The Best Superhero Comics of 2024–2025: 7 Electric Reads Worth Your Time

Ah, I love comic books! I know a bit about them, having been a reader since the mid 80’s, and I wanted to write something that would be an industry update for those curious about the best superhero comics 2024 and 2025 has produced.

There is a ton of content being released every week, and for those that love to stick to their favorite heroes or their favorite comic companies, this post may not be for you. These picks are for people who are looking for some of the best writing and artwork in superhero comics in recent years. It may not have to be serious, but it does have to be good. It also has to be fun to read for a committed or casual fan, and one should not have to be an expert in the continuity of the comic over the past 20 years to be able to pick up and enjoy either.

This is not a list of Eisner-winning comics, this isn’t criticism or ranking. It’s a short list of superhero comics that are doing good work right now. I have thought through and personally curated every title. The single most important criterion is that my standard of quality be met. I’ve put together my top 7 picks and include links about where to buy them, either in physical form or on Kindle. Let’s get started.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Hickman/Checchetto)

Ultimate Spider-Man is the best Spider-Man run in years because Hickman and Checchetto proved you can strip away decades of formula and still capture everything essential about the character—you just need a mortgage, two kids, and the realization your entire destiny was literally stolen from you. This is the Spider-Man run for readers who aged out of origin retellings: Peter is 35 when he finally gets the radioactive spider that should’ve bit him decades ago, and every swing becomes a choice between family dinners and saving a world already rigged by the Maker’s top-down control.​

Checchetto’s cinematic layouts make New York feel suffocating and watched, while Hickman leans into existential dread—the “missing piece” ache of a life lived wrong—without graphic content. Superhero violence stays PG-13; the brutal stuff is conceptual (stolen agency, systemic oppression as invisible architecture). It’s currently ongoing and essential reading if you thought Spider-Man had nothing new to say—start with Vol. 1: Married With Children.

The Power Fantasy (Gillen, Wijngaard)

The Power Fantasy is the most politically sophisticated superhero comic in quite a while—a Cuban Missile Crisis thriller wearing a cape that’s cynical, razor-tense, and obsessed with who gets to threaten whom. In Gillen’s world, “superpowered” has a chilling technical meaning: someone with the destructive capacity of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and there are only six on Earth. Survival depends on them never coming into open conflict, turning every handshake into a matter of deterrence math and every alliance into a potential apocalypse.​​ This is superhero comics for readers who understand power isn’t what you do—it’s what you could do, and who believes you’ll do it.​​

Wijngaard’s bold design and color sell the unreality of living next to walking warheads, while Gillen treats superpowers as ideology-driven brinkmanship rather than fistfights. The violence and tension are psychological and geopolitical rather than graphic, but the cynicism and Cold War paranoia make this squarely mature-reader territory. It’s currently ongoing from Image Comics, with Vol. 1: The Superpowers, and essential if you want superhero books that trust you to think.

Fantastic Four (North/De Caria)

Fantastic Four is the smartest superhero book Marvel has published in I don’t know how long. Ryan North treats monthly issues like a short-story collection where every issue is a complete adventure with its own narrative trick—stories told from aliens’ perspectives, from a sentient computer’s POV, with mystery narrators you don’t identify until the last page. He’s written over 20 full stories in the time most writers would tell 3 arcs, and the tricks work because the character depth is rock-solid: Alicia Masters’ artist’s intuition solves problems Reed’s genius misses, and the team’s intimacy literally saves the day.

When danger hits, it’s through impossible physics and moral dilemmas rather than gore, keeping the tone warm and genuinely all-ages without dumbing down the sci-fi weirdness. Currently ongoing and essential if you thought monthly comics couldn’t pull off literary ambition—start with Vol. 1: Whatever Happened to the Fantastic Four?

Radiant Black (Higgins, Costa)

Radiant Black is a cheat since it began in 2021, but it’s still ongoing and is the best all-ages superhero book in years. Higgins and Costa built a Power Rangers–style cosmic warrior story around Nathan Burnett, a 30-year-old failure who’s broke, back at his parents’ house, and suddenly bonded to the Radiant—a cosmic alien power that can turn his life around if it doesn’t kill him first. The catch: those powers were never meant for him, and their creators want them back.

