Have you heard the phrase “an embarrassment of riches”?
Well, that’s what 2013 was in terms of great comics — even with all the time in
the world, we couldn’t tell you about all the wonderful stories that came out of
mainstream and indie publishers alike over the last 12 months. Here’s what we
consider the very best, but feel free to include your favorites in the comments
— and let’s hope 2014 is just as good.
East of West (Image)
You’re going to see a lot of Image comics in this list, and
every single one of them deserves to be here — the company just killed it with a
multitude of brilliant, creator-owned stories that are topping everyone’s “Best
of 2013” lists. And near the top is Jonathan Hickman’s East of West, a
beyond-epic tale where Death, as in the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, is
the last hope of a future U.S., divided into seven nations. Oh, and the other
three Horsemen are trying to kill the President … who is a bad guy. It’s too
early to say where East of West is going, but Hickman is at the top of his
world-building game, and you’ll definitely want to find out.
The Wake (DC/Vertigo)
Scott Snyder’s work on Batman has been a marvel (no pun intended),
but his work there doesn’t hold a candle to his Vertigo series The Wake. Trying
to summarize it is nearly impossible, because while it’s kind of sea creature
horror movie à la Creature from the Black Lagoon, it’s one told over millions
of years, ranging from the distant past to 200 years in the future. It’s mystifying but not hard to follow, and the effortlessness which with Snyder can establish fully realized
characters with just a few lines of dialogue matches perfectly with Sean
Murphy’s art style.
Hawkeye (Marvel)
Marvel’s made a lot of good comics in 2013, so it’s saying
something that Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye is sill the best superhero book on the
market. Hawkeye has no superpowers, he isn’t very smart, and his weapon is
actually pretty ancient — and somehow Fraction manages to make these reasonably
low stakes (at least compared to the rest of the Marvel U.) adventures as epic
as any Avengers mission. Hell, even if he’d done nothing else this year, the
brilliant Hawkeye #11 — a mostly dialogue-free issue in which Hawkeye’s
pizza-loving dog solves a murder — would earn Hawkeye a “Best of 2013” spot.
Thankfully, Fraction wrote several other issues, too.
Annie Sullivan and
the Trials of Helen Keller (Disney/Hyperion)
You’ve heard of Helen Keller, of course, and you may have
heard of Annie Sullivan, the visually impaired woman who taught the deaf and
blind girl how to interact with the world. But writer/artist Joseph Lambert doesn’t
just tell this story through Annie’s eyes, but through what young Helen
perceives — it begins with virtually everything being an unknown mass to her,
and as Annie teaches her and gives her language, she begins to “see” the world
around her, which Lambert slowly fills in as well. This is literally something
only a comic could do, and it brings a depth of understanding to Helen’s life
that nothing else comes close to matching. It is brilliant, moving, and not
just one of the year’s best comics, but perhaps of all time.
Sex (Image)
Simon Cooke devoted his life to fighting crime as a
superhero and had time for nothing else — especially not hanky-panky. But now
he’s retired and returned to his home of Saturn City, and he has a lot of
making up to do. Sex is both a superhero story and pornography, but it doesn’t
feel gimmicky or sleazy, partially because as dirty and as explicit as it gets
(and boy, does it), Sex never feels like it’s ashamed of what it’s doing. It
also helps that it’s got a genuinely interesting, complex plot and great
characters, courtesy of writer Joe Casey, so even the fuck scenes are telling
the story. Comics Alliance called Sex “like the mythical
HBO-series-as-comic that everybody seems to be chasing,” and that nails it, as
far I’ve considered (no pun intended).
Adventure Time (Boom!
Studios)
The Adventure Time cartoon is great; this is a well-known
and established fact. But did you know that the Adventure Time comics were
just as good as the cartoon? Writer Ryan North, best known for Dinosaur comics,
knows exactly — and I mean exactly — what makes Adventure Time so great, and
replicates it perfectly on the page: the stories, the dialogue, the quirkiness,
the insanity. But he’s not aping the show, he’s creating his own stories that
use comics’ strengths just as the show uses animation. And if you hadn’t seen
the show for some reason, these are just great, fun comics. Spring for the
hardcover Mathematical Editions — you’re going to want these to stick around a
while.
