By Brian Lindenmuth
Thanks to DSD for having me back.
Years ago, when I ran Spinetingler, I worked the crime comics beat. This year, I’ve been working on a deep-dive project on crime comics (no details to share yet). Every year, there are dozens of crime comics titles released. As a result of that reading and research I realized I had compiled a lengthy list of 2024 crime comics releases. Since I wasn’t seeing much online chatter about them, I wanted to pull together a round-up.
At this point many crime readers know about some of the classic crime comic series and creators from a few years ago. Brian Azzarello’s 100 Bullets, Jason Aaron’s Scalped, David Lapham’s Stray Bullets, and of course Ed Brubaker’s Criminal all come immediately to mind. But there are many other titles and creators worth exploring.
There is a pretty healthy ecosystem for reading digital comics. With library services like Hoopla and Comics Plus to paid services like Viz, Shonen Jump, and Global Comix (yes, that big site too), it’s now easier than ever for readers to have no cost/low cost access to comics. This is great for crime fiction readers if they know what to look for.
Barry Gifford’s book of interconnected stories, Night People, was adapted into a four issue mini-series in 2024? Chris Condon is the writer for all four issues with a different artist for each one. When I discovered this, I was surprised that I hadn’t heard anything about it. [Night People by Chris Condon (Oni Press)].
Mad Cave Studios had multiple crime or crime adjacent titles in 2024 (A Phone Call Away, Deer Editor, Dick Tracy, Mugshots, Sanction, Kosher Mafia). Writers with substantial bodies of crime comics work gave us more stories (Ed Brubaker, David Lapham, and Gary Phillips). 2024 gave us: two books featuring a crime on a snowy mountaintop (Blow Away, Confession), two books about Jewish gangsters (Kosher Mafia, Nice Jewish Boys), a couple of anthropomorphic crime stories (Deer Editor, Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees), and a couple of cults and cult extractions (Deprog, Houses of the Unholy).
I haven’t read everything here yet and I included titles that were new in 2024, titles that continued or were collected in 2024, and cross genre titles. I may not have captured everything that was released but I probably came close. Here are my favorite crime comics from 2024. Hopefully it points readers towards some great crime fiction.
It was a good year for crime comics. Looking ahead, the 2025 list is already shaping up too.
A Phone Call Away by Rich Douek & Russell Mark Olson (Mad Cave Studios)
A Phone Call Away is about a family whose child went missing and was killed years ago. They now have another child and stream their lives as a reality show, banking off of the tragedy. When something happens to their second child, the truth will be revealed. Sometimes thrillers are delicate. The reader has to buy into a specific set of circumstances and character reactions, and within that framework a very tense story can be told. A Phone Call Away is like that. It’s a short, sharp blast that quickly sets up these characters then sets them against one another in a race against time. Though something tragic happened to this family, we are quickly disabused of the notion that they are good people. If we want these assholes to get comeuppance, what would that look like for these characters? What does resolution for this story look like? It’s one of the narrative questions driving A Phone Call Away.
Blow Away by Zac Thompson & Nicola Izzo (Boom! Studios)
The 1981 movie Blow Out was a remake of the 1966 film Blowup. Both movies deal with the capturing of an image or a sound recording that may contain a crime. Blow Away plays with this idea also. Wildlife videographer Brynne is on Baffin Island trying to capture shots of a bird. Her camera instead appears to capture two climbers scaling a mountain, getting into an altercation, and one going over the edge. What did she see? Was it a murder? Why doesn’t anyone want to take her seriously? Blow Away is an arctic set, psychological thriller that pits one woman against those closest to her.
Chaos in Kinshasa by Thierry Bellefroid & Barly Baruti (Catalyst Press)
Chaos in Kinshasa snuck up on me. Literally. I felt like I was on top of many of the 2024 crime comic releases when this one appeared on the library shelf seemingly out of nowhere. Chaos in Kinshasa is a wonderful tapestry story that uses the Ali vs. Foreman Rumble in the Jungle fight in Zaire as a backdrop. Weaving in and out are the Belgians, the CIA, African leaders, and Muhammad Ali himself. We also meet a woman who wants to escape her family by going to America and a shady cab driver who is much more than he seems. A hustler from Harlem, running away from his own problems by attending the fight, is dropped right in the middle of these heavyweights, players, powerful people, and larger forces. With so many moving pieces and competing goals, the story moves along at a nice pace but also has a lot of depth and knowledge about this time period. The lush, watercolor art style really brings the story to life. Chaos in Kinshasa may have come out of left field, but this kinetic geo-political espionage tale is worth checking out.
