Welcome to The Corner Box with David Hedgecock and John Barber. With decades of experience in all aspects of comic book production, David, John, and their guests will give you an in-depth, and insightful look at the past, present, and future of the most exciting medium on the planet—comics—and everything related to it.

[00:24] John Barber: Hello, and welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm one host, John Barber, and with me, as always, my good friend,

[00:32] David Hedgecock: David Hedgecock.

[00:33] John: People will probably still remember the year we're about to look back on--2025.

[00:38] David: Here's the thing, John. Everybody else does their year-end awards and year-end review stuff before the year's even over. We did it right, because we have respect for those people who put books out on December 31st. We want to consider the entire year, fully and completely, because you just never know. So, we gave that extra time that some creators needed to get in there to potentially make our Best Of 2025 list. I think we're probably the only truly valid Best Of 2025 list that's really going to be out there. That's my personal opinion on it. No one else is giving a full consideration of everything that's happened within the full year, except for us, clearly.

[01:21] John: That policy gives an advantage to every publisher, besides DC, who didn't ship anything that final shipping week.

[01:28] David: That's right, and you know what? All the other publishers needed that advantage this year, because DC really did come in pretty hot.

[01:33] John: I was just generally being silly, but you're right.

[01:35] David: So, do you have any criteria for how you set up your list, John? Did you give yourself any rules?

[01:40] John: I didn't exactly give myself any rules. I made a six tabs’ worth of a spreadsheet here, where I figured stuff out. I really put a little effort into this. I came up with a list of monthly comics, or periodical comics, and reprints, and stuff I got in Kickstarter, favorite single issues, OGNs from this year, and then started combining them together. I came up with a list of all new comics. So, the reprint stuff would have just been totally separate.

[02:07] David: My only rule for myself was--I feel like, in 2025, I've probably read more comic books than I've read in a long time. Non-work. If I count years where I'm working, I read way more, but this year, as a hobby, as a fan, I think I read more comic books this year than I have in a long time, but I had to exclude a pretty decent chunk of it, because I was like, “well, even though an issue or two of Hitman might have made a part of my list somewhere, it came out 20 years ago. I don't think I can call that a Best Of 2025.” So, I did limit, with the exception of a couple reprints. I did limit what I wanted to talk about. It was published in 2025, for the most part.

[02:50] John: Not that it was implied by the Best Of 2025 part.

[02:53] David: Well, it's my personal Best Of 2025. Some stuff, I discovered for the first time this year, John.

[02:58] John: Okay. Also, this needs to be a thing. It can't just be not a thing. It needs to be a thing, and from 2025. Those are my 2 criteria, I guess, if we specify that as being criteria. Mine are all from 2025. My opinions of finally having watched Oppenheimer 4 days ago are probably not that super relevant.

[03:18] David: Right. See, that's what I'm talking about. So, let's get into it, John.

It's time for the Best Comics Of 2025 with David and John. To be incredibly clear, since these guys struggle with the basic structure of time, we are looking exclusively at 2025--not 2024. Not the first three weeks of 2026. Nope. We're staying strictly within the 365-day perimeter of 2025, but with these two, who the hell knows where we'll end up?

Now, let's get into it.

[03:50] David: You've got 6 tabs worth of stuff. So, I think you should start.

[03:53] John: Do you want to count down just 5 things?

[03:55] David: I think we just get the highlights, and then when we get tired and sleepy, we'll just sign off.

[03:59] John: Okay. For me, there were two absolute--I thought--masterpieces of comics that I read this year, 2 things that I thought were just really good stuff. One is Tongues by Anders Nilsen. He's an alternative cartoonist, and I've read some of his stuff before, and the thing I always think of, with him, I'm not even sure if this is still in print, but this certainly isn't the biggest thing he's done by any means, was a comic called Don't Go Where I Can't Follow. It came out a little over 20 years ago. In real life, his girlfriend died, and it was him going through what that was all about, and the comic included actual things that existed. If they went to see a concert, maybe the concert ticket would be part of the comic book, physically placed on the page. I'm making that up. I haven't read it in a long time, but his art was always very abstract. Not loosely drawn. Just literally abstract. Sometimes, “here's a shape that represents a human,” not, “something that looks a human,” and I always thought of his stories as being very emotional non-stories a lot of the time. I also can't remember everything I'd read by him. So, I don't know if this is totally off-base, but Tongues is a very concrete story.

