The Stampies: Best Comics of 2025 (Part One)

The Stampies: Best Comics of 2025 (Part One)

Author: Brad & Lisa Gullickson December 18, 2025 Duration: 1:41:49
Friends, let’s celebrate. We’ve made it through another year, and no matter how you felt about the world outside your local comic book shop, you certainly read some great comics. Welcome to our annual award show, The Stampies: Best Comics of 2025. Part One. Every year is a good year for comics. You just have to go out and read them. That’s the secret. We try not to imprison ourselves with characters, genres, publishers, or even our preferred tastes. As long as you’re only interested in good comics, you’ll find them if you read enough, and the brilliant thing about 2025 is that we read a lot, and found so many great comics, but we still didn’t read enough to read all the great comics. Thankfully, we sent out the Comic Book Couples Counseling distress call, and a bunch of our friends from across the industry answered. Peppered throughout our Stampies ceremony are our podcaster, journalist, publicist, and creator friends, each offering their favorite comics from 2025. See a list of them below, and make sure you support their work and follow them on socials. As we do every year, we select our favorite comics and then create the Stampies around them. This two-part episode reflects our weird, collective tastes as a couple. Listeners will recognize several of the titles, but hopefully, we’ve thrown in several surprises, too. You can also find the award categories and (SPOILERS) winners below, listed alongside their timestamps in case you want to hop around or revisit later. For the first time ever, we’ve created physical Stampy Awards to be delivered to the creators. We’re only able to do this thanks to our new sponsor, Global Comix. The all-in-one digital comics platform is currently offfering a great comics bundle when you sign up for their Global Comix Gold program. Make sure you give them a click (more details below), then start browsing their incredible digital comics library. The Best Comics of 2025 Part One Guest-Stars: Lance (Bluesky) and Jeremy (Bluesky) of Comic Book Keepers. Eamon Winkle (Instagram): The Principles of Necromancy, Geiger, etc. Jenna Anderson (Bluesky) of Phase Hero and Go Read Some Comics. Chris Hacker (Bluesky) and Aaron Knowles (BlueSky) of The Oblivion Bar Podcast. Ollie Kaplan (Bluesky) of Comics Beat, Prism Comics, etc. Barbra Dillon (Bluesky): Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Fanbase Press. David Harper (Bluesky) of SKTCHD and Off Panel. Patrick Horvath (Bluesky): Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees. Badr Milligan (Bluesky) of The Short Box Podcast. This Week's Sponsors GlobalComix is the all-in-one digital comics platform offering unlimited reading of thousands of titles from top publishers, indie creators, across comics, manga, and toons. With GlobalComix Gold, members unlock access to more than 100,000 books and genres - superheroes, horror, sci-fi, manga, fantasy, romance, and more. Right now, GlobalComix is running a special Holiday Gold promotion: when you sign up for a year of GlobalComix Gold for $69, you'll get a bonus premium comics bundle from Dark Horse, DC, Kodansha, and Marvel - included for free. This bundle is valued at $67, making the annual plan essentially pay for itself with the bonus alone. How to Redeem: Use the link https://globalcomix.com/holiday-bundle-2025 to sign up. The offer is live now and available for a limited time (through January 4, 2026). Once subscribed, the bonus bundle will be added to your GlobalComix library. This Winter, from IDW Publishing, the Heroes in a Half-Shell take on the King of the Monsters! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles x Godzilla #1 crashes into comic shops on November 12th. Written by Godzilla Kei-Sei Scribe Tim Seeley and illustrated by the brilliant Turtle artist behind the Nightwatcher series, as well as the Stranger Things/TMNT crossover, Fero Pe, this new series finally brings two of our favorite franchises together. How can this reptilian miracle be?  Long before the organization was corrupted by S

Ever wonder what keeps Lois Lane and Clark Kent together, or why the Joker and Harley Quinn’s dynamic is so endlessly dissected? That’s the kind of territory you’ll find in Comic Book Couples Counseling Podcast. Hosted by real-life married couple Brad and Lisa Gullickson, this isn’t just a rundown of famous pairs. Instead, they use their own relationship as a lens to examine the loves, feuds, and complicated bonds that define our favorite characters. Each episode feels like a lively conversation between two passionate fans who happen to share a life, digging into the psychology, history, and narrative impact of relationships across comic book publishing and wider pop culture. You’ll hear them analyze everything from classic Golden Age partnerships to the messy modern entanglements in contemporary graphic novels, always with a mix of deep knowledge and genuine curiosity. This podcast offers a uniquely personal and thoughtful way to engage with the stories you love, moving beyond powers and plot twists to ask what these fictional connections really say about us. Tune in for a smart, often funny, and always insightful look at the heart of the narratives.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Comic Book Couples Counseling Podcast
Podcast Episodes
The Stampies: Best Comics of 2024 (Part One) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:17:31
Comics will mend your heart. That's the energy we're taking into the new year and the thought we carried as we assembled The Stampies, our end-of-the-year award show celebrating The Best Comics of 2024 - ahem - (Part One…
J Holtham and Michael Lee Harris on Motherfukin Monsters [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 45:06
It's easy to claim your comic as "Evil Dead for Blerds," but accomplishing the cheeky elevator pitch is far more complex. Writer J. Holtham and artist Michael Lee Harris grab their inspiration from the iconic Sam Raimi s…
Vita Ayala and Skylar Patridge on Finders Keepers [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 59:29
It belongs in a museum? On this week's podcast, we chat with friends and collaborators Vita Ayala and Skylar Patridgeabout their new comic, Finders Keepers, and why they were compelled to tell a "reverse Indiana Jones."…
Kami Garcia on Teen Titans: Starfire [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 47:49
After working through most of the Teen Titans, author Kami Garcia and artist Gabriel Picolo have finally reached the Tamaranean superhero, Starfire. Their latest collaboration finds Kori struggling to find her place amon…
Tom King and Ryan Sook on Black Canary: Best of the Best [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:52
We don't know how to feel about violence as sports entertainment, but we cannot deny how much we love stories that center their emotional conflicts inside a ring. With their new series, Black Canary: Best of the Best, To…
Dave Chisholm and Rick Quinn on Spectrum #1 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:09:30
Art finds us when we need it most. Spectrum, the new Mad Cave Studios series from creators Dave Chisholm and Rick Quinn, is an astonishing sci-fi saga that begins inside the Seattle WTO protests of 1999 and propels its c…
FML with Kelly Sue DeConnick [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:07:32
What a difference a week can make, huh? When we recorded our conversation with Kelly Sue DeConnick, we were still weeks away from the American election, but now, here we are, living in its aftermath. We couldn't have bee…
Kelley Jones and Matt Wagner on Dracula: The Brides [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:05:17
Dracula permeates everything. Before we're five years old, we know his story. It's baked into the cultural imagination. However, if you were to hold that story up to the light, you'd immediately notice a lot of holes. In…