Like a snake eating its own tail we come to the end of the year, re-ingesting and reconsidering the books, artists, and moments in the comics world that most moved us, or made us think, or perhaps even better, gave us shelter from the world outside for a short little while. And what a year, yeah? I feel like every year I find something new to love about comics, how they open up the world around me, introduce me to new ideas, art styles, or genres, and replenish my love for the form. This year is no exception, so let’s talk about a few of my faves!
Best All-Ages Comic: Kaya
This comic series from cartoonist Wes Craig and Image Comics is an absolute delight, and only got better in 2023 as the book finished its second arc. You may know Craig from his previous series, “Deadly Class,” a riotous and thrilling action comic that doubled as a metaphor for the trials of teenagers/young adulthood, where Craig’s kinetic and stylish visuals punctuated writer Rick Remender’s themes with swaggering aplomb. Here, Craig is on both sides of the writer/artist coin in a book that is still very much about growing up, but nods appreciatively to influences like Jack Kirby’s “Kamandi,” “Adventure Time,” Jeff Smith’s “Bone,” and Robert E. Howard’s “Conan.” Set in what seems to be a far-flung future-Earth, where humans war with an ever-strengthening robot empire and vie for resources against the lizardfolk, our eponymous hero Kaya, a teenage girl with a cybernetic arm bubbling with “Kirby Crackle,” is tasked with delivering her younger brother, the prophesied savior of their people, to safety amid the robot onslaught.
If that sounds like high adventure, it sure is, and Craig manages to throw a ton of fun ideas at the wall and finds that most of it sticks cleanly. Assisted by Craig is Jason Wordie on colors and AW’s Tom Napolitano on lettering, both of whom make substantial contributions to the book, from Wordie’s beautiful watercolors that make backgrounds come alive in the slight variations of color and fullness, and create complicated and tremendous lighting effects against Craig’s s delicate linework, to Napolitano’s unique speech bubbles and tails he has for different characters, causing even that bit of comic creativity to add personality to each character.
While “Deadly Class” was a book filled with ultraviolence and grim morality, “Kaya” leans the other way. Certainly, Kaya and her brother Jin’s story is one of peril and a good bit of tragedy, it is never far from light-hearted character moments, and the world envisioned by Craig is enhanced by the anthropomorphic mutant peoples that please the eye and tease the imagination. “Kaya” is a book that is light on premise and themes that are easy enough for younger readers to grasp, but where the book truly shines is the boundless imagination put into the worldbuilding, a wondrous environment full of fun monsters and terrific action that anyone can enjoy.
Best Publisher: The Nib
Let’s pour one out of “The Nib,” shall we? This September saw the last comic (above) published by the online/print magazine, the brainchild of cartoonist Matt Bors, ten years from the month it was created, waaay back in 2013. Originally an “imprint” of online publishing platform Medium, “The Nib” went through a variety of publishing regimes before finally resting as a subscription service via The Inkwell. Throughout all of its iterations, “The Nib” brought outstanding political comics, graphic journalism pieces, memoirs, and essays to its readership. Throughout its run, Editor Bors exhibited a superb eye for talent, championing cartoonists like Mattie Lubchansky, Gemma Correll, Ruben Bolling, Tom Tomorrow, Pia Guerra, Mike Dawson, Ben Passmore, Chelsea Saunders to name a few of the many, many excellent artists who graced either online or print editions of the mag.
Earlier this year, “The Nib” won an Eisner for Best Anthology, the magazine’s end already a foregone conclusion, the award a capstone on a brilliant and transformative run for both Bors and cartoonists like him. I hope the death of “The Nib,” a book that introduced me to so many talented cartoonists, and made me a wiser and more conscientious human, I hope death is not the end for this project that enriched my life these past ten years. We need good, honest, thought-provoking journalism now more than ever, and I’m thankful to Matt Bors and “The Nib” for everything it brought us this past seismically tumultuous decade.
Continued belowBest First Issue: “Somna: A Bedtime Story” #1
Hitting like a bolt of lightning just last month, Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay’s new project from upstart publisher DSTLRY absolutely rocked readers and critics alike. A bold, brilliant, beautiful and perhaps most importantly, undeniably sexy tale of unspoken desires in Puritanical England exudes sophisticated adult storytelling from the two talented creators. Set in a small village in 1600’s England amidst the witchhunting craze of that era, protagonist Ingrid (captured with nuanced emotion and charm during her waking hours by Cloonan, and with vibrant prurience during her dreams by Lotay) spends her housewife days mostly alone, her thoughts troubled by not only the burning of witches at the order of her solemn, serious-minded baliff husband, Roland, but also by her dreams, dreams that awaken carnal desires in her, desires perhaps too lascivious for her stoic husband.
The facilitator of those desires is an entity that can only be described as devilish, a shadow-black fiend that whispers secrets in her ear, touches her in all the places her husband doesn’t, and ups the “hot but dangerous” factor in this book by about 1000%. The first issue, on its own, is a terrific erotic story of lust in a lustless age, the imposition of men’s will on the desires of women (and how the church exploits religion to make women subservient), all the while setting up seeds for a compelling story to come. Cloonan and Lotay have remarkable chemistry, the interplay between Lotay’s lush dreamlike art and Cloonan’s exemplary narrative chops make this book a must read, and a stunning first issue right out of the gate.
Best Comic: “Monica” by Daniel Clowes
“Monica,” the newest graphic novel by Daniel Clowes, and his first in seven years, begs to be re-read almost immediately after finishing. There is no gotcha twist ending, no third act reveal that drops everything in its right place. No, “Monica” is the kind of story you need to sit with, a meaty morsel of brain-food to be chewed on and considered. In nine stories that revolve around the world of the eponymous Monica, some literally but others more metaphorically, with some of the stories aping genre comics of the ’60s and ’70s, we are led on a byzantine narrative path David Lynch would be proud of, never staying long in one place, encompassing themes both global (like world-ending cataclysm) and individualistic (child abandonment).
As we follow Monica throughout her life, we jump backwards and forwards in time to see the somewhat happy little girl with a dangerously neglectful mother turn into a successful but perhaps bitter young woman traumatized by the death of her grandmother and the re-emergence of her dead grandfather through an old radio, and that woman then search for answers in the darkest of places, a withering ’70s counterculture cult, only to again arise in later life still resilient, but with a bleak yet interesting story to tell. The book springboards deftly between tonal shifts, sometimes straightforward memoir-like tales from Monica’s past to allegories that are as perplexing as they are haunting.
“Monica” is never one thing, and in Clowe’s expert hands, hands that know how to tease readers along and keep them asking questions of his characters and plot, the book soars to new heights even for this accomplished cartoonist. At turns darkly comedic and incredibly profound, “Monica” is a book that I enjoyed not just in 2023, but one I expect to return to for many years to come, peeling back the layers for deeper meaning, turning the radio off and on to see if the voice is still there, however faint.