Cold Hard Cash: A Martha Chainey Escapade by Gary Phillips & Adriana Melo (Comixology)
Martha Chainey is called in by an old friend. A charity has been robbed of a significant donation and Marth is to bring the money back. It’s a lot of money though and different groups of people have their eyes on it. Gary Phillips has been at this for a long time, producing a significant body of crime comics work in addition to his novels. Cold Hard Cash is a two-fisted, action packed pulp story with a leftist bent. One of the things that makes Martha Chainey such a fun character is that she can be put into so many different types of stories. Hence the word “Escapade” in the subtitle. By the end of the story, she’s assembled quite the band of character around her. There should be many more Martha Chainey comics escapades. Like a pulpier cousin of Roxanne Gay’s comic The Banks.
Confession by Nobuyuki Fukumoto and illustrated by Kaiji Kawaguchi (Kodansha)
You can be forgiven if you haven’t heard of Confession in your 2024 book travels since it was just released on December 17th. Confession is a single volume manga released for the first time in English in 2024. Confession has a clean set-up. Two friends are mountain climbing. A snow storm has taken a serious turn, one has sustained a serious injury, and they can’t find a nearby cabin. The injured friend, believing he’s about to die, confesses to a murder. The storm clears and they are able to find the cabin and call for help. These two men are now trapped with each other in an empty secluded cabin with that confession lingering between them. Confession is a wonderful psychological ticking clock thriller set in a single location. There’s action, drama, and suspense as the two men navigate their new deadly reality and battle for resolution before aid arrives. I was not surprised to learn this had been adapted into a movie (which I haven’t seen yet).
Deer Editor by Ryan K Lindsay Sami Kivelä (Mad Cave)
The main character Bucky works the crime beat for the local paper and he’s investigating a John Doe case that leads to some dark and unexpected places. Bucky is also a deer. Anthropomorphic comics, crime or otherwise, are a well established convention. Hell, there’s another great one on the list here. Deer Editor is in the Blacksad tradition (worth checking out if you haven’t). Bucky is a rough and tumble hardboiled protagonist who isn’t afraid to get his hands messy to get to the truth. I won’t give away specifics but there is a supernatural turn part way through the story. It’s played out in a grounded way and just adds to the pulpy fun. Some of the side characters could use a bit more fleshing out and in an ideal world there would be further Bucky adventures to allow this world to grow.
Deprog by Tina Horn & Lisa Sterle (Dead Sky Publishing)
Deprog brings Raymond Chandler and Marlowe into the new century by way of Tate Debs, “a hardboiled hard drinking leather loving dyke detective”. Deprog is a 21st century spin on an old story. When Vera, the sexy femme, shows up at Debs’ makeshift office in the back of a video store, purring in her ear for help, the reader knows she will get that help and that she is dangerous, because after all, that’s the noirboiled way. Deprog is, at least partly, a story that updates the detective story into the new century while also acknowledging that it’s a part of the hardboiled detective lineage. It knows the detective story form and says something new with the given syllables. It knows its detective fiction tropes and characters. It also knows how to tweak and update them for the modern moment.
Dick Tracy by Alex Segura, Michael Moreci, & Geraldo Borges (Mad Cave Studios)
This incarnation of Dick Tracy is a realistic take that plays out like a classic gangster story. The writers do a great job of incorporating many of the elements and characters from the Dick Tracy world. As everything unfolds we get a compelling crime story that touches on themes like ptsd, land development deals, debates about law and justice, and soldiers returning from war. Dick Tracy is a two-fisted, yellow trench coat wearing, action packed crime story. Don’t miss it.
The Fable by Katsuhisa Minami (Kodansha)
The Fable is a manga title that ran from November 2014 to November 2019. In April 2024, Kodansha started releasing The Fable in omnibus editions. Five omnibus editions have been released so far. The Fable was also adapted into an anime.
