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20 ulubionych komiksów 2025 roku - Po napisach - komiks - książka - kino

20 ulubionych komiksów 2025 roku. Ranking komiksów wydanych w 2025 roku. Najlepsze według autora bloga 'Po napisach'.

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Z lekką zadyszką, głównie po to, by domknąć wątki i doprowadzić sprawę do końca. Team od "Feliksa i Makarego" miał moim zdaniem najwięcej pary na start, w pierwszej książeczce, później nastąpiło ostre hamowanie - zarówno z pomysłami, jak i z tą energią. W zasadzie drugi i trzeci tom można by połączyć, a historia tylko by na tym zyskała (choć czytelnik zostałby pozbawiony cliffhangera z końca drugiego tomu).

Żałuję też, że gdzieś umknął cały motyw przewodni, który osobiście związałem z tytułową parą. Wydawało mi się, że i twórcom będzie to najbardziej leżało na sercu - ten patent, żeby Feliks i Makary byli tymi kombinującymi antybohaterami, którzy ciągle wywracają się na własnych pomysłach. Tak się zaczęło, a skończyło na ratowaniu się z nieustannych opresji.

W kategorii komiksu dziecięcego to się zapewne sprawdzi; potyczek z niesprawiedliwym (niesprawiedliwym w mniemaniu Feliksa i Makarego) losem znajdujemy w tomie trzecim ciąg dalszy.

Złapani w drugim tomie w potrzask, w klatce u czarnoksiężnika, mają być elementem składowym eliksiru siły. A teraz, w trzecim tomie, jest tak, jak stoi w tytule - mamy wielką ucieczkę. Chociaż łatwo nie będzie.

Jest dynamika, jest kombinujący Makary i próbujący go czasem temperować Feliks. Tu wszystko się zgadza, bo niezmiennie zakorzenione jest w humorze i lekkości, które stanowią znak rozpoznawczy cyklu. Kreska jest sprężysta, lekko humorystyczna, ale nie infantylna. Narracyjnie to pościgi, ukrywanie się, szybkie decyzje, które bohaterowie podejmują z typową dla siebie mieszanką odwagi i niefrasobliwości. Zostają jednak postawieni w sytuacji, która wymaga od nich nie tylko sprytu, lecz także zrozumienia własnych ograniczeń.

Pierwszy tom pozostaje dla mnie wciąż tym najlepszym, zaraz za nim plasuje się omawiana "Wielka ucieczka". Staranny, poprawnie narysowany komiks przygodowy, który nie próbuje udawać czegoś więcej, niż jest. Ma energię, humor i sprawnie prowadzoną akcję. Plansze są czytelne, rytm kadrów dobrze trzyma tempo, a bohaterowie - choć prości - mają w sobie wystarczająco dużo uroku, by unieść historię.

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There are many dialogues and scenes here that define the comic’s character and clearly mark Snotgirl as a blunt pastiche. Take, for instance, the moment at the convention (a total disaster — you’ll have to read it yourself to find out why). After discovering a corpse, our heroines sit there, supposedly sad and upset, and one of them asks for seriousness because “she was one of us” (also an influencer). To which another replies: don’t exaggerate, she only had 500 followers. Yes — that’s exactly the case: the absolute definition of a mocking tone, genuinely blunt, funny, a bit comedic, a bit unsettling.

But let’s go back for a moment to Green Hair Don’t Care. I’m still a fan of the translation of the first title in the series and of the entire first volume. I recommend it as an excellent hybrid of influencer satire, thriller, and comedy — without cruelty. The second installment found its perfect timing for me: right after finishing the first season of the Apple TV series Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed. No, the titles aren’t thematically connected, but the vibe, the atmosphere — absolutely.

So, California Screaming: once again Bryan Lee O’Malley (a scriptwriter slightly out of breath in the second volume) and Leslie Hung (an illustrator who grows in this installment). Still, the second volume remains in a similar place — at the intersection of two temperaments: O’Malley’s precise, pop‑cultural irony and Hung’s sensual, jittery linework. Their collaboration matured already in the first volume, but only here does it take full shape (even if O’Malley lags behind with his story and we once again — until volume three — have to wait for a bigger breakthrough).

Fortunately, the characters show development: psychology, interactions, more about them (the girls), which allows the reader to enter the world more deeply. Beneath the satire and grotesque, we see people. Take her — Snotgirl, Lottie Person — she is both a product of culture and its victim. It’s increasingly clear that she’s a character who can’t distinguish her own emotions from the algorithms feeding them.

As for Leslie Hung’s growth — yes, it’s noticeable. The drawing is more deliberate than in the first volume. Her line is light but not airy; every character looks like a sketch made in haste that nonetheless captured the perfect gesture. Panels feel like scrolling a screen.

