This month, a new Pantheon graphic novel is swinging for the All-Time Greats, and old favorites like Kaya, Ultimate Spider-Man and Chainsaw Man are back among the best!
Don’t hesitate to let me know any of your favorites I may have missed via dave@comicbookherald.com!
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The Littlest Fighter
Joe Weiser’s The Littlest Fighter, a young readers graphic novel from Oni Press, is an exceedingly cute story of a young… turtle(?) training to fight his world’s largest Kaiju. It’s a cute premise, and a classic hero’s journey executed effectively, with kindly monster design by way of Jeff Smith. The true test for any book targeting 8 to 12 year olds is whether my oldest asks me if there’s more to read after I hand him a copy to get his perspective.
The true measure of success is of course when my son asks: Is there another one? Mission achieved.
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Chainsaw Man Vol. 17
While I love Tatsuki Fujimoto’s furiously sketched chainsaw devils, and Denji’s offbeat juvenile humor, it’s Chainsaw Man’s fearless plotting and pacing that has kept me happily committed through seventeen volumes. This is a work high atop the most popular mangas in the world, and there has to be pressure for Fujimoto to get back to the bread and butter of Chainsaw Man vs. epic Ito-esque Devils (War and Death are, of course, both on the horizon!). And yet, again, for the majority of this volume, we’re looking at what happens when a church/cult pops up to worship the Chainsaw Devil (with some mild fear of spoilers, I will reveal it results in, uh, a LOT of chainsaws). Denji has been Spider-Man-No-Moreing all over the book for more volumes than I can even remember. And it all works! It’s an X-Men comic with no Magneto, Fantastic Four with no Doom, Batman with no Joker… but good actually! There’s just a complete and utter fearlessness and confidence than I find intoxicating. Pump it into the veins of editorial branches across every major publisher!
Obviously, this being volume 17, if you haven’t read any Chainsaw Man yet, you’ll want to binge the whole thing post-haste. It’s the manga that sets the standard for all “popular” Viz manga I read. Chainsaw Man’s the reason I can’t commit to Jujutsu Kaisen or the newer Kagurabachi; I’ve already found peak. I need more!
Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 2
Volume two of Ultimate Spider-Man is really the make or break point for getting past the Hickman-induced expectations of grandeur that come from the writer behind House of X and Secret Wars 2015. Issues 7 to 12 reveal that Hickman and artist Marco Checchetto are fully committed to a straight-up Spider-Man ongoing; there’s no multiversal twist, no rugs torn out from under our feet. This is Peter, MJ, their children, Uncle Ben, and the most likeable J. Jonah Jameson in the history of triple J’s. At times, this means the pacing and plotting is more akin to Amazing Spider-Man of decades gone, where we can spend time ordering sandwiches in a bakery with J. Jonah for the sake of getting to know this supporting cast in full. The second volume is almost pure scene setting and familiarizing ourselves with the players, as Harry Osborn and Peter Parker familiarize themselves (with the help of Oscorp’s lead scientist, Otto Octavius) with the miracle suits bestowed upon them by teen Tony. The big picture finds Kingpin assembling his sinister six to hunt and capture the heroes, but really, those are volume three concerns.
It’s a deliberately patient work, confident in the seeds its planting with Venom-esque pico-tech and the roots of simmering conflict in their approaches between Green Goblin and Spider-Man. It’s also Marvel’s tightest collaboration, with Hickman and Checchetto synchronizing their gifts in ways that highlight the best superhero comics have to offer. I was highly skeptical of a run from this duo beyond 18 issues, but given the approach, a lengthy 20+ issue run now feels inevitable. Given this is the most I’ve enjoyed an ongoing Spider-Man comic in my lifetime, hallelujah.
Akogun: Brutalizer of Gods
Sometimes the pompous-pretentious part of my brain overrides one of the more crucial rules of comics: they’re supposed to be cool. Obviously there are exceptions – I’m not sure I could consciously describe any part of a Chris Ware story as cool – but if you’re playing with superheroes, fantasy or mythology, listen, get as smart and crafty as you damn well please, just don’t forget to also kick some ass.
Murewa Ayodele and Dotun Akande’s three issue graphic novel from Oni Press is as cool as they come. This is African fantasy where gods fight at a level befitting their station, tricksters craft decades in the making plots involving “Brutalizers of Gods”, and Rhinos rampage forth with golden horns and tusks. Akande’s beasts, gods and worlds are designed to evoke all the most thrilling high-fantasy tales of Thor or Wakanda, and Ayodele writes with a confidence and patience befitting a creator selected to take on Marvel’s most well-known goddess: Storm.
Ayodele and Akande work beautifully together, alternating between narrated fables, erotic intimacy, and, yes, cool-as-hell fights to the death. The only limitation is a creative unit so confident and ambitious that the shared-tethers of the plot edge and fray with each scene-cut and time jump, losing clarity around all those pesky who-what-wheres. Put more directly: Akogun‘s kind of confusing! My hope would be that should a Season 2 come to fruition – and sign me up – the puzzle pieces slide together a little more neatly. After all, we already know they look the part.
