If you’ve read Death of Comics Bookcase, Vol. 1, you know this character is a Spider-Man homage within a story about the threats of the rapid acceleration of modern technology. Sebastián’s take — aside from being kinetic and excellent — goes right to the meta heart of the character. I LOVE it.

And hey, if you want more Responsibili-Teen, there just might be a finished script for a new adventure. That script just might be with Nick right now. And the plan just might be for that story to appear in Death of Comics Bookcase, Vol. 2, maybe coming to Kickstarter in 2026. Just maybe. Perhaps.

Thing 2: My year reading 2000AD

We’ll get to 2025 shortly, but first I want to talk about one of the highlights of my comics-reading year in 2024: getting into 2000AD, properly.

Last year, I started a weekly feature within The Beat’s Wednesday Comics Reviews column, called The Prog Watch. It’s a simple idea: each week, I read The Prog, and I talk about what I liked and what I didn’t like in it (usually what I liked, tbh). For those who don’t know, The Prog is the UK’s long-running weekly comics anthology, perhaps most famous in the U.S. for launching Judge Dredd. It’s also a powerhouse of great experimental comics storytelling, consistently featuring wonderful sci-fi ideas and comics art.

I talked about this with my pal, Dean Simons, for The Beat, but I had a great time reading The Prog week-in and week-out in 2024. It really replaced browsing comiXology (which has had a massive downgrade in quality of late due to some technical changes) as my Wednesday morning digital comics-reading routine.

While The Prog is not readily available physically in the U.S. (outside of big collections of the highlights through the years), can buy it digitally for $1.99 each week, which to me is an absolute bargain. And look, I know this is sounding like an ad…it’s really not. I just dig the comic, which incidentally is also steadily publishing three of my collaborators from Death of Comics Bookcase, those being Anna Readman, Luke Horsman, and PJ Holden.

If you want to join me in this routine, you can do so here. I recommend it.

Thing 3: Most anticipated comics of 2025

Beat It, Rufus!
Cartoonist: Noah Van Sciver
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Due Out: March 11
This new book by Noah Van Sciver — one of the great cartoonists — is, essentially, about an aging deluded loser who continues to harbor 1980s hair metal fantasies of headlining an arena. I’m hooked from that alone, but add the leopard print spine and now you’ve got a book I badly want for my shelf.

Bowling With Corpses & Other Strange Tales
Writer/Artist: Mike Mignola
Colorist: Dave Stewart
Letterer: Clem Robins
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Due Out: Jan. 22

I’m not going to write long about this one here, because I’ve already written a review of this book that will be up on The Beat next month. Besides, I think all I need to say here is that Mike Mignola is drawing a new work of folklore-inspired comics. Also, how about that title?

Den Vol. 5
Writer/Artist: Richard Corben
Colorist: Jose Villarrubia
Letterer: Nate Piekos
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Due Out: Feb. 11

One of my big comics reading projects for 2025 is to catch-up with the new special edition hardcovers of Richard Corben’s Den, which I understand to be the artist’s masterwork, long out-of-print masterwork at that. Corben is a true master of the art form, and the new editions of these comics are just gorgeous (I have the first one, waiting to be read, right beside me). If all goes well, I’ll be caught up right in time for the fifth volume in February.

The Fables of Erlking Wood
Writer/Artist: Juni Ba
Letterer: Aditya Bidikar
Publisher: Goats Flying Press
Due Out: April 2025

Perhaps the most exciting comics Kickstarter campaign last year (with all due respect to Skybound’s Larry Hama G.I. Joe mega-funder) was The Fables of Erlking Wood, a new graphic novel from cartoonist Juni Ba. In my august role as a volunteer editor for The Beat, I got to read a good chunk of this book early. It’s got Ba’s usual high-energy, entertaining comics storytelling, applied to a new novel-by-stories approach. Simply put, I can’t wait to read the rest.

Legion of Super-Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga - Deluxe Edition
Writer: Paul Levitz
Artist: Keith Giffen, with Curt Swan, Pat Broderick
Inkers: Keith Giffen, with Romeo Tanghal, Larry Mahlstedt
Colorists: Carl Gafford, Gene D’Angelo
Letterers: John Costanza, Adam Kubert, Annette Kawecki
Publisher: DC Comics
Due Out: March 4
The Legion of Super-Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga is one of my all-time favorite DC Comics stories, and now, for the first time since 2010 (if I’m not mistaken), it’s getting the DC Comics (slightly taller) deluxe hardcover treatment, which is one of my favorite formats for comics on the shelf. I’ll be snagging this one as soon as it comes out this year.

Mafalda, Vol. 1
Cartoonist: Quino
Translator: Frank Wynne
Publisher: Peguin-Random House
Due Out: May 13
These are some of the most popular comics in the world, available for the first time now in English. Since debuting in the 1960s, Mafalda has become one of the most well-known characters in the Spanish-speaking world. Somehow, however, that’s never led to a proper English translation — but that is about to change in May. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to call this a major world comics event.