Thematically, the second volume deepens what was only sketched in the first: obsession with image, fear of authenticity, paranoia born from constant exposure. There’s less thriller here, which I quietly hoped for. It’s sort of lurking around the corner, something is happening, but it’s too faint, dimmed. A pity. We also get surreal elements: ghosts, hallucinations, unclear memories, mysterious figures appearing like glitches in reality. An addition that, in my opinion, wasn’t really necessary.

Ultimately, the second volume of Snotgirl is a comic that doesn’t try to be “important,” but in its lightness hits the core of contemporary experience. Personally, I have mixed feelings, although I’ve grown attached to the girls — I clearly see their friendship, I notice who’s stirring trouble, who’s trying to disrupt a certain “constant.” Snotgirl consistently shows that in an era of endlessly sugar‑coated reality, real life won’t disappear. Not bad.

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La Bête du Nord – La cité des mensonges — Narrative energy, dynamic artwork, and fidelity to the spirit of classic heroic fantasy. Solid, though not groundbreaking. Like a successful RPG session built around a single small adventure, focused on dice‑rolling and numerous clashes. All of this isn’t enough to call the album outstanding, but you will absolutely close the final page with the conviction that it was a good thing.

There are, however, elements that push the level a bit higher than my opening paragraph suggests. Above all, Oscar Martin’s short introduction (the script), in which you can feel genuine love for the subject and real engagement. What Martin writes at the beginning is later consistently delivered in his script — everything aligns. Conan returns from yet another journey, stops in a new city, in a tavern, drinks heavily at the counter, someone notices him and offers a task. What lies on the horizon? Gold, women, and perhaps some rest. A classic. Then come the wall‑climbing, the sneaking past guards, and finally the alarm and the slaughter — multi‑page, excellently drawn, laid out in large panels. Superb.

The second advantage is the distinctive edition. The best word for it is vintage — classic, stylish. This “vintage” comes from the drawing, but also from the colors: slightly muted, based on cool tones, printed on equally well‑chosen paper, not snow‑white but leaning toward a delicate écru. A word on the illustrations: Castellani isn’t afraid of abrupt transitions, sharp cuts, frames that look like frozen animation stills.

Going into detail, Martin circles narratively around barbarian mythology, around tales of lone warriors entering foreign cities like traps. You can see this fascination in every panel: it’s not merely a tribute to the classics but an attempt to rewrite them into a contemporary language without slipping into pastiche. La Bête du Nord – La cité des mensonges lives through its seriousness; all expression is raw and tuned to something true. And just as you enter heroic‑fantasy RPG sessions with full seriousness (if you play them), you automatically enter the world of La Bête du Nord with the same gravity. This is how the authors’ love for the genre and the character becomes visible — a bit of nudity, a few severed heads, pierced and spilled throats.

Thematically, these are the familiar obsessions with power and wealth — another constant in Conan’s world. Every character, from local warlords to ordinary townsfolk, plays their part in a theatre of appearances. The city is as important a protagonist as the warrior: corrupt, divided, full of gangs, black magic, false alliances, and constant tension. Martin builds emotion mainly through confrontation.

Intense, raw, unpretentious. It doesn’t surprise with its structure, but it surprises with its consistency. It doesn’t dazzle with subtlety, yet it dazzles with energy. Good and satisfying.

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On one of the early frames, where we see a solitary man—the main protagonist—in his room, you can spot, though not in the foreground, a few clues that allowed me to look at Le voyage en Italie through an intriguing context. And once again, for the second time this month, I have to return thematically to the work of Charles Bukowski. It’s fascinating, because theoretically the motifs in Bernard Cosey’s Le voyage en Italie cannot be connected to Bukowski on the level of direct influence or obvious analogy. And yet, the front cover of Women, first published in 1978, really does sit on Art’s shelf.

Cosey and Bukowski stand on two stylistic poles, but their work intersects in several surprising places: in the way they look at human beings, in the melancholy of everyday life, in the figure of a man drifting between the past and unfulfilled desires. This is not a genre connection—it’s an existential one. And Cosey did place Bukowski on that shelf, which should mean something. All of this—these references, and my observations—was also helped by Jacek Bartecki’s translation. First, because Cosey writes beautifully; second, because Bartecki conveyed that literary quality so well that I could once again find traces of the familiar prose of life I know from Hank (not only from Women).

This is one of those comics you don’t just read—you simply inhabit it. You’re in this story, with these people, in those places. Cosey talks about many things; you’ll take from the story what matters to you, what you somehow identify with. It’s a tale about men who return from war but do not return to themselves. About a love that was never fully lived. And finally about a journey without a destination, because the destination is too painful to speak aloud.

