Before the pandemic BF’s Staff Picks feature had run for many years, with members of the team giving a weekly overview of recommended new releases. Now, retooled and re-imagined to fit the site’s current ethos, it has returned as a monthly series designed to spotlight just a few key releases that appeal to us. This is not, then, intended as a comprehensive, exhaustive or extensive round-up but rather to point you in the direction of some top projects that caught the eyes of BF contributors. Please also remember these aren’t intended as reviews and full coverage of the comics/books below may follow in due course!
Comic of the Month
Moonshadow: The Definitive Edition – Expanded (Dark Horse Comics)
Some comics are just absolutely pivotal in defining your appreciation of what the form can do at its most ambitious. Moonshadow was one such game-changing read for me. J.M. DeMatteis and Jon J Muth’s epic first appeared around 40 years ago as part of Marvel’s original Epic imprint and has been reprinted, collected and added to on a number of occasions via other publishers, including DC/Vertigo and Dark Horse.
There’s no way to do justice to the plot and scope of Moonshadow in one of our two-paragraph promotional Staff Picks but this mix of weird fantasy, satire, space opera and coming-of-age story is one of those absolute “must-read before you shuffle off this mortal coil” comics for any aficionado of the medium. It’s a work of quietly powerful genius and in this ultimate Dark Horse edition you get a version absolutely bursting with extra supplementary material.
– Andy Oliver
Spent (Mariner Books/Jonathan Cape)
I rather like the term “autofiction” to describe Alison Bechdel’s new book (from Mariner in the US and Jonathan Cape in the UK). Going the full meta route, Spent combines a fictionalised version of Bechdel on the page while infusing the narrative with some very topical concerns. Expect themes touching on the parlous state of the world around us, environmental concerns, ethics in the grip of capitalism, and how we connect with media; all with an irreverent and playful take on comics and autobio. Undoubtedly one of 2025’s biggest releases.
– Andy Oliver
Heavy Metal Magazine #1
I was not that interested in this title when it was crowdfunding for over three-quarters of a million dollars! However, with polymath Frank Forte as Editor-in-chief, former First Second editor Dave Kelly as Executive Editor, and especially former Statix Press head Chris Thompson rounding out the editorial team it seems like they have a strong foundation on which to build. The new Heavy Metal will bring back some classic European artists like Enki Bilal, Jose Ortiz, and Vicente Segrelles while the UK is represented by Leah Moore, John Reppion, and Anna Morozova. It seems like they have all the pieces in place to have a chance to be successful.
– Gary Usher
Low: Bowie’s Berlin Years (SelfMadeHero)
Reinhard Kleist is one the form’s finest graphic biographers with books such as Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness, Nick Cave: Mercy on Me and Knock Out!: The True Story of Emile Griffith, among many others, to his name. Indeed in the case of the latter I said at BF in 2021 that “the strength of his biographical work is not simply in a graphic re-creation of events but in his skilled ability to use the visual language of the medium to evoke empathy in his audience.”
Kleist is back this month with a second graphic biography of pop icon David Bowie, after 2021’s Starman: Bowie’s Stardust Years. In Low: Bowie’s Berlin Years he explores Bowie’s time in Germany and the recording of the album ‘Low’. Expect another nuanced and visually arresting study from this master of the genre.
– Andy Oliver
Checked Out (Drawn & Quarterly)
Sometimes the premise of a book leaps out at you from the pre-publicity blurb and immediately seizes your attention. Kate Fricas’s Checked Out is described by publisher Drawn & Quarterly as a story “in which a queer library worker searches for love online, artistic validation in New York City, and the perfect book.”
Books that profess to be “a valentine to libraries” will always endear themselves to us here at BF and the quirky energy of the preview pages on the D&Q site only re-enforce that this slice-of-lifer looks to be one of the month’s most enticing graphic novels.
– Andy Oliver
The Other Jay & Eve (Silver Sprocket)
Giving us a different, genre-specific take on queer comics The Other Jay & Eve by Emma Jayne and Ashanti Fortson is the story of the roommates of the book’s title who allow themselves to be cloned as a way of making some easy money. It’s a decision that comes back to haunt them years later when they meet up with their doubles who are now engaged to be married. The sparky art and eye-catching colours of the preview pages here is certainly enough reason to give this book a look when it hits shelves at the end of the month.
– Andy Oliver
Pageant (Fantagraphics Books)
Fantagraphics tell us that Pageant is “an anarchic, absurdist comedy about lonely souls and the lonely soulless” and if that quote doesn’t tickle your fancy for Justin Gradin’s second graphic novel we’re not sure what will.
The second book in this month’s list to deal with cloning, Pageant follows Ponce Melee, an employee in a cloning lab, who creates doubles of himself as a remedy to loneliness, only to find they keep deserting him. With a cast of colourful characters this sounds like a wonderfully surreal farce for the middle of May.
– Andy Oliver
Robowolf #1 (Dark Horse Comics)
Well, this just looks insane in a good way. Artist/writer Jake Smith has a vibrant, cartoony art style that looks very appealing for a mainstream title. “An onslaught of bloodthirsty cannibals, ninjas, robots, and more!” is how Dark Horse describes this romp.
– Gary Usher
