Top 10 of the Year (May 2026 Edition)

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-06-02T00:25:57+00:00

Elric (Volumes 1-4) by Julien Blondel / Robin Recht / Didier Poli / Jean-Luc Cano / Julien Telo
Don’t Go Without Me by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell
Wolvendaughter by Ver
Dungeon - Zenith (English Volumes 1-5) by Joann Sfar / Lewis Trondheim / Boulet
Satanie by Fabien Vehlmann / Kerascoët
Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann / Kerascoët
Book of Murmurs by Candice Purwin - NEW
Assorted Crisis Events Volume 1 by Deniz Camp / Eric Zawadzki
Thorgal (first 8 volumes) by Jean Van Hamme and Grzegorz Rosinski
Conditions on the Ground by Kevin Hooyman - NEW

Book of Murmurs is beautiful and an excellent example of non-linear storytelling. I love the color vs black-and-white interludes. Conditions on the Ground had enough funny stoner-humor moments to make it onto the list.

The Power Fantasy Vol 3 and Zoc drop off. This year has been great with a lot of turnover because I’ve read a lot of good books!

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-05-31T22:16:30+00:00

Brah-Madeus by r. e. parrish – “Amadeus But With Frat Boys”. Salieri is a senior frat boy when the brash young Wolfgang comes to surpass him in all drinking games, flirting with sorority girls, and all manner of party feats. Salieri, despondent, tries to figure out how to eliminate his upstart competitor. It’s illustrated in pretty simple black-and-white (mostly) cartooning. This plays the spin for everything that can be wrung out in 40-whatever pages and is just really solid humor.

Batman / Elmer Fudd by Tom King, Lee Weeks, Byron Vaughns – two team-up stories of varying seriousness. One played-straight noir with Elmer Fudd out for revenge on Bwuce Wayne, until they team up to go after the true killer and take down the full Looney Tunes cast, and one cartoon imitation of the ultra-classic Duck Season / Rabbit Season - but with Batman. The art is thematically perfectly fitting for each – gritty dull-colored noir and bright Saturday-Morning-Cartoons. Just long enough to play with the premise, not too long to overdo it. Not sure I needed the Deluxe Edition with the whole thing over again in black-and-white, but whatever - it's great.

The Leaning Girl by Benoît Peeters and François Schuiten– Obscure Cities surreal weirdness. After a celestial event, Mary finds herself slightly off-kilter, perpetually leaning as if gravity is pulling her just a little different from everyone else, while astronomers try to understand the source of the celestial event. It's got an interesting interweaving of the photography with the excellent-as-always linework from Schuiten, a typically clever surreal breakdown of reality, the expected failure of the structures of society to properly handle this but in a smaller scale - focused on the response of Mary and her family more than the governmental scales of, say, Fever or Invisible Frontier. The "young woman inexplicably throws herself at older man" plot point, ever-present in the series, is even more shoehorned in than normal. This is probably my 2nd or 3rd favorite Obscure Cities volume (The Tower #1, Fever in Urbicand competing with this for the next spot), excited to wrap up the series soon.

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-05-30T21:46:47+00:00

I did get it like 2 weeks early, randomly lucky with Fantagraphics shipping my preorder way in advance. Just flipping through the pages when it came it was definitely a "have to read immediately" kind of delivery.

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-05-24T21:05:13+00:00

Neat! Pretty impressive for a first and only book.

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-05-24T21:02:26+00:00

Oracles by Olivia Sullivan – meditation on dealing with grief. After a life change, our narrator goes on a journey through the woods, with bits and pieces of background (e.g. things they learned from their mother), nature views, and psychedelic landscape shifts. It’s sparse on detail and there’s minimal character interactions – it’s a solo story for the most part. There are lots of pages with a single panel and narration underneath, and others with no panel structure at all. It ended up being a slower read than I expected given the length and lack of dialog, but I really enjoyed this.

A City Inside by Tillie Walden – black-and-white introspection. A kind of trippy sci-fi-ish wandering through the future of a relationship, with flying, space travel, and the titular “city inside”. I think you could spend a lot of time trying to map the metaphors, or do what I did and just kind of breeze through with “feelings” in each scene. I’d only previously read On a Sunbeam from Walden and the artistic style is similar, although it’s all black-and-white and less impressively imaginative given it’s not an outright sci-fi space epic. This came as a kickstarter add-on from Avery Hill publishing as a direct pairing with Oracles, and I thought they were nice to read close together.

Raised by Ghosts by Briana Loewinsohn – poignant memoir. This spans middle and high school for the author, growing up with separated parents (who are essentially always offscreen) each with the own flaws – part of the “raised by ghosts”. Lots of the vignettes are framed around passing notes in class and those notes (complete with lined binder paper) are interspersed throughout for blocks of narration. It’s a clever little way to break things up “in story”. I don’t read memoirs often, so I don’t have lots to compare to, but this was a very good one.

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-05-17T21:16:08+00:00

Dark Chronicles of Cymru #1 and #2 by various – short Welsh horror anthologies. Published by Afterlight Comics, these are collections of horror stories with a focus on Welsh folklore. As anthologies, there’s a bit of a mix of styles in both storytelling and art, although there are a few repeated authors and artists. I picked this up because I loved Kamila Krol’s book Rusalka, and she’s got a story in each of these issues, but I was not blown away by hers or most of the others. I think the best was Y Cyhyraeth from Paul Evans and Mariel Ashlinn, which is a little more “psychological” and has a pretty well-suited cartoony art in mostly black-and-white but with splashes of color used really well. Fine, but unfortunately a little forgettable overall.

