If you’ve been following Wednesday Comics Reviews over the past year, first of all…thank you! And second, you are presumably (like us) a weekly comics sicko. By that, I mean that you enjoy following comics month-to-month as they come out in single issues.
Highlighting that type of comic within the direct market — outside of the Big 2 — is our mission here every Wednesday. And while we do our best to point you toward our favorites throughout the year, we wanted to circle back here and highlight some books that we want to make sure don’t fall through the cracks.
So, without further preamble, check out 10 of our favorite books from 2025 that you might have missed…and add them to your to-read piles!
Wednesday Comics Reviews: Book you may have missed in 2025
Death to Pachuco
Writer/Letterer: Henry Barajas
Artist: Rachel Merrill
Colorist: Lee Loughridge
Publisher: Image Comics – Top Cow
Death to Pachuco is a noir detective story steeped in Chicano history, and it’s been a fascinating read through its first three issues. It’s clearly well-researched, the type of book that will teach you new things about under-covered portions of American history, while also entertaining you with you great use of genre tropes. We’ve got two issues left in this story, and I for one can’t wait. —Zack Quaintance
Event Horizon: Dark Descent
Writer: Christian Ward
Artist: Tristan Jones
Colors: Pip Martin
Letters: Alex Ray
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Fans of Event Horizon (1997) hold the film dear to their heart. It’s one of the best examples of what sci-fi and horror can achieve when put together. The result was nothing short of a journey into Hell that opened up a whole slew of new nightmares for willing audiences. When IDW announced a prequel comic was in the works, expectations ran high. Christian Ward and Tristan Jones knew this and delivered a return visit to Hell that lives up to the name. One of the most terrifying parts of the film is when an incomplete video of the fate of the ship’s first crew is shown. Snippets of the horrors they faced flash across the screen, things that looked like something out of a Bosch painting. The comic charts a course leading to the events captured in that video, bringing in a high ranking demon into the fray along with more explicit visions of terror (which the movie largely keeps off-screen). Ward and Jones succeed in capturing the tone and atmosphere of the film, creating a very cruel environment for their characters to navigate. It shows a deep understanding of the source material, which allows the creative team to add new monsters that fit the brand. The torture and the suffering that the Event Horizon witnessed within its halls and corridors is felt throughout thanks to this. Ward and Jones seemed intent on settling for nothing less, and with a new movie sequel announced, this book earns the right to be considered essential reading for lifelong fans of the film. —Ricardo Serrano
Falling In Love on the Path to Hell
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Garry Brown
Colorist: Chris O’Halloran
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Publisher: Image Comics
This book is a love story between two principals from very different worlds, with almost nothing in common…and who also have to be navigating their way through hell. He was a cowboy, she was a samurai — and they were both totally lethal. It’s a great premise for a comic book, made all the better by the fantastic, gritty artwork of Garry Brown with colors by Chris O’Halloran. It looks great, it’s got great characters, and the action set pieces are second to none. If you want know more about this one, you can read my full review of Volume 1 here. —Zack Quaintance
The Last Day of H.P Lovecraft
Writer: Romuald Giulivo
Translator: Mercedes Gilliom
Artist: Jakub Rebelka
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire
Publisher: Boom! Studios
To be judged on legacy by a fictional character might just be the most terrifyingly alarming thing that can happen to a creative person. This is the premise of The Last Day of H.P. Lovecraft, the story of the dying moments of one of the most influential voices in horror and the character that comes to pass judgment on him as he rests on his death bed. Lovecraft is a controversial figure whose place in fiction has been questioned based on his positions on race and his deep-seated xenophobia (which puts the Cthulhian creatures he became known for in an interesting light). Romuald Giulivo and Jakub Rebelka don’t shy away from any of it. In fact, they do an exceptional job of questioning while also acknowledging the unique ways the writer managed to scare readers into looking at the cosmos as the home of ancient gods with a taste for ritualistic violence. They offer no easy answers, but they do open up the debate to consider the totality of the man in question. This in itself is no easy task, and Giulivo and Rebelka do achieve it with grace and aggression. —Ricardo Serrano
News From the Fallout
Writer: Chris Condon
Artist: Jeffrey Alan Love
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Publisher: Image Comics
