2026 sequential art (comics, manga, bande dessinée, graphic novels, funnybooks, etc.)

Picked a poncey title to indicate all of it is welcome.

As usual, posting my reads from last year:

Ninja Saratobi Sasuke, Sugiura Shigeru
Les Petits Hommes - L'Integral, Vol.1, Seron
Justice Warriors, Bors, Clarkson, et al
A História do Tesouro Perdido, Nuno Artur Silva, António Jorge Gonçalves
Neijishiki, Yoshiharu Tsuge *
Dawnrunner, Ram V, Cagle et al
The N Word Of God, Mark Doox
DC Archives: Sugar & Spike, Sheldon Mayer
Tokyo These Days, Vol.1, Taiyo Matsumoto *
O Mangusto, Joana Mosi *
Black Phoenix #13, Rich Tommaso
Question Ominbus, Vol.1, O'Neill, Cowar, et al
Boody: The Bizarre Comics Of Boody Rogers **
Suzanne, Tom Humblestone
Boy Wonder, Juni Ba *
Time Waits, Zdarsky, Brothers et al *
Godzilla: The Marvel Years, Moench, Thimpe et al
Ashita No Joe, Vol.1, Tetsuya Chiba, Asao Tokamore
DJ Cat Gothic World Tour, Harukichi
Last Chance To Find Duke, Shang Zhang
It's Lonely At The Centre Of The World, Zoe Thorgood *
Asterix In Lusitania, Fabcarro, Conrad
Absolute Martian Manhunter, Camp, Rodriguez *
Bowling With Corpses, Mike Mignola
Oh Josephine, Jason
DC X Sonic, Flynn, Thomas, et al
DC Archives: Shazam, Vol.1, C.C. Beck
Reel Politik, Nathan Gielgud

* loved this one a lot
** reread

I got the Francisco V Coching bio/gallery book by Andrea Peterson, it's print on demand, only about 90 pages, in a series called Fifty Shades Of Philippine Art which has all kinds of artists

I read lots more floppies last year than GNs. It was great to have a new R Crumb comic after all this time, and I'm still buying most of the facsimile editions that Marvel and DC are putting out. The Golden Age DC ones are especially fascinating, they often give off an eerie, slightly unwholesome vibe that's somewhat at odds with DC's wholesome brand image. Also addicted to collecting Marvel's 70s horror reprint titles, full of great Atlas-era strips with strong new covers by ppl like John Romita and Ron Wilson.

Latest Rabbi's Cat is up to Sfar's usual quality. Love to hear that cheeky feline comment on the torah.

I seen someone (I think he was a comic shop owner) say there is a looming apocalyptic crisis with serialized comics selling so poorly and collected editions selling so well. I'm guessing this would just cause a shift to more original graphic novels, the transition might be difficult but I don't see why mass casualties would be inevitable. Anyone else hear anything about this?

Maybe he's just wrong

What's your Joe Kubert opinions? I think I favor his work from 1945-1970s but he never really lost it in a bad way. A shame that Kubert Archives series from Fantagraphics didn't get past one volume. His work around that period has wonderful textures at times. I love how rough and worn everything looks.

My Joe Kubert opinion is that he's one of the all-time great top ten American comic book artists - such an utterly distinctive ink style. His Hawkman strips have to be among the most elegant and sublimely drawn superhero comics ever, even if the stories are fairly ho-hum. Love this character sketch by Kubert, so much suggested with just a few brush strokes:

https://external-preview.redd.it/179mnI1y4qmokMcuzNDh4xsr439w4NzgXmFoIQKGVMg.jpg?auto=webp&s=d32fdd374e8482610e372aab841f0f2418eb1658

Slightly late, I read Kate Beaton's Ducks, and thought it was amazing.

Didn't read many comics last year, except for the Brink series (fabulous), whatever Ed Brubaker points out (I... think he's losing it), and I read all the Hilda books with my daughter, which are a total delight.