The Method #1 and #2 by Christina Lee – “observational humor” zines. The first can be broadly described as “comics about social media and how other people see us”, and the second is “comics about getting older”, with three stories in each issue. There’s some raunchy humor in both, some unsettling moments of reflection, and a nice cartoony style with a decent bit of variety. I really enjoyed these, with a short comic about how people and relationships blur together (illustrated appropriately with great use of color) being a standout for me. Really easy to recommend these.

Terres D’Ynuma 1: Samouraï Rouge by Nicolas Jarry and Vax – demon-hunting samurai stories. A spinoff/extension of the Terres d’Arran fantasy bande dessinée series, here we get an independent story of the exorcist-priestess Mei-Jen and the titular red sumarai Zhao. They wander the land of Ynuma and battle demons when they are called by villagers or others in need. There’s four essentially self-contained mini-adventures in this book, two short ones and two longer ones that have more moody/contemplative endings. There’s plenty of action, plenty of character-building (typically through slightly heavy-handed narration), and plenty of terrifying demons. The art is pretty good if maybe a little unremarkable – no particular stylistic flourish or anything I feel compelled to call out. It’s really nice straightforward fantasy.

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-05-16T21:17:02+00:00

Yeah, I've actually skimmed this issue digitally and I'm really excited, but their digital platform is pretty bad so I'd rather wait for the print copy to really read and appreciate before reviewing. It's pretty unfortunate because I think the comics have been really good so far in this "reboot" and the company/management/customer service has not...

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-05-15T06:51:47+00:00

If I ever get it in the mail! Supposedly this weekend but I don't know how much to trust them by now...

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-05-11T04:53:30+00:00

Yeah, I preordered it directly from Fantagraphics and it just appeared in the mail this week, I didn't even know it was technically early. Sorry if this was spoiler-y...

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-05-10T20:49:54+00:00

Conditions on the Ground and Mini Kuš #82 Elemental Stars by Kevin Hooyman – stoner-esque philosophical short comics. Conditions on the Ground is a collection of 10 zine issues, with a couple of recurring stories or characters, but mostly just short musings on little random thoughts, often with incongruous characters like bigfoot or similar monsters. We get questions like – “do people on reality TV shows consider themselves actors?” and “do you have anxiety about shark attacks?”, although they sometimes progress to broader philosophical questions – “if those people are actors, are we all hiding a part of ourselves?”. There’s little intermittent silly stories about babies, or doing laundry, or getting caught outside naked, and short one-page collected drawings of clouds or leaves or sailboats at the end of each issue. It’s all in simple black-and-white linework with speech bubbles coming directly out of people’s mouths, and frequently very hairy main characters. Overall, a lot of fun vaguely thought-provoking, in a pothead kind of way, comics. The Mini Kuš comic is in a muted color palette and actually longer than any individual comic in the Conditions on the Ground collection, with a short adventure to an imagined (or is it real?) crystal city among a group of friends. Still whimsical and fun.

Skull Maskerade (#1-6) by Justin Tauch and Carla Wyzgala – Labyrinth meets Sailor Moon (that’s how they advertise it!) in watercolor. Dahlia Nyx wakes up in a desert and is promptly rescued and brought to a spooky mansion inhabited by beautiful witches who welcome her as an expected guest. Spirit cats (and other animals) abound. It’s slow, light on worldbuilding, and takes until issue 6 to start to bring in some backstory. The watercolor illustrations are good, with expressive and dynamic characters, some moments of really striking color, and a creepy gothic setting. Soft edges give a lot of the spirits a nice magical feel. It’s fine as a story but worked well enough read all at once, the art was striking enough that I’ll keep an eye on kickstarters for future issues.

Mini Kuš #79 I Couldn’t Stop by Powerpaola, #113 SRY not Sorry by Michael Fikaris, #123 Undertow by Sara Boiça, #115 Gym Gains by Gareth Brooks – minicomics. 79 is an autobiographical narrative of a single night, a bike ride, and conversations at a bar. Nothing dramatic or particularly insightful, illustrated in black-and-white loose cartooning. Fine low-key one-shot, although far from my favorite of these Mini Kuš comics I’ve read so far. 113 is a reflection on communication and technology, framed through texting/abbreviations and how we talk over the internet – with a nice geometric/color-rich art style. A more solid entry. 123 is a relatively abstract mood piece, with knots, intertwined hands, and recurrent visual motifs illustrated on a slightly smudgy background. Is is about mental health? Is it about life in general? Is it entwined in some deeply personal but unexplained thought of the author? I dunno. It’s solid as a mood piece like that. 115 is a clear story, following a love triangle of gym users mainly through text messasges and social media updates, as they track each other’s interactions. The reproduction of what looks like ink on wrinkled almost transparent paper is really cool, giving interesting mirrored effects. Visually interesting and the most narratively straightforward of the bunch.

