Happy New Year, ComicsGAF. It's still 2014 right? My top, uh, 7 I guess with some others:
Manifest Destiny
Lewis and Clark go on an expedition…. And everything goes to hell. An adventure book and monster movie mix. Creepy, gross, tense, funny and dark, sometimes all at once. I especially appreciate that L&C’s shady crew don’t just exist as monster fodder from issue to issue (though it’s fun as hell when they are that too). I also sometimes really dig Owen Gieni’s coloring in this book.
Grayson
Insert Dick joke here. Seely’s doing wonders here. Taking established characters out of their comfort zone and pulling it off is exactly the kind of thing DC needs from time to time.
Sex Criminals
Fraction and Zdarsky are having a blast here and it shows. It would be easy to just put together a raunchy book with adolescent humor and call it a day, but SC has heart and solid characters. And also adolescent humor.
Southern Bastards
I live in the ‘South’, but maybe not quite this South, but I know enough to appreciate the little touches thrown in here. Someone mentioned that this is much like Scalped and that’s true. This is Aaron at the height of his powers. At times the complexity of his characters is top notch. I mean, he made me feel bad for that son of a bitch Boss FFS. Combined with, uh, that other story point and this is probably the series I’m most excited to see where it goes.
Zero
I can’t think of many comics as good as Zero at saying so much in so few words. That’s a good thing. I am never really sure where Kot is going with each issue is going to go but I know it’s going to be great getting there. The jumps in artists throws me a bit but damn if it doesn’t usually work out in the end. Great read from top to bottom.
Batman
I love in comics when a creative team gets to work on a character they obviously really love. Sometimes that turns out pretty badly *coughKevinSmithcough* but other times it’s pretty damn great. Snyder, Capullo and crew hit way more than they miss, and I appreciate how hard it is to make a real mark on the history of an established character like Bats. Much respect to pulling that off. It’s also pretty clear that – holy shit – Snyder thinks a LOT about Batman.
Moon Knight
I’m not going to lie: in general I couldn’t care less about Moon Knight. But Ellis/Shalvey’s six issues here are a work of art. Like concentrated doses of comics goodness with all the bullshit stripped out, pumped straight into your brain. I wish I could see Shalvey’s clean white field of Moon Knight’s cape soaring across a night sky or plunging into blood soaked violence every month. Forever.
Honorable Mentions:
Multiversity: Pax issue alone deserves some sort of special award, but I still want to see how the whole thing comes together.
New Avengers: Hickman’s epic storylines are great, and the incursions lead to all sorts of interesting questions and discussions involving superheroes and their representations in comics, but honestly I’m almost just as impressed that in this MCU age that Marvel’s even letting this thing run. Going from Avengers The Movie to seeing all his favorite superheroes being real assholes is going to scar little Bobby for life.
Red Lanterns: The only really good Green Lantern book left.
Deadly Class: I was underwhelmed by the first issue, then hooked with the next couple, and now I’m kinda back to underwhelmed again. There’s a lot of good in here, and I have faith it’s going somewhere great, I just hope we don’t need another drug addled road trip to find it.
Thor: I was really excited when I started reading the new Thor and Captain America runs, because they were both excellent. Cap got back from Dimension Z and went to Dimension Bland, but Thor has held up its end of the bargain. So far the ‘new’ Thor has been just as entertaining. In Aaron I trust.
Saga: Yeah, the story may move a little slowly at times, but I still think the payoffs are worth it. I imagine re-reading this collected will be excellent.
Batman and Robin: I was a bit concerned when Tomasi’s Batman went a little too batshit crazy after Damian’s death, but it led to Batman and Frankenstein team up and some shots of Batman on Apokolips that deserve to be framed and put on every wall, so it’s all good.
Hawkeye: Awarded as much for its impressive scheduling as its story and art.