Comic – Marked for Plot

Wynd – A Casual and Delightful Middle Grade Adventure

I picked up the first book in this series as I collected books for a class on Queer Comics and Cartoons. It didn’t end up making the cut as a whole-class read, but it quickly found its way into my classroom library and has become quite popular. While the series isn’t quite finished – final book is releasing this year! – I figured finishing book 4 was enough to write a review about the series more generally. It won’t tickle the fancy of anyone looking for serious or deeply thematic fare, but it’s fun and quick and a truly delightful kids book that I think many adults would enjoy as a casual read.

Read if: you love classic fantasy tropes, comics with vibrant illustrations are your style, faeries-as-bugs sounds fun

Avoid if: simplistic morality will bug you, you dislike chosen ones & prophecies, fantasy racism isn’t a worldbuilding trope that works for you

Comparable Media: Fablehaven, Septimus Heap, Cece Rios, Amulet

January & February Comic Mini Reviews

It’s been a slow month of comic reading. While I had some fantastic reads in early January (see the mind bending Tongues and the emotive Shadow Life), an awful lot felt fine, but not meaningful enough for me to keep investing in comics as aggressively as I did at the end of 2025. I’ve got a bunch waiting on my bookshelf, and I can see exploring them more deeply once r/fantasy’s bingo challenge resets in April.

r/Fantasy 2025 Bingo Card #2 – Comics and Graphic Novels

For the past three years, I’ve taught middle and high schoolers classes on reading and creating comics and graphic novels. What started as an impulsive decision quickly spun into a rekindling of my childhood love of sequential art. I grew up reading manga (unsurprisingly, I read a fairly equal balance of Shoenn and Shoujo; truly we gays get the best of both worlds) and finding my footing in what I like and dislike as an adult has been a fun adventure. Around November, I realized it would be pretty feasible for me to complete a bingo card comprised entirely of graphic novels. Some of these I read for school, others for personal enjoyment, and a few to explore things outside my perceived comfort zone.

Reviews are organized according to vibe so you can find the type of comic you’d enjoy, with my favorites within each category further towards the top. I anticipate that this is a challenge I’ll continue to pursue, though I think I’ll probably just read what’s interesting and see where the pieces fall for future years. Enjoy!

Tongues

It has taken me much longer to write this review than is normal. It’s tough to figure out how to talk about this book, or why I enjoyed it so much. I found this to be a bit like trying to point out a bird in the forest. The problem lay not with getting a friend to find the bird on the tree, but rather trying to get them looking at the right tree in the first place. Too zoomed in on specifics and a review loses any sense of cohesion, but too zoomed out and you have nothing interesting to say. There’s a lot to say about Tongues. Even when I end up disliking the choices an author makes in stories like this, I appreciate the gradual blurring of lines between Literary Fiction and Genre Fantasy. Thankfully though, I ended up liking Tongues a lot.

Read if Looking For:
– something weird
-something disturbing
– something baroque

Avoid if Looking For:
– something quick
-something sweet
– something simple

Shadow Life

We so rarely get to see older protagonists in fantasy and science fiction. Those we do get to see tend to be retired adventurers, war generals, or all-powerful magicians. Not old ladies who are struggling with bladder control and nosy children. Shadow Life was a breath of fresh air. It’s a moody and atmospheric graphic novel, and a slice of life very much outside the norm for genre fiction. As a novel, I think it would be unremarkable but enjoyable. In comic format however, I found it rather entrancing.

Read if Looking For: dark cozy, bisexual old ladies, shadow cats, characters with selective hearing, slice of life stories

Avoid if Looking For: plot-focused books, strong horror or fantasy elements, clear thematic takeaways

December Comic Mini-Reviews

My exploration of graphic novels and comics continues. Here’s a bundle of graphic novels I read in December. You’ll find a decent amount of horror, Red Scare America with anthropomorphic animals, cozy mermaids, and some vintage high fantasy elves. These are sort of loosely organized with my favorites at the top, but ultimately none of them felt like they warranted a longform review on their own.

The Power Fantasy

When I explored the idea of using comics in an Ethics class I’m putting together for high schoolers, The Power Fantasy was one of the most-recommended titles. It’s easy to see why, as the whole series is one big thought experiment on whether people with extreme superpowers can exist ethically (notice I said exist, not behave). It’s also got a clear thematic lineage with Watchmen, taking the superhero deconstruction presented by Moore in directions that feel much more 2025. Ultimately, I don’t think it’s quite straightforward enough for me to want to use as a whole-class read with high schoolers, it’s great for anyone looking for something to chew on.

Read if Looking For: ensemble cast of morally dubious supers, cigars that defy gravity, non-sequential storytelling

Avoid if Looking For: authors who hold your hand, heroes vs villains storylines, dramatic fight scenes

Watchmen

Watchmen has been touted as one of the best comics to come out of all time. Historically, many such novels lauded as ‘all time bests’ in the fantasy and science fiction genres have not lived up to the hype for me. Watchmen however, feels like the real deal. It’s dark and gritty, a take on superheroes that feels more nuanced than other deconstructions of superhero stories I’ve seen (such as Hench, Steelheart, or The Boys, all of which I very much enjoyed). It’s tough to read in a lot of places, and not a story I was interested in binge-reading. However, the juice was absolutely worth the squeeze, and I think it has a lot of important things to say about America and its fascination with superheroes.

Read if Looking For: layers of theme, episodic chapters, cold war stories, low powered supers (mostly), comics that get studied at colleges, epistolary comics

Avoid if Looking For: mindless fun, protagonists who are good people, books free of sexism and homophobia, diverse protagonists

5 Comic Mini-Reviews

I’ve been reading lot’s more comics recently, both for work as I continue to develop two seperate comics courses for middle and high schoolers, but also for personal pleasure. I’ll still do bigger reviews for comics that I want to dig a bit more deeply into, but for now enjoy a pre-Thanksgiving meal of some (mostly) light and fun comics.

Eight Billion Genies

Wish fulfillment (and how it can go horribly wrong) has been a mainstay in storytelling for a long, long time. I, like many of my generation, remember reading and analyzing The Monkey’s Paw in high school English class. In recent years, I haven’t found myself drawn towards stories featuring wishes, as I haven’t seen new ground being broken on a thoroughly explored idea. Eight Billion Genies changed that. Charles Soule and Ryan Browne created something really special with this one, and at 275 comic book pages, it’s a quick read.

Read if Looking for: ensemble casts, stories spanning centuries, mischievous (but not evil) genies, whimsical art

Avoid if Looking for: morality lessons, stringent wish fulfillment adherence, innovative villains, genies with any relevance to their mythological origins