New Year, New Comics: Taking Accountability For Our 2025 Resolutions

This isn’t the first time that we’ve run the New Year, New Comics feature. Almost exactly a year ago, we did the same and we thought it would be fun to show some accountability for what we did in the past year. So here’s last year’s features, plus thoughts from each of the authors about how they did.

Diving Into Uncanny X-Men And The Claremont Run — Tony Thornley

This era of Uncanny X-Men set the standard for Marvel. Through the Claremont run, we received such endearing concepts as Wolverine and The New Mutants, which would later give birth to X-Factor, X-Force, Cable, Gambit and a full micro-industry of X-Men comics and other lines like Spider-Man and The Avengers. Its impact didn’t stop at Marvel — it influenced the entirety of the comics industry! The soap operatic Triangle Era of Superman wouldn’t exist as it is without it. 

Of my nerdy goals, this is the one that I did the best. I didn’t complete the run by any means (I even had to take a break for a while … by reading the Claremont run on Fantastic Four), but I’m deep into it, ending the year on the first issue of “Days of Future Past” (Uncanny X-Men #141) and I’m going to keep at it until I hit “Mutant Genesis”.

‘JSA: The Golden Age’ Is A Gem — Benjamin Hall

 It is definitely a good tale for those wanting to see an examination of the United States of America post-World War II through the lenses of fictional characters. 

Re-reading the JSA: The Golden Age (2005) trade for Comicon’s 2025 “New Year, New Comics” I state the following: “…this collection is probably a good entry point for those who want to try a sequential story without worrying about continuity.” In this article I also talk about the United States of America’s problem with bigotry post-World War II and the 21st century. I think these two points are relevant because those who are of middle school age or older can learn a lot from this story. This is because sequential art can raise knowledge levels and fight hate.

Revisiting The Onion In Black Science — Anton Kromoff

The first few issues of the series were nothing short of spectacular. It’s this fun and frantic pulp series that shows family falling apart and in a weird way coming back together in an ever changing landscape of chaotic reality shifting adventure.

I had high hopes and lofty aspirations, but 2025 knew how to dismantle me in really unique and unexpected ways. My free time became a space for home repair. When I finally carved out time to read for pleasure, I found myself caught up in doom scrolling and staring in the middle distance. When I was a younger man, I gave Théoden a lot of grief for being drained of his will to live and joy by the constant whispering of Gríma the Wormtongue, but the siren song of social media, with its one part daily horrors and its one part cat videos and One Piece clips became more manageable than the silence of the page and the sounds the voice bubbles made in my own head.

So those high hopes of re-reading all of Black Science may have been accomplished in some parallel dimension, but here, it was not done. I did manage to read quite a few things that I enjoyed, but Black Science eluded me. There is always 2026 … but I fear, unless there is some brilliant shift in the weight of reality crashing down around us all, I doubt 2026 is going to be the year I learn to relax again. Only time will tell.

A Little Turtle Power With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — Tony Thornley

Frankly, the Turtles of Grayskull toys reignited my love of the Ninja Turtles, and yes, it’s probably turned into a bit of a hyper fixation. However, I’m thrilled to be able to dig in more and more and catch up on what I’ve missed.

And like many a hyper fixation, I completely forgot about it. That’s not to say that I ignored the Turtles this year. I read the first arc of Sophie Campbell’s Mutant Town era. I read the entirety of The Last Ronin (which I did start in 2025). And I read scattered issues of Jason Aaron’s TMNT, Dan Watters’ Shredder and the first issue Gene Yang and Freddie Williams III’s new run on the Turtles. Oh, and Dark Horse Comics’ Turtles of Grayskull and Stranger Things/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles limited series.

So I did okay, just not as well as I’d planned.

Reenlisting with Marvel’s G.I. Joe — Austin Gorton

…the thought hit me recently that reading through all the old Joe comics (again for some, for the first time for others) wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Even if I’m just doing it for fun, and will still go back to them again with a more critical eye when I do get around to my project. Especially given how entertaining the new Skybound GI Joe stuff has been to read. 

I am consistently terrible at meeting my New Years resolutions, and 2025 proved no exception to that rule. I think I made it about as far as issue #2 in my “just for fun” re-read of Larry Hama‘s G.I Joe before other obligations and desires pulled me in other directions and ate up my reading time. I did get a hold of some additional source material for my pie-in-the-sky G.I. Joe writing project, but that’s just failure of another form — since the point of my resolution was just to read for fun. At any rate, I’ll try again this year — with the Transformers compendium now in hand as well.