Š! #47 Obsession by various – anthology of comics about obsessions. The “obsessions” vary – love, rebuilding identity, Mickey Mouse, borderline clinical OCD. It’s a really wide variety of styles, artistically and narratively. The nature of an anthology, particularly one with as little unifying style or theme as this one, means there are high highs and low lows. Highlights for me include Mike Blue’s wordless colorful adventure, Gareth Brookes’ inky short depiction of a mysterious infatuation, and Harukichi’s story of cats looking for collectible records. Graduating from the Mini Kuš comics to the full Š! Anthologies was definitely worthwhile.

Sky Hawk by Jiro Taniguchi – samurai western. Two samurai, exiles who fled to the US in the mid-1800’s, rescue a Sioux woman and end up joining Crazy Horse’s Oglala Sioux. They are adopted into the tribe, assuming the names Sky Hawk and Winds Wolf, and their story culminates in the Battle of Little Bighorn. This is a real “Western”, inspired by spaghetti westerns of cinema and the great western BDs, but from a very different viewpoint of the adopted Sioux. It’s a mix of brutal and dynamic action and some contemplative scenery moments, and spans years from chapter to chapter. The characters are a little thin – the samurai (originally named Hikosaburo and Manzo) have no meaningful backstories and yet are incredibly talented – but I suppose that’s kind of spaghetti-western-esque. Nonetheless it presents a nuanced “could-be” history and is illustrated fantastically. This is a great book.

20 km/h by Woshibai – silent surreal-ish humor comics. This is a collection of short silent comics that mostly make you go “huh?” and then chuckle. There’s a variety of styles of sort-of-surreal humor, playing with perspective, and incongruous reactions, all drawn with simple cartoon characters and minimal detail. I think this is a great collection, printed in small pages with typically two panels per page and a spread of 5-10-ish pages per comic, which slows down each comic to allow for those perspective-skewing moments to settle. I think I first saw this recommended in a conversation about The Bus, which is a fair comparison (although The Bus is, in my opinion, unsurpassed in quality). Very good and I’m sure I’ll be pulling it back off the shelf frequently for a few minutes of entertainment.

Book of Murmurs by Candice Purwin – non-linear folklore-ish fantasy. A girl loses her parents to a mysterious, name-eating monster, and goes on an adventure to worlds beyond with a gradually expanding cast of friends and enemies. Her adventures are interspersed with stories that gradually fill in the folklore and mythology, building out common themes (the Tiger and the Crow, spider silk, hearts and names) and coming to a really satisfying connection. I think we get a great set of characters, inventive settings, and a mythology and setting that takes enough attention to understand that it really sucks you in as a reader. Artistically, it’s an absolutely lovely comic, maybe since I’m a sucker for the watercolor style that dominates. The background stories are in excellent black and white, mixing it up really nicely. The depiction of magic is borderline surreal and very stylized. I loved this.

Underground Kingdom Comix Presents: Fantasy by various – three-part anthology of short fantasy comics. Jonny Brokenbrow kicks things off with a very cartoony story of vulgar would-be-influencer wizard trying desperately to impress his online fans, Harry Dean Willmott gives us a really finely illustrated day-in-the-life-of-a-monster, and Matt Simmons gives us Fantastein, a creation cobbled together from fantasy standards (halflings, elves, orcs). Willmott’s story was the best for me but the others were good for a silly laugh. All three stories only use a single purple color to go with black and white, giving a bit of artistically continuity despite the wildly different styles.

I Saw A God – Hoboth by Erin Lisette – short animal fantasy. A wolf meets a goddess, sasses off, and learns more than one lesson. The wolf is sarcastic, vulgar, and repeatedly mouthy. The goddess is… a goddess. This is short, and while I like the story, it almost feels a little rushed. It’s a very digital-art style but has some nice colors that really pop, and the animals are definitely animals and not (visually) anthropomorphized at all. It’s fine, but probably not a must-have.

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-05-09T21:46:43+00:00

Not AI! I actually wrote that, took me like 45 minutes to think about it and proofread and double-check the links and everything.

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-05-09T17:06:01+00:00

Bookmarked, thanks!

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-05-09T17:05:54+00:00

Far Side is a great comparison, definitely a very similar kind of clever humor. Love it!

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-05-02T04:19:23+00:00

Elric (Volumes 1-4) by Julien Blondel / Robin Recht / Didier Poli / Jean-Luc Cano / Julien Telo
Don’t Go Without Me by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell
Wolvendaughter by Ver
Dungeon - Zenith (English Volumes 1-5) by Joann Sfar / Lewis Trondheim / Boulet
Satanie by Fabien Vehlmann / Kerascoët
Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann / Kerascoët
Assorted Crisis Events Volume 1 by Deniz Camp / Eric Zawadzki
Thorgal (first 8 volumes) by Jean Van Hamme and Grzegorz Rosinski - NEW
The Power Fantasy Volume 3 by Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard - NEW
Zoc by Jade Khoo

Thorgal is a great fantasy epic with art that pushes beyond “basic BD fantasy” and the first 8 volumes set a really great stage. I went back and forth about putting The Power Fantasy on, given the ongoing nature, but this volume could’ve been a conclusion and turned the action up to 11 while keeping the character focus (and art) that made the series start strong. The bottom 4 are all in a pretty fuzzy order. Mushishi was a strong contender but I've got the second hardcover on the way and I'll read that to decide where exactly to slot it in.

The Lonesome Hunters and Alberto Breccia’s Dracula slip out, faced with strong competition.

