For our 2023 Year in Review, we’ve got a different approach. With the world feeling colder and more distant, we wanted to turn the tide in our coverage and give the most personal approach to our wrap ups yet. Over the next week or so, you’ll be hearing from our staff on what they felt was the best of 2023. We hope you enjoy.
Best Ongoing: “Titans” by Tom Taylor, Nicola Scott, et al
While “Titans” is absolutely my favorite ongoing of the year, I must admit that a major part of my enjoyment of the series comes down to the fact that it represents the idea of forward momentum in the DC Universe. For the past 63+ years, the Justice League has represented the (in continuity) front lines of the DC Universe. Sure, people have innovated within that space (notably the Justice League Detroit era, the bwahaha JLI, and my beloved James Robinson run pre-“Flashpoint”), but the idea is usually the same: when shit goes down, you call the Justice League.
“Titans” represents the idea that it is time for the DC Universe to change; the old ways led to a lot of death, destruction, and disillusionment. Maybe there’s a new way?
That alone is a fun idea, but Taylor and Scott have used that as an opportunity to explore what such an idea would really look like. If the Titans are a family, can you thrive without letting intrafamily dynamics bring you down? Will the people who used to be in charge accept a new boss? What happens when the new boss, despite their best intentions, is the same as the old boss?
Again, a lot of this has been hinted at and not fully explored yet, but those ideas are more innovative and interesting for a Justice League comic than anything we’ve seen in some time. Plus, it is easy to forget that “Titans,” in a way, is following up one of the inarguably most popular team books of all time, the Wolfman/Pérez “New Teen Titans.”
And, like George Pérez, Scott’s work represents something of a platonic ideal of their era of superhero comics. Scott is the perfect artist to draw wild action that, at its heart, is as much about the relationships of the characters as it is about the death cult or the dead body of your teammate. Her work is so jam packed with emotion that, at times, you can be forgiven for not internalizing just how bombastic the action around it is.
And so, “Titans” is a very good comic, but it is a better idea for one. Here’s hoping that, over time, the ambition, historical precedent, and emotional depth of the comic all allow it to become an all-time great one.
Best Film Adaptation of a Comic: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
I took my kids to see Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse one day over the summer, and during its (frankly, too long) running time, I got to see my kids experience the full range of comic fandom on the screen. They fell back in love with old characters, met new ones that intrigued them, got bored at parts, didn’t understand a few scenes, jumped up and down with joy, cowered in fear, and got supremely pissed off at a cliffhanger. It almost doesn’t matter if any other comic film came out this year, because none could deliver that range of fanning out in one package. Across the Spider-Verse is as close as we will ever get to the experience of the sequential, serialized storytelling of a comic on screen, bar none.
Best Comic Adaptation of a Film: “Universal Monsters: Dracula” by James Tynion IV and Martin Simmonds
The challenge of adapting/adding to/recontextualizing the Tod Browning’s Dracula 92 years later while not using the likeness of Bela Lugosi is a herculean task. That film is very good, but much of its goodness comes from the tone of the sets, the film stock, the soundtrack, the stark black and white, and Lugosi’s equal parts restrained aristocrat and sex-driven animal.
Almost none of that is present in “Universal Monsters: Dracula,” but Tynion and Simmonds manage to take a few core pieces of that film – Renfield, the exaggerated uses of spider-webs an shadows, and incorporate the raw essence of what Browning was trying to do into this comic. Because of the impediments, this is an adaptation unlike any other you’ve likely seen, especially of a source material this well known and iconic.
Continued belowThat’s a good thing. Comics need more of this.
Best Trend: DC’s additive approach
I love Dan DiDio like Martian Manhunter loves Chocos. The former DC co-publisher was always trying to find the next way to shake up DC, to give the people a shock to the system, to attempt to get the world – and I truly believe he meant the world – talking about DC. But in doing so, DiDio often threw out the part of DC that always set the brand apart from other comics and pop culture: the legacy.
That’s been a buzzword at DC for almost a decade now, with various attempts to ‘bring back the legacy’ of the company, but this year DC actually did something about that. No, I don’t mean making the Titans the centerpiece of the line. This year, for the first time in almost 15 years, DC seemed more interested in acknowledging all of its history without the fact of its acknowledgment being the story.
Let me try to explain. In “DC Universe Rebirth” #0, Geoff Johns attempted to use the very idea of legacy as the point of the story. I love that issue (save the last page), but the story felt like defining a word by using the word itself. Compare that to the recent issues of “Action Comics,” where there are more members of the Super family flying around than we ever thought possible. Consider the continued presence of three Batgirls and no one is calling for one of them to die. “The Flash” has a spin-off title that (badly) focuses on two of the younger speedsters.
This is legacy in action, but more than that, DC finally has the feeling that drew me in as a kid again. Not only is there an old man’s lifetime worth of great stories in the past, but there’s a feeling that there are even more of those stories to come. This era of DC feels like a doorway opening to the future, without impediments in terms of who or what can be used.
Best Surprise: The Energon Universe
Surprises are rare in comics, and Skybound pulled one off with “Void Rivals” leading into a new shared G.I. Joe/Transformers universe. I really don’t have too much more to say, I just think its neat.