It's told non-linearly, but it's basically the story of Prometheus, the Greek god, who's chained to a mountain, and every day, an eagle comes and eats his liver, and that's his punishment for giving fire to humans, in Greek mythology. This posits that that wasn't the actual reason he got chained up. The real reason is, he knows somebody's going to come kill Zeus, but he won't say who it is. So, Zeus is trying to get that information out of him, for thousands and thousands of years, until the present day, when things seem to start falling into action. That's not the order this stuff comes about. Most of the story is set in Afghanistan, with some military people, a girl who's possibly the assassin--I'm not sure. I don't think we're quite sure yet--and then a boy who's maybe Hercules. All these events told out of order, as you start piecing this thing together.

The art's really unusual, but it's very figurative. It's pictures of things. You can tell what they are. It's pretty nicely done. It's a definite twist from what I thought of Anders Nilsen doing, and maybe he's been doing this thing for years, and I just lost track, and this is all hitting me at once. It's got hints of Sandman, but definitely a lot more alternative literary comic indie thing than Sandman ever would have been. Crazy panel layouts, really manipulating the shape and size of them, and pulling things together. I just thought it was really interesting. I thought the writing was incredible. I don't know. I just really enjoyed it. Zeus is always represented as a swan from the Leda and the Swan story, but he's never referred to as Zeus. He's always the Swan King. I don't know. Just fun stuff. I don't know. I liked it. It's super dark, but it's enjoyable.

[06:56] David: I hadn't heard of this one, but I'm looking at some of the accolades for this book, and it's clearly being well-regarded. For the listener, whenever I talk to John about stuff like this, he's always way more insightful, and way more well-read. So, I'm frantically always trying to grab a pen and paper, and write down, “Tongues by Anders Nilsen.” I’ve got to remember to read that one. I'm looking at some of the samples of the pages, though, and they're remarkable in their layout. The frame of the paneling is a creature of some sort, with its paws and head, and brain exposed, but then within the body of the creature is circular panels that are telling the actual story of a human doing something, with narrative going on. Really cool looking artwork.

[07:46] John: It's still very […]. That is the thing about it. There's 3 or 4 places in this book--It's 300 pages--where I didn't realize it was a spread. The percentage is probably better than this. There's a couple places where it lost me, what order I was supposed to go in. Almost all the time, it's real clear, and scene-to-scene, it's crystal clear. You just have to piece together the overall story as it's going on.

[08:08] David: But that's purposeful.

[08:09] John: Yeah, exactly.

[08:10] David: I like the idea of taking the story of Prometheus. The thing that I always thought was crazy about that story--I think this is Prometheus' story--The Greek playwright that wrote the Prometheus story, he was super famous, I think, and he wrote 3 plays, but two of the plays don't exist anymore. They've been lost to time. So, this is the only one that actually has survived through history. So, it's a part of a trilogy, and we don't know what the other two are. So, I always like when people dig into this one, because it's fun to imagine--I don't know--the rest of the framework, because we just don't have it. Maybe I'm getting this all wrong. I'm doing it off the top of my head.

[08:50] John: I just started learning about a lot of the Greek mythology stuff that I should have known the origins of. We know the gods that appear in the Iliad, from the Iliad. Not that they pre-existed that. They're stories that we only know from that. I didn't know that. I don't know. It just never occurred to me. So, like you were just saying, that's interesting. The Oppenheimer movie is also the Prometheus story. They drive that home a couple of times, and it's based on the […] American Prometheus.

[09:15] David: Is that your favorite story of 2025? Your favorite graphic novel? Your favorite mini-series? You've got to give it something. That's just one of your favorite things? You're just going to say “this is one of my favorite things?”

[09:24] John: Well, okay, this is actually a collection of five issues of this comic. So, let's say that's my favorite collection of new material.

[09:32] David: Okay. I do have a favorite collection of new material as well, John.

