7 single issue artists hit 110 pages this year, out of the stuff I bought. Devmalya Pramanik and PJ Holden each ended at 110 pages. Russell Olson was at 116, while Alexandre TefenKgi ended at 122 pages. Humberto Ramos narrowly edged that out with 125, while Domenico Carbone drew 140 pages. Props to both the Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu artists for making the list! But in first place, Batgirl's Takeshi Miyazwa, with 180 pages.
As always, I'm just ranking things I actually bought in 2025. If I didn't buy, it doesn't get considered, so go look for people who read, but didn't rank, that thing you really liked, and complain at them.
Favorite Ongoing Series (min. 6 issues):
1. Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu
2. Batgirl
3. Fantastic Four (the second one)
There were only 4 options, and that required counting Fantastic Four before and after the new first issue as two separate entries. The restarted numbering gets 3rd because there were a few issues that weren't event tie-ins. Batgirl, despite not having a plot I'm wildly invested in, at least looked good a lot with Miyazawa's art, and had some decent emotional beats for the title character. Fist of Khonshu comes in 1st easily though, because I thought the arc with MK trying to take down Fairchild was pretty interesting (and occasionally hilarious), and the Pramanik/Rosenberg team made it look gorgeous.
Favorite Mini-Series (more than 50% shipped this year):
1. Bronze Faces
2. Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt
3. Metamorpho
Lots of mini-series again this year. Several that didn't ship enough issues - Avengers Assemble, Babs, Calavera P.I., Red Before Black - some I just didn't enjoy enough - Dark Pyramid, Past Time, Runaways - for them to be in the running.
Bronze Faces felt like it had the strongest story, TefenKgi did some very nice work with the art. If I sometimes had trouble keeping the supporting characters in the crew straight, the issues and messy interrelationships between Sango, Gbonka and Timi always shined through clearly. And it was ultimately about them, that they all came into this with different ideas and goals, and that helped eventually wreck things, because they were never really a united front.
Great British Bump-Off probably edges out Metamorpho because I like John Allison's write more than Ewing's, and Max Sarin's art much more than Steve Lieber's.
Favorite One-Shot:
1. It's Jeff! Jeff Week
This category was supposed to have a few other contenders, but Tuatha and Marvel All-on-One aren't here. All hail the Land Shark!
Favorite Trade Paperback/Graphic Novel (purchased in 2025):
1. Atomic Robo: The Vengeful Dead (Brian Clevinger/Scott Wegener)
2. Bandette: The Marriage of B.D. Belgique (Paul Tobin/Colleen Coover)
3. Bad Machinery: The Case of the Good Boy (John Allison)
Obviously I've not reviewed any of this (or the next category) yet. Still got a half-dozen things from 2024 to get through first. But the Atomic Robo story tied together various threads Clevinger and Wegener had been setting up for years into a pretty satisfying package. I'm a little dodgy on stories where people try to force a couple to confess feelings and get together - it's my contrary nature - but Bandette was its usual mixture of humor and theft. I also started trying to find those collections of Bad Machinery Oni Press released last decade. of the four I've so far procured, The Case of the Good Boy was the one I liked the best. The silliness of the magic pencil charmed me, I suppose.
Favorite Manga (purchased in 2025):
1. Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General vol. 11 (Jin)
2. No Longer Allowed in Another World vol. 9 (Hiroshi Nota/Takahiro Wakamatsu)
3. Dragon Ball vol. 10 (Akira Toriyama)
Again, haven't reviewed any of these yet, but volume 11 of Precarious Woman Executive might have been my favorite of the entire series. Jin sticks mostly to one or two-chapter stories, and focuses on the characters mostly doing mundane or ordinary tasks, but makes it funny, and occasionally touching. Volume 8 of No Longer Allowed revealed a big plot twist, and volume 9 shows how that reveal ripples outward. Volume 10 of Dragon Ball I bought mostly because it's the beginning of the second World Martial Arts Tournament arc, and I get nostalgic for when non-Saiyan characters where allowed to look like they could actually keep up with Goku.
Favorite Writer:
1. John Allison
2. Jed MacKay
3. Jin
Just kind of playing the numbers, between Great British Bump-Off and the Bad Machinery collections, I probably bought more of Allison's writing than anyone else. MacKay is on here strictly from his Moon Knight writing, but if I find his pacing a little questionable at times, he finds some nice hooks to hang character beats on in his work. And I actually bought 2 volumes of Precarious Woman Executive, and they were both pretty good, so I figure Jin deserves some credit for that.
Favorite Artist:
1. Devmalya Pramanik (with Rachelle Rosenberg)
2. Adam Warren
3. Takeshi Miyazawa
I didn't buy as much of Warren's Dirty Pair work as I hoped this year, but the amount I bought is probably at least as many pages as Pramanik drew. Plus it's Warren's later Dirty Pair stuff, as he was moving his style into its own more distinctive direction.
But, again, I loved the work Pramanik did on layouts and doing interesting stuff with close-ups on characters, so they get the top spot with Rachelle Rosenberg, since I know her color work is part of what made Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu (and all MacKay's other Moon Knight books) look so good.
And, we're done with that for another year.
No comments:
Post a Comment