This year I'm planning to catch up on some of the big classics I've never read, like From Hell, Moore's Swamp Thing, Miller's Daredevil run, Airtight Garage...

I see that DC has been reprinting Kubert's war comics recently

Yeah Ducks is a truly major work.

I seen someone (I think he was a comic shop owner) say there is a looming apocalyptic crisis with serialized comics selling so poorly and collected editions selling so well. I'm guessing this would just cause a shift to more original graphic novels, the transition might be difficult but I don't see why mass casualties would be inevitable. Anyone else hear anything about this?

Kinda weird theory imo. As far as I know superhero comics sales have been in decline for ages (if I am wrong about this I am sure to be corrected), collected editions "sell well" compared to floppies maybe but they ain't doing manga or YA graphic novel numbers.

The comics retailer Brian Hibbs often posts interesting things about the state of the American comic book market, at The Beat and elsewhere:

https://www.comicsbeat.com/tag/brian-hibbs/

Thirded on Ducks. I thought I was p much done with autobiographical comics, but I was wrong.

https://www.retrofabrik.de/alfredo-p-alcala-voltar/
I got this very large (as in tall/wide) German collection of Voltar. Might be the best thing Alfredo Alcala did. I think this has more pages than the other Voltar collections I've seen but I don't know if it's complete.

Seeing the pages of the recent Snafu reprint, some of the most lavish art I've seen from 50s Marvel artists

RAG, you were interested in Trimpe I believe? Some mention here:

https://www.tcj.com/lost-marvels-volume-3-savage-tales-old-fashioned-machismo-in-the-ec-tradition/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=lost-marvels-volume-3-savage-tales-old-fashioned-machismo-in-the-ec-tradition

Thanks. I think I'm overdue a bigger dive into John Severin's work too.

Unrelated to this book: it breaks my heart to see artists drawing generically cartoonier faces when they used to have a far more distinctive approach, it's like seeing a model you liked using awful face filters.

Juliette by Camille Jourdy - Lovely watercolour based work about a woman returning to her hometown and dealing with her dysfunctional family. Kind and warm in the manner of a Kaurismaki film. I read in French but an English language version is available.

Really perplexes me that Neal Adams worked with artists the way he did on Continuity Comics and further projects, sometimes his and other artists styles shine through but a lot of the time it looked like they were working towards a house style, like the way a lot of animators and manga artists work. I genuinely like some of this junk but it's hard to tell who is doing what. Michael Netzer/Nasser claimed that Adams stole some of his work and only credited him later but the feud about them co-creating the character (or not) never ended.

Ms Mystic was the character, originally intended as a DC Comics character and even made a cameo in a Superman story but nobody would know who it was because the Ms Mystic project was delayed for years

https://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog/more-weight-a-salem-story/1134
This looks pretty impressive, there's even an animated trailer, anyone reading this?

RIP Yoshiharu Tsuge

https://www.tcj.com/rip-yoshiharu-tsuge/

Tsuge was such a real one, I gotta get the volumes of his stuff I haven't.

Japanese life expectancy is such that I often get blindsided by random manga-ka/actors/directors/musicians dying because I thought they'd passed ages ago.

The Legend Of Kamui, Shirato Sanpei - A period piece set in feudal Japan immersed in the white hot rage of 60's leftist politics on paper sounds like total Daniel_Rf catnip but while I did finish this it was a slog. A lot of courtly intrigue during which I frankly had a very hard time remembering who the characters were. Also Sanpei was really into drawing nature so there's prolonged passages just with animals killing and eating each other, as animals do - perhaps a parallel to the human cruelty present elsewhere but while I'm pretty hardened towards seeing man's inhumanity to man, the casual brutality of nature is not something I care to think about much, don't watch nature documentaries either (aware this is a personal limitation on my end and not Sanpei's fault). A strong pedagogical current in this as well - I found the discussion of the outsider underclass, who were below even the peasants in feudal Japan, the most enlightening - don't often see that represented in jidai-geki.

