This year wound down with a new wave of “comics are dying” discourse that proves how insular its fandom is, how it doesn’t consider larger economic factors like inflation and what other industries are struggling as people make decisions based on their disposable income.
Yes, readers are aging out of the medium, and that affects sales. Yes, it’s insane that of all forms of entertainment, comics are still predominantly sold through brick-and-mortar specialty shops that rely on pre-orders as a metric of financial health. Yes, we’re all afraid the X-Men line is going to regress to a status quo familiar to the generation that grew up on the 1990s animated series and Jim Lee trading cards. No, comics aren’t more “woke” now; no commercial industry is ever going to be as progressive as you make them up to be in your head.
Put all the noise aside. Comics are good. Just like any other year, they tell stories that stir our emotions, get us pumping our fist in the air or send us running to our social media platform of choice to ask our friends, “Yo, did you see this shit?” You just need to know where to look.
A few of us ComicsXF’ers got together and picked some of our favorite comics and graphic novels of the year.
Here they are, presented in alphabetical order.
The He-Man Effect: How American Toymakers Sold You Your Childhood
By Box Brown, published by First Second
Recommended by Dan Grote
More than a treatise on the power of the Masters of the Universe, Box Brown’s (Tetris: The Games People Play, Cannabis: The Illegalization of Weed in America) latest graphic novel studies the history of toys and toy marketing, and the synergy of cartoons and Reagan-era deregulation that created the juggernauts of He-Man, Transformers, G.I. Joe and their ilk in the 1980s and beyond. Brown also shows how nostalgia for IP can be a poison pill that results in things like idiot Star Wars fans demanding Kathleen Kennedy cede control of the franchise. More than a Nacelle Company special in which talking heads say, “Hey, ain’t these things from my childhood great?” Brown comes to teach, acknowledging the seedy capitalist underbelly behind these plastic totems of our youth and pondering how they affected children’s capacity for imaginative play. You may never look at your old action figures the same way again.
Jean Grey Vol. 2 #1-4
Louise Simonson, Bernard Chang, Marcelo Maiolo, Ariana Maher, Jay Bowen and Amy Reeder; published by Marvel
Recommended by Adam Reck
The Krakoan Fall of X era has been a mixed bag, especially given the sheer number of miniseries being published. So it was a very pleasant surprise to have one of the most talented legacy writers/editors in X-history, Louise Simonson, back to take on Jean Grey, a character who appeared to have been murdered at this year’s Hellfire Gala. The ethereal possibilities of Jean in the White Hot Room gave Simonson and artist Bernard Chang enough runway to explore some great What Ifs involving key moments in Jean’s history. Chang’s visuals compliment Weezy’s contemplation of the key motivations and interests of the character, honoring her complex canon in a way many writers don’t. If this book fell by the wayside for you among the myriad other X-titles this year, make sure you pick it up, then head back to ComicsXF to check out the extensive conversations Dr. Anna Peppard and I had about each issue.
Moon Knight Vol. 9
Jed MacKay, Alessandro Cappuccio, Frederico Sabbatini, Rachelle Rosenberg and Cory Petit; published by Marvel
Recommended by Anna Peppard
Chatter about the impending or ongoing death of the American comics industry is nothing new. While the complaints and causes change in subtle and obvious ways, such chatter has been happening since at least the 1950s. And over the course of my life as a comics reader, it seems to intensify every five years or so. One of the latest lightning rods of discourse involves Marvel’s shift to ever-shorter limited series at the expense of longer ongoings. Moon Knight Vol. 9 bucks that trend. Recently concluding at issue #30, this series offers a rare lengthy run with a consistent, talented creative team doing what all the best long-running serialized stories do — tell an emotionally complex, action-packed, deeply involving, visually distinctive story in which everything built to something and mattered. Simply put, whether you’ve previously been a Moon Knight fan, if you’re a fan of superhero comics’ unique brand of long-form storytelling, there’s a good chance you’ll find lots to love in this series. MacKay & Co. nurtured an exciting new playground for Marc Spector & Co. in the form of the equally grounded and utterly fantastical Midnight Mission, as well as a compelling supporting cast mixing exciting new creations, like the vampiric receptionist turned teammate turned hero Reese, and extant C-listers who seldom get a chance to shine (Every moment we got to spend with MacKay and Cappuccio’s Tigra was an absolute delight). Will Moon Knight’s example save the comics industry from its latest prognosticated decline? I wouldn’t go that far, but our lunar legend might say, “It’s not too late to save everyone.”
The Nasty
John Lees, George Kambadais, Adam Cahoon, Kurt Michael Russell and Jim Campbell; published by Vault Comics
Recommended by Dan Grote
The Satanic Panic of the 1980s did a lot of cultural damage. While the Parents Music Resource Center went after the American music industry and its “porn rock,” the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association in the UK rallied against so-called “video nasties” — low-budget horror movies criticized for their violent content. Movies with names like Cannibal Holocaust, The Driller Killer and Faces of Death. That, of course, only turned these movies into forbidden fruit among a generation of teenagers yearning for an authentic scare. The Nasty tells the story of one such yearning teen, Thumper Connell, who seeks to remake the fictional video nasty The House of Creeping Flesh with his friends for a local film festival. Will a prudish culture warrior put the kibosh on his dream, or will Thumper’s imaginary slasher friend, Red Ennis, become all too real first? Listen to Lees talk about the series on WMQ&A.
