Top Comics of 2024 (Part 1)

Jan 15, 2025

It’s January here at Do You Know What I Love The Most?, and that means it’s time to sum up the last 12 months with Year End Lists! I’ll be devoting the rest of this month to rounding up and discussing the various media released in 2024 that meant the most to me — just like every other website on the internet! Isn’t that special?

Today we’ll be diving into probably my favorite medium of all, comic books! These are the comics — be they monthly periodicals, graphic novels, manga, or webcomics — released in 2024 that touched me, thrilled me, and sucked me in like no others.

Due to size restrictions for these emails, we’ll be discussing the first half of this list today, and the remaining Friday in Part 2.

Absolute Batman / Absolute Wonder Woman / Absolute Superman (DC)

The biggest comic book news of 2024 had to be the announcement of DC’s Absolute line — a series of books featuring new takes on DC’s most iconic heroes, stripped of their most defining elements. It’s a Batman who grew up with a mother, and without a fortune; a Wonder Woman who has never met an Amazon, raised in Hell by the witch Circe; a Superman who grew up on Krypton and escaped to Earth as a young adult. They’re smart, daring stories, told by some of the biggest names DC could wrangle: Scott Snyder returns to the character who made him famous, reinterpreted by Snyder and Nick Dragotta as a hulking beast of a Batman who swings a bat-shaped hammer through brutal, intricately choreographed dozen-panel pages; Kelly Thompson and Hayden Sherman’s Wonder Woman is a cyberpunk sorcerer riding an undead pegasus, who has nonetheless lost none of the character’s famous heart; Jason Aaron and Rafa Sandoval have reinterpreted the S-Symbol as the insignia of Krypton’s worker caste, and cast their Superman as a shadowy defender of the working class from those who would try to oppress them. All three books are home runs, and while there’s always the worry of the line expanding too quickly, what I’ve seen of 2025’s upcoming new entries to the Absolute catalogue looks absolutely delightful. I can’t wait to spend more time in this universe.

Pine & Merrimac (BOOM! Studios)

There’s a sinister and compelling mystery running throughout Kyle Starks and Fran Galán’s Pine & Merrimac that will likely satisfy any fan of crime comics, but at its heart, this is actually a love story. Pine & Merrimac tells the story of private detective Linnea Kent and her former MMA-star husband Parker as they open their own small-town detective agency, looking for low-stakes cases to tackle while Linnea recovers from the trauma she faced in her previous job solving homicides. Linnea and Parker’s love is immediate, leaps off the page; they’re adorable, and I was rooting for them from page one. Much like the old Thin Man movies, you’re really coming to Pine & Merrimac just to see Linnea and Parker bounce off each other; everything else is just gravy. That said, their love also raises the stakes of the mystery, amplifying the danger the couple find themselves in. I’m not just worried about Linnea because I care about her — I’m worried about her because I care about Parker too (and vice versa). Believe me, there are some real nail-biter moments throughout this series, moments that shocked me, moments I’m surprised the story was able to come back from at all, but those moments mattered because I was rooting for Linnea and Parker with all my heart. The specific story being told in Pine & Merrimac may have come to a satisfying ending, but I desperately hope I can see the continued adventures of these characters some day.

Batgirl (DC)

Cassandra Cain — the second character to take up the mantle of Batgirl — is one of my favorite characters of all time, but she hasn’t had a story that fully and truly understood her and what she’s all about since, damn, probably since the very first run of her first solo series from her creators Kelley Puckett and Damion Scott way back at the turn of the century. That changes now, with Tate Brombal and Takeshi Miyazawa’s new Batgirl ongoing. In just its very first issue, Brombal and Miyazawa made me fall in love with Cass all over again, highlighting not just her incredible fighting prowess but her nobility, her stubbornness, her sass, the way her mission defines her identity, and most significantly, her incredibly fucked up relationship with her mother, the assassin Lady Shiva. It’s under-explored territory for the character, and works perfectly to highlight everything that’s special about Cassandra Cain in record time. Only 2 issues of the series released in 2024, but based on those issues, I’m looking forward to a character-defining run — but even if that doesn’t pan out, these 2 issues would still deserve a spot on this list for the way they reignited my Cass Cain fandom. Brombal and Miyazawa clearly love Cass, but more importantly, they know how to make readers fall in love with her, too.