The man known as The Fable is a legendary hitman. His killing prowess is so great that the mere mention of his name strikes fear into the criminal underworld. He has killed so many people that his handler decides he needs to lay low for a bit. The Fable gets sent away to Osaka for one year, to live anonymously under the protection of another gang. He is given strict instructions to relax, enjoy his earnings, and, above all else, no killing.
The Fable is a yakuza story that operates in a comedic and slice of life mode. Fable and his assistant settle into their new “normal” lives. They pick out curtains and pets, go on dates, and form relationships with the Yakuza group offering them protection. There is a push and pull tension present as Fable tries to not do the one thing he has done so well for so long and that tension is present in the story structure also, going back and forth between these domestic and violent modes. Your enjoyment of these broad slice of life scenes will depend on how much you come to love these characters and this set-up. The tension is pretty well balanced and when the story threatens to become mundane some yakuza intrigue or violent gangster shit comes along to shake things up. I was hooked on The Fable from the very beginning.
Houses of the Unholy by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
Houses of the Unholy starts with the Satanic Panic in the 80’s as the backstory of the main character. In the present, she’s just extracted a young woman from a cult. She’s terse, closed off, a hard ass. When the girl escapes and the cops arrest her, she gets put into the system. Which brings the FBI to her. She gets sucked into a case that will make her confront her past and question everything around her. Houses of the Unholy may start out with the satanic panic but the story connects the dots between what happened then to churches and religion and to the internet and online conspiracy stuff and how people get sucked into these things. Natalie, who went through something horrific and traumatic as a child, will have to relive it all as she gets pulled into the darkness that she’d been trying to hold at bay for so long. It’s a riveting story with lessons that are still applicable today, perhaps even more so. Brubaker knows his crime noir stuff so you know this is a dark ride that won’t end well.
Light It, Shoot It by Graham Chaffee (Fantagraphic Books)
A young man gets out of prison in a small town. He committed a terrible crime that affected the entire town. Everyone hates him and wants him gone. With a pocket full of cash from his parents, he leaves town to head to Hollywood where his brother is working. This becomes the fuse that leads us to the sleazy world of Hollywood in the 1970’s and all of the shady characters at its fringes.
The studio owner and his business partner are up to their necks in a film deal being financed by gangsters. The gangsters have a plan to recoup their money and maybe some ulterior motives of their own. The older brother, a cameraman, is just a cog in this machine but that doesn’t stop beautiful young women from trying to use him to break into the industry. This mix of characters and motivations is already combustible when the younger brother unexpectedly shows up.
The first half of the book takes time to set this world and those who populate it up. It’s in the second half of the book when things pop off and violent confrontations occur.
Visually, the art style drops you right into L.A. in the 70’s. Some of the characters are visually based on actors of that time (one character’s visual inspiration, for example, was clearly Vincent Cassell). If Boogie Nights meets Get Shorty as a mean little 70’s crime tale in sleazy Hollywood sounds like your jam, this is the book for you.
Manchuria Opium Squad by Tsukasa Monma & Shikako
Manchuria Opium Squad is an ongoing manga series that started in April 2020 and continues to the present. Volumes 1-3 were released in 2024 and volume 4 has a scheduled January 2025 release. So far, I’ve only read the first volume.
For various reasons, Manchuria Opium Squad seems to be pretty much off the radar screens of most readers. Which is a shame, because it’s a real hidden gem. First, manga isn’t included enough in the crime comics conversation, to the extent there is one (which I’m hoping to fix), second, Kodansha is releasing it as a digital only title for now, which limits its exposure. Even among manga readers this one just doesn’t seem to have much chatter out there. Other titles have made the jump from digital only to print, I’m hoping Manchuria Opium Squad does too.
Manchuria Opium Squad is a historical crime story set in Manchuria 1937. Eighteen year old Isamu is sent to the front lines in the battle with ChinaHe survives a close quarters gunshot wound to the face that damages one of his eyes, leaves him scarred, and increases his sense of smell. He’s sent to a State run farm to grow provisions for the army. There his mother falls ill and he needs money to buy her medicine. When he discovers a hidden garden of opium poppies, he decides to take all of his skills and enter the opium trade. Once he teams up with the ambitious daughter of a Chinese mob boss, let the empire building begin.