Nuclear bombs and monstrous mutations have long been friendly bedfellows, two sides of the same coin for those dealing in Cold War fears and the things that result when science breaks away from ethics. Condon and Alan Love’s News From the Fallout finds more than enough material here for its story of radioactive infection and the monsters it breeds. Set in 1962, the series follows the survivor of a planned nuclear detonation, one private Fallows. He sees that the other soldiers who were in the vicinity of the zone of impact are quick to turn into flesh-eating creatures, acting upon their new hunger the minute the transformation is done. Carnage becomes the status quo. Fans of Stephen King’s The Stand will find the story shares a few things in common with it, but Condon’s carefully paced script does more than enough to set itself apart. Alan Love’s art and Otsmane-Elhaou’s lettering, though, are the stars here. Images evoke shadow puppetry, where the outlines of the men involved with the incident carry the same weight of a heavily redacted government document. Old ideas sometimes show they still have a lot to give. The creative team behind News From the Fallout certainly tapped into that. —Ricardo Serrano
Paranoid Gardens
Writers: Gerard Way and Shaun Simons
Artist: Chris Weston
Colorist: Dave Stewart
Letterer: Nate Piekos
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
I have read this series start to finish three times this year, and with the amount of comics I have to read weekly to do my columns for this site, it’s a high compliment to give a book one repeat read, let alone two. But I just felt like there was so much to unlock in this book, both in the plotting and the details in the art. It’s a fantastical book that visually blends wildly-designed characters with the mundane. And it’s a narrative that is — to borrow a cliche — not what it seems. It also has a finale that will recontextualize all that came before it. It didn’t get a lot of buzz as it was coming out, but it deserved it. And I really hope it finds a much bigger audience in trade. —Zack Quaintance
Sleep
Cartoonist: Zander Cannon
Publisher: Image Comics
As of this writing, seven issue out of eight have been published, and man has it been a ride. Sleep is at its core a horror-mystery, one where the protagonist is at the center (not a spoiler, we know that from the first act of issue one) without any idea of how or why. So, as readers we are left to sort through the reality the hero is experiencing as he does so himself. When the book starts, it’s immaculately structured. Each issue (if I recall correctly), covers one day and it ends with the main character going to sleep. Then the next issue starts with a look back at the carnage that unfolded, without knowing what happened while he was asleep. It’s a hell of a way to tell a story in comics, and I’ve loved following it. I suspect it reads even better with a good old fashioned binge. —Zack Quaintance
Space Ghost and the Space Ghost Annual
Writer: David Pepose
Artist: Jonathan Lau
Colorist: Andrew Dalhouse
Letterer: Taylor Esposito
Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment
Not only did this creative team give us a 12-issue first volume that treated Space Ghost as the sci-fi superhero I’d longed for since 1966. Not only did he use his tech for preying on cosmic criminals and terrorists while building a supernatural aura rivaling Batman and the Phantom, we also got a found family tale. One with clever, heroic kids led by a mentor with heart and humor. Plus, a space monkey who’s not only a member of the family but vital to the first story arc. The villains may have been based on their cartoon iterations, but here they were crafted sinister and terrifying. Pepose, Lau, Dalhouse, and Esposito bring the storyline to a flawless conclusion in this annual, and it’s one of the best wraps I’ve read all year. —Clyde Hall
Thanksgiving
Writer: Mark Russell
Artist: Mauricet
Letterer: Rob Steen
Publisher: AHOY Comics
One shots tend to be one of the most over-looked formats in comics — especially for weekly Wednesday comics sickos — but this Thanksgiving tale is not to be missed, offering as it does one of the most timely and disturbing stories told in a comic all year. This book is really comics-making at its finest, deploy commentary, genre elements, and uncomfortable relatability all in the space of 40-some pages. I’m hoping this book sparks an annual Thanksgiving one-shot tradition from this team, because if this book is any indication, they’ve got a lot more they could do telling horror stories around that particular holiday. —Zack Quaintance
White House Robot Romance
Writer: Chip Zdarsky
Artist: Rachael Stott
Colorist: Tamra Bonvillain
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Publisher: DSTLRY
I really didn’t know what to make of this book when it landed in front of me for review, which is odd to say because the title tells you exactly what this comic is about. There’s a genre of comics I think of as Winking Title Comics, where they have an absurd premise that can only work in comics, and that’s it, that’s the book, like every page saying hey look at this isn’t this ridiculous? But White House Robot Romance is so much more than that. It’s a complex story about artificial intelligence, US Imperialism, Canadian resistance moments, robotics innovation, and probably a few things I’m forgetting. And it all reads and looks fantastic, delivering some really emotional and sweet moments, despite the lead characters not having a face. I also think this book — along with Endeavor — has fit itself into DSTLRY’s double-sized length in a way that really feels like a perfect fit, pacing itself well and packing in more story. —Zack Quaintance
Column edited by Zack Quaintance.
Read past entries in the weekly Wednesday Comics reviews series or check-out our other reviews here!
