We’re approaching that time of year when people start declaring the best of what they read, watched, and listened to. Usually, it’s delivered in top fives, tens, or twenties, but I’ll keep it simple.
Zoe Thorogood’s It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth is the best comic of the year.
For much of the year, I thought I’d be saying something else. I had Dandadan by Yukinobu Tatsu at the top of my list — a manga that’s so consistently kinetic, wild, and joyful that every chapter feels like a rush of adrenaline. It’s a weekly series that never misses a chance to drop a panel (or seven) that catches you off guard with its scale or flair. I don’t typically gravitate toward shonen manga for my favorites, but Dandadan felt different. It had that “new car smell” — slick, fast, alive.
Usually, my favorites lean more toward the likes of Inio Asano or Tillie Walden — creators who dig into emotion, interiority, the weird textures of being alive. Dandadan was the exception this year.
And then I read It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth.
I had read Thorogood’s The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott when it came out in 2020. I liked it. I also thought it felt a little undercooked — not in execution, but in scope. What surprised me is that this reaction came before I’d even finished reading it. That realization stuck with me. I had expectations for Zoe Thorogood before I even fully understood her work. And Lonely proved me right in the best way.
I won’t break it down in a conventional review. That feels redundant. This isn’t a technical appraisal — it’s a statement of resonance.
It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth is an exercise in exhilaration, even as it descends into very real depths — places describable only through imagination and fiction, which is often where truth lives most freely. It explores that peculiar feeling of being invisible while surrounded by people, of being the center of your own universe but still fumbling for your place in the world. It’s a confrontation and an escape. It’s cartooning at its most alive.
Zoe’s pen is magic. She changes style and genre mid-page, like someone shapeshifting to survive. The variety isn’t for show — it’s expression as necessity. She’s navigating life, and the medium bends to accommodate that.
Reading this, I found myself wondering: Is this what it would feel like if some of my all-time favorite comics had meaning? It’s like growing up on cartoons and then seeing Spirited Away or Only Yesterday for the first time. It’s not just emotional — it’s cool. It’s stylish. It’s comics as they should be: vibrant, searching, dynamic, and deeply felt.
Zoe doesn’t just draw beautifully. She leaves part of herself on the page. A glimmer, even in indecision and precariousness.
What struck me most wasn’t the scope of her life story — this isn’t a sweeping autobiography. It’s six months. And that’s enough. For some of us, six months is a lifetime. A couple of weeks, a single day, even the next 30 minutes — that can be a full-blown epic. And Zoe captures that. This is a dungeon crawl of real life, armed with a pen instead of a sword.
I don’t know Zoe Thorogood. I’m not claiming to know her after reading this — which is a trap we often fall into with deeply personal work. But what I do know, what this comic shows me, is that she has entered the zone of cartoonists whose work transcends the “should I buy this?” threshold.
Like a new Ishiguro novel, a Wong Kar Wai film, or a Jaime Hernandez comic, Zoe’s future work is now an automatic buy. And from this point forward, every new project will be judged not just on its own terms — but against the high watermark she’s already set.
I wrote more briefly about Zoe Thorogood’s It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth upon revisiting it.