It could also be that, this being volume one, I just jumped on too early and the real good stuff is in subsequent volumes. Wouldn't be the first time I made that mistake.

I've got the first two volumes because yeah catnip, and it persists in being difficult to follow — that's not totally new for me with lengthy manga though and I don't mind the expectation that I will have to reread it. It has such a good rep I am committed to following through, and descriptions of later volumes suggest that it becomes a story of revolution...not whatever is going on in the first volume lol. Also I have the later sequel (?) and like it but was excited to get something with more of that pedagogical feel.

I see that Lone Wolf & Cub is being reissued. I've always been curious but never checked it out. How does it hold up?

It was my first manga and introduction to samurai stuff so I'm prob not the most ovjective but I'd say if you like pulp thrills it's well worth reading, art is gorgeous too.

Kazuo Koike was a pretty right wing Japanese nationalist and that does come through in a pretty unreconstructed macho narrative (though not in explicit nationalism, as there are no non-Japanese characters anyway iirc).

I reread LW&C pretty recently and thought it was still pretty fantastic, though yeah it requires some content warnings for sure

I too was disappointed by that first Legend Of Kamui volume, for much the same reasons. Disjoined storyline, shifts in tone etc.

they've re-reversed LW&C apparently, which would be interesting to see, but i probably don't need a third copy. (fourth? i have the first dozen viz floppies, the 28 books, and pdfs courtesy of a humble bundle)

the new set appears to be 10 editions at £35 each

kindle copies of the first of the 28 books are quite cheap if you want to sample, £1.50 for ~300 pages

https://www.retrofabrik.de/alfredo-p-alcala-voltar/
I got this very large (as in tall/wide) German collection of Voltar. Might be the best thing Alfredo Alcala did. I think this has more pages than the other Voltar collections I've seen but I don't know if it's complete.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, 13 January 2026 19:24 (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

The artist Michael T Gilbert shared this Alacala DPS on his Facebook page the other day. I blow hot and cold on all these insane detail merchants, but this image does take things to a whole other level of ecstatic noodling obsession:

https://scontent-lhr6-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/669472371_10165245833604367_172024065891935042_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=13d280&_nc_ohc=6khgjRcBHRQQ7kNvwEtW2ub&_nc_oc=AdpFybGd94b-Go4cvxmfHnvx49NEwEr6zDeVEy-ReZY20dB02FCDuITP3sBJL-9KNCr2DrAb6eeSeFY-LBm9TYHC&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-lhr6-2.xx&_nc_gid=_TM8DXi8vLR2kYt47wd9qA&_nc_ss=7a3a8&oh=00_Af3QGug7tm_r7JxmLaphJqd8pzpk7G9ZOCUgFuwILOspJQ&oe=69DD692B

Alcala’s run on Swamp Thing was really good. Art wise anyways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBxhdFUaAd0
There's a very specific style of Alberto Breccia that I love (in the second book) but his style varies a great deal. Not an easy artist to browse before you buy.

https://bookpalace.com/info_ghostwrath
was excited until I saw the price, looks very nice though

Eric Stanton & Steve Ditko - Sweeter Gwen

This print on demand edition by Fetish History chops apart the panels and spreads them over something like 70s pages, the Eros/Fantagraphics edition is much preferable.

This is surprisingly funny and it's almost like Wacky Races. Kinky Hook has a similar style, tone and very lovely Ditko inking that leaves Stanton's drawing just barely present. Confidential TV on the other hand is genuinely unsettling. Other Stanton/Ditko collaborations were in Tops & Bottoms 1-4 which I haven't seen yet (not easy to find) but Eros/Fantagraphics printed all these, a shame there isn't a big collection of them. I bet Gary Groth has it on a to do list.

Working my way through The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For and enjoying it quite a bit.

Tried out a Brubaker/phillips crime/noir thing and I'm not into it. I don't like Phillips art much.