This is a story epic in scope. So these early chapters are really about starting to introduce the characters and build their relationships. These early chapters are compelling and do a great job hooking the reader and pulling them into this world and its story. Clearly there’s a lot more story to come and I can’t wait to see what the rest of the volumes bring.
Mugshots by Jordan Thomas & Chris Matthews (Mad Cave Studios)
Mugshots is one of my favorite crime stories of the year. The story opens with a young woman being snatched off the street. ‘Who took her and why’ and ‘who she is and who she’s related to?’ will become the questions that drive the story. Her uncle is an underworld tough guy who left town years ago. He loves his niece very much and his return will light up the seaside town of Brighton.
The works of crime writer Ted Lewis are in the DNA of mugshots. The hard man returning to town is reminiscent of Get Carter and the seaside setting recalls the novel GBH, where one of the two timelines is labeled as The Sea.
Mugshots is a Brit Grit hard man story through and through. It’s like the story of Get Carter filtered through the art style of Darwyn Cooke’s Parker adaptations. The story proper is filled with menacing characters and digs deep into the emotional and familial connections between these characters. History has bound these people together and now all roads converge as scores will be settled once and for all.
My Dear Detective: Mitsuko's Case Files by Natsumi Ito (Seven Seas Entertainment)
My Dear Detective ran from May 2021 until May 2024. The first print volume was released in English in October 2024 with subsequent print volumes scheduled for release.
My Dear Detective is a historical mystery set in the 1930’s, at the beginning of the Showa era. Hoshino Mitsuko is Japan’s first woman detective. Everyday she fights rampant sexism and misogyny. Japan at this time is in a period of rapid change, however old customs and beliefs remain present. Mitsuko is very good at her job and determined to be successful. She partners up with a local waiter who isn’t quite what he seems. Together they will solve cases and try to navigate this important time in Japanese history.
Mitsuko is a great character with wide appeal. What surprised me about the first case, in a good way, was how queer friendly it was. So not only is she a progressive character but there are some progressive themes woven into the story also. My Dear Detective is a wonderful read. It’s set in an interesting period of time, the characters are great to spend time with, and the cases that come along are compelling. Mystery readers should definitely consider adding My Dear Detective to their tbrs.
Profane by Peter Milligan & Raül Fernandez (Boom! Studios)
It’s hard to talk about what Profane is without spoiling it, especially because we’re discovering things at the same time as the protagonist. I’m going to risk spoiling the set-up and issue one a bit hoping it entices and knowing that the rest of the series is devoted to expanding on the idea in fun and unexpected ways. The protagonist is a PI named Will Profane. Some quirks and odd occurrences happen in the first issue as he investigates a murder case. By the end of the first issue it’s revealed that Profane is a character in a book and his author was the man who was murdered. Profane is an imaginative meta narrative, hardboiled detective story with a diverse cast. Each issue introduces new ideas and it’s clear that Milligan is a fan of the detective genre but also sees it with open eyes.
Sanction by Ray Fawkes and Antonio Fuso (Mad Cave Studios)
Sanction takes the classic noirboiled story structure of a detective pulling on the strings of a “simple” case that winds up leading higher to the halls of power and drops it right into 1987 Leningrad. On New Year's Day, a young woman’s body is found. The hotshot detective shows up but doesn’t want the case. He throws it to a colleague with a lesser clearance rate and instructions on how to wrap it up quickly: find a drunk and get him to confess. Detective Boris Dimitrovich is a nice guy, happily married, but he doesn’t work well in the Soviet System. The party line is that Leningrad is a paradise and when there is a crime, the people’s police are swift to bring justice. In other words, there is no crime because we say so. The reality is, of course, much different. Dimitrovich, can’t let certain details go and feels compelled to actually investigate the crime assigned to him. He can’t or won’t play the game.
Sanction is a great piece of crime fiction that uses a familiar form to place the reader into a different time and place. In these types of stories, the house always wins, but how the house wins here is particularly devious. By the end, it’s hard not to think of the two police detectives as having a mix of traits from the three central characters in James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential or the film Blue Collar. Might pair nicely with Gorky Park.
