‘Do Admit’ and ‘Spent’ Top PW’s 2025 Graphic Novel Critics Poll

It’s a tie again—third year running—for the top spot on PW’s annual Graphic Novel Critics Poll, highlighting the breadth of this category. The acrobatic graphic history and, intermittently, memoir Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me by Mimi Pond (Drawn & Quarterly) and the autofiction/social satire Spent (Mariner) by Alison Bechdel each received a total of six votes from our panel of 14 critics. Both titles are genre-blending works that take on political themes with a generous dose of humor.

The dual win represents a victory for women of the generation that first established themselves in the male-dominated comics scene of the 1980s—Bechdel, in particular, has since become a household name. This is Bechdel’s third time leading PW's critics’ list: she won the inaugural critics poll with Fun Home (2006), then took top honors again with Secret to Superhuman Strength (2021). Now she’s back with Spent, a farce that imagines an alternate-world Alison, also an overnight-success and politically progressive cartoonist, who grapples with the vagaries of wealth and fame in a tight-knit queer community in Vermont. Bechdel weaves beloved characters from her long-running queer comics strip Dykes to Watch Out For, now in their middle age, seamlessly into the storyline.

“Self-critical and neurotically funny, Bechdel asks how exactly she's supposed to use her relative economic success to save the world,” writes critic Cheryl Klein. Rife with inside jokes and jabs, the chapter titles are named after Marx’s Das Kapital, and scenarios include middle-aged polyamorous experimentation and food co-op shenanigans. “Bechdel is peerless at skewering both herself and the political left with sharp wit and deep affection,” adds critic Rob Kirby.

Pond’s dazzling group biography, Do Admit, portrays the soapy lives of the six Mitford sisters, scandalous WWII-era British socialites who spanned the political spectrum—two got caught up in the fascist movements, hanging out with Hitler; another’s a muckraking journalist and communist; and then there’s the catty novelist, the duchess…and the poultry breeding enthusiast. Pond contrasts the Mitford’s exploits with memories of her own South California upbringing in the 1960s.

“Both charming and cutting, Pond captures the glamour of the age, couching it in cartooning reminiscent of the New Yorker illustrations of the era. It’s as lovingly researched and witty as the Mitfords themselves,” writes critic John DiBello. Her playful, painterly blue inkwork winds the tales around visual jokes, like a machine assembly line for a debutante ball, or caricatured portraits of political figures as animals. The result is “history as tragedy, as farce, and as juicy gossip, drawn with gleeful imagination,” per critic Shaenon Garrity.

“This energetic and peppy rendering by the deeply besotted Pond offers a rare case of an author who is unabashedly entranced by her subject and yet delivers a book that is all the better for it,” adds critic Chris Barsanti.

The PW Graphic Novel Critics Poll is compiled annually, with participating critics listing up to 10 adult trade releases they consider to be the best of the year. This is the 19th year of the poll. The book or books receiving the most votes wins; we also share the Runners-Up, and list recipients of multiple votes as Honorable Mentions. Taking part in the 2025 poll are PW comics reviewers and contributing writers Chris Barsanti, Chris Burkhalter, Tobias Carroll, John DiBello, Andrew Farago, Shaenon Garrity, Rob Kirby, Cheryl Klein, Samantha Puc, Dean Simons, Alan Scherstuhl, and Masha Zhdanova, along with PW  graphic novels reviews editor Meg Lemke and contributing editor Calvin Reid.

Second Place

A close runner-up with five votes, Black Arms to Hold You Up: A History of Black Resistance by Ben Passmore (Pantheon) lands in second place. The first major trade house release for buzzy indie artist Passmore undertakes a barbed yet funny survey of Black resistance movements from the Reformation to Black Lives Matter—throwing Ben into history as a bemused observer through a time-travel conceit. The biracial artist debates his dashiki-adorned Black father and pokes at the sanctity of certain icons, as he quips his way through uprisings and the rise and fall of revolutionary figures. The hybrid genre allows for “ample humor alongside important movements that have been buried, declawed, or sanitized,” per Klein. It’s a favorite for critics for its bold approach to heady topics, with its “exhilarating leap across the grim history of American racism via a polemical and vividly illustrated recollection of Black armed resistance,” per Reid.

“With his signature dark humor and sharp critiques of the ways in which Black history is preserved through a white lens, Passmore forces protagonist Ben to reconcile the less palatable parts of true revolution with the violence of white supremacy and oppression. A timely, well-researched, and needed addition to the American historical canon,” adds Puc.

Honorable Mentions

Four Votes

More Weight by Ben Wickey (Top Shelf)

“Wickey's virtuosic cartooning and depth of research creates possibly the most nuanced and moving analysis of the Salem witch trials and their impact on Salem to this day.” – MZ

Tongues, Vol. 1 by Anders Nilsen (Pantheon)

“Exhilarating in its design and storytelling, its spirit of adventure and philosophical inquiry, and its continual inventive craft over hundreds of pages.” – AS

Three Votes

Black Cohosh by Eagle Valiant Brosi (Drawn & Quarterly)

“Brosi's big loose lines and innovative depiction of dialogue—including his own speech impediment, represented by hieroglyphic tangles—make for a compelling memoir of a childhood spent in a problematic commune. I also loved his homage to imperfect motherhood.” – CK

Cannon by Lee Lai (Drawn & Quarterly)

“Rarely does a narrative so perfectly capture the total collapse of a single person's life. Cannon’s panels veer from hauntingly spacious to overwhelmingly full with dialogue that's as much miscommunication as it is deliberate malfeasance from the characters. The constant tension and brilliant pacing are unparalleled.” – SP

Checked Out by Katie Fricas (Drawn & Quarterly)

“Fricas's funky style is instantly recognizable, wholly unique, and full of life.” – RK

Miss Ruki by Fumiko Takano, trans. from the Japanese by Alexa Frank (New York Review Comics)

“These slice-of-life manga stories from the 1980s have an elegant charm all their own, but they also make for an eminently readable counterpoint to the thematically similar indie comics published on the other side of the Pacific at roughly the same time.” – TC

Raised By Ghosts by Briana Loewinsohn (Fantagraphics)

“A wistful graphic novel that’s, among other things, a paean to passing notes in class. Drawing on her teenage years in the Bay Area of the 1990s, Loewinsohn’s minor-key vignettes that are steeped in a quiet melancholy but also alive with a wide-eyed sense of discovery. ‘Sofia Coppola by way of Megan Kelso’ is my reductive elevator pitch.” – C. Burkhalter

Two Votes

Buff Soul by Moa Romanova, trans. from the Swedish by Melissa Bowers (Fantagraphics)

The Ephemerata: Shaping the Exquisite Nature of Grief by Carol Tyler (Fantagraphics)

Ginseng Roots by Craig Thompson (Pantheon)

The Last Time We Spoke: A Story of Loss by Jesse Mechanic (Street Noise)

Life Drawing by Jaime Hernandez (Fantagraphics)

The Once and Future Riot by Joe Sacco (Metropolitan)

Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster et al. (Pantheon)

Precious Rubbish by Kayla E. (Fantagraphics)

Simplicity by Mattie Lubchansky (Pantheon)

The Weight by Melissa Mendes (Drawn & Quarterly)

World Within the World: Collected Minicomix & Short Works 2010-2022 by Julia Gfrörer (Fantagraphics)