Rolling Comics 2025

Kicking this off with my read-in-2024 list. Have you got any good reads from last year? What are you looking forward to next year? Comics: are they not just for kids anymore? Smash that bookmark thread button.

* for particular faves

Piscou: Les Misérables & Hamlet, Giovan Battista
Lucky Luke: Les Indomptés, Blutch
Best Of 2000AD, Vol.a4, VA
Chainsaw Man, Vol.12-15, Tatsuki Fujimoto
Silly Synmphonies, Vol.2, Todd Osborne, Al Taliaferro et al
River's Edge, Kyoko Okazaki
Mobilis, Juni Ba
Lapin #24, VA
A Favorable Wind On Full Sails, Arantochika
Peepee Poopoo #8008S, Caroline Cash
Black Phoenix, Vol.2, Rich Tommaso
One Hundred Tales, Osamu Tezuka
Fiends Of The Eastern Front, Gerry Finlay-Davies et al
Thieves, Lucy Barton
Santos Sisters #4, Greg & Fake, Graham Swift, et al
Dragon Ball 1-3, Akira Toriyama
Best Of 2000AD, Vol.5, VA
Old Caves, Tyler Landry
The 13th Floor, John Wagner, Alan Grant, José Ortiz et al
Fantastic Four Taschen Edition, Vol.1, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee et al
Açoriante Aguda E Outras Maleitas, Luís Cardoso
Michel Valliant: Macao, Benéteam, Gratm, Lapiére
Transformers, Vol.1, Daniel Warren Johnson, Mike Spieer et al
My Name Is Shingo, Vol.1-2, Kazou Umezz
Best Of 2000AD, Vol.6, VA
Self Esteem & The End Of The World, Luke Healy
Okinawa, Susumu Higa *
Robohunter, John Wagner, Ian Gibson, et al
Batman/Dylan Dog, Recchioni, Cavenago et al *
Cinder & Ashe, Gerry Conway, José Luís Garcia Lopez et al
Ana, António Jorges Gonçalves, Nuno Artur Silva et al
Spider Man: India, Shukla, Gyadu et al
The Steel Claw, Ken Bulmer, Jesús Blasco et al
The Rose Of Versailles, Vol.1, Riyoko Ikeda *
A Guest In The House, Emil Carrol
Hobtown Mystery Stories, Vol.1, Bertin, Forbes et al
Iris: A Novel For Viewers, Van Banda, Tijong-Khing *
Dynamite Diva, Jasper Jubenvill *
Black Phoenix: Lewton & Associates, Rich Tommaso *
Spirou: La Memóire Du Futur, Guerrive, Abilan, Schwarz, Doucet *
Sonic In Waifu World, Jake Machen
Igagauri, Fukui *
Sonic The Comic, issues 1 to 21, VA

Read very little this year except Monica by Clowes (incredible) and whatever Brubaker put out (increasingly mundane). How’s the new Spirou team?

The art is 100% the kind of midcentury modern stuff I crave from the series. It's quite self-consciously in dialogue with the serie's past in a way that might feel a little pandering, but otoh it is a legacy title, so. This latest volume gets very explicit in trapping Spirou in a fake late 50's and the way they find out of it is through throwing a wilder and wilder party, so you get a pantheon of midcentury BD icons dancing to Daft Punk, which is surely worth price of admission.

It's also clearly no longer aimed at kids as there's a fantasy sequence where Fantasio and the Comte die in rather a grizzly way!

Ninja Sarutobi Sasuke, Sugiura Shigeru - Out on NYRC. Kind of a middle point between regular genre entertainment and the pop art deconstruction I expected it to be. Frequently escapes the Japanese period piece setting to include yokai monsters, western settings and pop culture icons (Jean Paul Belmondo has a cameo), but these flights of fancy are explained in universe as ninja mind tricks summoned by Shigeru. The characters also often quote old Japanese pop songs, which the translator has seen fit to replace with western pop tracks. This irks me, but: would I laugh in recognition at the Japanese songs? No. So I'm more invested in gathering ephemera than in enjoying the reading experience, I guess.