[09:40] John: Okay.

[09:41] David: For me, my favorite collection of material this year--I've got a couple that I really enjoyed. I don't think these came out in 2025, but honorable mentions to Precious Metal and Little Bird by Ian Bertram and a writer who I can't remember the name of, but I really love that art, but I don't think those were 2025. So, my favorite collection for the year, though, John, is the Helen of Wyndhorn Collection by Tom King, and more importantly, Bilquis Evely. Man, the art in that thing is just beyond compare. Bilquis Evely threw down the gauntlet. I have picked that book up, and I read it, and then I picked it up again, and just looked at all the pictures, and I've recently just gone back again, just to look at all the pictures. There's a wild amount of detail in those books. Yeah, you're holding that. John's got it right next to him. An incredible amount of detail in those books, and the horror ability to evoke a specific period and a specific feeling is just incredible in this piece. I feel like I'm reading something that came from 1910 or 1915, or the 20s, just this really pulp fiction period piece art, but better in every way, and I'm just enamored with it, and the story was really fun.

It's a story of a girl who's lost, and her dad dies, and she reconnects with her grandfather, who we find out happens to be a Flash Gordon or a Conan, but his adventures that he writes about in the real world, he's actually having them in a fantasy world, and he invites his granddaughter to join him on his adventures, and they find a connection, and the story goes from there. It's a good story. It's a very good story, but the art just catapults it into my favorite collection of 2025. Bilquis Evely, I can't imagine not just reading everything she does forever, after seeing what she did here, and I hope she's able to continue to have the time--whatever time it took for her to make that book--I hope she continues to find the time to be able to do it in that way, and I hope she's rewarded for all her incredibly amazing efforts. Where is she from? Is she from the US? Is she Brazilian? What is she?

[12:06] John: I don't actually know. I don't know.

[12:08] David: Yeah, Brazilian.

[12:09] John: All right. Nice.

[12:11] David: So, that's my collection, John.

[12:12] John: Do you know Gary Gianni's stuff?

[12:14] David: Yeah.

[12:15] John: In this, it reminds me a little bit of that. I just read his excellent The Shadow: In The Coils of Leviathan limited series that Mike Kaluta co-wrote with this guy that wrote a radio show. It's a 30-year-old comic, not reprinted, I guess, for a long time, but I read that, I loved it, and then this was more of that, in the drawing style, but then her storytelling is just another level on top of the rendering. Everything's so interestingly composed, and stuff. I read Supergirl and this, this year, and I actually didn't realize until yesterday that the Helen of Wyndhorn actually had come out in the collection this year. Very cool.

[12:57] David: And I'm so glad I got the hardcover collections, because it's definitely one that I want to be able to easily grab from my bookshelf.

[13:02] John: I was trying to buy it at ComiCon. I couldn't find it after a couple days. I didn't buy it the first day, and then it was nowhere to be found.

[13:10] David: It was sold out?

[13:11] John: Yeah, because I think it was up for Eisner's last year. I think it got some Eisners.

[13:14] David: I feel like we talked a little bit about it. They were having a moment, because Supergirl was in the Superman movie, and they had the--

[13:19] John: Really nice to have that all […] together.

[13:25] David: I'm going to do my favorite interior artist for 2025. The guy that blew the doors off, for me--I've mentioned him a couple of times. He's been in the Corner Box Top 10 Hottest Artists of the Moment a couple of times now. So, he's got real chops. He's my personal favorite artist of the year, who I think is really also another guy who's really laid down the gauntlet, and done some incredible work--is Jason Fabok on Rook: Exodus, one of the Ghost Machine books coming out of Image Comics. Jason Fabok's work is just lighting up the comic book space. He's working on a comic book. It's a creator-owned book with Geoff Johns. So, he's having to imagine everything, and they're doing heavy world-building with this Rook: Exodus. They're on a different planet. There's all these different animals who've been mutated, and humans who are wearing all kinds of different tech, and there's different tech throughout the landscape that they're inhabiting, and the landscapes are ever evolving. They're going to a bunch of different climates, and it is just an incredible amount of inventiveness and creativity that he's laying down. That alone is a full-time job, and then on top of all of that, he is doing some really fantastic storytelling, and just some of the best American comic book artwork of anybody out there right now. I think he's doing it better than just about anybody, and just at the highest level. I'm just really in love with what he's been doing, and I feel like every page, you can tell this guy loves this project, and that he is fully invested in trying to make it succeed. Whether or not it does, I don't know, but I'm buying every issue. I'm certainly enjoying it. So, that's my favorite interior artist of 2025. The guy who really stood up, and took notice, for me, was Jason Fabok.

