To celebrate another memorable year for DC, we’ve once again asked five of our most active DC.com writers to look back and choose their three personal DC favorites of 2025. Look for a different writer’s 2025 Top Three every day this week!
Happy Holidays! It’s been another exciting year for DC fans, particularly fans of the comics, with the DC Universe expanding in all kinds of ways. While our heroes were still recovering from the explosive events of last year’s Absolute Power, they found themselves having to contend with the beat-’em-up crossover bash that is DC K.O., all while the slowly expanding Absolute universe continues to loom large. In other words, it’s a great time to be a DC comic reader, either longtime or new, and my three picks for favorite comics of the year serve as examples for how the future looks continually bright for our heroes and those who love them.
Batman and Robin: Year One
The “Year One” brand carries a long and weighty history, and is not a title one approaches lightly. Fortunately for the Dynamic Duo, they couldn’t have asked for a more formidable match than longtime DC scribe Mark Waid and acclaimed artist Chris Samnee. Batman and Robin: Year One is the retelling of the first twelve months of partnership between Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson. Weeks after the deaths of young Dick’s parents, Bruce has committed to keep the grade-school acrobat as his ward/partner-in-crimefighting. But the two orphans are very different people, and not simply in just their ages. Dick is a born performer, a showoff and a daredevil, often risking his neck to pull off feats of fancy. Batman’s more methodical, grim persona doesn’t mesh well with a bright new partner at first. Things complicate even further with the arrival of a new crime boss, General Grimaldi, who’s making a dramatic play at Gotham’s criminal underworld.
With the super criminals Two-Face and Clayface adding even more danger to the mix, Batman and Robin need to get their partnership clicking fast if they want to save Gotham. With exquisite artwork by Samnee and pitch perfect characterization by Waid, Batman and Robin: Year One made for one of the most satisfying miniseries to read each month for the entirety of 2025.
Detective Comics
Fresh off his award-winning run on Nightwing, Tom Taylor hop-skips over from Blüdhaven to Gotham to lend his talent to the other half of the Dynamic Duo. Teamed with artist Mikel Janín, Taylor’s run on Detective Comics has been a joyous exploration of Batman’s character, revealed through his crime-solving brilliance and conviction in keeping the city safe for all Gothamites.
The first arc saw the Caped Crusader investigate a series of mysterious deaths occurring among young people in Gotham, leading him to interact with an old Wayne family acquaintance—Scarlett Scott. Unbeknownst to Batman however, Scarlett is the daughter Joe Chill, the man who killed Thomas and Martha Wayne! Revelations, intrigue and mad science are all just the tip of the iceberg in what has become appointment reading in the world of Detective Comics.
Batman/Deadpool
I couldn’t leave off this extravagant crossover of crazy cosmic proportions! Batman/Deadpool is the highly anticipated team-up between two of the most popular heroes from both DC and Marvel, with the main story written and illustrated by Grant Morrison and Dan Mora respectively.
Theirs is an extremely fun story, filled with insane action, excellent interplay between our main two heroes, and more twists and turns than you’d find in Deadpool’s mangled brain. But this story was especially enjoyable for fans of the old crossovers between DC and Marvel, mainly the adventures published during the 1990s. Morrison plays explicit homage to the zaniness of those stories, complete with direct references to both DC vs. Marvel and the Amalgam universe. As a little kid, I was in on the ground floor when those stories were first published, and seeing those references was special for me.
But even if you’re unfamiliar with those prior crossovers, there’s still more than enough here to chew on. There’s no shortage of fourth wall-breaking (as is Deadpool’s specialty), including jokes about Batman’s infamous plot armor and his familiarity with fast-talking loudmouths such as Deadpool over his long career. And that’s not even getting into the amazing artwork. By now Dan Mora has proven himself a dozen times over why he’s one of the best pencillers working today. Here’s yet another example! With excellent, tone-setting renditions of cartoon ninja-killers, Deadpool’s indefatigable threshold for pain and all manner of surprises and cameos in between, this is some of Mora’s most dynamic and exciting work to date.
Be sure to read all five of our 2025 Top Three lists!
Donovan Morgan Grant writes about comics, graphic novels and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @donomark and X at @donoDMG1.
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Donovan Morgan Grant and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.
