Comicon’s Best Colorists Of 2025
by Erik Amaya
Welcome to Comicon.com’s Best of the Year Awards, gathering the best comics and comics talent of the long-yet-short year that was 2025. This year, we will be awarding in the following categories: Best Comic Series, Best Original Graphic Novels and Collected Editions, Best Single Comic Issues, Best Writers, Best Artists, Best Cover Artists, Best Colorists, Best Digital/Webcomics, and Most Progressive Comics.
Contributors to Comicon’s Best of the Year Awards this year include: Rachel Bellwoar, Richard Bruton, Tito W. James, Olly MacNamee, Tom Smithyman, and Tony Thornley.
The following are Comicon’s 5 Colorists of 2025.
Matthew Wilson
Wilson isn’t just one of the best color artists in comics, but he’s also a chameleon — which is appropriate for a color artist. On Incredible Hulk, he created a grimy hellscape amplifying the horror of the Hulk’s battle with the queen of monsters. In Amazing X-Men, he gave depth and life to a dystopian superhero future, making the title stand out among an otherwise lackluster event. In Bug Wars, he took Mahmud Asrar’s already stellar line work and turned it into a vibrant living world. There aren’t many colorists who are a selling point for a book, but Wilson is absolutely on that shortlist.
— Tony Thornley
Mattheus Lopes
Lopez provided a great application of color to comics this year. For example: his work on The Seasons from Image Comics helps the art evoke cartoonist Winsor McCay. Without Lopes doing the coloring on this particular title, it would probably not elicit McCay’s work to the extent it does. His primary strengths seem to be focusing on mood and balancing the palette. Lopes is trying to apply hues in a way that works with characters’ feelings and the respective atmosphere of the settings. It also means he maintains a sense of light and dark when selecting the colors. In any case, Lopes demonstrates a great understanding of the job.
— Benjamin Hall
Dave McCaig
McCaig is a colourist whose work enhances the line art of any comic book artist he embellishes. A talent who knows when to adopt a limited colour palette or when to use subtle gradients to help create a sense of depth, his work respects the art first and foremost. He has the eye of a cinematographer in the way he approaches colouring, adding to the tone of each book he took on this year and, in particular, The Walking Dead. A comic designed to be read in black and white, but wonderfully, unobtrusively coloured by McCaig.
— Olly MacNamee
Marte Gracia
Gracia made his name alongside Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva on House of X/Powers of X. He’s continued over the last six years to grow and evolve, and 2025 just continues to illustrate why he’s frequently on our Best Of list. This year in particular saw him step onto Amazing Spider-Man with Larraz and give Peter Parker’s world an incredible life — both the mundane New York City buzz and the space adventure Peter was thrust into. We always love his work, and continue to love watching him grow.
— Tony Thornley
Tomeu Morey
Morey is here for his work in Gotham City, and that alone is enough. After years of working on the Batman books, you’d think a colorist’s work may get stale. Morey doesn’t just keep it fresh, but he evolves with each incarnation. While in the past, his Gotham was full of neon red, his work on the 2025 relaunch shifts into electric blue — giving the pages a crackle — and then tilts the colors again into something much warmer with the emotional, human moments. He doesn’t get enough credit because his body of work is much more limited, but he’s one of the best in the industry right now.
— Tony Thornley