[15:17] John: That's cool. Yeah.

[15:18] David: I mean, the story is--as I say all the time, it's a Geoff Johns joint--but that's good. That's slightly above average most of the time, and the art really does catapult it to the next level.

[15:28] John: Very cool. Possibly, my favorite artist is tied in with my favorite OGN, which I'll get to later. I feel like that should be a separate thing. Everybody that you'd mentioned, great artists. I really--as we've talked about a lot--love the art in Absolute Wonder Woman by Hayden Sherman. Probably one of my top five comics from last year. I mean, it's certainly up there, and Kelly Thompson's writing's great. His art's fantastic. I almost went with him just now, but I'm going to jump in, and it's something we'd talked about a little bit, but I'm going to say David Finch. Almost surprisingly, as much as I like Finch's stuff, he’s maybe my favorite penciler this year, my favorite artist this year on the interior of a book, Skinbreaker. I enjoy the series a lot, and it's such a showcase for his art, and we've gotten into it a lot, too. We can skim through this one, but the almost surprisingly weird storytelling of it, of two-page spreads of foliage and faces, and stuff working really well, and that's another one where clearly he spent a lot of time on it, and just got to go to town on it, and it's cool to see somebody really go in and do that, and come out the other end looking more like themselves than something else. It's the most David Finch-y thing that's ever been drawn.

[16:42] David: That is wildly accurate.

[16:43] John: And I appreciate it. I enjoy it.

[16:45] David: You are not wrong in your choice there. Skinbreaker, I've been getting the Treasury Editions of every issue.

[16:51] John: Yeah, I wish I had been.

[16:52] David: Man, I'm so glad I got those. I don't remember. Well, I think I heard Kirkman on a podcast somewhere, before they had launched it, and he was talking about the art, and how they had a Treasury Edition. So, I jumped in on that, but I'm so glad I did, because the Treasury Edition, it really is the way to look at this stuff. It's gorgeous, so incredibly detailed, and yeah, you're not wrong. David Finch is just really crushing it. All right. What’ve you got next, John?

[17:23] John: My favorite original graphic novel of the year is a comic by Jesse Lonergan called Drome. I don't know. Have you seen that?

[17:31] David: Yeah.

[17:32] John: I was blown away by this. Lonergan, is that the right way to say it, do you think?

[17:36] David: I think so.

[17:37] John: Yeah. Sorry, Jesse, if we get it wrong.

[17:40] David: We need to have that guy on the show.

[17:41] John: Yeah, that'd be awesome. He did this comic called Hedra a few years ago, and the whole thing with that was that it was super gridded out. I think that came out during my period where I maybe wasn't reading a lot of things, and wasn't super engaged with things, and I missed it, but I somehow wound up with a digital copy of it on something, and I read it digitally, and I'm like, “man, this is really cool. This is neat.” The way he subdivides a page into grids, and uses that to tell the story. Super fine grids. Drome is all done in a--what is it? 35-panel grid. Not necessarily every panel gets used, like Dark Knight, or something. There might be 2 panels that fit together, or something like that. I'll get into more of that in a second, but Hedra was doing that. I didn't realize Hedra was also printed on newspaper size. That was his thing. It was like Wednesday Comics, or something, where he'd unfold it, and it was a giant tabloid size.

[18:33] David: Oh, that's cool.

