2013’s pretty much over and, boy, was it ever a great year for comics. Here’s what I and other Kotaku staffers loved reading over the last twelve months.
Sex Criminals
It was fair to expect that a book from Matt Fraction and
Chip Zdarsky would have some of the raunchiest porn comedy this side of a Judd
Apatow movie. But it’s the sweetly awkward coming-of-age romance in Sex Criminals that comes as a surprise
and makes it more than a collection of squishy sequences floating on top of a
fantastical metaphor for post-coital bliss. Even if time stops after a life-changing
horizontal tango, the real magic comes from being able to share it with
someone. And, hey, if it got banned, then it must be worth checking out, right? (Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky, Image Comics)
The Private Eye
It’s the eye candy that sucks you in first: awesome
environmental and character designs shot through with neon and pneumatic tubes
and an irresistible daisy chain of all your favorite retro/future visual signifiers
crammed into each other. But the best thing about The Private Eye is how it tortures you with what it means to live
in a hyper-connected world. Its characters move through a world where keeping
secrets is an obsession because people lived through a datapocalypse where all
their collective internet dirty laundry was public. And in a year when the reality
of the surveillance state was impossible to ignore, this digitally distributed title makes you think about your own web browsing and social network sharing in the
worst possible way. (Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin, Panel Syndicate)
Pretty Deadly
What I love most about Pretty Deadly is that, three very
beautiful issues in, you can feel what it is about more than you can
necessarily know what it is about. The myth-concerned Western offers up its
component inspirations easily—some Sergio Leone scene-setting, visual grammar
from manga and a bit of fairy-tale framing—but the explicit motivations of the
series’ motley characters are still mysterious. But you can still tell that the
swordfights and gunplay happen because of primal drives like fear, bitterness,
greed and hope. It’s one of the best debuts of the year and will surely get
stronger as more of its world’s tales get told. (Kelly Sue DeConnick & Emma
Rios, Image Comics)
Batgirl
You can’t be a member of Batman’s crime-fighting brigade
without family trauma. And, while Barbara Gordon has had her own share of bad
times at the hands of maniacs like the Joker, this past year upped the stakes
exponentially. After facing down her own psychopathic brother, Barbara Gordon’s
come away with a fratricidal guilt so powerful that she feels unworthy to wear
the Bat-symbol. And then her own father starts hunting her. It’s about as dark
a Bat-book as exists right now and it’s all the more impressive for how it
hasn’t needed a big event crossover to make it compelling. (Gail Simone &
Federico Pasarin, DC Comics)
Saga
Forget the wings, horns and television-heads. The players in
Saga‘s sci-fi soap opera are as horny, scared shitless and delusional as the
people in your own life. Nobody’s terribly noble in this comic and it’s all the
more enjoyable because of it. There are families all over Saga, made up of
people who’ve been told that they shouldn’t be together and wondering if that
might actually be true. When the universe is war-torn and randomly harsh, it
feels stupid to believe that love can change anything for the better. But to
believe the opposite, Saga tells us, is to make the universe even more fucked up. So, be stupid. Be brave. (Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples, Image Comics)
Nowhere Men
What if science were as big a thing as rock n roll? You’d
have dudes in garages trying to whip up the next Hadron collider or cold fusion
breakthrough. And you know how the break of a really awesome band can seem like
the end of the world? In Nowhere
Men, that threat is real. At the core of this series is the unresolved tensions
between four big-brained superstars who founded mega-science juggernaut WorldCorp.
The broad parallels to bands like the Beatles—the brooding idealism, fun-loving
ubiquity and accusations of selling out— are part of the point, but the arguments
about what science is supposed to do and what’s best for humanity aren’t just
philosophical. They change the ways people’s brains and bodies work, creating a
crop of cursed and far-flung metahumans who are essentially a concept album
that represents what happens when ego and experimentation go too far. The fact
that there’s an incredible parade of late 20th-Century graphic
design tropes throughout the series so far is just super-sweet frosting on the
cake. (Eric Stephenson & Nate Bellegarde, Image Comics)
Battling Boy
Battling Boy rocks because it boils down adventure fiction
formula down to its purest elements and adds a ton of sass to the mix. It’s filled
with fashionable characters, a fallible lead and a landscape of
larger-than-life deeds and worlds that are just out-of-reach. You want Battling
Boy to kick butt not just so he wins the day but also because his exploits feel
like they’re taking you to the fresh, of-the-moment re-thinking of what a
superhero can look like. (Paul Pope, First Second)
The Walking Dead
“Remember how good things were before they got bad…”
That’s the lingering thought behind the melodrama of The Walking Dead. The 10th anniversary ‘All-Out War’ story arc in the hit series brought two opposing
visions of community into conflict with each other and called into question the
price that people pay to enjoy a common good. There’s no question that the bad guys are terrible. The real
tension comes in seeing just how long the heroes of Kirkman and Adlard’s yarn
can continue to be good as everything shifts around them. (Robert Kirkman &
Charlie Adlard, Image Comics)
Boxers & Saints
History shouldn’t ever be boring if it’s told the right way.
Boxers & Saints puts you right in the emotional epicenters of two people on
either side of the Chinese-vs.-outsiders conflicts from the dawn of the last century without forcing
you to memorize dates and the names of leaders. You come away with an electric
understanding of why people fought and died and with a greater sense of empathy
for either side of the battles. Boxers and Saints shows how powerful faith can
be and how cultures clashing can have terrible consequences. (Gene Luen Yang,
First Second)
X-Men Legacy
Stephen Totilo writes: An X-Men comic that has an issue that is all
about The Watchmen. A super-hero
comic that never settles on a status quo. A story about David Haller, son of
Professor X and a man with many personalities in his mind vying for control.
Every issue of Si Spurrier’s nearly-concluded series has at least one fantastic
surprise and at least one thing you haven’t read in an X-Men comic before. The
product of fresh thinking and arguably a better Marvel comic than even the
lauded Hawkeye and Daredevil. (Si Spurrier
& Tan Eng Huat, Marvel Comics)
Copra
Stephen Totilo writes: What can we say? Michael Fiffe’s tribute comic to DC Comics’
great 1980s villains-as-government-agents Suicide Squad series that can also be
read as an energetically-drawn, art comic. Great, though not widely available.
Get it here. (Michael Fiffe, Bergen
Street Comics)
Guardians of the Galaxy
Michael Fahey writes: Talking raccoon with a laser pistol. I will say it again: talking raccoon with a laser pistol. (Brian Michael Bendis and Steve McNiven, Marvel Comics)
Empowered
Richard Eisenbeis writes: Every year, there is no comic I look forward to more than the newest 200-page issue of Empowered—and this year’s only serves to remind me why. This “sexy superhero comedy” follows D-list superhero Empowered as she moves from bondage-target to legitimate hero. The world of Empowered is full of superheroes that are more divas than heroes, and villains that range from the classically incompetent to the legitimately terrifying. Part superhero deconstruction, part emotional epic about self confidence, Empowered delivers as many laughs as it does tears.
In addition to the yearly trade paperback release, this year saw the release of a few short one-shot comics, further fleshing out the backstories of the characters.
If you think having a cosmic-powered god-entity living on your coffee table or a world where a fair share of superheroes got their powers from alien STDs is worthy of a good laugh, Empowered is the comic for you. (Adam Warren, Dark Horse Comics)