The Unwritten: Tommy
Taylor and the Ship That Sank Twice (DC/Vertigo)
Anyone who’s been reading Mike Carey and Peter Gross’
wonderful The Unwritten, which re-imagines a Harry Potter-like character as an
instrument in a war to control the world using the stories people believe,
probably already has this original graphic novel. If you haven’t, you should,
because it reveals the secret of Tommy Taylor’s creation — both as the
character in the books and the real-life person — that had previously been
unanswered in the comics. But even non-Unwritten fans can read Tommy Taylor
and the Ship That Sank Twice and find an imaginative, gripping story about the
relationship between fiction and reality — and what’s more, there’s a really good
kid’s fantasy story in there too. Somehow Gross and Carey make all these
stories come together seamlessly, which is why this isn’t just a great Unwritten
graphic novel, but a great graphic novel, period.
Hyperbole and a Half
(Simon & Schuster)
Surely many of you already know of Allie Brosh’s webcomic,
and I assume you all bought it paperback because 1) you (correctly) believe Allie
Brosh deserves money for her amazing work, and 2) you know Gross’ tales of
childhood craziness, adult depression, and her intensely stupid dogs is a thing
that needs to be owned. If you don’t know this, and don’t own this book,
perhaps because you’re put off by Gross’ deceptively simple art-style, knock it
off. You’re missing with one of the best comic books of the year, which is why
its on this list. Hyperbole and a Half is profound, moving (seriously, her
description of depression is literally the best way anyone has ever managed to
describe it) and blisteringly funny. You will never look at a kernel of corn
the same way again.
Lazarus (Image)
Greg Rucka and Michael Lark return for this chillingly
prescient dystopian scifi comic about a world where only a few families control
all the world’s wealth and power, and battle each other for more. Forever Carlyle
is the Lazarus of her family, meaning she’s been genetically engineered to
protect them from threats inside and out. Even without the obvious relevance to
today, Lazarus is a scifi political thriller with enough action to satisfy any
fan, and Michael Lark’s artwork complements story perfectly. Read it now before
it gets optioned to be a movie, because it definitely will.
March (Top Shelf)
John Lewis was born in rural Alabama, but a meeting with
Martin Luther King Jr. inspired him to protest segregation in Tennessee and take part in 1963’s historic March on Washington. Now Lewis is a congressman,
and he tells his story and the story of the civil rights movement in the March, in the
first of a three-part series. Since Lewis is recounting events he saw
first-hand, the book is personal, but no less powerful for it, and co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell help transform
his narrative from mere autobiography into the epic, enthralling story it
deserves to be told as.
Battling Boy (First
Second)
Writer/artist Paul Pope is no stranger to action-packed
scifi weirdness, like his Batman: Year 100 or his Adam Strange series in
Wednesday Comics. But in Battling Boy, Pope may have perfected it. Sent from
another planet to defend a city besieged by monsters and demons, the
12-year-old Battling Boy has 12 magical t-shirts that give him different
superpowers — not all of which he can control. While light on dialogue,
Battling Boy more than makes up for it by featuring some of the finest action
sequences ever seen in comics — but it’s also still a tale about a young boy
finding himself and growing up. And most impressive of all, it’s as great a read
for adults as it is for kids.
Mind MGMT (Dark Horse)
Calling Matt Kindt’s Mind MGMT a spy conspiracy with
superpowers is correct, but does it a disservice. Sure, it has a shadowy
government agency, a secret conspiracy, psychic abilities, and an ally-turned-enemy
bent on revenge. But the genius of Mind MGMT is in Kindt’s storytelling and
characterization, which has built a fully-realized world with completely fleshed-out characters almost effortlessly — it seems like any of them could star in
their own spin-off series (and they’d be good, too). In its second year, Mind
MGMT’s story has grown more complex, but the rewards have grown too, as Kindt slowly
unpacks the mystery of Meru and the Mind MGMT agency. With only 36 issues
planned, you could wait to read it until the comic ends in a couple of years,
but then you wouldn’t have the pleasure of anticipating each new monthly issue.
