The best comic books of 2016 – Vox

comics, more than ever, are not just about superheroes.

In 2016, comic book writers, artists, and publishers proved once again that there is life beyond Marvel and DC Comics, beyond our favorite caped crusaders and mighty mutants. We will always have (and love) blockbusters with the Avengers, Batman, and Superman, but the number of great comics in different genres has grown steadily over the last few years.

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There are now featured comics in almost every genre; you could very easily compile a year-end list of just sci-fi or fantasy or crime or sci-fi-fantasy-crime comics, and still walk away with an outstanding library full of treasures.

The nine comics we’ve ranked below (well, 10 comics once we count our tie for number one) have been our favorite established/ongoing series in 2016 (check out our favorite new comics here) . they’re all staggeringly different from one another, but they all exemplify what comics can do when art, prose, and plot come together to create magic.

9) the legend of wonder woman (dc comics)

DC comics

DC announced in December that it’s canceling The Legend of Wonder Woman, which traces the superhero’s origins from her childhood on the idyllic island of Themyscira to her eventual choice to join the human world. We’re going to miss it in 2017. The book has been confident and clear in telling the story of Wonder Woman, a hero who’s often misunderstood — and at times inconsistently written. The Legend of Wonder Woman’s husband-wife writer-artist duo of Renae De Liz and Ray Dillon lean into their title character’s empathy and joy and make those qualities her defining traits, reminding us all of what makes her so super.

8) monstress (comic image)

Image comics

Few comic books build such beautiful and strange worlds as writer Marjorie Liu and artist Sana Takeda’s fantasy adventure Monstress. Their comic is complex, and a challenge in parts, but the reward is a lush, dreamy story full of robust characters. On the surface it’s about a young woman and a monster that lives within her, set in universe where witches eat magical little beings. But in 2016 it unfurled its dark wings into a story that cleaves at issues like inequality, politics, and race — a serious reflection of real-world issues, examined via fantasy.

7) bitch planet (image from comics)

Image comics

The concept of Bitch Planet — a sci-fi take on grindhouse flicks that sends “non-compliant” women to an interplanetary jail to compete in a Hunger Games-ish battle to the death — is supposed to be pulpy, bonkers fun. And it totally is.

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But writer Kelly Sue Deconnick and artist Valentine De Landro’s best work is in the comic’s softer moments, thanks to the attention and care they reserve for the inmates of the titular prison. This year, the two gave us a deeper look at the father-daughter relationship and the story of recluse Meiko Maki, a beautiful and devastating story that asks readers to consider how race, sexism, and violence shape us all. Every single one of us.

the most disturbing thing about bitch planet is that deconnick and de landro rarely provide satisfying and comfortable answers; it’s a comic that wants you to keep asking questions long after you’ve finished the last issue.

6) paper girls (image comics)

Image comics

Paper Girls is set in suburban Cleveland in the 1980s; it’s about a band of gutsy newspaper delivery girls who function as our eyes and ears to a strange alien invasion, and there’s mystery on every page. From writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Cliff Chiang, the wide-eyed saga is full of electric moments that shatter everything you think you knew about where its story was going.

This year, the newspaper girls introduced a time jump element that brings everything back to 2016 from the ’80s, which on the surface should make the story a little easier to put together. but the book’s special undertone of ultra-weirdness, complete with dino-steeds and the newspaper girls’ unexplained connection to a certain tech giant, is enough to keep readers gloriously baffled.

5) the unbeatable squirrel girl (marvel comics)

Marvel comics

Centered on one of Marvel’s more playful heroes, Ryan North and Erica Henderson’s The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl represents a couple of delicate balancing acts: one between geek-friendly comedy and superhero action, and another between deep Marvel canon-mining and more newcomer-friendly storytelling.

the comic is full of wacky jokes and witty asides (north’s footnotes on almost every page are as welcome as distractions), ironic marvel riffs (squirrel girl’s gleeful baiting of tony stark is a gag), and victories that ignite intellect and cunning more often than brute force. And he had a banner year in 2016, when he saw squirrel girl and her motley crew of companions, including a squirrel with a ribbon named tippy-toe and the calmly trans-masculine koi boi, get tangled up with other weirdos from the marvelous universe (howard the duck, mole man), as well as some of her biggest players (many of whom she beats the crap out of in the equally excellent standalone graphic novel, the invincible squirrel girl pummels the marvel universe).

