Some of my favorite reads from last year…

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Welcome once again to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read lately that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Occasionally I’ll sneak in a contemporary review if I’ve gone out of my way to buy and read something brand new. Every so often I’ll borrow from my wife or from our local library. But the majority of our spotlighted works are presented years after the rest of the world already finished and moved on from them because I’m drawing from my vast unread pile that presently occupies four oversize shelves comprising thirty-three years of uncontrolled book shopping. I’ve occasionally pruned the pile, but as you can imagine, cut out one unread book and three more take its place…

…all of which I convince myself I’ll totally get to someday. Same holds true for writing about ’em. And now, more of the latter! It was nice to finish the second installment earlier, but we’ve dozens more to go before we sleep.

14. Brian Michael Bendis, Bill Walko, Wes Dzioba and Joshua Reed, Fortune and Glory: The Musical (2025). I’ve often enjoyed Bendis the real-life raconteur more than Bendis the superhero superstar, and I wasn’t let down here. The original Fortune and Glory, his 1999 memoir miniseries, was essential reading for comics fans who crave behind-the-scenes candor about breaking into the biz. His latest tell-all takes us backstage to reveal that time he was invited to contribute to Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the legendary disaster that racked up a higher body count than possibly any other show in Broadway history. Although he ultimately, wisely backed away slowly from it, he interacted with just enough persons of interest for another round of self-effacing hilarity that’s generously sympathetic toward those who went down with the ship.

15. Nnedi Okorafor and Tana Ford, The Space Cat (2025). The team behind the alien-potted-plant immigration saga LaGuardia reunites for a bubbly collection of all-ages shorts starring Okorafor’s own cat Periwinkle, whose Calvin-sized imagination conjures up any number of sci-fi hi-jinks, such as an ostensible alien incursion that’s actually just a bowl of hot sauce someone left out, to everyone’s imminent regret. Fun times!

16. Thom Zahler, Warning Label (2018). A gamedev named Danielle wasn’t just dumped by her ex; she was cursed. Now whenever a prospective love interest approaches, a magical list materializes to inform them of all her worst flaws, as if she were a pack of cigarettes or a weight-loss drug. When she hits it off with a theater manager named Jeff, he’s duly warned, thus raising questions: can he fix her? Can she grow and change of her own accord? Or can they work through things together, as adults might sometimes try? The print collection of a Webtoon serial, this whimsical gem is clear evidence that quality rom-coms — exceedingly rare in the comics medium pretty much since the ’60s — are possible and welcome, with or without geeks as their main characters.

17. Steve Orlando, Sara Pichelli, Russell Dauterman, Carlos Nieto, Matthew Wilson, et al, Scarlet Witch, Vol. 1: The Last Door (2023). Charter member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Longtime member of the Avengers, plus a few other fly-by-night teams. Quicksilver’s sister. The Vision’s wife. Magneto’s daughter sometimes, or not. For decades Wanda Maximoff has been defined as other people’s attachments, coworkers, or nemeses in crossover events. Until recently, the witch-mutant has rarely been treated in the Marvel universe as an individual, let alone as a solo hero. Orlando’s run — annoyingly released as a series of de facto miniseries in accordance with the company’s current, unfortunate, short-term-focused sales practices — begins here by establishing her independence from team books, giving her a home base, and enlivening an MCU-inspired supporting cast (Agatha Harkness! Kat Dennings’ Darcy!) so they don’t feel like hollow, sales-driven choices. I was pleasantly surprised and am likewise digging Sorcerer Supreme, which is her current monthly “series” and job title after her 2025 promotion…though if my math is right, it’s her and Orlando’s sixth time restarting together from #1.

18. Dan Watters, Casper Wjingaard, Aditya Bidikar and Tom Muller, Home Sick Pilots, Vol. 1: Teenage Haunts (2021). Shortly before their careers exploded — Wjingaard with the jaw-dropping super-political thriller The Power Fantasy, Watters with numerous Big Two titles and other projects — they conspired on twisty teenage punk-rock horror about a murdered local band and a haunted house that turns into a giant magical mech, way more intense than the one at the end of Monster House. Among other differences, this one can walk, a bit more steadily than Baba Yaga’s hut.

19. John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, L. Fury and Nate Powell, Run, Book One (2021). The team behind the civil-rights leader and Congressman’s autobio trilogy March reunites and recruits a new main artist for the next chapter in his life. Published a year after his death, the fourth volume picks up with the Voting Rights Act’s 1965 passage and plumbs further racist violence, turmoil over voter laws, rifts within the Democratic Party, the impending Vietnam War, the controversial “Black Power!” slogan and the schism within the SNCC that would lead to his brokenhearted resignation. A brief foreword asserts Lewis had approved “the majority of the finished pages” before his passing; to this day I’ve seen no word as to whether a next volume will ever happen without him — the last pessimistic update was four years ago. The final scene here — a sliver of hope amid an all-consuming thunderstorm — is arguably apropos of the World Today, but such a downer to leave unfinished.

Some of the tallest books I read last year.

