2025 Best Graphic Novel or Comic Hugo Nominees

Completed 6/28/2025 Reviewed 6/29/2025

In this blog entry, I review and rank the six Hugo nominees for Best Graphic Novel.  This has been a very tough category to review.  Some works are pretty standard fare and others are remarkable.  A couple of the books are later volumes.  So I wasn’t clued in to the plot and character development at this point.  I’m definitely sad about this.  And one book was only an excerpt.  This is typical in some of the categories, especially for Best New Writer.  I ended up getting that book from the library and reading the whole thing.  I’m so glad I did.  This is my ranking of the books from favorite to least favorite:

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Book 2 by Emil Ferris – This is the most remarkable work.  The art is reminiscent of Linda Barry of “Ernie Pook’s Comeek” fame, but a lot of it is very detailed.  The story is about a young girl named Karen, probably early teens, of Puerto Rican descent beginning to question her family situation and explore her sexuality.  She imagines herself a werewolf and a detective.  She lives with her much older brother in the late sixties after her mother died of cancer.  They live in the slums of Chicago.  She’s an artist like her brother, hence the resulting graphic novel.  She uncovers the truth about the death of her brother’s twin, their father, their ties to organized crime, and the mysterious life and death of the Jewish woman from the apartment upstairs.  The story is both beautiful and brutal, so much more than a thirteen-year-old should have to deal with.  She processes it all through her art and storytelling.

The Deep Dark by Molly Knox Ostertag – This is the book that was only an excerpt, and for some reason, wouldn’t load on my e-reader.  So I got the book from my library and was so glad I did!!  It’s about Mags, a young Latina lesbian living with her mother and sickly grandmother.  She’s out to her family and is having a secret affair with one of her friends who has a boyfriend.  Out of the blue, an old childhood friend comes back to town to visit.  She was still a boy when they were young but now is a trans woman.  She wants to kindle a romance with Mags out of their close relationship as children.  However, Mags has a supernatural secret that she’s not supposed to share with anyone, a dragon-like killer creature she was born with.  Mags has to deal with her growing love for her childhood friend and the lonely life she envisioned for herself because of the creature. Gut wrenching and and very imaginative.

We Call Them Giants written by Kieron Gillen, art by Stephanie Hans, lettering by Clayton Cowles – I believe this is just the first of a series, as it left some questions for an ongoing story.  One day a rather sardonic young woman wakes up to find everyone else has disappeared.  She finds another teen, a girl from school, and eventually, a violent gang of other survivors.  Lori and Annette search for food and try to hide from the gang.  One day, they see several meteor-like things plummet to the Earth and find they are inhabited by giant beings, one red, one green.  The red one ignores them until it begins leaving food out for them.  Figuring this as a lure, they are hesitant but hungry.  Eventually, they are captured.  The red giant doesn’t cause any harm, but Lori doesn’t trust them while Annette does.  Still, the cognitive dissonance makes Lori escape, discovering an evil intent of the green one.  Well drawn and imaginative.  I liked that it was a little different than your typical alien invasion story.

The Hunger and the Dusk: Vol. 1 written by G. Willow Wilson, art by Chris Wildgoose – I really liked this story.  It definitely helps to start at the beginning.  It’s still kind of standard fare, but I got engrossed in the relationships.  There’s an Orc lord who has a marriage arranged with an Orc woman from another tribe.  The marriage is of course political, though there is something beginning to grow between them.  There’s also a Human warrior who leads one of the last groups of surviving Humans.  As a gesture of good faith, an Orc tribe gives him a female healer Orc to take as they try to battle the grotesque mutant Orcs.  All their journeys are just beginning, but if I were a graphic novel person, I’d definitely follow up on this one.

Monstress, Vol 9: The Possessed, written by Marjorie Liu, art by Sana Takeda – Jumping in at volume 9 is definitely difficult.  I had trouble following the multiple story threads but got the general idea.  The story follows a half-wolf young woman has one piece of an ancient powerful mask.  She has found three others, but last one is being held by her maniacal father.  In addition, there is a race of human-like cats.  A group of them have come back from traveling in parallel universes and they are pretty sure they are in their home universe.  They are somehow involved with the half-wolf woman.  I wish I had the time to start from the beginning to catch up on what’s really going on.  The art is good, a little on the anime side.  I felt this was pretty standard fare for a fantasy graphic novel in terms of content and art. 

Star Trek: Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way, written by Ryan North, art by Chris Fenoglio.  Interesting, but frustrating build your own adventure featuring many of the characters from Lower Decks.  I was really excited about this one, but it felt kid-ified.  The humor of the show was not really there.  The premise is that Mariner wakes up every day and makes choices that all seem to lead to her getting killed.  But then she wakes up and starts all over again.  You, as Mariner, have to keep going back and trying different paths through the story to figure out what’s going on and help her survive.  I spent quite a while on this and eventually did a search on the internet for a cheat tree of all the choices to get to the end.  When I finally did finish it successfuly, I was tired of it. 

That’s my list.  The top four all vied for the top spot as I read them, but Deep Dark stood out as the best, being most intense and thought provoking.  Next up is going to be the YA novels and the Best New Writer awards.  I don’t know if I’ll be able to read everything before the July 23^rd deadline, but I’m going to do my darndest.