4) midnighter and apollo (dc comics)

DC comics

There is no comic book romance better or more exciting than the one between Midnighter and Apollo. The former is a ruthless anti-hero with a computer brain that allows him to win fights by predicting moves before they happen; the latter is a golden being who uses solar energy to give himself laser eyes, super strength, flight, and super speed. Together, they’re the sexiest couple in all of superhero comics — whether they’re in the bedroom, washing dishes, or taking on demons.

Writer Steve Orlando and artist Fernando Blanco have struck a winning balance between poignant tenderness and searing wit to create a relationship that aches and breathes. And like any good comic book couple, the stakes for these two are huge, as this miniseries tests whether their love is strong enough to endure literal hell.

3) the flintstones (dc comics)

DC comics

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Rife with the sort of visual and verbal punnery that characterized the 1960s TV cartoon, The Flintstones comic doesn’t seem like it would be a fitting venue for some of 2016’s sharpest social commentary; then again, 2016 has been an unusual year in a lot of ways, so here we are. Part of DC’s recent revival of a bunch of classic Hanna-Barbera properties, Mark Russell and Steve Pugh’s take on Bedrock’s modern Stone-Age Family is a series of standalone stories (a nice nod to the cartoon’s episodic nature) that look sideways at modern concerns with a healthy dose of wit, satirical bite, and even melancholy.

the book finds fred, wilma, the rubble family and the other bedrock dwellers struggling, to varying degrees, with the dangers of encroaching modernity, opening the door to stories centered on consumerism, technological fear , religious fanaticism and even PTSD but true to its source material, The Flintstones manage to keep things surprisingly light throughout, weaving a riveting mix of razor-sharp satire and more comfortable comedy-style humor. of situation. is one of the biggest and best surprises of the year.

2) vision (marvel comics)

Marvel comics

Tom King’s Vision wrapped its 12-issue run this year, leaving behind one of the most innovative — and sad — standalone stories Marvel has published in recent memory. Centering on the A.I. Avenger (who recently made his way into the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War) and the family he created for himself, it’s a deeply humanistic science fiction tale about the suffering and trauma that accompany the “normal” lives the Vision family strives toward.

the conflict between the robotic nature of the characters and the suburban home environment in which they attempt to function allowed the vision to dig deep wells of emotion, which overflow several times throughout the book; the back half of this series is basically one devastating blow after another. available in a couple of trade paperbacks, it’s worth reading cover to cover to experience some of the best storytelling – superhero, sci-fi or otherwise – 2016 had to offer.

1) saga (image comics) — tie

Image comics

There should just be a guaranteed spot on year-end lists for Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’s Saga. A space epic about a family — Marko, Alana and their child Hazel — with the odds stacked against them, it allows us to experience the achy, painful, and beautiful moments shared between parents and their children, set against a unique intergalactic backdrop. Saga frequently offers glimpses of truly bizarre stuff like audacious rocket ship fornication or weird, bug-like teachers, but it always stays grounded in the inescapable and relentless progression of life, and in the dignified, graceful way that only Vaughan and Staples could pull off.

1) the wicked + the divine (image comics) — tie

Image comics

Over the past two years, no comic has been as thrilling as Jamie McKelvie and Kieron Gillen’s The Wicked + The Divine. The comic began as an impossibly hip and clever take on celebrity and mythology: Every 90 years, ancient gods get to spend two years living with mortals, which they choose to do as pop stars because they love being worshipped. Imagining Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and Kanye West as fickle, narcissistic, and divine beings with supernatural powers makes as much sense as any theory about what drives idolatry and fame.

In its most recent volumes, the book has toyed with ideas of fandom and creation, and this summer gave us the best superhero fight of the year, something the vmas would kill for, before exploding (some of) the rules and (some of) the characters that mckelvie and gillen have created. our gods and goddesses now live in a world of uncertainty. the first arc was about a murder and our characters found the truth in it, and now the tables have been turned with the deities keeping a murder secret.

there are moments when evil + the divine feels like a band or a pop star that has just come off their first stadium tour and closed at madison square garden. it’s time to get back in the studio and luckily for us, what’s to come could be their best album yet.

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