[18:34] John: Yeah. No, that's $50 if you're trying to find that in print. All right, well, hopefully somebody will put out a nice one of it. Old man complaining about money moment. There we go. Hedra is loosely Gilgamesh, with a hero who meets an equal hero, and then they team up together, and fight a monster. Though, in this case, the Gilgamesh character's a woman, the other guy's a guy, they fall in love, and there's other characters in there. The immediate star of it is the art. The storytelling is, I just think, incredible. There's so many pages that you read as experiences that are fully readable, that you do not read left to right, tier by tier. He's so engaged with the grid in it. I thought after Hedra, “okay, that's cool, but that's a dead-end,” and then I saw, he kept using the grid in other stuff. He did one of the wave of Animal Adventure comics that came out in the last couple of years that Pornsak did the writing for.

[19:36] David: Oh, okay.

[19:37] John: The grid felt very similar to the way you see the grids used in Absolute Batman or Kaya, or something, where there's grids in play, and the storytelling is really good and cool, but it's not like the grids are operating as normal panels. I'm like, “yeah, maybe that's just where it goes, and the grid just becomes a deal that Jesse Lonergan's doing.” There's more good ideas on any spread in this than most creators have. You get trained to it, you get used to it, of not reading stuff linearly, or seeing the two things at once, tracking things upward as they go that way. Anything you can do to that grid, he does. Breaks it up with circles, collapses things, stretches things, all to tell this story, and the story is pretty long, and there's a lot of words in it, there is a lot of dialogue if you put it all down, but it's mostly visually told. The dialogue is proportionately not very much. Then again, it's super crisp and clear, like a rollicking action comic. Tongues getting into all that stuff about the storytelling, and the myths, and stuff, it is like that sounds. It is very intellectual. It's like Sandman minus any sentimentality. She fights sharks that jump out of the ground, and punching, and stuff story. Have you read it?

[21:01] David: No, I haven't read it, but you know what's weird? Jesse Lonergan's name has been coming up a lot lately. He's on my radar, of somebody to check out. I just haven't known him, but I think Drome will be--maybe that's where I'm going to start.

[21:12] John: Tongues, I think you'd appreciate, the way you were looking at it, and saying that. I don't know that it's really your thing. I feel like Drome might be your thing. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm just saying this because we've known each other for a long time.

[21:24] David: I’m going to check that one out.

[21:25] John: Yeah, a crazy mix of Chris Ware, Jack Kirby, Jim Starlin. I don't know.

[21:32] David: You mentioned Gilgamesh, and the only Gilgamesh I've ever read is Gilgamesh II by Jim Starlin. So, you're probably right. This is where I'm at.

[21:39] John: I read Gilgamesh this year. So, it was fresh in my mind. I need to reread Gilgamesh II, because that was--

[21:46] David: You definitely need to reread Gilgamesh II. That was one of my favorite comics for a while, though, I would say. I really liked that book. Jim Starlin rarely disappoints, actually. Jim Starlin, he's pretty good.

[21:56] John: I've never gotten into Dreadstar. I just found it at some store I went into. They had the first six issues of the Epic run of Dreadstar, and I happen to have the graphic novel. I don't know where I got that from. So, I might really dig into some old Starlin, but yeah, agreed.

[22:16] David: So, I did not actually have an OGN--original graphic novel--on my list. What I did have was my favorite limited series of the year.

[22:25] John: Okay.

[22:26] David: But my favorite limited series of the year is a bit of a cheat, because my favorite limited series for the year was Death of Copra, by Michel Fiffe. For years now, Michel has been self-publishing Copra as an independent, self-published superhero comic. Image has done a couple of collections of material, but he's got well over 40 issues worth of material that he's produced over the last--I don't know--7/8 years, or so, and I've been a faithful follower of Copra for almost the whole time. I think I got in in the teens, at some point, and just a huge fan of Michel's work. I had the pleasure of working with him on a G.I. Joe comic book back in the day, when I was still at IDW, but Death of Copra, it's everything I wanted. He wrapped up the series, essentially, with this Death of Copra, and it's everything I wanted it to be, and a little bit more. I don't know how worth it it is to go into the details of this limited series, other than to say it was my favorite. Copra, as a whole, is fantastic. It is a very impressive thing, in this day, to see somebody sit down and produce 50 issues worth of material independently. Writing, lettering, coloring, drawing, he did the whole thing. The letters page, the covers, the printing, the publishing, the whole thing is by Michel. It's a one-man band, and just nobody's doing that in 2025. Definitely not at the level that he's doing it at. So, really enjoyed the Death of Copra limited series. He wrapped up a ton of storylines, and really brought things home, in a really satisfying way. I'm sure he's feeling a sense of relief, having finally put a bow on that project, but I'm definitely going to miss it.