Man if you don't like Phillips I wonder what you'd think of mainstream big two art these days, he's fucking Hergé within that context.

Meawhile I have finished the ACTION hardback, here's my take on the stories:

Dredger - A tough secret agent who doesn't play by the rules, accompanied by a fussy public school sidekick who keeps trying to reign him in. The enemies are, of course, the reds, but the real enemy is hierarchy, the class system...but also bureaucracy, human rights, anything that keeps Dredger from indulging in his bloodlust, which always turns out to be justified and Dredger the smarter guy. Dirty Harry transplanted into a spy story, but to its credit Dredger never tries to fake any patriotism or concern for human life; in a way he resembles Hookjaw, just a violent creature slaughtering his way through existence. Which is wot a real man should be, to the mag's tween readers.

Hellman Of Hammer Force - Fascinating concept: after decades of WWII comics, creator Finley-Quaye thought it could be a novelty to have a German hero, or anti-hero anyway. An admirable idea on some level, considering the jingoistic tone of war comics in general, but it ends up a bit of a mess. The comic posits Hellman as a relic of WWI era noble German militarism - he fights for his country, but hates the nazis with a passion. This becomes quite preposterous very fast, as Hellman refuses to kill enemy soldiers unless absolutely necessary, leading to a vision of war that's mostly chivalrous dudes arresting each other...which, again, I could see as much like the war games its readers would be playing on the playground. Zero mentions of the holocaust, in case you were wondering.

Blackjack - This seems truly progressive for its era? Sure you can view it as a cash in on blaxploitation, but they did make the character Black British, and I struggle to think of any other protagonists from that time. Anyway it's a boxer who is losing his eyesight and needs to hit the big time before that, so he eventually travels to the US and gets involved with the mob. His trainer being Irish and manager Jewish adds to the underdog vibe, both portrayed as unambiguously good guys and loyal friends. It's not free of stereotypes in either art or writing, but still, impressive.

Play Till You Drop!- Soapy strip about a football player being blackmailed by a skeezy sports journalist claiming to have evidence that his father, also a player, took bribes. Fun little bit of cultural tourism for me but hardly memorable.

Hook Jaw - Probably the mag's biggest character, Hook Jaw is a giant shark who keeps messing up some greedy American's plans to build an oil platform. So it's a Jaws cash in with an ecological subtext. I'm not quite enough of a gorehound for this to hit my pleasure centres, but I can certainly see how mind blowingly cool it must have been for audiences at the time.

Sport's Not For Losers! - The kid protagonist in this has had an accident rendering him unable to continue his passion for hurdling (!). So he recruits his fuckup older brother. Again I am fascinated by how intelligently the writers play on their audience demographic's emotions - the big brother is often viewed in a judgmental way, as a younger brother might disapprove of his big bro's getting into booze, drugs, girls; but at the same time the world is also stacked entirely against the older brother, grownups constantly misinterpreting him, which is also true to a child's view of reality. Interesting stuff, this.

The Coffin Sub - WWII submarine commander loses entire crew, is haunted by guilt. Sadly the strip can't really decide what it wants to be, with said commander being either ultra protective of the crew (I already lost one crew!!!) or insanely reckless (now I will join my crew in the afterlife!!!) depending on what the story demands. Nice spooky atmosphere tho.

The Running Man - Oh, this is so so my shit! A Brit on vacation in the US gets abducted and forcibly given face surgery to resemble the psychotic son of a mob boss, said son being wanted by the authorities. So our hero starts on a road trip across the USA to confront his enemies, with the law hot on his heels. This allows writer Steve MacManus to play all the hits of contemporary American grindhouse cinema: Deliverance-style rednecks, crazy car stunts, satanists. Reminds me a lot of my beloved Italian crime films from the 70's, which also often drop in a native actor to a US based story.

Green's Grudge War - Only two episodes of this in the volume. I dunno, he's a soldier and he gets jealous of other soldiers? It was zzzz.

