The 15 Best Comics of 2024!

For the past couple of years I have been tracking my comic reading habits. Methodically recording every single issue read and in 2024, I read 397 comics. Far short of my lofty goal of 500, That said I did read quiet a bit of new comics either for my own leisure or in my role as comic reviewer for The Beat as part of the Wednesday Comic Reviews and The Marvel Rundown. The criteria for the following list is that they are the comics I really enjoyed reading that came out during the 2024 calendar year. It is presented in alphabetical order.

With that out of the way, here are the 15 best comics of 2024!

Batman Dark Patterns #1

While” Year One” style Batman stories are nothing new, Dark Patterns feels really fresh. Writer Dan Watters introduces a couple weirdos in the Gotham Medical Examiner and the new villain the Wounded Man. It’s a pretty great time and art alone is worth the price of the issue. Each issue is beautifully laid out and illustrated by Hayden Sherman with superb watercolors by Tríona Farrell. With Ram V’s Detective run over, Dark Patterns may be my favorite Batman book right now. I still need to check out Batman and Robin Year One, but I’m confident that this book will be the best.

Exceptional X-Men #4

X-Men has been a bit of a mess this year with the fall of Krakoa, change in editorial, and the From the Ashes era launching. The main team books have been uneven to say the least but one has been consistent in its character focus and interesting examinations of the scars left behind from Krakoa. The mutant teens in this book have been some of the most developed and realistic take on teens I have read in sometime and definitely the better of the new mutants from each X-Team book. I have been writing about this book each month for the Marvel Rundown and it’s been the first comic I read that week.

You can more about what I loved about Exceptional X-Men in the Marvel Rundown Year’s End List for The Beat

Flash Gordon Quarterly #1

Pulp hero anthologies are making somewhat of a comeback this year and nyou can see that with Flash Gordon Quarterly. The comic series plays with genre settings for the Athlete turned Champion of Mongo be it a Western or a pulpy Neo Noir detective series. This is on top of a pretty solid King Vultan story. I had a lot of fun with this comic and what Mad Cave has been doing in general with their licensed properties.

You can read more of my thoughts on Flash Gordon Quarterly #1 on in the Wednesday Comic Reviews for The Beat

Godzilla Rivals: King Ghidorah vs SpaceGodzilla

As part of my role as comic reviewer for The Beat, I get to read a lot of Godzilla Rivals comics. Like most things in life, some are good, some are bad, but few are exceptional. This one is one of those few exceptional ones. This one-shot is a beautifully illustrated story about man trying to save his estranged father while in the shadow of a clash between King Ghidorah and SpaceGodzilla. It takes the best part of any Godzilla story and makes it sing in an efficient manner.

You can read more of my thoughts on Godzilla Rivals: King Ghidorah vs SpaceGodzilla over at Wednesday Comic Reviews for The Beat

Godzilla Rivals: Mothra vs Hedorah

A story about pollution vs nature, progress vs tradition, slime monster vs Moth. To be fair, most Hedorah stories are parables of pollution, but this one feels extra pertinent with focus on the Not-Elon Musk CEO driving research into what became Hedorah. Luckily Mothra is there to save the day.

You can read more of my thoughts on Godzilla Rivals: Mothra vs. Hedorah over at Wednesday Comic Reviews for The Beat

JSA #1

JSA is back baby and this time it’s not wasting time getting to the action. Jeff Lemire has the JSA’ers split up with the old guard stuck in Fate’s Tower in Limbo and Infinity Inc stuck on Earth. The first issue is about the rift in the Infinity Inc team as they try to grapple with what happened. It’s a great start for the world’s first superteam’s new series. The first couple issues were released in 2024 and have shown me that Lemire and Diego Olortegui are cooking up something. 2025 is the 85^th anniversary of the JSA and I am planning on doing more with that.

Karate Prom

Karate Prom is one of the funniest and most exciting comics I read last year. The writing and art by Kyle Starks is refreshing and the colors by Chris and Liz Trice Schweizer pop off the page. I wrote about this one in greater detail over at The Beat and I highly recommend checking out this graphic novel that may have slipped under the radar for you.

You can read more of my thoughts on Karate Prom over at The Beat

The New Gods #1

Ram V and Evan Cagle are having a year. Dawnrunner was a beautiful take on the giant mech vs Kaiju format (that just missed the list) and now they take on one of the most challenging DC assignments: The New Gods. This first issue just makes the cutoff date for this list, but it makes it for good reason. New Gods is in the vein of Hickman’s X-Men and Gillen’s Eternals. It’s a gorgeous book with a lot of high concepts at play. Having already read the second issue, I can tell you this mini-series will be on a lot of people’s Top Comics of 2025.