Narratively, it’s intimacy: a conversation about trauma, about memory, about life after great events. Cosey fits into that tradition, but he does it in his own way—without pathos, without grand declarations, most often in silence.

There are three main characters—Arthur Druey, Ian Fraschetti and Shirley—each carrying the weight of the Vietnam War. At the same time, this trauma is not spectacular or dramatic. It’s everyday trauma: diffuse, unprocessed. The titular Italy is the place where the three meet, but also a confrontation with the past, with guilt, with unfulfilled hopes. Not every story can be repaired; they will eventually understand that. Some answers come only when one stops desperately searching for them.

Le voyage en Italie is one of the best examples of a comic that does not try to be great—and that is precisely why it is. Cosey does not impose emotions, does not force sentiment, does not build drama through shortcuts. He also proves that comics can be literature—you can feel the weight of the lines, of individual words. Once again, a bow to the Polish translator.

Melancholic also through the drawing: delicate contours. Cosey is not afraid of naturalism, of faces marked by scars, age, exhaustion. These are not magazine-cover faces, just as the landscapes—although Italy is, of course, postcard material—are not idealized. Mostly it’s the provinces, advertisements, ordinary streets, ordinary people. A Tuesday or a Wednesday, certainly not a weekend.

Thematically, it’s a comic about how sometimes you have to travel very far to understand that the answers are very close. Mature, humanistic, deeply emotional.

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A damn difficult and intimate thing. And at the same time, an extraordinary courage on the author’s part — to speak openly about her desires, fears, anxieties, and sexual dysfunctions. One may ask whether an author can expose themselves so deeply, reveal so much of their own issue, their own problem, their own intimacy. Is there a boundary? But with subjects like these, comics also serve as a form of self‑therapy. I think that’s what struck me the most after reading (or rather while reading). And I like to lean into things that sit beside the main content. Of course, this is a narratively well‑constructed story, one that can genuinely engage the reader.

For the same reader, different elements may turn out to be the most important afterwards. There’s also a matter that, for some, may become the central theme — the sexual dysfunction mentioned earlier, carried by the main character, who is also the author of this comic. I won’t reveal what it is, since the specific medical term appears in the comic itself, not in the publisher’s note. So: intimacy, the attempt to understand one’s own body, a series of always‑essential issues that must be explained when interacting with a partner — before, during, however — so that the interaction isn’t a problem but always a pleasure.

Beyond this “central theme,” there are more threads. Alongside the medical nature of the story, there is also psychology. Yes, Alix Garin has to deal not only with her body but also calm her mind, come to terms with herself, first repair herself, and only then take care of the relationship. Or maybe these things go hand in hand? These are damn difficult moments, and I’m arriving now at what Regaining Desire is for me.

The matter of a fulfilling intimate life in a relationship is extremely important. Sexual satisfaction has to be there — I can’t imagine one person being content while the other bends their principles, unable to derive any pleasure from it (if sexual intercourse is happening; situations vary). The narrative that “sex isn’t the most important thing” is understandable, but in Regaining Desire this issue is central. Everything can be talked through, but first one has to be open, understand oneself, and even earlier — uncover oneself. For me, Regaining Desire is precisely about that: about a life curve that will always, sooner or later, appear in a relationship, a marriage, a partnership. If one endures it (repairs it, reassembles it, sets it in motion), things will only get better.

And the whole path the author takes toward these conclusions, toward the ending? I don’t approve of every stage. In many respects I’m a traditionalist; I didn’t always root for this girl, though I must agree with many of her conclusions (“if at 25 you’re not allowed to live dangerously… then when are you allowed?”). Still, it’s her story as a whole — I don’t interfere, I don’t judge aloud, I’ll keep those remarks to myself.

It’s an important comic because it touches on many components of modern relationships. Trust, physicality — there is no taboo here, nor should there be. It’s also a title one can offer to those struggling with uncertainty, fear, not knowing where their indifference comes from. I recommend it, even strongly.

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Auraléon, a draftsman with a sharp, shadow‑soaked line, and Carlos Echevarría, a scriptwriter capable of distilling human fears into short, precise forms. The stories in this album are intense, self‑contained, and hit immediately.

It’s a claustrophobic, hallucinogenic descent into the characters’ psyche. I want to emphasize that claustrophobic mood, because it works instantly, largely thanks to Auraléon’s style. It’s extraordinary, yet deeply hermetic. At times I felt the drawings drift away from the narrative — in the sense that the story is one thing and the illustrations another, suspended in space like beautiful, unsettling images. It reminded me a bit of Caza — also in that narcotic vision that evokes genuine uncertainty. But where Caza stops, Auraléon and Carlos Echevarría push further. They strike, uncompromisingly, at the most sensitive points of human perception, loading you with material you cannot possibly absorb in full. You don’t refuse the host, though.