Look Out For Lefty - Another football strip. Only one episode in and I have a feeling it'll be Dullsville too but to its credit it does start with the protagonist confronting his grandfather for eating dog food and that's not nothing.

Phillips art reminds me of a certain style of 1970s illustration that I like as magazine covers but doesn't read well as a story. His art is stiff and strikes me as pulled from photographs.

I dislike Alex Ross for the same reason. Good covers but stiff and soul-free.

Certainly agree on Ross! Superheroes look preposterous in his photorealist style.

I recently finished Strange Adventures by King/Gerads/Shaner. It was pretty good although I probably would have liked it more if I hadn't read King's Miracle Man immediately before. I'm not an Adam Strange nerd so I can't say how King's take fits in with the history of the character but I enjoy how he looks at these characters and situations in a more realistic manner hat make me rethink how superhero stories are often presented.

Another art complaint that probably only bothers me but Gerads does it and I have to get it off my chest: I hate it when artists reuse the same artwork in multiple panels with only slight changes. Say if there are three panels of a character talking and the artist uses the exact same background and even parts of the character with just enough changes to make it different. This immediately pulls me out of the story and I start comparing little details in the panels to verify wether it's a straight copy or did they just redraw it very carefully. It feels like cheating, but again, I accept this as a personal issue.

I don't think Phillips has much in common with Alex Ross (thank god!) and if you were to ban cartoonist-illustrators who use photo reference you'd be left with Ernie Bushmiller (thank god!)

No no no, I don't have a problem with artists using photo references at all. But when the art LOOKS like it is straight from a photo it bugs me. Bechdel (and probably everyone) uses photo references and yet her art doesn't look like it. Phillips does.

I'm really nitpicky about art and it has kept me from trying a lot of comics that are supposed to be really good.

Finally got that Bill Everett collection in the Fantagraphics series of Atlas comics. A fulfilment of something I've wanted for a long time, I'm assuming it is a fairly complete collection of his late 40s to early 50s horror stories but I'm not certain. It's definitely my favorite era of Everett. The paper is glossy but they done a good job on the color.
https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/the-atlas-creator-collection-no-3-bill-everett-vol-1-one-head-too-many-and-other-weird-horror-stories

https://www.fantagraphics.com/collections/atlas-comics/products/the-atlas-creator-collection-no-4-bernard-krigstein-the-complete-atlas-stories
I probably won't get this but it should be good, some of Krigstein's later Atlas stories really stand out in the era because the sheer number of panels he packed in some pages

https://fourcolorshadows.blogspot.com/2011/06/desert-rat-bernard-krigstein-1957.html
what I've seen isn't his most refined work but it's interesting

Another art complaint that probably only bothers me but Gerads does it and I have to get it off my chest: I hate it when artists reuse the same artwork in multiple panels with only slight changes. Say if there are three panels of a character talking and the artist uses the exact same background and even parts of the character with just enough changes to make it different. This immediately pulls me out of the story and I start comparing little details in the panels to verify wether it's a straight copy or did they just redraw it very carefully. It feels like cheating, but again, I accept this as a personal issue.

I think there are contexts in which this works - mostly comedic - but generally yeah it does make me think someone's being lazy or in a hurry. But then as a non-artist I always cut a lot of slack for the "in a hurry" option - always frankly baffling the quality of work that people manage to churn out on a monthly or even weekly basis.

I'm really nitpicky about art and it has kept me from trying a lot of comics that are supposed to be really good.

Tbf this is no different from rejecting a comic for bad writing, i.e. totally valid!

I was extremely enamored with some of the work Scott Hampton did in his Spookhouse books and I ended up buying all his new work for a few years, on Simon Dark he digitally copied a lot of his drawings and it didn't work at all when it was character drawings (backgrounds were less of an issue) and I eventually decided I just didn't care for what he was doing in monthly comics. I don't know if he did anything creator owned again.

