comic. It solidified for me that Gillen can write about the insular arts culture, fans, critics, creators, that sort of thing, y’know, stuff utterly swimming in that sort of bubble. Phonogram, WicDiv, Die. That sort of ‘my relationship to this artform and this art culture’ project. He can manage that. But ask him to write reality, Real Shit, stuff that has to tackle Real Politics or geopolitical material, grounded in a well-read understanding, and it all goes to shit. That is just so not at all a thing he can do, from what I’ve seen here. Maybe he can in a few years, if he works at it. But right now? Absolutely not. I read TPF and my god, it wants to be Watchmen, but it is instead wank.

A comic that would like to be about the drama of The Most Powerful People On Earth, like, say, Succession but instead of having Brian Cox or Jeremy Strong-esque character actors who look like real people, everybody looks like a romanticized Tumblr Sexyman. They all look Hot but also crucially Hot in the same narrow sort of way. It’s a comic full of Logan Roys if they were all Tumblr Sexymen. If that sounds stupid, well, it’s because it is. And rather than Succession’s showcase of how pathetic these people are, it’s a comic that indulges in the ‘cool’ factor of the all-powerful leads. It’s the ‘ohhh man, these guys are fucked up and dangerous! But damn, that thing he did was cool and badass! They looked good doing it!’.

It’s a comic supposedly about not-fighting, so you’d think when action happens, it would feel hauntingly visceral. You’d expect some kind of interesting handling of violence. But no, when it does happen, when a guy gets turned into a meatball, or heads get blown up, it feels no different to a Kirkman or Millar book. Its relationship to violence is nothing like the reflective Alan Moore work it wants to channel. It’s an adolescent’s idea of a Mature Comic, which is to say, it is a Mark Millar comic. All posturing and performance without anything of real substance to back it up. Everybody looks amazing, with perfect clothes and make-up, with nary a sight of a wrinkly Urasawa oldman or any sense of textured reality that Otomo or Totleben could convey. It’s Instagram Filter Reality. It’s Indie X-Men Comics for people who bought the Krakoa era. Commercially savvy, certainly, and I do hope the creators make good money off it, but creatively? Cooked. This is nothing. It’s outright bad. It’s a comic that gives its characters varied specific international identities and yet everybody talks like Kieron Gillen. The dialogue is dire.

And my disappointment is immeasurable.

So ends my attempt at finding an original long-form ongoing I can enjoy reading in the DM.

Alas.

Maybe when Ram tries to do it, I can try again in a couple of years.

But until then?

a new STEP FORWARD? who can say?

The Direct Market aside, there’s been some interesting movements to keep an eye on. First Second is getting a Sister Imprint that is exclusively for publishing Adult Graphic Novels via Macmillan.

This is big. We had Tor Nightfire launch a few years back, with Nadia Shammas/Marie Enger’s Where Black Stars Rise (an excellent comic fyi) at the forefront, aiming to serve Adult Comics Readers exclusively. But that seems to have vanished and died out, and we have no clue on it at this point. Nothing new has come from them since.

So another notable player coming into the terrain to make Adult OGNs happen is good. That’s needed. That’s sorely needed, as not everything can be YA or Middle-Grade, and lord knows there are tons of people dying to work on and get paid for making actual comics for adults and not just younger folks. And the outlets to do so in the book publishing space have been scarce compared to what they ideally ought to be.

This is good news. 23rd Street Books existing is a net-good for the artform. I hope more and more publishers can get into the Adult Comics publishing space and make the right hiring moves to help it blossom into what it really can be. There’s no shortage of comics readers or a hunger for comics reading. It is just a matter of material and finding the avenues to get that material into the right hands.

And it’s a particularly exciting enterprise, given we know one of the big launch titles coming from the new publishing imprint this year in August:

drome by jesse lonergan

Upcoming Comics I’m looking forward to in 2025

It feels like I’ve waited my whole damn life to get a proper full-on collected English version of Shirato Sanpei’s groundbreaking gekiga series. It’s influential, its a cultural juggernaut in Japan, but it’s been so unavailable to access and enjoy for an English-speaking audience. The new D&Q Editions look to be collecting the whole thing in 10 volumes, and I’m thrilled we’ll have high quality modern pages of Shirato Sanpei available.

It’s gonna take a while for all of the volumes to hit, but goddamn I am happy to wait. I’ve waited this long. I can manage.

Singelin is one of the most talented cartoonists around. And alongside Mathieu Bablet, we have a new collaboration that sees them tackle Super Sentai from a decidedly French angle. It’s very much a DKR-esque ‘And the heroes retired, it’s been years since they were last required’ sorta deal. You know the usual. And it seems them all ordinary, trying to get by. So nothing too terribly new. But Singelin’s strikingly distinct cartooning is the big draw here.

Look at this trailer they’ve put out for the book!

Those regular jackets and boots over the Sentai suits look so cool and provide such real texture to the world of Shin Zero. After Frontier, I can’t wait to see what this ends up being like.

JE SUIS UN ANGE PERDU by jordi lafebre

Lafebre’s new project after Always Never! I was mixed on the that book, and thought Aditya Bidikar kinda nailed it in his critiques of the book. But Lafebre still remains a very talented cartoonist, and I am eagerly looking forward to what this next book will be like. Hopefully something much sharper than the quite stunted Always Never.

It took me a good while to put the finishing touches on this long, sprawling piece. When I first started, it was a good bit ago. Now it’s the 19th of January, the ceasefire has just gone into effect in Occupied Palestine. We’re seeing such outbursts of joy and relief from Palestinians after 15 months of horror. The Palestinian Resistance alone deserve credit for this, having defeated every single ambitions of the Zionist entity and its many imperial backers. Without their resilience, and the spirit of the Palestinian people, none of this could be possible. May it last. May this be the foundation for the eternal preservation of this relief and joy. Now, more than ever, the Palestinian people need our help. So once again, if you got anything out of this piece, I ask that you consider helping within your means or doing whatever you can with your platform.

That is all. This feels like the only worthwhile and responsible use of whatever platform I have. So that’s it from me for now. Much love.

Do take care of yourselves.

Ritesh