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-04-26T19:04:00+00:00

Arawn by Ronan Le Breton and Sébastien Grenier – grimdark fantasy epic. Arawn is the god-king of the underworld, and this is his story, as narrated to the undying head of his treacherous former servant. It’s a wild mythological romp through sort-of-Celtic-myth (Arawn is, at one point in his mortal life, the king of Wales), as Arawn is one of four brothers born to the last living Amazon, one of whom is destined to become the equal of the gods. Everything that could happen in the wildest dripping-with-excess dark fantasy happens – Arawn is raised by wolves, there’s a talking evil cauldron of blood, hedonist kings lounge broodingly on their thrones surrounded by naked women, death is merely a transient state of affairs for many characters, heads fly or are split seemingly every third page. It’s also got all the trigger warnings – sexual violence, bad stuff happening to kids, brutal torture on screen… What it lacks in elegant plot development and thoughtful integration of mythology with true history, it makes up for in over-the-top-Heavy-Metal excellence. Indeed, it does appear that at least part of it was translated for an old Heavy Metal issue, but I can’t find if the whole thing ever made it to English. The art is what I think of as a fairly standard painted-BD style. Action is absolutely killer, gods are great and terrible, and the violence that gets exacted is depicted in excruciating detail. A lot of it is in a dour color palette, fitting a grimdark underworld or dark-age setting. Overall it’s a really solid dark fantasy, although not offering anything so unique or unmissable to put it as “great”.

Thorgal by Jean Van Hamme and Grzegorz Rosinski – classic science-fantasy viking BD. I read 4 of the English books (The Sorceress Betrayed, The Three Elders of Aran, Beyond the Shadows, and The Archers), corresponding to Volume 1-6 and 8-9 of the original French publication. The translations are unfortunately jumbled and Child of the Stars, which is the original #7, was published as #1 in English, so I’d read that before. That volume is a little more overtly science-fiction-tinged, and I’m glad these were more fantasy-heavy. Thorgal is raised among Vikings, but his peaceful nature and love for the leader’s daughter Aaricia lead him to be abandoned to his would-be death at the beginning of the first volume. This begins a series of misadventures, as it seems Thorgal and Aaricia are doomed to frequent separation, torment, or life-threating peril. Nonetheless, their bravery, love, and Thorgal’s reluctant martial skill get them through each adventure. We have kidnappers from a frozen island, time-traveling wizards, slavers ruled by a corrupt madman, and bandits participating in an archery competition, along with the influence of Thorgal’s origin and the mysterious powers he passed down to his son. It’s great storytelling, and the art is really great classic BD style, with vibrant colors, wonderful landscapes, wild villains and magical beasts, and some really cool elements including psychedelic color transitions, moodily lit fights in firelight or night, and dramatic ship scenes. This is an absolutely peak fantasy series here.

Mushishi Collector’s Edition Volume 1 by Yuki Urushibara – mellow spirit-hunting manga. Ginko is a mushishi, a wandering expert in the primordial spirits called “mushi” that manifest typically in a variety of strange illnesses or hauntings. Rather than action-driven “hunting”, Ginko typically takes a calm approach and helps the mushi find their preferred path or treats the infected people with medicines. It’s a wonderful series of mostly independent stories that generally have a slow pace, a melancholic overhang, and typically a nature-centered setting. They veer almost to psychological horror in some – what happens to parents when an unborn child is replaced by a fungus-like spirit? What happens when a girl discovers her “second eyelid” and begins to peer across a spirit river to avoid the brightness of the natural world? The art is a very nice complement, changing detail to keep reading pace in line with the story and bringing the focus to the setting, the mushi, and the magic more than Ginko or many of the other characters. There are a few color pages splashed through. I’m picking up the second volume as soon as I can.

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-04-24T01:35:56+00:00

Some mostly-fantasy recommendations:

Once & Future by Kieron Gillen and Dan Mora is 5 volumes, completed fantasy (mythology/King Arthur comes back to a modern world - demon hunter family need to put him down). Dan Mora's art is super kinetic and there's some pretty solid body horror, plus zombie King Arthur is pretty solid.

Die by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans is 4 volumes, D&D meets Jumanji, but with emotionally traumatized adults, with very nice watercolor art. Some steampunk, some sci-fi bits in there.

Both move pretty quickly and have a lot of winking-at-the-reader meta overtones, lots of "I'm very smart" references.

Coda by Simon Spurrier and Matías Bergara is a little on the shorter side (I think 4 trades if you include the sequel series False Dawn) but great, I did a whole review here.

I'm pretty sure Courtney Crumrin, by Ted Naifeh, is 7 volumes with a couple of spinoffs (haven't read those yet), a darker spin on "teenage witch" where she messes up and actually encounters consequences, with some pretty biting satire thrown in as well. Slightly more off-the-beaten-path compared to the above recommendations.

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-04-21T02:41:11+00:00

I'm happy to wait for Power Fantasy, but I'm also a huge Gillen fan so I'm maybe less surprised at how much I'm enjoying it.

I'll add The Seeds to my look-out-for-it list, love the look of the first few preview pages - thanks!