My runner-up to that is not complete, and that's why it doesn't get my nod for the year, but my runner-up is RoboWolf by Jake Smith, coming from Dark Horse Comics. I actually would say that Jake Smith is probably my colorist of the year. The colors on RoboWolf are amazing. The stuff he's doing is just incredible, and how he as a colorist is able to color all the incredible detail that he as the artist is laying down on the page is just impressive, but RoboWolf's a fun romp. It is the dumbest, most brilliant comic that was produced in 2025, and I'm 100% here for it. Does not get my nod for the year. It's not complete. So, Death of Copra edged it out, and that's what I got for my OGN, if you will, for the year.

[25:11] John: Sounds good.

[25:18] David: My next one is my best new comic book of the year, and best new ongoing series, and there's tons of great choices out there in 2025. There's so much good material getting off the ground in 2025, but the comic book that edged out the rest for me was Battle Beast, by that Kirkman guy, whose name I can't remember, and artist Ryan Ottley. So, the team that did pretty much almost all of Invincible--Kirkman created and wrote all of it, and Ryan Ottley drew most of Invincible--is back together, and Battle Beast is from the Invincible universe. They're recounting the stories of this character named Battle Beast, who made several appearances in Invincible. I think they're telling stories from Battle Beast's past, before he met Invincible. I'm not sure. Maybe it's after. I'm not really clear on that. It doesn't really matter. Battle Beast is just this hardcore assh*le, who is desperate to try to find someone who can kill him, because he wants to end his life, because he's miserable, but he refuses to take himself out, because he doesn't want to go out that way. So, he's traveling the universe, literally looking for the biggest bads in the galaxy, in the universe, to try to beat him, and of course, none of them can. He's too good, and he ends up destroying all the competition that he himself puts himself in front of.

So, it's super fun. It's really well written. It's got that Kirkman/Ottley signature style of superheroes, but over the top violence. Ryan Ottley is just drawing every organ exploding out of the back of somebody's spine from the punch that Battle Beast is giving it. Again, just a great level of inventiveness. There's a lot of world building, and the character himself, Battle Beast, starts out in Issue #1, and in previous iterations where we've seen him, he's a one-note character, but within the first six issues, I think Kirkman does a really impressive job of character development with this guy. It's earned, and it's honest, and I'm really excited to see how the evolution of this character takes place, from this one-note brute to something else, and Ryan Ottley's art has really never been better. So, I think that's my favorite of the year, and a special mention to Skybound itself. They seem to just be, in 2025, just hit after hit, after hit. Everything they've been doing in 2025, I've really enjoyed, but I think Battle Beast stands slightly above the rest right now, for me, in terms of ongoing series.

[28:08] John: Skybound's definitely had a good couple of years. It's funny, because yeah, of course they did. They've had two really big TV shows come out of it, one that was the biggest TV show in the world when it was at its height, but none of those series are around anymore, and nothing's ever really hit the same traction. I don't know that Kirkman has tried to do anything at the scale of Walking Dead or Invincible. I don't really think so.

[28:31] David: I feel like he's tried it a couple of times. It just hasn't worked out for him. He did 30 issues with the artist who did Batman and Robin: Year One.

[28:39] John: Samnee. Yeah, he did the Fire [Power].

[28:41] David: He's tried it a couple of times.

[28:43] John: I guess I was under the impression that that's how big that story was.

[28:46] David: Maybe it was.

[28:46] John: Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. Didn't mean to say that they haven't done good stuff, or that he hasn't done new projects. You can imagine a world where a company like that fizzles out, but they've had super strong last couple of years.

[28:58] David: Oh, yeah. I see what you're saying. Yeah, I know. Strength after strength. They picked up the license for the Hasbro stuff.

[29:06] John: Oh, did they?