Saga (Image)
Nothing has changed about Saga since last year. Well,
nothing in the sense that it’s still a sexy scifi-fantasy space opera about
love, family, ex-girlfriends, bounty hunters, shitty romance novels, robot
royalty, ghost babysitters, mothers-in-law, cats who know when you’re lying,
sentient spaceship trees, and everything else writer Bryan K. Vaughan has packed
into it. Fiona Staples’ art is still beautiful, rendering expressions so perfect that you could read the book without any dialogue and you’d still know exactly what
the characters were feeling. And it’s still one of the best comics available
today. If you know someone who likes Star Wars and can handle the occasional
drawing of people having sex, they are almost guaranteed to love Saga.
Boxers & Saints
(First Second)
Gene Luen Yang examines the Chinese Boxer Rebellion from two
sides in these two complementary stories — one about a young boy named Little
Bao, who become a leader in the revolution against the Western missionaries who have abused his homeland, and the
other about a young girl who is taken in by Christian missionaries after her
village abandons her and must decide where her allegiances
are after she grows up — with her country or with her faith. Although separate, Boxers and Saints
are really one story, revealing both sides of a war, and how easy it is for one
to lose sight of the other — which is why Boxers & Saints resonates so
powerfully for readers of all ages.
Avengers: Endless
Wartime (Marvel)
Whether you’re a lifelong Marvel maniac or just wished the
movie had been longer, few comics come as close to capturing what makes the
Avengers so special as Warren Elis’ Endless Wartime — and since it’s a
stand-alone graphic novel, it’s not burdened by mountains of continuity either.
Sure, the movie fans may wonder why Wolverine is hanging around with Captain
America, but he’s an organic part of the team, as is the always appreciated
Captain Marvel. The tale brings together Cap, Thor and Iron Man’s pasts,
particularly parts that haunt them, but it has all the action and great
dialogue that make Ellis one of the best. He knows exactly what makes each
character different, as well as what makes them great — but also what makes
them great together. Any Avengers fan, old or new, needs to pick this up.
Sex Criminals (Image)
The second of Image’s “Really Great Comics with Sex in the
Title” series, Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky’s Sex Criminals imagines aa man and a woman with superpowers: They can stop time for everyone but themselves… but
only when they’re having sex. And then they try to rob a bank. While hilarious,
Sex Criminals is weirdly sweet about the pleasures and troubles and dangers of
sex, and like Image’s other Sex-titled comic, it
isn’t afraid to portray all aspects of sex, but it never feels judgmental.
Imagine if the 1974 sex ed filmstrip about Joe and Susie your teachers made you
watch in high school was both genuinely helpful and massively entertaining —
that’s Sex Criminals.
Batman ’66 (DC)
We’ve already discussed how great Scott Snyder’s New 52 run
on Batman is, it should be telling that the best Batman book isn’t that, but
this: Batman ’66, based on the almost 50-year-old campy TV series. This comic
practically screams fun, but it’s not some “look how stupid Batman used to be”
hit job; it’s a celebration of a time when Batman wasn’t always tortured and
dour, and Joker robbed banks instead of mass-murdering countless innocents. It’s
a breath of fresh air from most modern DC comics, and its greatest strength
is how it uses the TV series’ characters and tone, but then adds the action that comic books can provide, but that the show never could. Imagine, if each episode of
the 1960s Batman TV show had a $50 million budget and access to today’s special
effects, what they would do with that — that’s what Jeff Parker is bringing to
Batman ’66, and it’s fantastic.
The Fifth Beatle (Dark Horse)
People have told plenty of stories about the Beatles and
their compatriots before, but there’s one thing no TV show or movie can do — make
us really feel like we’re actually seeing the Beatles, as opposed to people
trying to do an impression. The Fifth Beatle sidesteps this, and Andrew
Robinson and Kyle Baker’s art captures the Beatles in a way no live actor ever
could. Beyond that, this biography
of Brian Epstein — the man who guided the Beatles from small-town
Liverpool band to a worldwide sensation — is both uplifting and haunting, and
he faced anti-Semitism, homophobia (indeed, homosexuality was actually illegal
in England at the time), addiction and his own ambition before dying at the age
of 32. Epstein’s rise and fall, set next to the continual rise of the band he
led, is compelling, as well as a extraordinary look inside the Beatles
themselves.