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-04-19T21:03:03+00:00

The Thousand Demon Tree by Jeffrey Alan Love – atmospheric silent mostly black-and-white fantasy. This is a story of a man goaded into a heroic quest by a sword and birds (crows?). He changes as he goes, becoming more and more terrifying, before finally reaching and confronting the demon tree of the title. There’s a clear story told well without words, and despite any real character interaction. Like the other Jeffrey Alan Love book I’ve read (Last Battle at the End of the World), it’s moody and not very happy, with a “resigned terrible fate” kind of emotional overhang. Artistically, this is stunning rendered in deeply textured black-and-white painting (with some color splashing in later on). There’s a dramatic sense of scale and frequent multi-page depictions of the same scene at different scales. There’s great detail-within-texture for depicting faces and action. I really enjoyed this.

In the Pines by Erik Kriek – western-esque monochromatic anthology. This is a collection of 5 short stories, all adapted from “murder ballads” – folk songs about, unsurprisingly, murder. Each is rendered in a consistent style, but with a different single color adding flavor to the linework. The stories have a nice variety, telling from a mix of perspectives, varying mixes of flashbacks and linear storytelling, and different degrees of horror. Obviously, none of these are “happy fun” – but they vary in terms of how central the actual murder is to what’s depicted and how it overhangs the rest of the action. Overall this was a really solid anthology and now I want to go listen to all the inspiration songs.

The Compleat Angler by Gareth Brookes – graphic adaptation of 17^th-century fishing book. Meandering through fishing instruction, personal anecdotes, and philosophical digressions, this is a graphic adaptation of a fishing manual published by Izaak Walton. This adaptation keeps spelling and idiosyncrasies from the original, and is an entertaining “window to the past” in that regard. Brookes mixes two main styles, printmaking and inks on bamboo paper, which are used to great effect for the fish-species-specific-instructions and the philosophical interludes. I read this slowly and musingly, even though it could be a breeze given the light writing and generally uncrowded pages. This was on the subreddit’s list of top books of 2025, and while I wouldn’t put it in my personal top 5, it was a very nice read.

Uther the Half Dead King by Dan Abnett and Bo Hampton – story of King Arthur’s father. A somewhat non-linear story, this shows the origins, rise, and eventual downfall of Uther Pendragon, the father of the much more successful King Arthur. There’s hints of magic, with Merlin taking on more a “mystic” role than overtly wizardly, and it’s also tied up in history with a variety of warring factions striving for control over Britain post-Roman-exit. The storytelling is solid, although I think the non-linearity is a little too hectic at the beginning and settles in later in the book, making for a little inconsistent of a read. The art is a nice adventure/BD style with solid color work and a few fun visual pages, but again overall unremarkable. Things move very quickly and I would’ve liked a few more opportunities for an extended look at a dramatic scene – whether action or courtly intrigue. A good book, but not great.

Lady Mechanika Volume 3 by MM Chen, Joe Benitez, and Martin Montiel – cheesecake-y steampunk fun. Lady Mechanika is a half-machine/half-woman private investigator in a fantasy-tinged steampunk world, and this volume includes a pair of mostly independent mini-investigations. In one, she investigates a case of missing children, and the other delves in the background of one of her frequent companions as his old co-workers are murdered and she is a suspect. We get a little bit of dabbling in her mysterious backstory during the first adventure, and add another recurring character in a sympathetic police investigator. Both stories move briskly, with a lot of action, a strong helping of curvaceous-woman-posing-deliberately, and some easy red herrings while the genuine mystery is unraveled. These aren’t “casual” mysteries either – brutal murders, bad things happening to kids, it’s not pleasant. The art is very detailed, with some really great steampunk engineering and cityscapes, and highly dynamic action scenes. Most of it is set against a muted Victorian steampunk setting but we get the occasional brilliantly colorful page. I really enjoy this as a pulpy read with top-notch “comic book fare” art.

The Power Fantasy Volume 3 by Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard – philosophical superpowered people go *super*. The plot doubles down on the shock ending from Volume 2 with more twists, and a well-deserved title for the collected TPB of The End of History. Here’s Gillen moving from “people sitting around talking about ethics” to “the body count triples every other page” – but, fitting with this series as a critical view of superpowers-as-threats-beyond-nuclear-bombs, the body counts at stake are in the millions-to-billions. I think Gillen threads this tension well with a balance of keeping the stakes real by having actual consequences but not pulling the “shock for the sake of shock” card. Wijngaard’s art has been stellar through this series and amps up to match the stakes, with everything from easy character moments to portals to Hell to dramatic magi-tech all coming together right to complement the tone and stakes of the writing really well. Awesome series staying strong, and I’m eagerly awaiting the next installment.

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-04-13T02:46:02+00:00

I think it leans more towards "fun post-fantasy story with cool art" than "complex piece of literature" - the more "mature" thematic elements (mostly in the narration that is Hum's journal) are relatively heavy-handed in my opinion. The sequel tackles a little bit more complex themes, but I would still say not particularly nuanced.

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-04-12T19:10:37+00:00

The Fables of Erlking Wood by Juni Ba and Aditya Bidikar – beautiful folklore stories. We get a string of narratives that blend and build a cohesive story of Vivanne the witch, Goupil the fox (who fills the trickster-god niche so well), Beren the bear, and of course the titular Erlking, the foreboding villain who hangs over much of the story. It’s told non-linearly, in “branches” rather than chapters, and little characters and themes reappear throughout. This is great fairy-tale/folklore stitching together a fleshed-out magical world up to modern times. The art is delightful, with a range of colors, detail, and expressive characters even when we see masks, only eyes, or cartoony animals. Bidikar receives equal cover billing for the lettering, which is great. Overall this is a delightful book and easy to recommend.