[29:07] David: Yeah, and they really hit the ground running with that stuff. Daniel Warren Johnson turned out to be an inspired choice for Transformers. I think putting Paul Pelletier on G.I. Joe: Real American Hero with Larry Hama was a great move. When Chris Mooneyham shows up, he's great too, and the Kubert covers on that book are really great. That book looks better than it hasn't in a long time, and G.I. Joe itself, they're crushing that book. I'm super entertained by what they're doing there, in a way that I didn't know that I could be entertained by new G.I. Joe, the way they're doing it, and then Void Rivals is interesting. I'm still on that book. 25 issues in, as well. So, they're doing a lot of cool stuff. Skinbreaker, we already mentioned. The Universal Monster stuff, that's the stuff that's a little more hit and miss with me, I think.

[29:56] John: I agree, but I was going to say I really liked Invisible Man this year. I thought that was by far my favorite of any of them.

[30:01] David: I didn't pick that one up. I picked up--what was it? the Dracula series?

[30:05] John: I feel like that's one of those ones where you can see the hamstringing of material to development on it, if that makes sense.

[30:13] David: Yeah.

[30:14] John: The Dracula book was neat, but so was the movie, and it falls into a weird spot, but definitely, I thought the art in that was nice. The art on Invisible Man, by DaNi, I freaking love. I believe this came out this year. My favorite new series. I'm actually not positive. I didn't actually break things down that way. So, I was looking through my list to see what was my #1 new series, and I hope I'm not stepping on something that you were going to say later on. I would have to go with Assorted Crisis Events by Deniz Camp and Eric Zawadski. I was a latecomer onto this. I read the collection of it. I wasn't reading the individual issues. I think I probably would have liked it more coming out as individual issues, because I just feel like, in the middle of a week's worth of comics, these would really stand out as fun, bright spots. The basic gist is taking comic book multiverse nonsense, and the same way Everything, Everywhere, All at Once turned it into a personal story, doing that, and trying to get into metaphors for stuff that's going on in people's lives. Sometimes, very one-to-one metaphors. There's definitely parts where you're not going to miss what he's going for with it.

[31:27] David: Yeah, it's a little over the head.

[31:29] John: I found it interesting, in that pushing the genre of superhero type stuff or multiverse type stuff into a new realm, where there are no superheroes in this. There's nothing like that. There's just these events where people from the past will show up, or alternate universes will cross in, but you get stories, like somebody who's living life in fast forward, and it turns into that thing where you look back on your life, and it does seem like that. It relates to real things that people go through. The one I was talking about, I mean, that is a one-to-one metaphor of “what if life went really fast?” because life feels like it goes really fast. I don't even know if that's a metaphor. The other one I was really thinking of was one where an alternate universe town shows up in the same town, and the alternate universe earth was uninhabitable. So, they're basically refugees coming in, but they're literally the same people as in the town. The problems they have with these refugees coming in to, like the South Park episode that also did this, “take our gerbs.” The conflicts arise, and parallel stuff happens.

The art is super neat, definitely gridded out. It has a grid feel that a lot of stuff has these days. It's real clean panel layouts with sometimes an abundance of panels. Not all the time. Very much does a different storytelling trick along with the writing trick of every issue. All fits together really well. Jordie Bellaire's coloring in it is real cool, and really makes it stand apart. Really doesn't look like anything else out there. You can see it taking cues from indie and alternative comics, and also just--I don't know--it's really playing up the uniqueness of the stories in the medium. There's all this stuff you can do with that kind of thing. Like a lot of things, Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou lettering, there's one spot where I'm like, “why the hell did he do that with the lettering?” but that's the level this stuff goes on, where stuff's really good, and this is some of my favorite stuff of his of this past year, but he letters a hell of a lot of books real well. So, that's saying something.

