WaPo Cartoonist Quits, Scholastic Earnings Short, Best Of Lists, and more— The Comic Bookmarks January 5th, 2025
Welcome to another year at FC2C. Hope you had a great New Year.
So after the holidays and everything, it’s time to get back to business as normal around here, meaning it’s time to link blog. Since it’s been a few weeks, here’s what‘s been piling up since right before Christmas.
Previously on FC2C
Scott Cederlund
Headlines
Ann Telnaes
More about Benjamin Mullin
So much is happening here but the main takeaway is that the Washington Post can’t point out the hypocrisy of Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post. In case you missed it, Bezos’ Amazon is donating $1,000,000 to the Trump Inauguration committee.
An international-focused look at some of the great comic creators who passed away last year. (sc)
Paul Gravett gives us the a guide to books coming out in March, 2025. (
Comic Sites on Comic Sites
Trevor Van As
I’m really not one to track what I’ve read in a year (but strangely, I love Letterboxd for movies) but I keep playing with the idea of setting up a spreadsheet. If you’re one who likes wants to keep track of your reading, this looks like a fairly good sheet. (sc)
Augie De Blieck Jr.
I think it was on BlueSky but I’ve seen Augie talk somewhere about trying to explore putting out more of his stuff via video and Youtube. But here’s a post where he breaks down some of his experiences trying that. (sc)
Every critic - and everyone who does the job of a critic but calls themselves something else - should have this emblazoned on a parchment somewhere. If you refuse to give negative reviews, your positive reviews mean nothing, because your audience has no idea what you think the difference is.
— William Bibbiani (@williambibbiani.bsky.social) January 2, 2025 at 2:04 PM
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And let’s be honest, sometimes bad reviews are just more fun to write.
I know that I’ve said this to my peers before but I do think it’s been a while since I’ve just wanted to spend time with something that was that bad. Maybe in 2025 I need to look out for bad books. (sc)
Business
Scholastic has been the backbone of the comics industry for (I’d guess) 20 years even if it’s not recognized regularly as such. It’s been developing the next generations of readers one way or another during that time, whether through the comics that it produces or through its book fairs which get so much out there. This may be one of those things that we should be paying more attention to in 2025. (sc)
The Funny Pages
I was able to finish and publish Anzuelo this year, which was quite an insane level to clear 🪸 If only, for that I'm grateful.
— beluga's kin (@emmartian.bsky.social) December 31, 2024 at 4:20 AM
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I really want to spend some time with this book and get my thoughts out about it but let me just say right now that this was one of the most beautiful books of 2024. Rios’ images just slayed me with how open and raw they were. (sc)
Interviews
David Brooke
Evan Cagle is quickly turning into an artist to pay attention to. Between his evocative covers of Ram V’s Detective Comics run and now doing (most of) the artwork in the new New Gods series, he’s an artist who can shift his tone to match what the story needs. Dawnrunner is both this big mech story but also a story about parents fighting for their kids. It works on this huge, apocalyptic level as well as a much smaller, more intimate one as well. This interview offers some nice insights into how Cagle approaches his work. (sc)
EW’s editorial guidelines
A short interview from Entertainment Weekly, but a notable one in that Moore seems more willing that usual to talk about his comics writing in connection to his prose fiction. That Holub focuses the discussion specifically on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen certainly helps. (mb)
Best Of Lists From Around the Internet
There are a lot of Best Of lists out there. I don’t agree with everything on these lists (Beneath the Trees Where No One Sees shows up on one or two of them and it would be on my list for most disappointing books of 2024) but I love the breadth and depth of comics that these lists highlight. There really is something for everyone out there and it’s just a matter of helping people find the right book for them. (sc)
James Kaplan
The Editors
Samantha Puc
Jarrod Jones
Jasmine Amiri, Rachel Forbes, Joe Pascullo, Lisa Rowland, Sara Smith
Sean Gaffney
Borys Kit
Dan Grote
Reviews & Features
Ashita no Joe is currently sitting on the to-read pile, waiting for a free week to read it. (sc)
I had seen Erika Friedman talking about this series on BlueSky a week or two ago, saying if you liked The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t a Guy At All, that you needed to check out this series. I picked up a digital version and see I have 6 volumes to catch up on. (sc)
Logan Dalton
Get ready for 2025 to be the year of Krypto. And this is a far better Krypto than that other version could ever been. (sc)
Michael Nam
It's not comics fandom if we're not perpetually panicked that our entire world might come crashing down at any given moment, but this certainly resonates a lot more that the typical handwringing, to be fair. (mb)
Oliver Sava
I’m catching up on some of these books now, like Dawnrunner, Detective Comics, and The One Hand And The Six Fingers, and slowly coming around to the realization that Ram V may be my favorite writer right now. He’s definitely up there and any book that has his name on it is worth checking out. (sc)
Beat Staff
Somewhere in-between a list and a retrospective of Zack Quintance's first year reading 2000AD week-t0-week, this is a very thorough recap of what amounted to an incredibly strong year for the Galaxy's Greatest Comic. Moreover, Zack and Dean provide some good advice for how (and why) to get into the world of 2000AD beyond just Judge Dredd. (mb)
Jake Murray
The Absolute line seems to be hitting with people but I really just fear that DC is going to take something that’s working good on a small scale and ruin it by trying to scale it up. I’m already concerned that in a few months, the size of this line is going to double.
But with these 3 books, it’s interesting to see what people are connecting with and what they’re taking away from each of them. How many times has DC tried to reboot Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman at the same time where maybe only 1 out of the 3 really clicked? Now they’ve got 3 strong main titles with these characters. (sc)
The best selling comics of last year, aside from X-MEN and UNCANNY X-MEN, were all alternate universe versions of iconic heroes. Ultimate and Absolute. I've been thinking about this. On the one hand, it seems kind of sad. The 'official' versions should be represented more. BUT. 1/
— Gail Simone (@gailsimone.bsky.social) January 1, 2025 at 12:18 PM
To go with the above, this thread from Gail Simone was interesting to read. As someone who’s taken more of a back to basics approach with her X-Men run, it’s revealing to see her work out why thing like the Ultimate and Absolute lines are so popular right now.
But I also think there’s something to how these new lines are speaking to our times more than the more mainline takes of the characters are. Like these are the takes for 2024/2025 on these characters that we need right now. (sc)
On the other hand, we could just need more old comics. And thank goodness we have Tegan O'Neill for that. Revisiting the advertisements in old single issues is like opening a time capsule. (mb)
And of course, there is an issue in-between the ads as well. (mb)
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