As an album, the comic is a collection of short tales from the world of dreams, from other planets, from the far side of the mirror. Chaos and Journey to Hell doesn’t so much tell a story as pull the reader into a vortex where plot and image fuse into a single trembling organism. The album resists summary — you cannot lock its events into a sentence, not even a paragraph. These are dispatches from beyond our world: from territories of absurdity, grotesque, and narcotic trips.

In this strange, always atmospheric and dark spectacle, the artist and the writer — as if taking the same substances — compose poetic verses and unleash their peculiar imagination, creating worlds and figures like those from feverish nightmares.

Lingering for a moment on Auraléon’s forceful, characterful drawings — his black‑and‑white pages are dense, full of shadows, streaks, blurs that refuse to let the eye settle. The composition is often counterintuitive, as if deliberately enforcing disorientation. The reader’s eye circles the page, searching for an anchor, but finds only new fractures in reality. Many panels reveal Auraléon’s obsession with deformation: stretched faces, bent silhouettes, spaces that shouldn’t exist but do, because they’re projections of some psychedelia, a circus of oddities, of fear. Some panels could be lifted straight off the page as designs for the most out‑there tattoos.

Thematically, it’s a fascination with cosmos, mythology, bodily distortion. The scripts are short, often built around a subversive punchline, as if the creators wanted the reader to feel uneasy even after finishing a single brief story.

There is no classic antagonist here. No evil you can point to. Only fear, spreading across the pages like a shadow. It’s not a comfortable work — there’s a lot of gripping uncertainty, the atmosphere is always thick, always suffocating. I recommend it.

A final word: big applause for the team behind this title. As a reader, I can see it wasn’t easy — in terms of translation, editing, and proofreading. Jakub Jankowski must have bent himself into knots to tame the authors’ verbal acrobatics, their ornate names, all in tight tension with the poetic language. Bravo.

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There can be no unreserved enthusiasm here. The project is undeniably ambitious, yet its ambition keeps colliding with the decision to merge several genres and, above all, two narrative motifs that simply don’t fit together — even in theory. It feels like two separate films projected under one title.

Among Philippe Pelaez’s three current sci‑fi works, Noir horizon, tome 1–3 is the most imposing — in scope and in volume: 172 pages containing three episodes, compared to the 88‑page Nine and Nobody. Thematically, it blends visual intensity with political commentary; narratively, it’s a slow march toward a boundary no one wants to cross but everyone is forced to. The convicts sent from Kadingirra to Kepler are assigned a mission that reeks of political deceit from the start — their journey is more a sentence than a task. As they uncover the planet’s secrets, the structure of the story emerges: a dystopia rooted in violence; an expedition into an alien ecosystem; and the realization that the true threat lies not in cosmic emptiness but in the system that sent them.

The ingredients are strong, especially the motif I personally find irresistible in sci‑fi: the exploration of new worlds. The first episode is excellent, enriched by a powerful horror element. The “black horizon” is an unknown that must be crossed. Many missions have failed before, but this one — with murderers, terrorists, dangerous people — might break through. Together with them, the reader plunges into the dark void, where genuine horror awaits, reminiscent of the infernal video logs in Event Horizon (1997). It’s the best part of the trilogy. After that, things deteriorate — significantly.

We get the tyrant’s story, the dystopia, the decaying metropolis of Kadingirra (the ancient Sumerian name for Babylon). Everything is clear, transparent — no ambiguity. Yet there are simply too many ingredients, and some add nothing. The whole “death games” motif, with a strange discipline meant to keep society in line — echoing Rollerball (1975) or The Running Man (1987) — serves no real purpose. It’s meant to underline the cruelty of the mayor, a Nero‑like figure burning his own city, but it only dilutes the atmospheric sci‑fi horror. The third act piles everything together — all at once — and the engagement collapses.

The ambition is fully realized only in the artwork. Visually, it’s one of the strongest sci‑fi horror albums: dark ambient space opera, oppressive mood, organic linework. Benjamin Blasco‑Martinez excels at atmosphere — always bleak, always pessimistic. Pelaez’s script reinforces that tone. Despite textual flaws, the mood remains consistently grim — a genuine strength.

The graphic layer offers scale reminiscent of monumental space operas, though the artist’s line is more organic. The pages are dense, detailed, yet never chaotic.

It’s an uneven trilogy, but potentially intriguing. Its world is evocative, its vitality impressive, its ambition exceeding genre boundaries. The creators had ideas but lacked consistency. The comic has visual power but not dramaturgical cohesion across all three episodes. It’s a trilogy that falls apart in your hands: spectacular on the surface, hollow inside. What remains is the sense of a missed opportunity — a pity, especially for fans of Pelaez’s earlier works.

