Page 45 Review by Stephen
Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month December 2025
This is a beautiful, beautiful piece of art and a stunning piece of sequential-art storytelling.
It's as poignant as can be, and ever so true. It caused me some considerable concern from start to finish, and it will speak directly to so very, very many.
Here, beneath its quietly struggling surface, always kept close to one's chest and far from a young one's eye-line lies the weight of parental responsibility:
To be a provider, unfalteringly, of everything, always and without fail: from food to comfort, from safety to encouragement, from shelter to optimism and imagination and love and answers and stories and kindness and humour and adventure and opportunity and warmth and a future free from obstruction or anxiety.
That's an unbelievable amount to ask of anyone.
And it's a hell of a lot to convey in a very short story, but Berry - Britain's Comics Laureate from 2019-2021 - does it so deftly, without melodrama; with barely a word, in fact, just the subtlest of storytelling techniques and a profound, personal understanding.
There's a tension of expectation from the very beginning with the accumulating cumuli and a chain - a chain! - which breaks the sky-shot on the very second panel; the chain of a children's swing. "Higher!"
And there's so much white space, so much emptiness, both in and between the wind-swept panels, otherwise filled with the same cold, watery, sorry blue colours of the clouds up above which are so very heavy; laden with the threat of rain.
The outlook is bleak; heavy and bleak; and It's not even winter.
Massive respect to all parents everywhere who are doing their level best; especially those going it alone.
If Anders Nilsen's TONGUES was my favourite graphic novel of 2025 - and it has been - this is my favourite comic of the year, by far.