The Power Fantasy #1

Kieron Gillen is a masterclass of his own when it comes to comics with political intrigue and world building. The Power Fantasy is no exception. The premise of Superheroes being the equations to nuclear weapons has been touted around for decades, notably in Watchmen, but this does it in a sharp and witty way. I haven’t kept up with the series since launch, but I aim to check out the first trade which should be out soon.

You can read more of my thoughts on The Power Fantasy #1 over at Wednesday Comic Reviews for The Beat

Savage Sword of Conan #1

Jim Zub’s Conan comics have been some of the best comics on the shelf over the past couple years. 2024 saw a relaunch of the oversized magazine Savage Sword of Conan and really captures the character’s pulp roots. On top of that this series serves as an anthology for Robert E. Howard’s other creations. This comic was so damn good.

You can read more of my thoughts on Savage Sword of Conan #1 over at Wednesday Comic Reviews for The Beat

Transformers #12

Transformers by Daniel Warren Johnson, Jorge Corna, and Mike Spicer have been one of the biggest surprises for me since its launch in October of 2023. In Transformers #12 we get to see the pay off to the first year of storylines as Optimus and the Autobots attempt to hold the line against the resurgent Decepticons. Optimus must make a difficult choice between Cybertron and Earth and the consequences are almost too much for Optimus to bear. I wrote about this extensively for The Beat and even wrote about it for the Beat’s big year-end list of Best Comics of 2024. Do yourself a favor and check out this series.

You can read more of my thoughts on Transformers #12 over at Wednesday Comic Reviews for The Beat and the series as a whole for the Beat’s Year-End List

The Ultimates #4

If Ultimate Spider-Man is a reexamination being Spider-Man when you have so much to lose and Ultimate X-Men is a reexamination of being Mutant, then Ultimates is a reexamination of being the team of heroes in a world where all the villains have won.

Issue 4 particular shows how The Maker intentionally broke this universe’s Reed Richards into becoming Doom. Not only that it plays with the nature of linear time in comics and turns it on its ear. Easily one of the best issues from the past couple years. Even then there are still just bangers after bangers in this series. Issue 5 explores a new Hawkeye- a Native American as Captain America stands by him to take on the government forces. It’s a great look at the dynamic between America and its native peoples. The whole series has been great and well worth checking out.

Ultimate Spider-Man #12

Marvel Comics has largely been in a holding pattern this year with the X-Men and Avengers getting new Senior Editors. I will speak more about the X-Men books further down this list, but first I want to discuss the beauty of the revived Ultimate line from Marvel. I was skeptical, to say the least, about Marvel attempting to make the Ultimate Universe happen again, but I was wrong.

Ultimate Spider-Man is evidence of that. 2023 ended with the exhilarating and novel (and surprisingly trans-coded) Ultimate Spider-Man #1 with a much older Peter Parker taking the mantle of Spider-Man despite having a wife and kids. Well, issue 12 ended 2024 with an equally shocking and surprising reveal. This series has restored my faith in Jonathan Hickman after the middling GODS and the nonexistent Substack work.

You can more about what I loved about Ultimate Spider-Man in the Marvel Rundown Year’s End List

Ultimate X-Men #10

To say the Ultimate X-Men is a departure from the mainstream 616 Marvel would be an understatement. The series from Peach Momoko is a complete reexamination of what it means to be the X-Men in a world where evil is in charge. Other Ultimate books have revealed that the Mutants we all know, and love are/were still around, but this book presents a new Mutant generation through the lens of Japanese school culture.

The watercolor art is beautiful, and the story is dynamic but slow burn. It easily features the bet take on the Shadowking since his first appearance in the early years of the Claremont run. Most people talk about Ultimate Spider-Man or the Ultimates, but no one should be sleeping on the Ultimate X-Men.

X-Men #7

As I have already stated, X-Men line has been uneven. The flagship book X-Men has been the poster child for this lack of direction. It has had a rocky start by showing a Cyclops that is a mess, which is fair given all of his trauma, but the story itself has been meandering between standing up to O*N*E, dealing with the new adult mutants which is weird, and coming to grasp with this shadowy cabal 3K seemingly lead by Cassandra Nova. That said, issue 7 is really freaking good. Cyclops and Magneto hashing it over a beer and magneto throwing down against a wild Sentinel.

Final Thoughts

2025 looks to be one of the roughest years in a long time given the political climate in the United States. I have set a new goal to be more consistent with posting on my own website this year. I need the release and I want to put more good into this world and I will not let the corruption of the world weigh down on me. I refuse to go into the dark silently and I will not despair. I know talking about comics and such isn’t exactly high art, but it brings me joy as I am sure it does others.

You can always find me here or over on Bluesky and I contribute weekly to The Beat. If you are new here be sure to check out out the archives. Personally, I’m quiet proud of my History of Heroes Reborn posts. Looking to getting back into writing those after much, much delay.

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