The fights deliver Power Rangers spectacle and kinetic pacing, but the book earns its stakes through real weight—money stress, consequence, desperation meeting cosmic responsibility. It’s superhero violence without gore, but mature enough to acknowledge adulthood hurts. Essential if you thought all-ages books had to choose between fun and depth. Start with Radiant Black Vol 1, or try Radiant Black: Massive Edition for the universe-launching run.

Dawnrunner (Ram V/Cagle)

Dawnrunner is the best mecha comic in recent times because it treats the pilot-machine bond as body horror and a story about connection simultaneously, and they both work. Ram V built a world where humanity turned the apocalypse into an industry—giant monsters attack, so we built giant war machines and made their pilots into gladiators. Ace pilot Anita Marr bonds with the prototype Dawnrunner, and that cockpit link becomes biomechanical fusion: organic tissue meeting machine in ways beautiful, horrifying, and inescapable.

Cagle’s layouts give us blockbuster scale without losing the quiet, human beats, and the violence is mecha-combat spectacle with biomechanical imagery rather than graphic gore. The emotional weight hits the hardest: grief, parenthood anxiety, and your body becoming a weapon against your will. The complete five-issue run is available in hardcover or on Kindle from Dark Horse. If you want Pacific Rim energy with Arrival-style emotional devastation, start here.

Absolute Batman (Snyder/Dragotta)

Absolute Batman is another great argument that you can still revolutionize a character everyone thinks they know. Snyder and Dragotta gave us a Bruce Wayne who’s an underdog again, scrappy and furious and built like a wrecking ball, and somehow it feels like discovering Batman for the first time. Strip away the generational wealth and reimagine him as a working-class engineer obsessed with fixing a city that keeps breaking, and suddenly Gotham’s rot has real teeth. This isn’t just “what if Bruce was poor”—it’s a total rethinking of what Batman represents when he’s chaos pointed at the powerful instead of order protecting the status quo.​

Dragotta’s bold, kinetic layouts sell the new scale and brutality—DC rates this Teen Plus, with intense Batman-level violence and grim street menace, but not gore as spectacle. The themes skew working-class rage and systemic corruption harder than any Bat-book in memory. Currently ongoing from DC Comics, and essential reading if you thought superhero reinventions were exhausted—start with Vol. 1: The Zoo.

Absolute Wonder Woman (Thompson/Sherman)

Absolute Wonder Woman is the best Wonder Woman book in years because it does the impossible–it makes Diana feel dangerous, mythic and new without losing the character’s heart. Thompson’s reinvention is ruthlessly simple: Diana wasn’t raised on Themyscira but in Hell itself, and that single change transforms every familiar beat into something sharper and stranger. This isn’t paradise-lost innocence meeting a cruel world; it’s hope forged in darkness, which makes Diana’s heroism feel earned rather than inherited.​​

Sherman’s jagged, expressionistic art gives the book visceral weight that makes monsters, magic, and emotion feel dangerous up close. DC rates it Teen Plus with intense myth-horror imagery and hard-edged action, but it’s not gory. The darkness serves the story’s emotional architecture: watching Diana choose compassion after being raised by the damned hits harder than any traditional origin. Currently ongoing from DC Comics and essential if you thought Wonder Woman reinventions were done to death. Start with Vol. 1: The Last Amazon.

Honorable Mention

Batman: Detective Comics–Gotham Nocturne (Ram V/Albuquerque)

The reason DC is here and not on my list has nothing to do with quality. Batman: Detective Comics — Gotham Nocturne is the best Batman comic in years for readers who want the medium pushed to its limits, and completely alienating if you don’t. Ram V structures this as a gothic opera where every choice matters: Batman narrates his own psychological unraveling in dense interior monologue, the same visual ideas keep hammering home meaning (shadows swallowing figures, masks with nothing underneath), and even the lettering changes based on who’s speaking; Barbatos gets script-formatted rectangles instead of normal balloons.

Fans call it “genuinely a work of art” that “leaves me in tears”, detractors find it slow, narration-heavy, and light on traditional detective work.​​ The tone is darker and more introspective than typical Bat-books, prioritizing atmosphere and symbolism over procedural pacing. If you want comics using every tool available—stories that fold back on themselves, pages that argue visually—this is essential. If you want tight mysteries and clear answers, skip it entirely. Start with Vol. 1: Gotham Nocturne: Overture.