She’s Running on Fumes by Dennis Hopeless & Tyler Jenkins (Comixology Original)
She’s Running on Fumes is a kind of crime memoir (memnoir?) where writer Hopeless takes the family lore and stories of his childhood and shapes them into a narrative. The result is a crime story informed by real life.
The narrator describes his father in the following way: “My dad was like a pirate ship captain. No moral compass to speak of, but quick on the uptake and charming as the day is long. A white trash cult of personality–And King Shit to every low rent criminal in town.” After an accident, his mother is now on the hook for some missing product. She starts a chop shop and winds up being much better suited to the criminal life than her husband but really her main interest is in taking care of her and her kids.
You know what, Hopeless himself provides the best set-up for She’s Running on Fumes:
“When I was 3-years-old my mother started a chop shop with a half-wit junkyarder named Corn Dog. Dad was the criminal. Mom had never broken a law in her life, but with him brain-damaged, fifty-thousand dollars of cocaine gone missing and hospital bills piling up, grand theft auto was our only hope. She’s Running on Fumes is based on the true story of how my mom lied, cheated and stole her way through dad’s tire fire and the freedom she found on the other side. The story is based on family stories and my father’s near-fatal accident from when I was a toddler. As I grew older, details were added that made it clear my father was a criminal and many of the events of my childhood were driven by his criminal dealings. The seeds of the idea came from asking my mother about these old stories as an adult and getting the real dirt.”
If that sounds intriguing, it is. This isn’t a traditional crime story narrative but it has tons of lived in, life experience details that make for a hell of a compelling read.
The Troublesome Guest of Sotomura Detective Agency by Sakae Kusama (Tokyo Pop)/Mobsters in Love by Chiyoko Origami (Square Enix)
I’ve always been curious about the outer edges of a genre. Where things get blurry, intersect with other genres, or character types or story beats from one genre intersect with another genre. In crime this typically comes about with the intersection or merging of the genre with horror/science fiction/fantastical elements. These cross genre efforts work so well together, and are so common, that readers just accept them.
Here, we have another cross genre crime story, but it is one that your average crime fiction reader likely hasn’t come across before (but their queer friends may have), crime fiction and yaoi/BL. Yaoi, or Boys Love (BL for short) is a genre “ that depicts homoerotic relationships between male characters”. If you ever watched or read a crime fiction movie/TV show/book and thought “oh yeah, there’s something more going on between those two” or “what if they kissed”, then yaoi with mystery/crime fiction characters and story elements might be for you. Generally speaking, these stories can range from spicy to wholesome. Which works out nicely since one of these is spicy and one is wholesome.
The Troublesome Guest of Sotomura Detective Agency
Matsuda Kei is a PI who takes cases from people in his community. The cases are pretty small scale, he's just helping people out in his neighborhood. Kamiko, a former classmate, insinuates himself into Matsuda's life and business. They start a physical relationship almost immediately. Much to Matsuda's chagrin, Kamiko winds up helping out on the cases and he's got some good ideas. Over time, this physical situationship turns to them catching feelings for each other.
This works well as a piece of mystery/crime fiction as there are actual cases being worked and solved in between the evenings spent having on the page sex. In the home stretch of the book a couple of the cases wind up fitting nicely together to create a longer story arc. My only real complaint is that sometimes some of the panels lack clarity (either about who is talking or what is happening) and the story or scene becomes a little muddled as a result.
Now let’s jump over to the wholesome side of the equation with Mobsters in Love.
Mobsters in Love is a will they/won’t they rom com that uses crime fiction characters and a crime fiction world as its setting. Volume 1 was released in English for the first time in 2024.
Akihiro Kashima is our mc. He’s the right hand man of a Yakuza group and he’s hopelessly in love with the boss. This leads to all sorts of funny scenarios where Akihiro has to be in close proximity with the boss or misinterprets something said to him. Mobsters in Love repurposes crime fiction character types for another type of story, the rom com. But even though its primary focus is on the rom com elements, it is also crime fiction. We don’t question crime stories told in other modes, like humor humor, so why should we question ones told in a romance mode. The bottom line is that Mobsters in Love is sweet, funny, entertaining, and made me laugh.