A friend of mine owns a Preacher page by Steve Dillon where most of the panels are photocopies, with perhaps just a minor figure added etc. And that's how Steve Dillon pencilled and inked at least one monthly comic book for years and years.

In the past, comic artists would have assistants to do the donkey work on the backgrounds and minor figures etc. The economies of scale aren't really there for that anymore, or the need for big studio/'shop' set-ups, but even pre-AI ubiquity there were plenty of computer tools to do that donkey work digitally.

The repetition of near-identical panels is a very old trick, but I think it's accelerated in the modern, decompressed era, which often seems to want to be cinematic and 'quick' - more akin to a flicker book, almost.

I've always been an art first writing second comic bk guy, which I think put me slightly at odds with the ILC 'community' back when there was such a thing. And I still get annoyed with comic reviews that scarcely mention the art. But of course the best comics are a perfect synthesis of word and picturezzzzzzzzzzz

So definitely hoping to acquire the Everett and Krigstein collections when funds allow. Loving this Fantagraphics series of Atlas reprints, definitely another shadow world/flipside to Marvel comics.

I think there are contexts in which this works - mostly comedic

I like original art where you can see how this kind of stuff was done, e.g. this John Byrne drawn strip that was in a mid-90s Batman annual I had as a kid, which I think is a good example of it working well as a comedic thing.

https://cafans.b-cdn.net/images/Category_3563/subcat_27167/EPSON007.JPG

also the repeated use of this panel in the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons 'Chronocops' strip in 2000ad is one of favourite things I've seen in a comic strip

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/592880808419c27d193683ef/1579433266613-VY191FRARXVL8VSW8ZJ6/Capture.JPG?format=2500w

I really regret letting those two Basil Wolverton collections slip past me. Really expensive now.

There was a Matt Fox collection that I was totally unaware of when it came out and that's going up in price too.

I realized there is some Everett horror stories in the Venus collection that aren't in the new book. I guess it might be the case with some of their other collections.

Really don't care for his 60s superhero stuff, Dr Strange is something that seemed like it could work better for him but I don't like it much. Even a lot of his Submariner work is perplexing (why did the shape of his head keep changing?)

It would be facile to suggest that Everett's alcoholism played a part in that perplexing inconsistency, but it's undeniable that his personal struggles played havoc with his career. I think in the 60s he was a bit lost with Marvel Method storytelling but managed to reinvent himself as an inker. He inked a run of late period Kirby Thor issues that are just gorgeous and show what we were missing with Colletta all those years; he was also one of Gene Colan's best inkers, a notoriously difficult penciller to ink and seemingly a much more 'modern' artist than Everett. The Black Widow strip in Amazing Adventures 5, 'And to all a good night', by Roy Thomas/Gene Colan/Bill Everett is one of my all-time favourite comic stories.

which I think put me slightly at odds with the ILC 'community' back when there was such a thing

I wouldn't say "at odds with", it's more that most of us, and most people writing about comics on the internet in general, are not able to converse intelligently about art but we are all writers so...I do try to mention art whenever I can (my Action breakdown above a bad example - I'll admit that I didn't think much beyond "hell yeah these inks"), and in my comic book discussion group try to listen most attentively when one of the artists pipes up, I tend to learn a lot more from them than from the writerly types.

I have been thinking of trying to get into some sort of drawing for total beginners class. Though maybe for the purposes of comix appreciation a art history class would actually be more useful? I dunno.

To be honest I don't find Everett that much more erratic than a lot of comic artists. Some really good artists have done a lot of junk. There wasn't a whole lot of biography in that Blake Bell biography of Everett. I'm guessing he just didn't care for the material, the job was taking it's toll and editors were probably trying to push him in directions he didn't want to go.
His Skywald work is quite impressive but I feel like something is missing.
I love the over the top facial expressions in his 50s work. He done a sizeable amount for Marvel in the late 50s, I wonder if Fantagraphics will go there? But I'm most hopeful for a Russ Heath book.