Best Comic Book Gifts Under £25: New Comics, Manga and Seasonal Picks

Comic shops are difficult places to buy a present. The shelves are full of things that cost four pounds and things that cost a hundred, and almost nothing in between announces itself as a gift. Buy at the cheap end and it feels like you forgot. Buy at the expensive end and you have spent a lot of money on something the recipient may already own.

The middle is where the good presents live, and it is genuinely well stocked if you know what you are looking at. Everything in this guide is under £25, most of it is under £13, and all of it was on the shelves at Forbidden Planet when I put this together.

This guide is organised by what the thing physically is, because that is what decides whether it works as a gift, and it flags three traps that are easy to walk into at a comics till.

Quick Picks

Prices as listed in October 2026. Comics stock moves fast and single issues sell out, so check availability rather than assuming.

Three Traps at the Till

1. A single issue is not a present on its own

Four of the items here are single issues, at £3.30 to £4.60. That buys roughly twenty pages of story that stops on a cliffhanger and expects the reader to buy the next one next month.

That is a perfectly good thing to buy. It is a poor thing to wrap. If somebody opens a single comic as their gift, the effect is closer to a card than a present.

What works instead: buy three or four single issues together as a bundle, or use one as a stocking filler alongside something larger. At under a fiver each you can hand over a small stack for the price of one paperback, and a stack reads as deliberate in a way one issue does not.

2. “Absolute” means two completely different things

This one catches people out constantly, and the price is the giveaway.

Absolute Batman at £3.30 is a monthly single issue from DC’s Absolute Universe, which is a line of comics set in an alternate continuity. It is not an Absolute Edition, which is DC’s oversized slipcased hardcover format and costs a three-figure sum.

Both will be in the same shop, both have “Absolute” on the cover, and they are about thirty times apart in price. If somebody asked for “the Absolute Batman”, establish which one they meant before you pay. Our guide to comic omnibus and collected edition formats covers the hardcover side of this in detail.

3. A number one is not always a starting point

Batman: Bad Seeds: Streets Of Gotham #1 carries a large #1, and it also carries “Week 8, Part 2” in the corner. It is the first issue of a mini-series that sits inside a larger weekly event, which means handing it to somebody new to Batman will produce confusion rather than delight.

The same logic, more simply, applies to two of the books below: Dungeon Crawler Carl: Volume 2 and the volume of The Summer Hikaru Died pictured here are not first volumes. For a gift, start at volume one unless you know the recipient already has it.

The general rule at a comics till: read the small print in the corners of the cover, not the big number in the middle.

Browse what is in stock →

The Books: Best Value as Presents

Dungeon Crawler Carl: Volume 2, £12.41

A graphic novel adaptation by Matt Dinniman with Laurel Pursuit and Tevagah, published by Aethon. The source is one of the breakout self-published fiction successes of recent years, and the comic version is bright, loud and immediately readable, which is exactly what you want from a gift book.

At £12.41 this is the single best value item here as a standalone present. It is a real book, it has a cover that looks like something, and it does not require the recipient to already be a comics reader.

The catch: it is volume two. Buy volume one as well, or buy volume one instead.

The Summer Hikaru Died, £9.22

Mokumokuren’s horror manga, and the cheapest proper book in this guide. The cover is the giveaway for what makes it work: flat yellow, one smiling figure, nothing else. It is a quiet, unsettling series rather than a loud one.

This is the pick for somebody who reads literary fiction and has never tried manga, because it behaves more like a novel than like an action series. It is also the right price to risk on somebody whose taste you are not certain about.

Same caveat: the volume pictured is number three. Start at one.

The Seasonal One

Blue Lock: The Official Advent Calendar, £24.97

Twenty-four days of small items behind doors, built around the football manga and anime series. At £24.97 it is the priciest thing in this guide, and per item it is not cheap.

What it buys is duration. Most presents are opened once; this one is opened twenty-four times, which for a younger recipient is worth considerably more than the contents strictly justify. For a teenager who is into the series, it is close to an ideal gift.

