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2022 Year in Review: Best Cartoonist

By | December 8th, 2022
Posted in Columns | % Comments

Welcome to the Multiversity Year in Review for 2022! We’ve got over 25 categories to get through, so make sure you’re checking out all of the articles by using our 2022 Year in Review tag.

Some comics are a team effort, with various folks chipping in parts both large and small to make a comic get in front of you. But sometimes, there are folks who take on the lion’s share of the responsibility, writing and illustrating – and sometimes coloring and/or lettering – their own work. These are, in some ways, the purest expressions of creativity we see in comics. Today, we honor those doing the heavy lifting.

3. N.D. Stevenson

Some might say 2022 was a quiet year for Nate Diana Stevenson, in spite of this being the year the non-binary creator of “Nimona” and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power revealed his new first name, and that he’d stopped using feminine pronouns – after all, we’re still waiting for the Lumberjanes TV show (which he is showrunning), and the Nimona movie (which Netflix and Annapurna thankfully saved from Disney earlier in the year.)

However, Stevenson’s weekly comic strip “I’m Fine I’m Fine Just Understand” remains an regular online pit stop for yours truly, an often hilarious, sometimes haunting insight into his life, reflecting on his hopes, dreams, anxieties and regrets, as well as anything major he’s been up to (like… seeing a hiker with two Mountain Dews in his pocket, or more sincerely, his experiences undergoing gender transition.) His cartoons are so deceptively simple looking, resembling schoolboy ramblings interspersed with doodles of his fiery little alter-ego, but they’re really masterclasses in how much comedy in comics depends on abrupt pacing, and it makes it all the more impactful when he deploys shadows and color, or more realistic renderings of what he’s pondering.

Plus: there was a whoooole Book of Boba Fett fan comic, “This Place Was Home,” a lovely tribute to Attack of the Clones’ Zam Wesell (the shapeshifting sidekick of Jango that Stevenson has loved since childhood, for what were pretty clear reasons in retrospect), which was so much better than the show it wasn’t funny. Sure, it’s rather coarse for Star Wars, but imagine, imagine if the show’s creators had explored their lead character to such a poignant extent – they really missed a beat not asking him for his insight into the Fett family. – Christopher Chiu-Tabet

2. Terry Moore

Terry Moore is one of the comic industry’s most reliable talents, and has been since he debuted with “Strangers in Paradise” nearly 30 years ago. Acting as his own publisher for most of that time has given Moore freedom and longevity rivaled by only Dave Sim or Todd McFarlane. In 2022, just like pretty much every other year, readers could look forward to a new issue written and drawn by Moore every six weeks.

Moore spent the first part of the year wrapping up “Serial,” a murder mystery starring an usual little girl. It’s a spinoff of his lauded “Rachel Rising,” but stands fine on its own. He then launched a new series, “Parker Girls,” which is a follow up to his “Strangers in Paradise” opus but is also accessable to new readers. Naturally, both series play to Moore’s strengths and showcase the qualities that put him on this list.

Moore’s specialty, for those who don’t know, is women. Not supermodels. Not idealized proportions. Not spine-contorting poses that feature both boobs and butt at the same time. Just… natural-looking women with varied ages and body sizes. Add to that his excellent handle on facial expressions, and the characters virtually come alive on teh page. Then toss in his detailed backgrounds and Charles Shultz-inspired ability to draw snow that you can practically hear crunching under the character’s feet. The sum is work that makes Moore a national treasure. – Drew Bradley

1. Stan Sakai

There’s an intimacy a creator has when they act as both writer and artist for their creations. Of course, there’s the eternal tug of war between creator as writer and creator as artist. But it also lends a sense of consistency from that intimate involvement. Your pen is the only pen bringing forth the words and the pictures. There’s no battle for competing visions. And there’s no better word to describe Stan Sakai and his franchise creation, “Usagi Yojimbo,” which has been going strong for over 35 years, than consistent.

On paper, a story of a rabbit in feudal Japan that combines the actual history of its period setting with the supernatural and some humor and some really hilarious word balloons when people die reads like a hard sell, or something that is ripe for disaster under the wrong kind of creative team. That’s a lot of elements in one place, and if not done right, something will get lost in the shuffle or be treated with a level of disrespect. But that intimacy Sakai has, that nearly four decades of intimacy, brings all these ingredients together in a balanced and compelling way. Moreover, the end product remains accessible to any level of reader. While there is a universe built up around the series, it’s not bogged down in minutiae. It’s a world that both casual readers and longtime fans will enjoy on the same footing. I challenge you to find a “bad” issue of “Usagi Yojimbo” – – trust me, you won’t. And that’s the secret to Sakai’s success, that consistency.

The near future sees Sakai’s samurai rabbit world return to Dark Horse under its own imprint with the promise of an expanded universe. No matter what comes next from the “Usagi Yojimbo” world, its creator has laid a strong foundation for it. – Kate Kosturski


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