Shout-outs: Continuing and Collected Crime Comics
Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees by Patrick Horvath & Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (IDW Publishing)
Beneath the Trees where Nobody Sees was collected for the first time in 2024. It's pitched as "Dexter meets Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy Town" and yep, that about sums it up.
The first issue is great at setting everything up. The characters are all loveable, cute animals. Our main character, a bear, is a beloved member of a small town. Walking down main street, she has kind words for everyone she passes and receives many kind words in return. People are friendly, kind, and help each other out. The epitome and idealized version of small town living. Within a couple of pages, our sweet main character goes to the big city, lures someone into helping her, drugs them, and takes them into the country to murder and dismember them. She then heads back to town to resume her comfortable life, all urges satiated for now. Her life is neat and orderly. She has a system. She has a plan and works her plan. No muss no fuss. Until the day of the big town parade when a murdered and dismembered body is nailed to one of the floats and uncovered in front of the entire town. While everyone is freaking out, our main character is having a different type of crisis. Someone’s fucking with her on her turf and this little public display is going to bring unwanted attention to her activities. So she has to find the other killer first.
The art is a real highlight here. It looks like it could be art from a children’s book. It’s lush and warm and inviting. It’s like a lush children’s book. These visuals in service of a visceral, and violent story create a tension that elevates the entire project. Beneath the Trees is a full dark story told in an unexpected way and is worth checking out.
Blacking Out by Chip Mosher & Peter Krause (Dark Horse Comics)
Blacking Out was a Kickstarted project from a couple of years ago. I believe this 2024 Dark Horse release is the title getting a wider release for the first time.
The town is on fire, literally and figuratively. A wildfire rages on in the background. A dead girl. Her rich father stands accused of her murder. The rich father’s attorney hires an alcoholic, disgraced ex-cop. The detective doesn’t need to solve the case, he just needs to find enough to dirty the waters. Once the old juices get flowing. The detective will want to take it further and find out the truth. Is he the right man for the job? Is he ready for the revelations the investigation will uncover?
Candy & Cigarettes by Tomonori Inoue (Seven Seas Entertainment)
Candy & Cigarettes is a manga title that started in January 2017 and ran until May 2021. Seven Seas started releasing volumes in English in 2022 and volumes 7-10 were released in 2024. I only just started reading it a couple of months ago.
Candy and Cigarettes is about a retired cop who needs to pay for his grandson’s medical treatment. He joins a shadow government organization where he’s partnered with an 11 year old girl who is a master assassin and experienced killer. His job is to assist her as needed.
Candy & Cigarettes is a fun tweak on the classic Lone Wolf & Cub character dynamics. Typically, in stories with those character types (father/father figure & child/childfigure), the father is the badass and violent character and the child is there to be protected. Here, while the father figure is capable of handling himself, the child is actually the violent badass.
While this concept is pulpy and fun, the story is also aware enough to realize that the backstory of an 11 year old master assassin is probably tragic. But even as that starts to get unpacked, Candy & Cigarettes maintains its light touch.
This is a wild, fun ride with an action packed plot that never lets up. The character dynamics and relationships, especially the core two, are funny and tender. Candy & Cigarettes is a total blast and fans of Duane Swierczynski should check this series out.
Don’t Call It Mystery by Yumi Tamura (Seven Seas Entertainment)
Don’t Call it Mystery is a manga title that started in November 2017. Omnibus editions of the title were released in English starting in May 2023. Omnibus editions containing volumes 7-12 were released in English in 2024.
The main character Totonou, a college student, is a Sherlock Holmesian type character that gets pulled into situations where his unique observation skills always affect an outcome. He’s rational and observational but also a bit of a shambling mess like a Columbo figure.
There is something of an episodic feel to the series as Totonou stumbles his way, or is pulled into, the next thing. But the further adventures all feed off of each other, with something happening in one case that will lead to the next case. So there is a growing sense of a wider world being developed and character development that occurs. Japan has a long and rich history of mystery fiction that Don’t Call it Mystery draws from and furthers. It’s easy to see the appeal of this character and his adventures. This logical and deductive character who is constantly getting caught up in golden age mystery-like scenarios. A little off kilter but a very addicting series of books.