[33:34] David: Deniz Camp, for me, I feel like in a couple of years, we're going to be looking back at 2025 as when he started to emerge. He's going to get on something big in the next 12 to 18 months, and he's going to do a real good job with it at one of the Big2, Marvel or DC. I know Absolute Martian Manhunter is already a thing that people are taking up, and standing up, and taking notice, but for me, it's his work on Ultimates that makes me go, “he can do all of it.” He's got Assorted Crisis Events, which is a little more personal, a little more heady. I don't mean that as a negative. It's more personal, and he's writing that story, and then he's got something like Absolute Martian Manhunter, which is just, he's really doing a lot of mind-bending work over there, and then Ultimates is this almost straight up superhero story with all kinds of constraints on it, and he's just making that book so fun and so entertaining to me, and the characters that he's reimagined, like She-Hulk and Hawkeye, he's done it in really cool, interesting ways.

Man, I think Deniz Camp is the breakout writer of the year, for me, and Assorted Crisis Events is certainly part of that mix. I think, for me, right now, he's a slightly better version of Grant Morrison, in that his heady stuff I can still understand, and his straightforward, comic booky stuff, superhero stuff, is also easy to understand, and for me, I just gravitate to him more. I'm gravitating to his writing more. I'm more interested in what he's trying to say, or what he's trying to do. So, he can clearly do it all, and I'm really excited to see where he goes in the next year and a half. I feel like he's going to break out in a big way. I hope that he takes that big breakout energy that he has, at either Marvel or DC, and pours all that energy back into more of his creator-owned work, because while Ultimates might be the thing that I'm most interested in, I think things like Assorted Crisis Events are the things that'll carry him forward, as a creative, for a very long time. I've been thinking a lot about James Tynion lately, and his Tiny Onion publishing, where he was on the biggest book at DC. He was writing Batman for DC, and he's taken that, at the top of his popularity, and transferred that into creator-owned stuff, and I hope we see more of that in 2026. Deniz Camp, in particular, I hope he does more of that. So, anyway, yeah, that's a great choice, John.

[36:03] John: I mean, he's already writing two of the big books, and two of the big lines. He definitely seems like the creator that Marvel's got a lot of faith in, how fast they put him on a big book. I think that was probably the first thing I'd read by him. I don't know that I'd read any of his earlier stuff. I did read a little bit of 20th Century Men. I guess he'd been around for a few years by then.

[36:24] David: I think he's just now coming into his own. 20th Century Men was cool. I liked that one, but what he's doing now is better, clearly. He seems to be improving with every new script he's turning in.

[36:35] John: I definitely want to go in and read the whole Ultimates shebang, when it wraps up. I'm interested in doing that. I lost track of the books I was enjoying, and wasn't sold on everything. Ultimates read to me like a very Hickman-y book. It was like, “they got somebody that can write like Hickman,” and I didn't realize the breadth that Deniz Camp has, and probably how much that probably spreads out from that. There probably wasn't a way to avoid that, when you're dealing with such a Hickman-y premise, as Ultimates was, set up by Hickman earlier. So, I'm excited to go on and read Ultimates, and see how that diverges from where I maybe thought it was going to go, or whatever, because that definitely sounds like it's been good.

[37:11] David: Marvel Unlimited does a good job of collecting the Ultimate Universe into years. So, they've got the full Year One collection in its reading order already, and they've got Year Two. They've already started the Ultimate Universe Year 2 collection in its proper reading order. So, it's never too late to jump in, John. We've only got two or three months left before they shut that whole thing down, or whatever. I still don't think that's what's going to happen, but whatever they're going to do next, jumping off point is coming up here. What do you think, John? Should we make this a two-parter? I can hear our listeners just screaming, “yes, this is the best material you've produced in quite some time, David and John. Please continue it.”

[37:51] John: All right. To be able to get through some more of last year's comics.

[37:56] David: Staying on the cutting edge, as usual.

[38:00] John: In that case, thank you all for joining this week. We'll be back for more Best Of--it'll be 2 years ago by then, I guess. I don't know. With all these Crisis events, I'm not sure how time works.

[38:12] David: This ending is turning into a crisis.

[38:14] John: Yes. So, let's end it now. Thanks for joining us. Keep on comic-ing, everybody.

[38:20] David: Yeah, that's our new sign off for 2026. I like it. Keep on comic-ing, everybody. Bye.

This has been The Corner Box with David and John. Please take a moment and give us a five-star rating. It really helps. Join us again next week for another dive into the wonderful world of comics.