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Reversing the axis of narration and looking at the myth from the point of view of a man whom history has condemned to eternal damnation — that’s an intriguing concept, one I struggled with while reading. There were moments when the act of reading (let me assure you right away: this is a very good comic) caused me some difficulty in picturing this story about Cauchon, who is indeed portrayed as the stern overseer of Joan of Arc’s trial, yet at the same time the authors attempt to soften his image.

By what right? That’s what I kept thinking as the trial draggedged on, the girl’s situation worsened, and Cauchon suddenly appeared (again thanks to the creators) as someone capable of speaking to the accused with a touch of humanity, even embracing her in the finale. Having just watched the cinematic masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Carl Theodor Dreyer), I was even more combatively inclined toward the Church than usual (and usually my inclination is simply negative). So I recommend starting the comic Cauchon…ou l’homme qui tua Jeanne d’Arc from the end… Let me explain.

With works like this, with historical comics, I particularly value the supplementary material. In Cauchon…ou l’homme qui tua Jeanne d’Arc, that role did not fall to the Polish publisher, because historian David Glomot, involved in the project, was also given space for a very particular form of expanding the story. It is not an insight into the life of the French national heroine, but rather an explanation of the comic’s creation process and a discussion of many decisions — including the one crucial choice concerning the titular bishop.

Glomot’s text offers a great deal — it made me appreciate the authors’ approach and understand the narrative device involving him, the judge. And that wasn’t the only matter clarified. Glomot describes, in an exceptional way, a whole series of compromises the creators made, thanks to which the comic, in this form, could be published. He also addresses several decisions that a medievalist might object to, but again these are concessions dictated mainly by the comic medium and the expectations of contemporary readers (the pigs in that region, which should resemble wild boars more than cute smooth‑skinned pink piglets, are just one of many examples). I think that after reading this text everything becomes clear, and I recommend absorbing it before the main story.

There are many characters on this stage, but one central figure. Yes, Joan of Arc — although pivotal — moves into the background. Cauchon is the most important here, as the title states. He is at once confident and lost, brutal and sensitive, believing and doubting. Joan is both strong and fragile, determined and lonely. Their relationship — though deepened fictionally — works like a lens through which the mechanisms of power, fear, and faith become visible.

And the story itself? Once again pain and suffering, though not as intense as in the 1928 film. The comic medium operates under different rules, that much is certain. In other words, the creators use gaps in the sources not to fill them with flashy fiction, but rather to show how history itself is a construction — built from documents, emotions, politics, and later interpretations.

On the other hand, the comic does share something with the film, mainly through its formalism and illustrations. Joël Parnotte guides the reader’s eye with a precision reminiscent of a film cinematographer. The panels are dense but not overloaded. The compositions introduce tension even in static scenes. Cauchon’s face is drawn with obsessive attention to micro‑gestures — a twitch of the eyelid, a tightening of the lips, uncertainty hidden in the gaze. This is not theatrical expression but intimate expression. It works beautifully; you will appreciate the illustrator’s meticulousness.

And I admit that when it comes to drawing faces, figures, landscapes, walls, cells, buildings, Parnotte excels. It is a static comic, with little dynamism, but when action does appear, Parnotte falters — the artist’s difficulties become visible, especially when drawing hands (particularly when they are positioned differently than usual). That’s how it feels to me.

Assessing the entire comic, I must repeat my initial surprise at the empathy shown toward Cauchon. Ultimately, I also hold great admiration for Parnotte’s artwork (the mentioned shortcomings cannot overshadow 170 pages of excellent work). If I had to point to the main motif running through the album, it would be responsibility. Dorison and Delahaye do not ask whether Cauchon was guilty. They ask what a person looks like when he must make a decision knowing its consequences will be greater than himself.

This edition deserves a separate paragraph. The golden embellishments, the texture on the cover meant to resemble leather. Those golden elements add elegance in strong contrast with the deep black. Beautiful craftsmanship.

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La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc

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The narrator, already deeply familiar with Lone Wolf and Cub, approaches Kubikiri Asa / 首斬り朝 as another work by the same creative duo: writer Kazuo Koike and artist Goseki Kojima. Once again, they open up the harsh, ritualized world of samurai-era Japan — a realm of strict codes, customs, and historical landscapes — all driven by Koike’s storytelling rhythm, where narrative always comes first.

Although the manga has a central protagonist, he is not framed in the epic manner of Ittō Ogami and his son Daigorō. Instead of broad, sweeping drama, Koike and Kojima choose a more intimate perspective focused on a man whose profession places him directly on the boundary between life and death: Yamada Asaemon, executioner and sword tester. Before Ogami existed, Asaemon was already a culturally essential and socially legitimized figure.

