Heartstopper Volume 4

From my school's library.

Title: Heartstopper
Issue: Volume 4
Publisher: Scholastic / Graphix
Date: 2021
Writer: Alice Oseman
Artist: Alice Oseman

Nick and Charlie are on Summer break, and Charlie is trying to figure out how to say "I love you" to Nick for the first time. Nick is trying to find a way to help Charlie with his mental health issues.

Charlie's mental health journey becomes the major plotline for this volume, and it's handled with a good balance of realism and hope. There is also more emphasis on family relationships, after the focus for the last two books have been more on friends. The friendships are still there, and the author is very good at keeping us caught up on relationships with minor characters through small, quiet moments.

The parallel journal-based approach to narration which takes up much of the middle of this book can sometimes feel a bit clinical, although the messages are good ones and well-handled. The is some very effective family drama to end things, and a couple of bonus features at the end are charming, particularly a one-panel-per-page minicomic on the relationship between two teacher characters.

This was a good treatment of serious issues that still kept the delightful character interactions that have made this series stand out.

Rating: 8.5/10

GI Joe Origins Volume 1

First review of 2026! From a Little Free Library in Ware MA USA.

Title: G.I. Joe Origins
Issue: Volume 1
Date: September 2009
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Writer: Larry Hama
Art: Mike Hawthorne, Tom Feister
Colorist: Erik Swanson
Letterer: Robbie Robbins, Chris Mowry, Neil Uyetake
Editor: Andy Schmidt, Justin Eisinger

Trade paperback collection covering the first mission of the G.I. Joe team. Duke and Scarlet get airdropped into the Nevada desert on a secret mission that is partly training, partly a test, and partly a real mission, in a way that really doesn't make any sense.

Meanwhile a villain named Chimera (who I guess might go on to eventually become one of the better-known villains like Cobra Commander? Maybe?) singlehandedly fights off a SWAT team, and generally make all of law enforcement look incompetent as he pulls of an escalating series of crimes, leading to the launching of a deadly plan from a secret base. The kind of plan with an unnecessary countdown and some monologuing to explain it. Clearly Chimera did not read The Watchmen.

I did like seeing the early formation of the bond between Scarlet and Snake Eyes.

I did not like Scarlet getting damseled. I was also not thrilled that the story introduced a character who was more interesting than anyone on the Joe team and proceeded to kill her about a fourth of the way through the book.

Rating: 3/10

Updated All Time Top Rated Comics 2025

Here is my updated list of all of the comics I've rated a 9 or above. Only one new book (Seven Ways Through the Woods) was added in 2025.


9/10

All In The Family Part Two: Angel
Amulet Book Two: The Stonekeeper's Curse
Amulet Book Seven: Firelight
Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You
Boxers
Dog Man And Cat Kid
Dog Man: Grime and Punishment
The Flutter Collection
Ghosts
Guts
Heartstopper Volume 1
Life With Archie #16
Lumberjanes Volume 3: A Terrible Plan
Lumberjanes Volume 4: Out of Time
Lumberjanes Volume 5: Band Together
Machiavelli
Rival Angels Season 3 Volume 2
Saga Compendium 1
Seven Ways Through the Woods
Small Town Type #1
The Treasure of the Black Swan
Understanding Comics
Warriors: Graystripe's Adventure
We Won't Be Erased
White Bird
With the Light Volume 2

9.5/10

Amelia Rules: When the Past is a Present
The Arrival
Castle Waiting Volume 1
I Kill Giants
A Monster Calls
The Prince and the Dressmaker
Vietnamerica: A Family's Journey

10/10

Bone: The Complete Cartoon Epic In One Volume

Looking forward to reading more great books in 2026!

2025 Recap

I read and reviewed 56 comics in 2025, up from 35 in 2024, and slightly above weekly, still a long way from daily.

There weren't a lot of highlights in 2025. I only rated one book above an 8. There were also a fair amount of below-5 ratings.

Highs and Lows of 2025:

Highest-Rated Comics of 2025

Seven Ways Through the Woods (9/10)
Choose Your Own Adventure: Tobacco Hornworm (8/10)
Heartstopper Volume 3 (8/10)
Midwest Books To Prisoners Community Zine 2023 (8/10)
Monsters in Sweaters (8/10)
The Question #8 (8/10)
You Know You're A Rural Queer When... (8/10)

Lowest-Rated Comics of 2025

Bio-Booster Armor Guyver Volume 3: Dark Masters (4.5/10)
Godzilla: The New Heroes (4.5/10)
Marvel Comics Presents #29 (4.5/10)
Pathfinder: Wake the Dead #1 (4.5/10)
Ranma 1/2 Volume 4 (4.5/10)
Sugarholic Volume 2 (4.5/10)
Superman's Good Guy Gang 2025 FCBD Special Edition (4.5/10)
Harley Quinn: Lootcrate Exclusive #1 (4/10)
Silver Surfer #2 (4/10)

Top 5 Books Read in 2025

 This is my top 5 books (all genres, not just comics) read in 2025:

5. My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
4. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
3. Fool on the Hill by Matt Ruff
2. The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
1. John Adams by David McCullough

Ranma 1/2 Volume 4

From my books retrieved from storage.

Title: Ranma 1/2
Issue: Volume 4
Date: 1995
Publisher Viz Media
Writer: Rumiko Takahashi
Artist: Rumiko Takahashi

Ranma, a local martial arts prodigy, has a bit of a curse to deal with. He changes sex whenever he gets splashed with cold water. Hot water reverses the change.