The Jump by Wesley Griffith (self-published)
The Jump is an ongoing, self-published hardboiled crime story. Writer & artist Wesley Griffith periodically releases a new issue every few months. He sells them through his site and makes them available on GlobalComix. The Jump has a succinct synopsis that is worth quoting in full: “A chain of violent, chaotic events are set in motion when a low level gangster begs his neighbor to jumpstart his broken down car.”
One of the stand out qualities of The Jump is the visual style. It’s like if you take this pulpy/crime story and filter it through an underground comix style. There’s nothing else like it out there. The Jump is the best kept secret in crime comics and crime fiction at the moment and one of my favorite crime things going.
Killing Stalking by Koogi (Seven Seas Entertainment)
Killing Stalking is a South Korean manhwa. It started off as a webtoon that ran from March 2016-March 2019. Seven Seas released the first English language volume in July 2022. Volumes 6-8 were released in 2024.
The vol. 1 set-up is simple. A young gay man has a crush on a popular college classmate. He becomes obsessed and breaks into his crush’s home. Inside, as he fantasizes about his classmate and what they can do together, he makes a horrific discovery: someone tied up in the cellar. Then the classmate shows up and traps him.
Killing Stalking is a dark, brutal, violent, psycho-sexual story. The word transgressive gets tossed around in a way that dilutes its meaning, Killing Stalking is an actually transgressive story. With all of that said, it might be surprising to learn that this is a very popular and acclaimed series of books written by a female author. While it may not be for everyone it is a compelling story that goes in very unexpected directions. I may need to take a break in between volumes with some lighter fare, but I definitely want to keep going. There is nothing else like it out there.
Newburn by Chip Zdarsky and Jacob Phillips (Image)
Newburn is an ex-cop turned PI. The major crime families in NY keep him on retainer to investigate any problems that may arise in their dealings with each other. He calls himself “a U.N. Inspector wandering through a war zone.” When he brings on a new employee, we get to see the inner workings of this arrangement. The set-up may be a little over the top but it’s executed with a straight face and the result is a compelling crime story. Volume 2, collecting issues 9-16, was released in 2024.
Shout-outs: Cross Genre titles
The Deviant by James Tynion IV and Joshua Hixson (Image Comics)
The Deviant Vol. 1, collecting issues 1-4, was released in 2024.
December 2023. Michael is researching for his next graphic novel project. He interviews a man who is serving life for the murder of two young men 50 years ago in December 1973. The older man was working as the mall Santa and the two young men were his elves. When illicit photographs of the young men were found in his house he was arrested for their murder. For 50 years he has maintained that he didn’t kill them. Now, the murders are starting up again.
The Deviant spends time exploring the commonalities of these two men through their interview sessions and the unfolding of the story. Both of these men are gay and both have a darkness in them. The story is methodically paced as things in the present build and things in the past are revealed to the reader. Clearly there’s more to the murders and more to both of these men. Evocative and haunting, while the story is grounded in reality, it’s the explicitness of the murder and crime scene imagery that pushes this into horror territory. Worth checking out.
In Perpetuity by Maria Hoey and Peter Hoey (Top Shelf Comix)
In Perpetuity is a cross-genre story with fairly heavy crime elements. It’s a noirboiled story set in a kind of mid-20th Century afterlife. Jim, our main character, leads a mundane life. When he discovers he can cross over to the living, his world opens up and he starts being a kind of courier for criminal elements. The woman he connects with in the mortal realm gets caught up in a larger conspiracy of corruption. The bones of this story and many of the visual stylings are rooted in classic noir films and stories and this afterlife noir is worth tracking down.
Invasive by Cullen Bunn & Jesús Hervás (Oni Press)
The collected edition of Invasive (issues 1-4) was released in 2024. Invasive takes the reader into the underworld of surgery addiction and illegal surgery operations. The main character is a high level surgeon. Her daughter disappeared and reappeared in a catatonic state with her vocal cords removed. Her daughter isn’t the only one that has mysteriously been left mutilated. Whatever the hell is going on out there, she wants to get to the bottom of it. The art is a real high point here, as the cover image suggests. Definitely not for the faint of heart. Fans of Brian Evenson should check this out too.