Koike uses Asaemon to explore morality within a world governed by unforgiving feudal law. The manga depicts the brutal reality of his work — from gruesome trials for aspiring executioners to the rigid legal frameworks that sanction such violence. These scenes can feel shocking to modern readers, yet they are shown as part of a meticulously regulated system respected by citizens, officials, and the condemned alike.

At times, Koike steps briefly into modern commentary, addressing the reader directly. In a hostage‑holding episode, when Asaemon demands that everyone be cleared from the area, the authors wonder whether similar strategies might still be useful today to unsettle a violent offender. Several such marginal reflections appear throughout the volume.

Kojima’s artwork feels more restrained than in Lone Wolf and Cub: thinner, more precise lines, a focus on texture rather than dynamism, and sudden, sharp bursts of movement that emphasize not spectacle but moral weight. The contrasts he uses highlight the ethical gravity of the scenes rather than their brutality.

Despite the grim subject matter, the protagonist remains human — disciplined, aware, surrounded by ordinary life: fishing, cleaning, daily routines. Themes of guilt, revenge, and social hypocrisy weave through the background.

The strength of Kubikiri Asa / 首斬り朝 lies in its refusal to moralize. It simply presents a man performing his duty and leaves the reader to decide what to make of it.

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Frida Kahlos papegøye is a collection in which Jason returns to the short‑form storytelling he has practiced for years — a blend of pulp tropes, melancholy, and cool, understated humor. The book is built as a sequence of stories that function simultaneously as jokes, tributes, and quiet meditations on cultural (and pop‑cultural) icons. Jason freely mixes references, plays with metaphors, and never insists that the reader catch every allusion or decode any hidden message.

His motivation seems constant: he wants the reader to pause, reflect, and smile. He draws from many artistic fields — cinema, literature, painting — invoking works like The Night of the Hunter (1956, Charles Laughton) or Magritte’s Golconda (1953), among many others.

Historical figures appear as well, though the mixture doesn’t always fully cohere; some episodes are harder to grasp, such as the opening story Is Anyone Here?. Others, including a wonderful homage to 1950s monster movies, deliver pure delight.

Jason’s inspirations are clear: pop‑cultural reinterpretations, surreal gestures, and cinematic narrative shortcuts. Having read several of his albums, it’s evident that each one is a deliberate variation that ignores boundaries between high art and popular culture. At the margins of the collection, he also includes more intimate pieces, such as the strikingly sad Nothing, a story about aging and illness.

As a creator, Jason is precise. This album — eleven short stories — forms a catalogue of narratives where characters speak little and meaning emerges between panels. His visual style is sparse and ascetic: thick outlines, flat shapes, pastel colors. He favors ellipsis and gesture over dialogue. Not everything is immediately legible, but that ambiguity encourages rereading, re‑examining details, and discovering how a single added element can shift the entire meaning.

Frida Kahlos papegøye exemplifies how contemporary comics can reinterpret cultural icons without slipping into banality. Jason’s work belongs to a strand of comics unafraid of engaging with art history — but doing so on its own terms, with distance, irony, humor (always with a Jarmusch‑like vibe), and lightness.

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Let him find her, please.

Those were my words—the ones that accompanied me most often while reading Sōsakusha / 捜索者. My first encounter with Jiro Taniguchi’s talent came with the five volumes of The Summit of the Gods. It was a magnificent story about passion, individualism, difficult relationships, and an addiction to mountains. I, who have very little in common with mountains, understood then what drives those desperados ever higher—loners, and I’m not afraid to write it: often madmen.

Between the silence of mountains and the noise of cities.

Sōsakusha / 捜索者 is different. Don’t let the mountains on the cover or the man with climbing gear mislead you. Yes, Shiga is connected to the mountains—he’s an alpinist, he runs a mountain lodge, people respect him and value his opinion. The mountains are his terrain; nothing surprises him there. And Shiga—because that’s who we’re talking about—reminds me a bit of Habu from The Summit of the Gods, even in appearance. With the difference that Habu would never settle in one place.

The very title, Sōsakusha / 捜索者, quickly reveals the metaphorical nature of the protagonist’s profession. There will be no spectacular operations on peaks. Shiga answers a call from Tokyo—a sprawling urban giant, a human hive. Megumi has gone missing, the daughter of his friend who died many years earlier. Shiga once promised he would protect the girl. And because he is a man of honor, he goes to Tokyo.

This is a comic without formal experiments, without the desire to impress. A story that trusts the reader. It believes you will notice what matters most—that searching is always a movement inward, not forward.

