The best graphic novels of 2025
The Guardian | James Smart | December 2, 2025
Four D+Q Books named to The Guardian’s Best Graphic Novels of 2025!
Lee Lai’s 2021 debut Stone Fruit gained deserved plaudits, and Cannon (Drawn & Quarterly) confirms the Montreal-based cartoonist as a serious talent. Protagonist Cannon looks after her grandad, works a chaotic restaurant job and sees her relationship with her bestie Trish fall apart as the city swelters in a heatwave. Lai builds a tender and very natural drama from kitchen catastrophes, awkward conversations, self-help podcasts and imaginary magpies.
There is more fantastical storytelling from Birmingham-based illustrator Michael D Kennedy, whose debut collection Milk White Steed (Drawn & Quarterly) stars blues musicians, strange spirits and young cowboys. Kennedy explores the creative process and the experience of growing up black in the Black Country in surreal fables packed with energy and imagination.
The Weight (Drawn & Quarterly) collects Melissa Mendes’s webcomics about a girl growing up in a remote farming community where horizons stretch wide but options are few. It’s a vivid and lyrical epic of long, hard days, domestic violence and moments of heartbreaking joy: a graphic novel you will gallop through, your emotions rattling along the way.
Growing up in 1970s California, Mimi Pond found the aristocratic Mitfords, born in the early years of the 20th century, compellingly exotic. She shares her lifelong fascination in Do Admit! a splendid book of geopolitics, jolly hockey sticks and gossipy asides, as the sisters choose between fascism and socialism and help shape attitudes to everything from class to funeral rites.
There is more fantastical storytelling from Birmingham-based illustrator Michael D Kennedy, whose debut collection Milk White Steed (Drawn & Quarterly) stars blues musicians, strange spirits and young cowboys. Kennedy explores the creative process and the experience of growing up black in the Black Country in surreal fables packed with energy and imagination.
The Weight (Drawn & Quarterly) collects Melissa Mendes’s webcomics about a girl growing up in a remote farming community where horizons stretch wide but options are few. It’s a vivid and lyrical epic of long, hard days, domestic violence and moments of heartbreaking joy: a graphic novel you will gallop through, your emotions rattling along the way.
Growing up in 1970s California, Mimi Pond found the aristocratic Mitfords, born in the early years of the 20th century, compellingly exotic. She shares her lifelong fascination in Do Admit! a splendid book of geopolitics, jolly hockey sticks and gossipy asides, as the sisters choose between fascism and socialism and help shape attitudes to everything from class to funeral rites.