Things get even more complicated when Ranma's old frienemy, Shampoo, shows up, along with her great-grandmother, who uses a secret pressure-point technique to make Ranma intolerant of hot water, causing Ranma to be stuck in girlform. From there, Ranma sets out on a series of schemes to get the great-grandmother to reverse this latest indignity. We end with a cliffhanger involving a shark.

This was goofy fun, a bit hard to follow in places, although some of that was just from jumping into the series at volume 4. The characters are more meant to be laughed at than to be sympathized with, which left me without much of a hook to care about the story beyond the slapstick antics. This was decent in terms of mayhem, but there wasn't much in the way of substance.

Rating: 4.5/10

Seven Ways Through the Woods

Title: Seven Ways Through the Woods
Date: 2025
Publisher: Greenwillow Books (HarperCollins)
Writer: Jenn Reese
Artist: Devin Elle Kurtz

Not a comic. This is a children's picture book.

Jenn Reese presents a series of adventurous kids looking for a way through the dark and mysterious woods. They each find their own way to cross, complete with Devin Elle Kurtz's absolutely gorgeous illustrations and a bit of helpful advice for each method of crossing. Don't try the crystal serpents if unless you enjoy their singing! The story ends with a bit of insight on the nature of the obstacles in our paths, and a very different seventh approach.

This was charming and delightful.

Rating: 9/10

Tactics Volume 1

From the shelf of unread books.

Title: Tactics
Issue: Volume 1
Date: 2007
Publisher: Tokyopop
Writer: Sakura Kinoshita, Kazuko Higashiyama, Lianne Sentar
Artist: Sakura Kinoshita, Kazuko Higashiyama
Letterer: Star Print Brokers
Editor: Lillian Diaz-Przybyl

Kantarou is a folklore scholar who's not exactly making the big money off of his publications. Fortunately, he moonlights as an exorcist of sorts who deals with problems caused by youkai. These beings are usually invisible, but Kantarou has the ability to see them. To really get ahead in his business, though, he's been searching for Haruka, the legendary demon-eating tengu.

But once he finally gets Haruka on his side, it only adds lots more complications to Kantarou's life.

This series is episodic with something of a mystery-solving vibe. Each situation that Kantarou and Haruka encounter seems to break the rules of the supernatural as they understand them at first, and it's up to them to figure out what is really happening.

The dialogue flits all over the place, especially in the midst of the action, and the stories tend to rely on an epilogue-like bit toward the end to help the reader make sense of it all. The world does have good internal consistency and enough variety of supernatural beings and effects to keep things interesting, and the banter between the characters is fun in places.

Rating: 5.5/10

Flash Gordon #34

I picked this up at the Brimfield Antiques Show in September of 2025.

Title: Flash Gordon
Issue: 34
Date: 1981
Publisher: Whitman (Western Publishing)
Writer: John Warner
Artist: Gene Fawcette

Flash Gordon, Dale Arden, and Doctor Zarkov travel to a remote area to loot one of Emperor Ming's observation posts for spare parts. The station appears to be unguarded, but it's actually defended by a type of gas that Ming devised that knocks out its victims and causes potentially fatal hallucinations. This is one of those classic unnecessarily slow deathtraps, and it's really just an excuse to give us a peak into each character's worst nightmare and watch them deal with these dream scenarios.

Zarkov faces off against the most frightening thing he can imagine: Literally his own brain! In a jar! Except it's evil. 

Dale, is a scenario very much playing to stereotypes, finds Flash falling in love with a strong and beautiful (and blonde!) warrior woman who is more than ready to handle any of Dale's objections with fist and sword, all while Flash stands by, dazzled by his newfound love.

Flash himself gets the least interesting nightmare: Getting crushed by Ming himself, grown to giant-size.

It takes Zarkov's wit and Flash's strength of will to overcome the effects of the nightmare-gas. I was a little bit disappointed that the writers weren't able to make things a bit more parallel and have a clearly defined strength of Dale's that lets her overcome her own scenario. That would have made the story a lot more satisfying. Instead, she gets rescued by Flash, as per normal.

The story was still fairly interesting in spite of how contrived it all was.

There's also a backup story in which Flash is searching for Charn, a leader in the rebellion against Ming. Charn was captured by a tribe who enslave their captives, and his will has been just about broken in captivity. Flash is captured as well, and needs to find a way to instill hope in Charn so that they can attempt to escape. This story was a good concept but suffered a bit from page-count limitations, as it could have used some more time to develop. 

The worldbuilding and character interactions in both stories were good.

Rating: 5/10

Sugarholic Volume 2

From the unread book shelf.

Title: Sugarholic
Issue: Volume 2
Date: 2009
Publisher: Yen Press
Writer: Gong GooGoo
Artist: Gong GooGoo
Letterer: Terri Delgado

Jae-Gyu has agreed to pose as Whie-Hwan's girlfriend for a month. She's struggling to deal with his strict rules and life in the big city in general. And the fact that she's caught the eye of a star musician is not making things any easier. This is a slow-burn romance that has the potential to go in a lot of different directions. The characters all tend to be a bit flighty and high-strung, which makes everything they try to do more complicated. This issue was still mostly setup as the main characters take their places in the scenario. Everyone in the story is very pretty, but no one is all that likeable at this point. I did like some of the intrigue that is happening with Whie-Hwan's very powerful family, which provides a bit of a mafia vibe to put an edge on the romance.

Rating: 4.5/10