20. Roy Thomas, Neal Adams, Jim Steranko, Wally Wood, et al., Lost Marvels No. 1: Tower of Shadows (2025). Marvel has been outsourcing certain projects to other companies lately, the most unexpected of which is this new hardcover series from Fantagraphics Books, which aims to collect never-before-reprinted works from the oddest corners of their publishing history. Case in point: after the Comics Code Authority loosened up a little in the ’70s, Marvel launched Tower of Shadows, an EC-style horror anthology whose contributors included mainstays of the time (Buscema! Colan! Don Heck, who plays horror-host for one tale!) along with a number of powerhouses — Adams, Steranko, Barry Windsor Smith, and EC veteran Wally Wood. There’s less content than one might’ve hoped for — with #6 the editors resorted to adding reprints as filler, then was retitled Creatures on the Loose with #11 as fantasy stories began outnumbering the spooky tales (disqualified from inclusion here). Due to “legal concerns” this tome also omits two Lovecraft adaptations, “The Terrible Old Man” and the classic “Pickman’s Model”. Regardless, I couldn’t pass up the historical curiosity value. As comics aficionados might guess, Steranko’s “At the Stroke of Midnight” holds up strongest.

21. Howard Chaykin, Garth Ennis, et al., Lost Marvels No. 2: Howard Chaykin Vol. 1 (2025). The next volume spotlights the controversial, irascible, maybe-not-so-beloved iconoclast with a place in comics-history books as the very first Star Wars comics artist who’d go on to creator-owned success with American Flagg!, Black Kiss, and other titles not safe for prudes like me. Collected here for the first time ever are his two issues of the late-’70s Marvel Premiere anthology, each starring his creations Monark Starstalker and Dominic Fortune; and two late-2000s miniseries under the mature-readers MAX imprint: one starring Fortune in a WWII Nazi-punching blood-storm; and my fave of the set, War Is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle — a year-one origin for Marvel’s rarely used WWI flying Ace written by Ennis that’s exactly as messed up and wickedly funny as you’d expect from the mind behind The Boys and Preacher, aptly complementing Chaykin’s sensibilities.

22. Duncan Jones, Alex de Campi, Glenn Fabry, Tonci Zonjic, et al., Madi: Once Upon a Time in the Future (2021). The director/co-writer of Moon (with Sam Rockwell, which was great) and Mute (still unwatched in my Netflix queue, eight years and counting) jumped media to continue their universe with a Kickstarter’d hardcover military-SF shoot-’em-up about a remote-control cyborg mercenary fighting to reclaim her independence. After Warcraft there’s no way a studio would’ve given Jones a big enough budget for this, but cinema’s loss is comics’ gain thanks to a stellar rotation of contributing artists including but not limited to Duncan Fegredo, Simon Bisley, Skylar Patridge, Pia Guerra, James Stokoe, R.M. Guera, Chris Weston, Annie Wu, Christian Ward, and more, more, more. Months later I’m struggling to recall story specifics, which isn’t quite praise, but I recall 2000 A.D. fans might love this most.

23. Paul Jenkins, Humberto Ramos, and Leonardo Olea, Fairy Quest, Vol. 1: Outlaws (2021). The oft-paired duo (Revelations, Peter Parker: Spider-Man) switch genres to an all-ages revisionist fairy-tale fantasy set in the land of Fablewood, where Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf are friends, but the new ruler is a big fat jerk, so they have to go team up with other public-domain characters to free the land, and so on. It’s an ideal intro to Everything You Know Is Wrong revamps for kids who’d love Ramos’ energetic renderings (currently a treat on Marvel’s Fantastic Four) and who missed out on Fables, Once Upon a Time, Jon Scieszka, and countless violent B-movies that’ve done this sort of thing far worse.

24. Kevin Maguire, Tanga vs. the Kaiu of Cammera (2025). The celebrated, extremely expressive artist helped make Justice League one of DC’s best-remembered post-Crisis reboots, but he recently revealed DC hasn’t given him a raise in twenty years. Hence his commitment to creator-owned fare with this Kickstarter’d collection of a sci-fi serial that was buried in a pair of since-forgotten 2011 DC anthologies, whose publishing rights reverted back to him. Light on backstory and high on space escapades, Our Heroine is a purple alien woman with the same powers as most spacefaring superheroes, but (a) she fights space kaiju! And (b) she’s drawn by Maguire!

25. Fred van Lente, Tom Fowler and Bill Crabtree, Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games (2025). In case any longtime MCC followers were wondering: yes, I’ve mellowed a bit on Kickstarter lately, after the lengthy moratorium I took because I got burned too often in their formative years. One more successful KS campaign was irresistible given the writer and the subject matter: van Lente’s past nonfiction collaborations Action Philosophers! and Action Presidents! were alternately educational and hilarious and worth every penny. Teamed with different artists this time, his latest graphic-storytelling seminar covers the origins of tabletop RPGs in general and the world of Dungeons & Dragons in particular — bios of its co-creators Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax; pre-RPG games and gewgaws that informed its eventual synthesis, going back to 20-sided dice found in archaeological digs; obligatory mentions of certain Tolkien creations on the safe side of the copyright line; the laughably real “Satanic Panic” that still gets Gen-X’s eyes rolling; TSR’s other RPGs, products and eventual downfall; the schism between its creators; and so on to the present. I deeply appreciated learning about everything that led up to my love of D&D as a kid, and hearing updates on what’s happened since I walked away from it.

To be continued!