Baby Blue
I’ve been on a Smashing Pumpkins kick lately, obsessed with compiling a playlist of Siamese Dream-esque songs (if you have recs, send ’em my way!). As they’re among the bands most firmly rooted in junior high/high school nostalgia (I think the top of the list is Linkin Park, Sum 41, Tenacious D, Green Day and Styx (thanks, Dad!)), certain Pumpkins songs have a unique ability to transport me. This happened as “Today” hit my headphones in the midst of a basketball warmup, and suddenly I was 13 years old, riddled with anxiety about an upcoming game and either ready to jump through the roof or curl into a ball and rock on the floor.
Imagine police were looking for that mental distress on my face, and able to confiscate my emotional music, and you’ve grasped the foundation for Bim Eriksson’s Baby Blue, a new graphic novel out now from Fantagraphics. The work begins with our lead character, Betty, obtaining an iPod full of banned music (after all, no mentally healthy person is listening to Morissey!) from a suicidal contact. Betty’s emotional stability wavers on a paper-thin edge, and she’s instantly approached by police and placed on a watchlist when this event brings her to (fairly reasonable!) tears in public. This is a Sweden where happiness or at least contentedness is demanded at all times, and the mentally unfit are taken to clinics for medical course correction. It’s satirical commentary on how societies treat those who march to a different drum, but it’s also resonant predictive text. The best satires always carry just enough reality.
Eriksson’s cartooning is surreal yet consistent, with hollow eyes, elongated limbs (every character’s legs go ALL the way down to the floor), and disproportionately square shoulders. It’s a realistic dystopian future, but with elements of absurdity melded to its core. What’s fairly remarkable is that Eriksson is regularly able to convey subtle emotional shifts via facial tics and character interactions, even when animal masks and alien body types are involved. Your mileage will undoubtedly vary on the stylistic approach, but the idiosyncrasies never impede narrative. For my money, they give it life.
Hourglass
Barbara Mazzi’s Hourglass opens with a splash page of a young woman navigating the gear-laced halls of this fable’s almighty ‘hourglass,’ a technology that effectively grants immortality to the wealthy. This single image is rich with golden churning cogs, snaking pipes, and a perspective that seems to indicate machinery that goes on forever. Mazzi displays a gifted ability to snake between youthful wide-eyed wonder, the opulence of this world’s de-aged upper class, and the grime of the cutthroat workers ensuring the longevity of their rich overlords. It’s a compelling commentary on class through a storybook romance that feels like it’s always been lodged in the subconscious just waiting for someone to pull it out.
Hourglass is the kind of YA graphic novel that trusts a readership with layered themes and complex decisions, reminding me of the First Second graphic novels of Jen Wang. I won’t spoil it, but the work’s explosive conclusion is impossible to put down, and Sopranos-esque in its enigmatic meaning. At a sprite 100+ pages, the work sacrifices the emotional resonance of supporting players (there’s a bug-eyed laborer with some WILD thoughts about the religion of the Hourglass that we could unpack!), but I’ll always favor immediacy over sprawl. Another win for Silver Sprocket, and a work that launches Mazzi onto my radar for all future works.
Kaya Vol. 4
Wes Craig’s all-ages fantasy is firmly entrenched among the Image all-timers; at this point the only real question about Kaya is how far do Craig’s plans stretch? Approaching 30 issues, Kaya is one of the sturdiest long-running series in the direct market, all the more impressive considering Craig’s succeeding in a highly saturated fantasy market on the power of design, expert craftsmanship, and completely non-cynical heart. Like Jeff Smith’s Bone, Craig fully gives himself to the journey of Kaya and her brother Jin, navigating an endlessly engaging fantasy landscapes of robots, wizards, alligator-men, trickster-gods, and magical boys with the powers of animal transformation. Alongside Jason Wordie and Tom Napolitano, Craig has crafted one of my favorite worlds in comic books.
The most recent volume of Kaya, collecting issues #19 to #24, reaffirms the book among comics’ best, as Craig’s imagination is freed in the haunted city, allowing for kaleidoscope dream-state layouts and chase sequences involving rabid dinosaurs for the honorary reason that this is comics and they can, dammit! Kaya and Jin’s quest is under constant duress – let these kids catch a break! – and the regular addition here of Razel the Loki-like (ex?) god of tricksters is a more than welcome wrinkle. At some point, I suspect I’ll grow tired of the “Jin gets captured and Kaya must save him” structural cycles, but Craig seems to even notice that here, more likely to move along the rescues as they recur, and seeking to avoid stasis. I can’t wait to see where we’re going next.
