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 Writer: Tom Taylor
At this point in his career, Tom Taylor is one of DC’s go-to writers for major books. It makes sense, the guy writes incredibly fun comic books that sell well. Superhero comics are excellent when they’re imaginative and tell sweeping, cool stories and Taylor’s certainly do. Just look at Garr-O in “Titans: Beast World,” the way he reimagines DC lore in “Dark Knights of Steel,” or Dick Grayson’s swashbuckling adventures in the most recent arc of “Nightwing.” They’re also great when a writer clearly understands comics as a visual medium and works with their artists to experiment and push things forward. Yet again, Taylor does this all the time, most recently in the POV issue of “Nightwing.” They’re particularly great when a writer appreciates the lore of the universes they get to play around in. Taylor’s Elseworlds series and his affinity for crossovers make it clear that he’s thrilled to use the DC sandbox.
But the reasons for Taylor’s success run even deeper than all of that. Fundamentally, Taylor understands what makes superheroes compelling. First, that they’re people and second, that they’re people we should see as role models. Sure, there are your antiheroes and complex protagonists like Red Hood (who Taylor also writes well!) and there’s absolutely a space for them. But when it comes to your flagship characters — your Supermen and Titans and Nightwings — we need them to be multidimensional but almost supernaturally noble. And Taylor writes nobility better than just about anyone else out there. That’s partially because of his focus on showing his heroes interact with real people, not just punching bad guys. And it’s partially because of his dedication to engaging with real-world issues in his comics and having his protagonists do the same. But really, it’s because Taylor writes his heroes like people we know. They struggle, and they need help, and they get tired and overwhelmed. But they always stand up, and do what’s right, because that’s what heroes do. And Tom Taylor gets how to write that.
Most Welcome Series: “Green Lantern”
How nice is it to get back to the basics in a Green Lantern comic? Over the years, the lore of the Green Lantern comics has become a bit of a weight on the line. Epic story after epic story got to be too much to follow and the returns were diminishing to say the least. So when Jeremy Adams and Xermánico opened their new series with Hal Jordan on Earth, saving trapped miners and begging Carol Ferris for a job, it felt like an important turn back to the basics. “Green Lantern” has been telling lean, digestible stories that are still rich in detail and entertainment value.
Yeah, there’s a Sinestro plot and there’s been a steady buildup of lore-y material, but this is also a series that spends time on Hal playing baseball or basking in flying through the clouds. It’s got gorgeous pencils and coloring, evoking memories of the early days of the Johns/Reis run. If this series gets bigger and turns to the epic, that’ll be a perfectly reasonable choice. Plus, the first 6 issues of the series indicate that it would happen through a steady ramp up rather than throwing us into the deep end. But regardless of that, for now, reading “Green Lantern” and understanding every word without reading any previous series is the most welcome development for comics in the year 2023.
Best Single Issue: “Transformers” #1
Has there ever been a better, more natural combination than Transformers and Daniel Warren Johnson? When this series was announced, excitement was more than warranted. Somehow, though, Daniel Warren Johnson has outperformed expectations and that was clear in “Transformers” #1. The debut issue of this series does a little bit of everything. It grounds the story in character, focusing on friends Spike and Jenny as people before thrusting them into the world of Autobots and Decepticons.
Once they stumble upon a ship from Energon, though, we aren’t just thrown into cool action (though that’s there too and it’s glorious), the Transformers, too, are treated as complex and their rich history is clear just from a handful of lines. As things pivot fully into action, it’s epic, exciting, and the potential for “Transformers” feels endless. Johnson’s art style is a perfect fit for this universe, too. He communicates momentum, weight, and energy as well as anyone ever has in this medium, and that is an incredible compliment to the scale of a Transformers story. This is exactly what a first issue should be, not just exposition telling us to care, but action that makes us care. And in “Transformers” #1, Daniel Warren Johnson delivers one of the most exciting, gorgeous, and intriguing first issues in recent memory.