Peacemaker Tries Hard
Kyle Starks, Steve Pugh, Jordie Bellaire and Becca Carey; published by DC Comics
Recommended by Dan Grote
Kyle Starks is a bastard. He’ll spend six to eight issues making you laugh your ass off at a comic, then suckerpunch you with an emotional beat you never saw coming because you realize in retrospect you’ve come to care about these characters who were deeper and more complex than all the jokes and action sequences would lead you to believe. Gets me every. Goddamn. Time. Here, Starks takes his talents to the star of the 2022 Max TV series, drawn with zero worries about likeness rights by Steve Pugh, on loan from whatever Mark Russell AHOY comic they’re currently working on. On its surface, this is a story about Peacemaker stopping Monsieur Mallah and The Brain from breeding a race of Deathstrokes for The Brain to use as potential host bodies. Really, it’s about Peacemaker wanting people to come to his birthday party, and learning lessons about heroism and friendship from an obscure Golden Age superhero. Also there’s a dog named Bruce Wayne.
Rare Flavours
Ram V, Filipe Andrade and AndWorld Design; published by BOOM Studios
Recommended by Dan Grote
Ram V and Filipe Andrade’s first collaboration, 2021’s The Many Deaths of Laila Starr, was a haunting, beautiful meditation on the fleetingness of life through the lens of Indian culture and its pantheon of gods. Here, the team returns to India for a tale of food, passion and obsession. Rubin, a gourmand/cannibal demon(?), hires Mo, a young filmmaker, to follow him across India to make an Anthony Bourdain-style documentary on the hidden gems of its cuisine — spices that make the mouth water, meat that falls off the bone, cooking methods that demand patience and reward perfection. Each issue tells the history of a particular dish as Rubin is led by his appetites and Mo by his doubts, with occasional flashes of a future that teases success and tragedy in equal measure. Like the food the comic describes, it demands patience, a slow read, as you absorb the juices of Andrade’s art and the meat of Ram’s prose. Don’t put ketchup on this one.
Tales of Asunda #4: Mother’s Hands
Sebastian A. Jones, Matteo IIluminati, Arianna Pisani, Canaan White and Blond; published by Stranger Comics
Recommended by Latonya Pennington
Black elven heroine Niobe Ayutami has been the flagship character for Stranger Comics since 2009. Introduced in their first comic The Untamed #1, Niobe’s story has since been expanded in several other titles including the Tales of Asunda series. This particular issue is special because it features the first appearance of Niobe’s mother, Nadami, and Niobe meeting her for the first time with the help of the time-traveling abilities of the shaman Dura. Sebastian A. Jones pens a heartwarming love story between Nadami and Powlorre, another elf from a different tribe. Through Matteo Illuminati’s earthy color palettes and Arianna Pisani’s intricate layouts, we see Nadami as a lover and a fighter and how her spirit lives on in Niobe.
Transformers #1
Daniel Warren Johnson and Mike Spicer, published by Image/Skybound
Recommended by Austin Gorton
We live in an age of nigh-immortal IP, when anything with even a little commercial juice left in it (perceived or actual) will find a home. The key to these kinds of revamps is to strike a balance between the familiar and the new, to justify creatively the decision to keep it going without turning off perennial fans of the material. Daniel Warren Johnson’s kickoff to Skybound’s new Energon Universe hits that balance with aplomb, presenting a tale both familiar (complete with the image of the Ark crashing into a mountain, leaving its exhaust ports exposed) and new (the decisions to kill off Bumblebee and sideline Megatron while focusing on a smaller core initial cast give the book a different feeling right off the bat). Transformers #1 also succeeds thanks to Johnson’s raw, energetic artwork, which among other things manages to make the requisite human PoV characters interesting simply by shifting the perspective of the art from the Transformers’ point of view to the humans’ throughout the issue, transforming the robots from seemingly regular-sized characters to enormous destructive beings depending on whoever is viewing the action (There’s a panel in this issue in which Spike and Carly are trying to push Optimus Prime’s massive-to-them gun into his hand that might be my favorite single comic book image of the year).Transformers comics are nearly 40 years old and have changed publishing hands several times in those decades, but 2023’s Transformers #1 proves they are still more than meets the eye.
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Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts WMQ&A: The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.
Adam Reck is the cartoonist behind Bish & Jubez as well as the co-host of Battle Of The Atom.
Anna Peppard
Anna is a PhD-haver who writes and talks a lot about representations of gender and sexuality in pop culture, for academic books and journals and places like Shelfdust, The Middle Spaces, and The Walrus. She’s the editor of the award-winning anthology Supersex: Sexuality, Fantasy, and the Superhero and co-hosts the podcasts Three Panel Contrast and Oh Gosh, Oh Golly, Oh Wow!
Austin Gorton also reviews older issues of X-Men at the Real Gentlemen of Leisure website, co-hosts the A Very Special episode podcast, and likes Star Wars. He lives outside Minneapolis, where sometimes, it is not cold. Follow him on Twitter @AustinGorton
Latonya Pennington
Latonya Pennington is a freelance contributor whose comics criticism can be found at Women Write About Comics, Comic Book Herald, Newsarama and Shelfdust, among others.