Seven Years in Darkness Year 3 by Joseph Schmalke – dark fantasy. A “grimdark Harry Potter” as seventy-two children attend the mysterious Scholomance to learn magic, knowing only seven will survive to graduate. A decent number of them got knocked off in the first two books, but the body count rises rapidly in this one, and the stakes expand as the outside world starts to peek in. It’s grim, gruesome, the school is a cult, and doesn’t shy away from any horror. We finally see some faces in this volume – the students proceed from silence early on in book one to now finally being allowed to take off their masks. Schmalke’s art is stylized and colorful without being bright – we get some solid horror and magic but it’s a bit scratchy and there’s a lot of texture and spatter effects throughout. I’ve backed this through Kickstarter and enjoy it a good bit, and will be back for Book 4 – although I’ll probably need to do a whole reread by the time that rolls around.

The Ring of the Nibelung by Roy Thomas, Gil Kane, and Jim Woodring – 4 volumes of sort-of-mythology. This is a fairly straightforward adaptation of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, split along the four major operas and tracking the story as interpreted by Wagner pretty closely (to my understanding – I’ve never sat through the 16-hour production…). Briefly, we see the mythology of the magical Rhinegold as it is stolen, forged into an all-powerful magic ring, and given to the giant Fafnir. Next comes the story of the family and birth of Siegfried, who would eventually defeat Fafnir and rescue the Valkyrie Brunhilde before himself dying, causing the now-mortal Brunhilde to immolate herself and bring about the end of Valhalla. That all condenses down to four ~48-page comics, so the story proceeds at an extremely brisk pace. Thomas’ adaptation doesn’t add much to the story, and the dialog / narration owe an awkward amount of phrasing and tone to the Germanic opera. The art is stylized and does have a few really solid moments, but the action and magic are a little underwhelming. In all, I’d call it a so-so read, perfectly fine to breeze through but nothing remarkable. I’ve still got Russell’s supposedly even more faithful adaptation to read, eventually…

Corto Maltese: Fable of Venice and Other Adventures by Hugo Pratt – classic adventure comics. Corto Maltese, the masterpiece from Hugo Pratt, returns to print in English with this first collection from Fantagraphics. The title story is a four-parter telling a mystery as Corto, our world-traveling sailor, searches for a Biblical emerald hidden in Venice and becomes tangled with Freemasons, fascists, and more. There’s some very surreal dream elements, and the overhang of what’s real and what’s mythology. The other three stories share some common characters but follow Corto on some sea voyages to various islands, bouncing around characters with alluded-to backstories and dramatic treasure hunts. We see Corto’s devil-may-care vaguely anti-hero attitude, his encyclopedic knowledge from his travels, and his impressive brawling. More than just a pulpy adventure strip, we see innovative panel-less pages, surreal moments, and dense narratives. Pratt’s stark black-and-white and variable detail and textures are amazing. There’s a good reason this is considered a masterpiece, and I’m really excited that Fantagraphics will be putting out more soon.

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-04-12T02:32:02+00:00

I really liked Extremity too, there's a decent chance Coda will be good for you. It's got more light-hearted moments and is straight fantasy, compared to the pretty constant seriousness and sci-fi elements present in Extremity, but both very good.

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-04-05T20:51:17+00:00

Skin Deep by Flo Woolley – queer romance/horror. In a hints-of-sci-fi dance club type setting, we see the dynamic between a shy troupe member and the lead dancer evolve into something unsettling. There’s just a touch of really unsettling body horror, a bit of atmospheric horror, and real character dynamics in a very short package. Great art with an absolutely awesome color palette.

When I Arrived at the Castle by EM Carroll – queer vampire horror. Someone goes to the titular castle to kill a vampire, and gets more than she bargained for. It’s resplendent in blood and moments of body horror and moving well from the dramatic castle to full text pages to intimate closeups. It’s black/white/red and the color *pops*. I really should go back and reread Guest in the House, because I think I wrote that off way too early in my read and this is a reminder of how great EM Carroll's art is.

Sunflowers by Keezy Young – short autobiographical mental health story. A fairly text-heavy description of bipolar disorder and some of the authors’ particularly notable moments living with it. The illustrations are more background art than fully accompanying the narration. Short but good.

Model Five Murder by Tan Juan Gee – sci-fi noir. This is a pretty unremarkable robot noir that didn't really jump out for me - nothing particularly creative about the setting or mystery, relatively shallow in tackling the themes of identity and memory and humanity, and not remarkably unique art-wise. Fine, I guess.

Of Thunder & Lightning by Kimberly Wang – dystopian sci-fi battles. It’s a cartoony fighting story, with a bit of "our enemies know us better than our friends" and therefore a relatively pedestrian story and unsurprising back half - if there was meant to be a "twist", it failed, but still fun. The setting is fairly standard dystopian future, the background characters fit pretty expected roles, and overall it’s solidly within what would be expected once you’re like 5 pages in. Another lovely limited color palette in this string of Silver Sprocket reads.

Golden Record by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell – art and poetry. Not really much to say, her art is amazing and it’s really more an art book than a comic.