The One Hand & The Six Fingers by Ram V, Dan Watters, Laurence Campbell, and Sumit Kumar (Image)
The One Hand and The Six Fingers are two intertwined stories that were published separately. This new edition brings them together as a whole, with alternating issues building the story from each of the main character's perspectives. One side of the story is a grizzled homicide detective on the verge of retirement when an old case rears its ugly head. The other side of the story is an archaeology student who commits a brutal murder one night but has no memory of doing so. All of it takes place in Neo Novena, a retro futuristic city where strange things happen on the edge of vision but disappear when looked at directly. Elements of Blade Runner, Dark City, Matrix, Manhunter, and others are in the DNA but it stands on its own when taken as a whole. A wild ride.
Underheist by David & Maria Lapham (Boom! Studios)
Issue 1 of Underheist came out in December 2023. Issues 2-5 and the collected trade paperback all came out in 2024.
Elsewhere on this list you’ll find books by Gary Phillips and Ed Brubaker, two writers with significant bodies of crime comics work. Here, we get another giant in the field, with David Lapham. When David Lapham has a crime or crime adjacent title out you’ll want to pay attention to it. From the opening pages you know you’re comfortably in David Lapham country before you even read a single word. How? 8 uniform square panels, that signature layout that goes all the way back to Stray Bullets. This is a cross-genre story but I won’t spoil how, as it’s best for the reader to make that journey with the protagonist.
Underheist is a heist story. One of the main components of the heist story is when everything goes to hell. How things go to hell is one of the places where the writer can really flourish. The pressure is on, fractures in the heist team manifest themselves, interpersonal conflicts emerge, not to mention the heat is on. Underheist is a story of the aftermath of a heist and how things go to hell.
Additional 2024 crime comic releases: Blood Oath by Rob Hart, Alex Segura, and Joe Eisma (Dark Horse), Death Drop Drag Assassin by David Hazan & Alex Moore (Scout Comics), Hard Style Juice by Clay McCormack and Ricardo López-Ortiz (Comixology), Pine & Merrimac by Kyle Starks & Fran Galan (Boom! Studios), Rifters by Brian Posehn, Joe Trohman, and Chris Johnson (Image Comics), The Blood Below by Morgan Quaid & Willi Roberts (Markosia Enterprises), The Body Trade by Zac Thompson & Jok (Mad Cave Studios), Vengeance is for the Living by Keenan Marshall Keller & Alex Delaney (Floating World Comics), Huge Detective by Adam Rose & Magenta King (Titan Comics), Torpedo 1972 Enrique Sanchez Abuli & Eduardo Risso (Ablaze), The Mirage by Owen Michael [UK only] (Changeling Studios), Klik Klik Boom by Doug Wagner & Doug Dabbs (Image), Local Man by Tony Fleecs& Tim Seeley (Image), The Way of the Househusband vols. 11-12 by Kousuke Oono (Viz), Sakamoto Days vols. 11-14 by Yuto Suzuki (Viz), The Case of the Bleeding Wall by Joe R. Lansdale, Kasey Lansdale, & Daniele Serra (Dead Sky Publishing), Crocodile Black by Phillip Kennedy Johnson & SOM (Boom! Studios), Prairie Gods by Author: Shane Connery Volk (Mad Cave), Rock a Girl by Louis Wire (self), Calavera PI by Marco Finnegan (Oni Press), Gun Honey: Heat Seeker: Combustion by Charles Ardai & Ace Continuado (Titan), Minky Woodcock: The Girl Called Cthulhu By Cynthia von Buhler (Titan), The Tin Can Society by Peter Warren & Francesco Mobili (Image), Noir is the New Black: Expanded Edition by Various (Fair Square Comics), Exit City by Mark London & Karl Mostert (Mad Cave Studios), Gilt Frame by Margie Kindt, Matt Kindt (Dark Horse), Nice Jewish Boys by Neil Kleid (Comixology), Kosher Mafia by David Hazan & Sami Kivelä (Mad Cave), Red Before Black by Stephanie Phillips & Goran Sudžuka (Boom! Studios), Scalped Omnibus by Jason Aaron & R. M. Guéra (Vertigo),
Sex Criminals: The Complete Edition by Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky (Image)
Honorable Mention
Tripwire Magazine released a Crime Comics issue in 2024.
If you made it this far, what crime comics did you read this year? What crime comics did I miss?
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