The story is painful, depressive, and speaks volumes about contemporary relationships. It’s hard to blame anyone here. She, the missing girl, at first glance seems very well‑behaved. In reality—as is usually the case—it turns out her mother knew very little about her. Theoretically, Sōsakusha / 捜索者 presents nothing new: another search for a young person who walked the edge and made her own choices. You can’t always be there for your child. It’s impossible.

To put it colloquially, but humanly—Sōsakusha / 捜索者 shatters the reader‑parent. There is something difficult in it, something hard to accept, but you have to push through that truth.

I now see Taniguchi as an even more “literary” creator. Not because his works are ambitious—though they are. But because he can speak about things literature often keeps silent about: exhaustion, responsibility, the fact that sometimes you cannot save anyone, because you must first save yourself.

For me, this is one of the most intimate comics. Not because of the plot, but because of the way the author lets you enter the protagonist’s inner space. As if he were saying: “Look. This could have been you.”

As for the artwork—the panels are clean, transparent, often wide, even when the action moves to Tokyo. The city is not a neon labyrinth but a dense, suffocating structure in which a person easily disappears. And there is that surgical precision—from the detail of a hand to the edges of buildings. Lines without tremors, always confident. In the climbing sequences, Taniguchi’s obsession from The Summit of the Gods returns—there the mountain was an absolute; here it becomes primarily a metaphor for the boundary between what is possible and what is necessary.

Thematically, the manga repeatedly crosses genre boundaries. Drama, suspense, at times thriller. A story about searching, parenthood, moral debt. An outstanding read.

[ponapisach]

No matter how subversive, iconoclastic, or packed with problematic content a cultural work might be (and that’s a euphemism, because Ranx is simply fucked up), I will never stand in line with Montag and the other firemen from Fahrenheit 451 to burn Ranx or anything like it. All the more so because there’s actually quite a lot of genuine artistic pleasure here.

Despite everything, it’s a kind of imprint on the history of comics — but above all, a product of its era. It crosses the boundaries of provocation instantly and stays there, on the other side. There’s no good taste there, no pleasant smells, no elegance, no cream-filled pastries, no classy suits, no refined manners. So what is there?

Ranx is a bit like a comics-version Dr. Hackenbush. I hope someone knows what I mean. Ugly, vulgar, relentlessly abrasive. And that’s still putting it mildly. I don’t think there are many comics as brazen, as radical, and as deliberately filthy as this one. Experiencing it feels like a punk concert in a basement that’s far too small, where sweat and smoke mix with the sense that the world really might end.

You can read the album in two ways: as a masterpiece of anarchist imagination or as a borderline experience that pushes past the edge of good taste.

It was created at a time when Italian counterculture was boiling with anger, drugs, and political tension. Liberatore gave the character a body — muscular, exaggerated, as if sculpted from meat and chrome. His Ranx is a cyborg built from parts. A machine that loves, kills, doesn’t understand distinctions, doesn’t bother with nuance. His obsession with Lubna — a cruel, manipulative, perpetually high underage girl — is the heart of this story. It’s a toxic, brutal love stripped of any filter. This strange, aggressive feeling resembles an emotional short circuit under the skull of the titular antihero.

Narratively, it’s a genre cocktail: dystopia, satire, grotesque, pornography, social horror. If I looked at it more analytically, in a critical spirit, I’d say that beneath the scandal lies something more precise — a diagnosis of a world in which morality has ceased to exist. Liberatore and Tamburini managed to fuse extreme naturalism with grotesque in a way that created an icon. Ranx is indeed radical, but also impossible to forget — that’s already a plus. Even when you try to clean your head after reading it, a sticky grease remains, a smell, an atmosphere you can’t wash off.

[ponapisach]

Stop Tomasz Niewiadomski. Seriously. If no one holds him back, he’ll put every sacred thing in the path of his Ratman — and Ratman will chew it up, grind it down, and use it. Time‑Traveller is a wonderful piece of comic‑book nonsense: funny, full of spark, a much‑needed dose of absurdity in the modern world. If there were a competition for creative surrealism in image and text, I’d put Niewiadomski in the starting lineup without hesitation.

Ratman — a mutant born of an explosion, a laboratory, and pop‑cultural chaos — has always lived on the margins of the mainstream. Not as a parody of a superhero, but as his local variant: more caustic, more self‑ironic, more aware of his own makeshift nature. Niewiadomski never built an icon. He created a figure that could walk into anything — mythology, history, politics, cinema, even the Titanic — and lose none of its nonsensical dignity.

Time‑Traveller is a punk comic: free, cheeky, wrapped in a wintery aesthetic. I liked it, I grabbed my head, I widened my eyes, I congratulated the author’s imagination. Because look — is there any other title where Predator can meet Stalin? Tomasz Niewiadomski, like a lost member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, creates adventures for Ratman so bizarre that reading this book feels like a ride through Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas — no brakes, under the influence. Visually it’s a strong character and an aesthetic statement: Polish comics don’t need technology to travel through time. Absurdity is enough.