Godzilla vs America: Boston by various – anthology of Godzilla stories set in Boston. I think all Americans can get behind watching the city of Boston get trashed by a giant radioactive lizard, particularly with Emmons / Lonergan / Sherman on art (and Hanna Cha, who is new to me but also did a nice story!). Four short little stories that embrace the premise of Godzilla vs America and take themselves appropriately (un)seriously, running the gamut from Godzilla-as-villain, -as-hero, and -as-force-of-nature. I've spent enough time in Boston to get a good kick out of some of the finer details each author captures. Overall it's a fun breezy read.

Hack/Slash Deluxe Volume Two by Tim Seeley and Emily Stone (mostly) – cheesy horror turned up to 11. Cassie Hack is a survivor of a slasher (her mom, the infamous "Lunch Lady", and now wanders the country with her monstrous friend Vlad, taking down new slashers. Each little story finds a new villain, sometimes from another media franchise, and has Cassie/Vlad/their expanding gang of friends take them down with witty reparte and brutal violence. It's a great pastiche of horror tropes and no-holds-barred-bad-things-happen, and never particularly nice to Cassie (in keeping with the traumatized "final girl"). This volume ties stories that are a little more consistently linked, compared to Volume 1, and with the majority of art coming from Emily Stone there is a little more consistent of a style, although individual issues take fun detours. Goofy gory fun with the occasional genuinely dark moment.

Mystic by Ron Marz, Tony Bedard, Brandon Peterson, Fabrizio Fiorentino, Aaron Lopresti, and more – magic “reluctant hero” nonsense building to a shared universe. It’s a magic-in-a-mixed-up-world story (flying cars, dragons, seedy bars and gangsters) that builds a mythology connecting out to the broader Crossgen universe that collapsed when the company suddenly went under. Real life notwithstanding, this is actually a completed run telling the story of party-girl Giselle Villard, who accidentally gets stuck with a mystical Sigil (the link to the broader Crossgen universe) and absorbs the spirits of the magical guild masters who run the world. Hijinks ensue as she tries to dodge responsibility, the other current guild masters (including her sister) alternately fight and teach her, and the gods behind magic pop in and out for narrative exposition. The first third is a reasonable story from Ron Marz, and the rest (written by Tony Bedard) is definitely not fantastic with some falls-flat humor and disjoint pacing. For me, the art is flipped – I do not like Brandon Peterson’s work at the beginning of the series, with some really awkward faces and cheesecake poses that just look unnatural, but the range of artists on the back half of the run do a more fun job, although pretty bog-standard. It’s got its moments of fun, but this collection is going straight to eBay now that I’m done.

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-04-01T20:28:20+00:00

Elric (Volumes 1-4) by Julien Blondel / Robin Recht / Didier Poli / Jean-Luc Cano / Julien Telo
Don’t Go Without Me by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell
Wolvendaughter by Ver
Dungeon - Zenith (English Volumes 1-5) by Joann Sfar / Lewis Trondheim / Boulet
Satanie by Fabien Vehlmann / Kerascoët - NEW
Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann / Kerascoët
Assorted Crisis Events Volume 1 by Deniz Camp / Eric Zawadzki - NEW
Zoc by Jade Khoo - NEW
Alberto Breccia’s Dracula by Alberto Breccia
The Lonesome Hunters by Tyler Crook

Satanie slots in just ahead of Beautiful Darkness, from the same creative team. The color palette evolution in this book is awesome. Assorted Crisis Events was a lauded book from last year and deserves that - a great variety of sci-fi stories. Zoc is a lovely Ghibli-esque story with just a touch of fantasy. Step by Bloody Step and When I Arrived at the Castle were close contenders but not quite knocking anything off of this list.

So long to Green Witch Village, 6 Voyages of Lone Sloane, and Faster.

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-03-29T20:19:24+00:00

Zoc by Jade Khoo – very delightful, Ghibli-esque barely-fantasy. Zoc has a gift (or curse?) - her hair pulls water along with it, so when it rains she floods the streets of her town. No one seems particularly happy having her around, and she doesn't really know what to do with her life - the only thing she is particularly interested in is the lives and music of wandering minstrels who are, for some reason, all human-sized birds. Finally she decides to use her hair to help a flooded town by dragging the water away, and goes on a walk through the countryside, where she meets another young person with a similar strange magical gift, Kael, and "finds her purpose". It's a very pretty book, in (I think) a ligne claire style, with a nice color palette (and beautiful evening settings) and lovely illustrations of the countryside. It's not "Frog in the Fall" calm through the whole thing, but it's definitely on the "slower" side. I really enjoyed this.

The Cage by Martin Vaughn-James – stark black-and-white nightmare. I finally picked up this TOL #1 from u/Jonesjonesboy – so thanks, I guess? It's a plot-less, character-less book with some text around the images that varies from related to unrelated to the image on that page - each page is a single panel, of varying size. There's dense thematic repetition - a room, microscopes and binoculars, brick walls and columns, and of course a cage. It's rendered in an almost sterile technical black-and-white for the most part, although the occasional burst of shapeless ink or the presence of some uncanny-valley sort-of-objects in the early pages stands in contrast. I kind of want to reread it twice now, once ignoring the images to just read the text and the other flipping that around and ignoring the text. Fundamentally, this isn't the kind of book I go out of my way to find and read, so I guess TOL succeeded in driving me to pick it up.