Universal Monsters: Frankenstein (Image)

Image’s “Universal Monsters” imprint has been doing fine work this past year, finding intriguing new directions from which to approach these classic characters while never straying too far from the stories we all know and love. In Universal Monsters: Frankenstein, writer/artist Michael Walsh explores the famous monster via the perspective of the corpses he’s made from. What kind of people were they, before they were rend asunder and sown into something entirely new? Do their pasts have any effect on the creature’s present? Are there people out there still missing them, people who would be devastated to learn what they’ve become? It’s a poignant, novel device to view this story through, one that grants it an identity all its own. Walsh’s plotting may be a highlight, but he’s still first-and-foremost an artist, and his work throughout this series is stunning, bathing the story in shadowy, gothic horror; the monsters loom ominously on every page, and I don’t just mean the poor creature. Universal Monsters: Frankenstein is a sumptuous visual feast that treats its source material with love and respect, but not slavish devotion, and that’s something worth celebrating.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Marvel)

Beating DC’s Absolute line to the punch, Marvel also relaunched their Ultimate Universe in 2024. The shining jewel of this initiative is Ultimate Spider-Man, which lured superstar writer Jonathan Hickman back from Substack and paired him off with superstar artist (in my heart, if nowhere else) Marco Checchetto to introduce their take on Peter Parker, a married father of two who discovers his spider abilities as an adult and has to learn the full extent of his power and responsibility while juggling a family, a job, a mid-life crisis, and the overwhelming feeling that he may not be cut out for this whole super-hero thing. I tend to think of Hickman as a big-picture writer, primarily interested in world building and plot, but he’s actually a phenomenal character writer when he wants to be, and it’s never been clearer than in Ultimate Spider-Man, especially when it comes to the subplot focusing on J Jonah Jameson and Uncle Ben. It’s such an offbeat pairing, but Hickman and Checchetto immediately create an irresistible, propulsive chemistry between the two that sets this apart from other Spider-Man stories. Seriously, if this book was just the two of them I’d still read it; hell, I’d probably be more excited about it. This series can sometimes be feel slow when read month-to-month, but in its collected edition, Ultimate Spider-Man is the kind of propulsive, heart-felt experience I’ve come to expect from the Ultimate line, no matter what incarnation.

The One Hand / The Six Fingers (Image)

The One Hand and The Six Fingers both want their readers to work to uncover everything they have to offer, but fortunately, the payoff is well worth the effort. The One Hand — from writer Ram V and artist Laurence Campbell — is a moody murder mystery that follows decorated detective Ari Nasser as his life plunges into chaos when the serial killer he seemingly put away decades ago suddenly begins killing again. Meanwhile, The Six Fingers — from writer Dan Watters and artist Sumit Kamar — is the story of Johannes Vale, an average worker whose life falls apart when he realizes that he is the serial killer Nasser is looking for — only he doesn’t remember murdering anyone. The two series wind and intertwine as they explore both sides of the same mystery; only by reading both series can the reader discover the full story, but neither book gives you any indication that the other exists or what the ideal order to read the issues in is. It’s something you need to figure out yourself, a fascinating use of the medium of monthly comics that just can’t be replicated anywhere else — not even the collected editions of both series. Of course, none of this would matter if the story wasn’t worth it, but thankfully, together The One Hand and The Six Fingers tell a captivating, chilling, cyberpunk-infused tale that will have you questioning the very foundations of reality and what life really is. The One Hand and The Six Fingers are challenging reads in every way, but overcoming those challenges only make the experience more memorable, and the reward of finishing their saga all the more rewarding.

ABOUT

“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin about his relationship with the stories he loves. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and you can follow him online on your social media of choice. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!

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