From Cover to Cover’s Favorite Comics of 2024
Scott’s favorite books of 2024
I’ve got a confession to make, I don’t like doing these year-end lists. I love reading other people’s lists but I hate putting my own out there even though I’ve done it most years. In fact, you can see below a portion of my spreadsheet that goes back to 2003 documenting what I’ve considered the best books each year, although I’ll admit that my memory of a few of these books is a bit fuzzy.
Before we dive into my favorite books of 2024, let’s quickly walk down memory lane with From Cover To Cover’s favorite books of 2021, 2022, and 2023.
Mike Baxter
Scott Cederlund
Scott Cederlund
And on to 2024.
The Top 11 Comics of 2024 (according to one person)
The Books That Started to Linger In My Thoughts Before I Even Got To The Last Page
- Barda by Ngozi Ukazu, published by DC Comics (reviewed here)
- Tokyo These Days V1-3 by Taiyo Matsumoto, published by Viz (reviewed here)
- Final Cut by Charles Burns, published by Pantheon Graphic Library
These books lodged themselves into my brain, even while I was reading them. Ukazu’z Barda took a character and a story that I’m very well versed in and gave a new perspective on them, completely indebted to Kirby but going off in a different direction, starting with a school-girl like crush on Orion but giving Barda and the Furies an agency that they don’t often get. Tokyo These Days feels like Taiyo Matsumoto approaching a certain point in his life and reflecting on what it means to be working in manga after a long and fruitful career. And no cartoonist is working these days who captures that 70s-ish teenage ennui like Charles Burns. His Final Cut works because of the tone it sets— Burns may filter his comics through a reminiscence of his own teenage/early 20s years but he keys in on universal feelings of isolation and disconnection that perfectly set the spiritual flavors of his comics.
The Books That Have a Vibe That I Just Dug
- Rare Flavours by Ram V & Filipe Andrade, published by Boom! Studios (reviewed here)
- G.O.D.S. by Jonathan Hickman, Valerio Schiti, Marte Gracia & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo, published by Marvel Comics (reviewed here)
- Hirayasumi V1-3 by Keigo Shinzō, published by Viz
Rare Flavours, G.O.D.S., and Hirayasumi are books that you need to give yourself over to a bit, synch up with their wavelengths to ride the waves with them. Shinzō’s Hirayasumi is the surprise book of the year, one that wasn’t on my radar until late in the year; it’s like if Scott Pilgrim was written by Kiyohiko Azuma (Yotsuba&, Azumanga Daioh.) It’s such a sweet book that’s about being sweet without ever becoming sickening so. G.O.D.S. almost didn’t need to be a Marvel book but it provides so much flavor to Hickman and Schiti’s story that’s basically about a guy trying to find some kind of work/life balance. And in Rare Flavours V and Andrade take you on a culinary tour of India, with your guide being a man-eating demon. Each of these books has a vibe to them, a tone and voice that you give yourself over to to see where they can take you.
The Books That Move Around In Their Space
- Return to Eden by Paco Roca, published by Fantagraphics (reviewed here)
- Search and Destroy V1 by Kaneko Atsushi, published by Fantagraphics (reviewed here)
- Precious Metal #1-6 by Darcy Van Poelgeest & Ian Bertram, published by Image Comics
Beyond the characters, each of these books takes you someplace, whether it’s pre-World War II Spain, a dystopian Russia, or the future where forces are trying to manufacture the next god. This group creates a setting for their characters to live in, to fight in and for. Paco Roca’s biography of his mother and her upbringing is so tied to the Spain of her childhood, the sites, smells, and experiences that happened in that place and that time. Atsushi’s Search and Destroy takes place in a neo-Soviet Russia that you have to believe would give itself over to the corruption and violence that comes in the future. Van Poelgeest and Bertram’s prequel to Little Bird is a futuristic space opera that takes place on Earth, even if you would hardly recognize it. These books make use of their settings; they’re a force that acts upon the men and women of these stories.
The Books That Make Me Look At Them A Bit Differently Each Time
The books that make me look at them differently
- Absolute Wonder Woman #1-3 by Kelly Thompson, Hayden Sherman, and Jordie Bellaire, published by DC Comics (reviewed here)
- Anzuelo by Emma Ríos, published by Image Comics
I don’t know if I have a great handle on these books yet. With each issue of Absolute Wonder Woman, Thompson, and Sherman have revealed a bit more of their story. This Diana is different than the mainstream DC Wonder Woman. She’s had a different upbringing but still seems the rebel, a characteristic often overlooked by creators. Sherman and Bellaire feel like just the right art/color team for this book. Their work is a revelation, full of storytelling choices that make them co-authors of the book with Thompson. Rios’ Anzuelo is probably the most emotionally raw story I read all year, telling the story of a group of kids who survive the end of the world. There are a lot of stories like that right now but Rios’s storytelling is so raw and so exposed that it’s almost painful to read. But it’s a good pain, a needed pain.
The Books that Deserve An Honorable Mention
I’m trying to think about what these all these books say about 2024. The big thing that stands out to me is that there’s a lot of Marvel, DC, and Image here. That’s not to say that I think those are the best publishers but that the good stuff was really, really good. But I also think it says that my reading habits were fairly conservative this past year. Part of that is that my glasses weren’t that good and reading was a bit hard. My wife would laugh at me when I’d take my glasses off and hold a book 4” away from my face to read it but that was the best way to read until a couple of weeks ago. So the actual act of reading wasn’t that much fun for a chunk of 2024. I bought a good amount of books that are on other “best of 2024” lists that are sitting in one of my to-read piles. I started Emma Rios’ Anzuelo multiple times but didn’t read the whole thing until a week or so ago when I had new glasses and could focus on her lettering.
But more than that, let’s go back to the idea that when the mainstream publishers were good, they were just that much better than everything else. Absolute Wonder Woman and Barda are two of the best things from 2024 that anyone put out. The ways that these creators tackled familiar stories but from different angles opened up a lot of space to explore the characters. G.O.D.S. could easily have been stripped of all the Marvel trappings and published as a creator-owned book from Image and it probably would have still been good. But the ways that Hickman and Schiti staged this love story with a background of the Marvel cosmic universe just added a depth to it that pleased this old Jim Starlin/Steve Englehart fan.
So in the end, 2024 was a good year, a strong year. But that’s more on me than on the books themselves. I read a lot but did I read enough books or the right books? For some reason, that question lingers in the back of my mind more than it has before. I look at the table at the top that shows my spreadsheet that goes back 15+ years and other than a few things here and there, these are mostly all books that I can still think about or grab off the shelf and read. I wonder if in a couple of years, I’ll look back fondly on my 2024 list or wonder what in the world was I thinking.
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