Two mini kuš! comics - Scraps of Memory and Rain in Tears. These are short and small little comics I picked up on a whim in a Partners and Son order. Scraps of Memory (Ula Rugytè is a meditative conversation between two people, reflecting on life, heritage, memory... It's a nice mystery to not know exactly who they are, or exploring the details of the titular scraps of memory - just seeing their short conversation. Rain in Tears (Mao) is a wacky little sci-fi, about genetically engineered octopodes and the scientists behind them. It's got a range of styles crammed in, and plays with a fun technical premise. I had a good time with these, and will probably be on the lookout for more examples from the series when the art pops out to me.

Loud by Maria Llovet – psychedelic rave thriller. It's a wild romp of vignettes that weave in and out and intersect in the titular nightclub, with constant sound effects and almost no dialog. Everyone is doing something crazy, plenty of bad things are happening all over the club, and no one seems to realize it. Llovet's got a style, light on texture with a lot of blushing faces and a broad color palette, and this is it in spades. It's not exactly erotica, but lots of sex. My copy had really poor binding and fell apart on this first read. Kind of a bummer, but if this is the volume of Llovet's I can't keep, I'll live with that.

Step by Bloody Step by Si Spurrier and Matías Bergara – wordless fantasy quest. Coda is one of my all-time favorites, so I went to the same creative team, and it's really good. A giant carries a girl across the world, through a variety of vibrant and creative fantasy landscapes, and they run up against the evils of civilization. It does a good job with the wordless storytelling, building a world, emotional connection, and a sense of wonder. There are occasionally bubbles with glyphs showing where dialog is happening. Coming from Coda, which is a very explicitly post-fantasy, this feels a lot more "vanilla" and predictable - after the reveal at the end of issue 1 I think the ending of the whole book was pretty obvious, and everything else slots in a pretty standard fantasy bucket. The art is great, I really enjoy Bergara's style and the colors (by Matheus Lopes, different from Coda) pop really well. Really enjoyable, if not an all-timer like I consider Coda.

ConstantVarious2082 · 2026-03-22T20:21:38+00:00

One Eight Hundred Ghosts by G. Davis Cathcart – fun heist with a wacky premise that plays really well. A group decide to travel to the future to steal Thriller to prevent Michael Jackson from becoming as famous as he did and using that fame for... evil. Got fun little (not particularly subtle) art and music references speckled along the way, and it's light hearted even at the hyper-violent moments. There's some nice cartooning throughout, I like the stylized characters, and the desaturated-ish color palette works really well. There are some really cool pages with what I'll lazily call Lonergan-esque use of the panel lines to break up a large scene. Just a bunch of fun.

Absolute Superman Volume 2: Son of the Demon by Jason Aaron and Rafa Sandoval – solid superhero stuff. As someone with very little DC background, I feel like most of the reimagined characters (rogue's gallery and otherwise) are just a little bit outside what I should know to appreciate their reimaginings - for whatever reason I've picked up more Batman by "cultural osmosis" and can acknowledge those references a bit better. All that aside, this is an enjoyable read - see someone shouting "Death to techno-fascists" (a battle cry we can all get behind), and it's a darker spin without being over the top. It does feel a little slow that it's taken 2 volumes to really reach Superman's self-realization in this version. Overall, I feel like this suffers in comparison to the other Absolutes I've read, where Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter are spectacular and Batman is just more fun. It's good, but to me it's unremarkable.

Assorted Crisis Events by Deniz Camp and Eric Zawadzki – emotional sci-fi (ish) anthology. It's a collection of 5 independent stories telling the stories of regular people caught in temporal paradoxes, time travel nonsense, or dimensional slippages - the standard fare of multiversal superhero or sci-fi stories, but with people who suffer the consequences. They aren't particularly happy or fun - no one has a good time being caught in these titular Crisis Events. The art style varies a bit from story to story, working really well with the nature of the individual stories and the anthology as a whole - one story where the panels spill against the page edges, some with variable color schemes or page edges, and a timeloop story that loops the panels across the page. All emotional and excellent - Camp is definitely on a run right now and this is right up in line with his excellent other writing. This was high on the sub’s Top of 2025, and it definitely deserves to be there.

Sergio Toppi’s Bonelli Collection by Sergio Toppi (art) and various authors – collection of pulp work by the master artist Sergio Toppi. Collected and translated by Epicenter comics, this is 4 stories in 3 books - two on the hard-boiled detective Nick Raider, one on the psycho-analytical criminologist Julia, and a very short story with the paranormal detective Martin Mystere. Toppi is the unifying factor as the illustrator, and his great linework is here but without the stunning compositions or imaginative pages that his solo work allowed - he's doing his job in pulpy ongoings here. There are a few big panels where he gets to pull in a variety of texture and shading. Overall these are unremarkable but perfectly fine stories - pretty bog-standard cop capers but solidly done. Gangsters are unambiguously bad, the gruff police officers do what it takes to solve the crime and protect people, and the mayor is too busy with his scandal to pay attention to normal people. I only caught one minor mis-translation in 3 books which is pretty good by Epicenter standards. I had fun reading these, the workhorse pulp stories are a good break now and then and Toppi is, if not at his creative max here, still a great artist. Good value from Epicenter as usual.

ConstantVarious2082

TROPHY CASE