Welcome to the Multiversity Year in Review for 2021! To call this a weird year is a Hulk-sized understatement, but one thing that was a pleasant surprise was the sheer number of interesting and excellent comics that came out this year. We’ve got over 25 categories to get through, so make sure you’re checking out all of the articles by using our 2021 Year in Review tag.
5. “Imogen of the Wyrding Way”
The vastness of Mike Mignola’s universe can be daunting for new readers, and even the most self-contained stories contain subtext that can be missed. It’s no doubt for that reason that when I teamed up with Mark Tweedale for two reviews of “Lady Baltimore: The Witch Queens” that he recommended I take a break between issues #4 and #5 to read “Imogen of the Wyrding Way.”
And I am glad he did that, for this one shot brought rich characterization to a very important character to Lady Baltimore and “Lady Baltimore.”
The story itself is a more classic, old-world tale of trolls, though still set in the World War II time period of the “Lady Baltimore” series, connecting the two without explicitly saying so. The beauty in it is we see Imogen’s heart on her sleeve, and how much more she is like Sofia Baltimore, something that isn’t crystal clear in the main series. While there is a more modern look in “Lady Baltimore,” this one calls back to more classic stories, but not without providing hints to the future. Artwork, particularly the coloring of Michelle Madsen, allows for beautiful expression of depth and magical power, perfect for the story’s forest setting.
But what makes this story stand out most is how it teaches the reader how the world of the Outerverse works. It’s subtle, using the forward plot movement rather than a lecture. And in that subtlety, the reader simultaneously learns and becomes further invested into the story, the characters, and their larger universe. And for those readers looking for their first taste into the intricate creations coming from Mignola’s pen, it’s no doubt the best way to learn. – Kate Kosturski
4. “Look Back”
Multiversity’s own Walter Richardson wrote about “Look Back” when it first dropped on the Shonen Jump website. I implore everyone to read his piece, as it is as dead-on and comprehensive a critical piece as you are likely to find, and a far more well-crafted analysis than you’re going to read from me. What “Look Back” did for me was open my eyes more fully with regard to how the artist views their work and the unique responsibility the work embodies. The tragic interplay between art and commerce looms large here, and the manga artists within “Look Back” have their lives shaped inextricably by that push and pull. As great as “Chainsaw Man” is – and it is truly one of the best ongoing series that manga has to offer at the moment – there’s a deeper sense of love and craft that you can feel as you read “Look Back.” Certain locales are so lovingly rendered that I suspect they draw upon something out of Fujimoto’s memories.
Emotions of melancholy and regret are real and raw and deeply felt, at least by this reader. “Look Back” dropped onto the Shonen Jump app with little to no advance notice on a Monday morning in mid-July. The fanfare only came as fans and critics allowed themselves to experience it. It feels like a minor miracle that it even exists, bucking the usual serial demands of shonen manga, and not really adhering to any of the constraints or tropes one usually associates with the genre. It is as if something inside Fujimoto just had to get its way out, by any means necessary. It became the best thing I read in 2021. – Vince Ostrowski
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3. “Sir Edward Grey: Acheron”
In terms of structure, Mike Mignola’s “Sir Edward Grey: Acheron” is almost entirely a conversation, and yet if you were to remove all the speech bubbles, I’m reasonably sure most readers would still be able to follow the shifting power dynamics throughout the issue. It’s quite a balancing act too, since the story drifts between flashbacks, some to the relatively recent past of “B.P.R.D.: The Devil You Know,” “Hellboy in Hell,” or “Hellboy: The Wild Hunt,” but also into the far-flung past, such as the Second Fall of Angels, when Pluto was overthrown by Satan. Occasionally the story drifts to observers in an entirely other part of Hell, such as Misters Jenks and Dean, aware of unfolding events by supernatural means. Sometimes “Acheron” drifts to purely conceptual places, not physical, but an idea of a place that has an abstract meaning to the characters.
So the story has to frequently orient the reader in terms of location, time, and abstract conceptual spaces, while also communicating power dynamics—who is in power and how that power shifts—and all of that still reads just in terms of panel composition, page layouts, and colors. It is this last element that I particularly want to call attention to, because Dave Stewart’s storytelling through color in this issue is some of the best he’s ever done. We’re talking about a colorist that has been awarded more than a third of all Eisners ever awarded for best coloring here. “Acheron” is a masterclass of storytelling through color. Stewart juggles so many elements, yet the effort is invisible and the result is elegant, building to a crescendo that gave me chills.