The Seasons #1
Writer: Rick Remender
Artist: Paul Azaceta
Colorist: Matheus Lopes
Letterer: Rus Wooton
Publisher: Image Comics
Due Out: Jan. 29
I’ve really enjoyed the books coming out through writer Rick Remender’s Giant Generator imprint, from Grommets to The Sacrificers to The Holy Roller, but this one (which I’ve gotten an early look at) might be the best one yet. It pairs Remender with artist Paul Azaceta, colored here by Matheus Lopes, and the result is one of those new Image Comics that rekindles your excitement for big production creator-owned comics.

Shakara - The Complete Collection
Writer: Robbie Morrison
Artist: Henry Flint
Letterer: Ellie De Ville
Publisher: 2000AD/Rebellion
SHAKARA!
(This will make sense once you read this book, which you should.)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #6
Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Juan Ferreyra
Letterer: Shawn Lee
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Due Out: Jan. 26
The newly-relaunched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been strong, doing a reunite the turtles arc with a new high-profile artist for each issue, all penned by Jason Aaron. Now, the book is settling into its new regular series artist Juan Ferreyra, and it’s status quo with the team back together — and this first issue is fantastic.

There’s No Time Like the Present
Cartoonist: Paul B. Rainey
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Due Out: March 26
Paul B. Rainey drew one of my favorite graphic novels in recent memory — Why Don’t You Love Me — which deconstructed the concept of a sci-fi multiverse, by combining a send-up of the classic Sunday comics strip with an intensely psychological character drama. This new book seems interested in doing the same for time travel, making it one of the must-reads of the first half of the year.

Thing 4: SINK

So, I spent part of my (too brief) holiday break reading some comics runs I’ve been meaning to catch up on…and that brought me to the third arc of John Lees, Alex Cormack, and Shawn Lee’s SINK. And friends? This should have been on every best comics of 2024 list.

The reason it wasn’t was because it was published through Kickstarter (comics press does a bad job vetting crowdfunding platforms for good work, which to be fair is a MASSIVE undertaking and comics press has zero resources), but the last two issues of the arc — Sink #14 and Sink #15 — are getting direct market releases through Comix Tribe early this year, so maybe that will change (I’d have had them on my most anticipated, but I backed the campaign…so I’ve already read them, thereby leaving nothing to anticipate).

Anyway, I'm making this one of my things because I’d like to encourage everyone to read this book. It’s phenomenal. It’s the type of book that not only makes me want to make my own comics better, but I came away from this latest arc with several new ideas for doing so. And for now real reason than I just enjoyed the hell out of it, and it inspired me to redouble my efforts.

It’s about a neighborhood in Glasgow, Scotland, called Sink Hill, and it starts out as a gritty anthology series of seemingly unconnected happenings. Very cruel things happen to people in Sink Hill, constantly, and yet the stories are told in such a way that they don’t feel excessively grim. I can’t quite figure it out (maybe it’s the pacing? or the kinetic nature of the cartooning? see above) but the book tortures basically every last person in its pages, without every feeling gratuitous. And the narrative structuring is often ingenious and electric. The third arc starts to weave some of the standalone pieces from earlier in the book together, imbuing it all with new meaning. Plus, one of the issues has cooking show jokes, and I’m yet to tire of those.

So, if you haven’t read SINK, highly recommend getting on it! And if you haven’t caught up on the last arc — believe me when I tell you this elevates everything that has come before it.

Go here for all your gritty Glaswegian SINK needs.

Thing 5: Wild God by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Finally, I like closing these newsletter with a recommendation of something I’ve really been into outside of comics, and throughout the month of December, it was the new album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Wild God.

Now, I had listened to this album earlier in the year and liked it well enough, but for whatever reason, it hadn’t caught on within my regular rotation. I returned to it in December because it’s a deeply sad album, and I was in the frame of mind for melancholy music (normal holiday stuff). What I found when I returned was one of the most cathartic music experiences I’ve ever had.

See, Nick Cave has lost two of his sons in the past decade, including the 15-year-old Arthur, who fell from a cliff in 2015. He’s explored the loss and pain quite a bit in previous albums, as well as in a documentary. And those are painfully dark albums. Wild God too is deeply sad to me, but it also feels like the artist has now started to come out the other side, contemplating the cost of loving someone (anyone), the risk, and the way everything ends, no matter what you do or how sunny your expectations.

The songs on this album all sort of run together, and the sonics are beautiful, to be sure. But I think it’s the lyricism that really puts it over the top as my second favorite Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album, behind only Push the Sky Away (2013), which actually feels like a precursor to this album in many ways, the calm before the storm that the songwriter didn’t even know was coming.

I love this album, and it’s up there among my favorites for 2024.

Conclusion

Can you all believe I sent a deadline for when I’d send this newsletter…and actually stuck to it? Miracle. And something to aim for again next month. Hey, it could happen — I mean the commission is already in, and it’s a fairly surprising one. I’m letting the artists pick the characters, with little to no guidance from me. It’s been super fun to see which characters attract which artists. As I write this, I have two more ready to send too. Fun times.

Last thing…while I’m not quite ready to announce anything of substance. I can tell you that the contract has been signed for my next comics project, which if all goes well will be out by the end of the year. I will say that it’s not Death of Comics Bookcase, Vol. 2 (not yet, work continues on that…), but it will be familiar to readers of the book. That’s it for now though.

With that bit of ambiguity…have a great worst part of the year everyone, and take care!

-Zack Q.