“Everything, everywhere, all at once” — that should be the subtitle of Time‑Traveller. Across many episodes we follow Ratman, equipped with a bicycle — a time machine. But this gimmick doesn’t dominate the comic, even if the title suggests it. Ratman, a funny little rat in a cape, does travel through time, but the main thread is a sequence of satirical stories. That’s also the structure of this 200‑page album: short tales, sometimes longer, always over the top, meant to put the reader (it worked on me) into that peculiar mood where you try to answer questions like: “what exactly just happened?”, “what’s the deal with that talking belt buckle?”.

So Time‑Traveller isn’t a classic time‑travel story. It’s more a catalogue of ways in which a comic can play with time as a convention. In one episode the hero meets Hans Kloss, King Kong, and an Austrian watercolorist.

Each encounter becomes a pretext to shift tone: sometimes pastiche, sometimes grotesque, sometimes a philosophical anecdote. Niewiadomski doesn’t try to build a coherent world. He constructs a series of microcosms. A wonderful thing, though of course the level varies. Sometimes the imagination feels cut off mid‑sentence, as if someone walked into Niewiadomski’s room and interrupted his Ratman rambling. Because of that, a few (or a dozen) stories feel unfinished — or maybe I simply missed the punchline or the final dot. No matter — this album deserves a place on the shelf.

[ponapisach]

COLUMBO – s02e06 – A Stitch in Crime – Zaszyta zbrodnia

Peter Falk VS Leonard Nimoy

Zaszyta zbrodnia - Po napisach - komiks - książka - kino

Recenzja serialu "Columbo" - s02e06 – A Stitch in Crime – Zaszyta zbrodnia. Peter Falk, Leonard Nimoy, Anne Francis

[ponapisach]

To one of the more interesting and original comics I’ve read recently. Consciously light, constantly suspended between seriousness and slapstick farce. I felt great in its world — a bit as if I were watching a French sci‑fi comedy from the 1980s that was never actually made, but in which Pierre Richard could easily have starred.

The starting point is the idea of time as a usable space. That’s the concept the scriptwriter, Giorgio Albertini, began with. Born in Milan, Albertini graduated in medieval history, dabbles in archaeology, and his profession turned out to be crucial in imprinting his authorial mark on the story. This “usable space” I mentioned is, in fact, the full commercialization of tourist services built around time travel. Could this be Albertini’s quiet dream? Quite possibly.

In the world of Chronosquad, trips to various moments in time become possible for the right price. It’s already the norm — this branch of tourism has reached a highly advanced stage. Tourists are, of course, kept in check, and the proper institutions ensure that historical timelines remain undisturbed. For example, in ancient Egypt, tours are organized far from population centers or with appropriate equipment (no modern objects, a guide present, and so on).

Tourism thus becomes a new form of colonization — soft, commercial, wrapped in the illusion of innocence. Yet this isn’t a cynical dystopia but a world we already know: global, automated, reduced to services. Albertini merely shifts the boundary — instead of intercontinental flights, we have excursions to the Pleistocene, and so on. Instead of travel agencies — Chronoports. Instead of guides — agents ensuring that tourists don’t damage history more than they already do in everyday life.

Grégory Panaccione complements this vision with artwork that makes no attempt at realism. His line is quick, slightly rough, deliberately “unfinished.” The color palette — warm, pastel, lightly dusted — gives antiquity a softness that contrasts with the technological sterility of the contemporary sequences. The result is a visual dissonance: the past feels more alive than the present.

At the intersection of these two artistic temperaments emerges a plot that is simple yet expansive — you can feel that already in the first volume. This multi‑threaded structure may throw you off a bit, but I believe it will all come together beautifully. “Honeymoon in the Bronze Age” is a missing pair of teenagers, a rescue mission, a new agent thrown into the deep end. Bloch Telonius — a slightly clumsy medievalist — becomes our guide through a world that constantly slips away from logic. His naivety is the key: it allows the reader to enter the story without cynicism, but also without illusions.

It’s funny and light, though the tone keeps shifting. The narration flows, the atmosphere transforms, veering into humor, then adventure, and at times into a fairly heavy crime story.

For me, this is a comic about the desire to escape. Not only through time, but from oneself. From one’s own limitations, one’s own era, one’s own mistakes. It’s a story about how every journey — even one between epochs — is, at its core, a journey inward. I also like the idea behind the protagonist — with his awkwardness and sense of wonder, he’s the perfect guide through this world. He could stand right next to the reader, who with the same sense of awe begins to understand this reality while absorbing it with genuine enthusiasm.