El Fuego
I was not familiar with this part of David Rubin’s game. I knew the Spanish cartoonist as the incredible visualist behind collaborations with Matt Kindt and Jeff Lemire (Cosmic Detective, Ether, Black Hammer spinoffs), but not as his own fully formed voice. It’s a trite concern, but the leap from full-time artist to fully-in-control writer/artist leaves many a sure hand collapsed in a pit of bodies who’ve tried and failed. Queue up the standard reviewer’s lament: “It looks great BUT…”
Well, El Fuego, originally released in Spanish in 2022 and now translated to English via Oni Press, looks great AND I quite enjoy Rubin’s apocalypse sci-fi and cultural commentary! Think Armageddon in a post climate collapse world, all through the lens of a rock-star Architect tasked with saving mankind by building a lunar evacuation colony. There aren’t many beats here that truly surprise, but there’s an eccentricity and confidence to Rubin’s storytelling that overpowers fears of been-there-done-that. An example: Of course the moment our protagonist finishes a call from Moon to Earth with his doting wife and daughter, he turns around and cuts up lines of coke for himself and his mistress. I just call this Thursday (nobody send these reviews to my wife, please)! BUT Rubin introduces “kryptocoke,” so that the duo’s eyes turn green, and their bodies emanate emerald auras as they engage in the erotic festivities. And THEN, I won’t spoil it, but Rubin twists the grotesque up a notch, channeling Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman as written by The Boys era Garth Ennis. It works! (not to mention convinces me there’s a Black Label Superman project just waiting for David Rubin’s pen.)
Over the course of ~250 pages, Rubin plays with a wide variety of craft and ideas, and as you’d expect, some moments work far better than others. There’s a sequence of the kryptocoke leaving our now ruined protag wandering the city streets with his green Doctor Strange astral self lurching out of a husk, as they make their way to a synthetic sex shop from the mind of Syd Mead and Geoff Darrow. For my money, it’s the scene that most effectively captures the fall of the grand hero of mankind, a memorable mixture of seedy, pathetic, gross and sad. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s a lengthy mid-work sequence where two characters wander a now desolate Rome and their looooong conversation is spread entirely across double page spreads. The dialog lacks the emotional heft or propulsive force to justify the length, but it’s still fascinating to see how Rubin conveys an extended walk-and-talk without panel borders. I’d argue you need the space to try both scenes, even if I’m admittedly skimming dialog during the latter.
Again, it would be too easy to toss this in the pile of “Great art BUT” comics, and I just don’t think that does it justice. Much like an addict wandering the burning waste of the Earth-that-was, Rubin’s more than capable of surviving on his own, and I look forward to seeing what tricks are up his sleeve next.
Tongues
Anders Nilsen’s Tongues wants to rise to the level of the greats, and it has all the tools to get there. Ostensibly, Tongues is a reimagining of the myth of Prometheus, the Prisoner of the gods chained to a mountaintop for eternity due to his overeager infatuation with the disease of humankind (or so his family of jailors would tell you). The story of Prometheus on the mountain and the viability of the human experiment is only one of three core narratives, though, as the work spans near-present-day Central Asia with a cast of children, soldiers, monkeys and god-chickens. The scope is astonishing; it’s a challenge not to get lost in superlative. It’s the kind of work with a pull quote referencing Maus, Fun Home, Persepolis, and Jimmy Corrigan in a single breathless name-check. Nilsen’s modern mythology possesses Moebius’ soft touch and Art Spiegelman’s experimental ambition, with the world-weary design of Frank Quitely and the panel-defying layouts of P. Craig Russell.
Whether it’s my thumb catching an unexpected fold on a page that reveals an explosion of mysterious floral biology, or the way a page of comics might consist of 11 teardrops, creeping with the verdant flora of Prometheus’ hillside, there are repeated moments of ecstasy revealing modes of storytelling I haven’t experienced before. Structurally and visually, Tongues is simply one of the coolest graphic novels I’ve ever held. This, plus an enigmatic core shrouding quests and connective tissue in layered secrecy makes for comics offering the rarest of promises: rewarding, near-necessary rereads.
It wasn’t until I was about 2/3rds of the way through Tongues that I noticed the “Vol. 1” indicia on its spine. This is both thrilling and deflating. It’s exciting that Nilsen would want to return to this world, that there’s the promise of a volume 2 on the horizon; it’s deflating in the sense that for most of its duration this feels like the sort of masterwork that deserves a satisfactory conclusion (and without the eternity of the gods, I am naturally impatient). I came into Nilsen’s work cold, but have since learned that Tongues has been in-progress for years, and that this Pantheon collection assembles the last 7+ years of six issues. Hopefully the second volume won’t take as long, but frankly, given the attention to detail and bursting creativity on every page, it’s almost a relief to learn no one crafted something so gorgeous in any shorter amount of time. I don’t need to actually discover I’ve been eating from the liver of gods myself.
Tongues is my favorite read of 2025’s first quarter, and a front-runner for graphic novel of the year. I promise you’ll enjoy it in print more, too.
Catch up on all CBH’s favorite graphic novels of 2025 right here!