Skip it if: the recipient is not specifically a Blue Lock fan. Franchise advent calendars are bought for the franchise, not for the format.

The Single Issues

All four of these cost less than a coffee and a pastry. Treat them as the comics equivalent of a stocking filler, or buy several at once.

Mark Spears: Graveyard Shift #1, £4.60

Creator-owned horror from Keenspot, and the most visually distinctive cover in this group: a crowd of monsters advancing out of a graveyard under a purple and acid-green sky. Mark Spears is known for exactly this kind of heavily rendered monster art.

This is the pick for somebody who likes horror and does not care about continuity, because nothing about it requires knowing anything first. Of the four single issues here, it is the one that works best in isolation.

Absolute Batman, £3.30

The Absolute Universe line has been the most discussed thing DC has done recently, and this is the Batman title from it, with Scott Snyder writing and Nick Dragotta on art. Reimagining Batman in a separate continuity is a well-worn idea, and the reason this version gets attention is the creative team rather than the premise.

Cheapest item in the guide. Also, as noted above, the one most likely to be confused with a £100 hardcover.

Amazing Spider-Man: Amazing Visions #1, £3.75

Spider-Man in an armoured suit in front of Captain America, Black Widow, Iron Man and Hawkeye. If you are buying for somebody whose entry point to all of this was the films, a cover with the Avengers on it does more work than any amount of explaining.

Batman: Bad Seeds: Streets Of Gotham #1, £3.75

A strong creative list on the cover, including Matt Fraction, Mariko Tamaki, Jorge Fornés and Steve Lieber. For somebody already following current Batman, the names alone are the pitch.

For anybody else, see the warning above about “Week 8, Part 2”. This is a good comic in a confusing place.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a single comic a bad gift?

On its own, yes, mostly. Twenty pages ending on a cliffhanger does not feel like a present. Three or four together, or one alongside a book, works much better and still costs less than £20.

What is the difference between Absolute Batman and an Absolute Edition?

Absolute Batman is a monthly comic from DC’s alternate-continuity Absolute Universe line, priced like any single issue. An Absolute Edition is an oversized slipcased hardcover format, priced in three figures. Same word, unrelated things.

Should I buy volume one or the newest volume?

Volume one, unless you have checked what they own. Two of the books here are later volumes, and a later volume is useless to somebody who has not read the earlier ones.

Is manga a safe gift for a non-manga reader?

It can be an excellent one if you pick for tone rather than for popularity. Something quiet and character-led travels better to a prose reader than a long-running action series does.

When should I order an advent calendar?

Early enough to arrive before the first of December. After that the value drops every day, and a calendar that turns up mid-month cannot do the thing it exists to do.

Final Thoughts

The useful split in a comic shop is not publisher or character, it is physical format, because that is what decides whether the thing feels like a present when it is handed over.

If you want one gift that works without any further thought, buy Dungeon Crawler Carl at £12.41, starting from volume one. It is a real book, it is loud and friendly, and it asks nothing of the recipient in advance. The Summer Hikaru Died at £9.22 is the better pick for a quieter reader, and the better pick for somebody who reads novels rather than comics, again from volume one.

The Blue Lock advent calendar at £24.97 is the strongest gift here for a fan of that series specifically, and the only item with a deadline attached. Order it in November or leave it.

Among the single issues, Mark Spears: Graveyard Shift #1 at £4.60 is the one that stands alone best, because it needs no context. Absolute Batman at £3.30 and Amazing Spider-Man: Amazing Visions #1 at £3.75 are good stocking fillers. Batman: Bad Seeds #1 at £3.75 is excellent for somebody already reading current Batman and genuinely confusing for anybody who is not.

And whatever you pick up, read the corners of the cover. The volume number, the “part two”, the issue count: those small marks are the difference between a gift that lands and one that produces a polite thank you.

See current stock and prices →

Prices were supplied from the retailer’s listings in October 2026 and change without notice; single issues in particular sell out quickly. Creator and series details are taken from the covers of the issues pictured. Cover images are courtesy of their respective publishers and are reproduced here to identify the products discussed.