That Mignola and Stewart were able to pull off so much in the small space of a single issue, and with such finesse, is a bold statement on their storytelling craft and the strength of their decades-long partnership. ― Mark Tweedale
2. “Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1957—Family Ties”
‘Family Ties’ is a perfect example of the singular and focused kind of plot that makes the smaller side of the “Hellboy” universe such an incredible kind of storytelling. It’s the kind of issue that should be a sort of template for any one-shot issues existing within a greater canon. Written by Mike Mignola and Chris Roberson, it spends only the smallest portion of its early pages establishing the world and where Hellboy is in his career in 1957. The script keeps things tight and even if someone unfamiliar with these comics could pick it up and immediately understand the rules in a fundamental, or at the very least rudimentary, way. Hellboy and his current partner Susan Xiang are quickly thrust into a possession plot involving a family living in the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio. It’s a great little story that flips expectations even as it is giving you the clues to as what’s coming next. It builds quickly, but purposefully. It’s an excellent encapsulation of many of the things that make Hellboy a beloved character and book. It’s legitimately scary and gory while still giving us a nice amount of dry wit and action that even casual fans have come to expect.
With a wide array of artists who have worked on Hellboy and his expanded comics over the years, any one of them could have jumped onto this issue and given us something that works great. That’s the thing with this universe, is that every artist that has worked on it has made it their own while still feeling of a piece, even if their style might not be the one your gut would initially expect. Laurence Campbell was tapped to illustrate this issue and his gritty and intensely detailed style is used to balance a sense of everyday life, the obvious fantastical of the main character being a big red demon man, and the true horror. Campbell is able to convey so much without changing up his style, but rather his use of shadow and light. Exactly how much detail is shown on each panel or page dictates the mood without any need for assistance from the writing. As Mignola and Roberson are giving us very conversational and to the point dialogue, Campbell and colorist Dave Stewart are setting the mood with each page.
Continued belowFrom a “Hellboy” fan point of view, ‘Family Ties’ takes devoted readers back to a simpler time in the canon, when it wasn’t all doom, gloom, and multiple apocalypses. Looking at it as a one-shot, it’s an economic issue that gives us a good old fashioned paranormal investigation that tells a complete story with a beginning and end. It works as an easy entry to the universe, tells an interesting story, and works for readers at all levels of familiarity. It is easily one of the best one-shots of the year for being so accessible and perfectly crafted. – Christopher Egan
1. “Planet Size X-Men”
“Planet-Size X-Men” wears its scale on its sleeve, touting the terraformation and colonisation of Mars as the next natural step for Krakoa, and showing how a handful of talented mutants can achieve it in a matter of hours, all in 48 pages. This is the best of what one-shots can be, sprawling yet compact, grand in miniature.
Pepe Larraz and Marte Gracia are the obvious stars of this story, bringing their brand of hyper-scaled, dynamic art with all the usual sparks of surrealism that accompany their cast of utopic, reality-manipulating Omega level mutants. This however, was also our first insight into what a Krakoan X-Men comic from the duo looked like when completely removed from the writing of Jonathan Hickman. Not only is there no deviation in quality or continuity from this shift, but they manage to put out arguably their best work ever as a duo under the scripting of Gerry Dugan. The martian landscapes, tension-laced showdowns and unabashed flexing of mutant power are all as grand as could be expected, with a lack of action allowing the pair to focus all their energy on the atmosphere needed for the monumental accomplishment on display.
“Planet-Size X-Men” is arguably the perfect solidification of what makes this era of stories great, conflict is put to the wayside in favour of scale, nation-building, thematic accomplishment and stunning mutant technology. The way the issue sits so intrinsically inside of the ‘Hellfire Gala’ event while also being its own separate spectacle is also a great encapsulation of what made the overall event great, it pulled together a mish-mash of individual narratives that leaked into one another simply due to the high-brow fashion gala at its centre.
This story is evocative in a way we have hardly seen since the highest peaks of the Krakoan era in stories like “SWORD” #1, “X-Men” #7 and “House/Powers of X,” making it that much harder to ever put the genie back in the bottle for the Mutant Nation. Arakko now sits at the centre of the future of Mutantdom, rather than falling to the wayside, and Mars is firmly in mutant territory. It’s hard to think how Krakoa could ever top this in its fireworks next year. – James Dowling
