As part of last year’s coverage, I noted how comics creators are seemingly getting better and better practically every year. And, sure, that’s hard to definitively prove (and also maybe it’s just a touch of playful hot air), but I think it’s valid nonetheless. Because after the year we’ve had collectively (following the chaos of basically the last four-ish years), it’s important to truly and earnestly recognize the sheer quality across the entirety of the comics industry. (Especially since some creators and other industry folks don’t think so kindly of their colleagues/cohorts.)
But if you really want plenty of signs of just how good things truly are, and how creators somehow keep getting better in telling increasingly thoughtful and engaging stories, you can just check out our coverage of the best comics of 2023. Be it writers and letters, OGNs and miniseries, the 2023 crop of offerings/titles felt like both a salve for and an explanation of the madness of our times (as well as just being damn fine art and storytelling). Our staff spend just a few lines commemorating these many and varied achievements, but we do so in robust and heartfelt celebration of this singular year. Without these efforts, who knows what might have become of our shared sanity?
But much like the quality of books and creators alike, we’re not nearly done with our own works. You can read part two of our best comics of 2023 extravaganza here. We hope that with both parts, you’ll see what’s always been readily apparent to us at AIPT: the world may be an endlessly maddening kerfuffle, but the comics are great (and getting better) at celebrating, explaining, and generally making life markedly more palatable. And with 2024 shaping up to be one for the books, at least we can place our continued hope in comics.
– Chris Coplan, Comics Editor
Best Comic to Show a Lapsed Fan
Green Lantern (2023 Series)
Courtesy of DC Comics.
You can teach an old dog new tricks! This new series is a perfect mix of nostalgia with a heaping of mystery that will draw in any fan. While it has been mostly about Hal Jordan and Sinestro, there are hints of something major happenings to the Green Lantern Corps and the universe at-large. The humanity injected into Hal makes it fun to watch as he tries to win back Carol, have a buddy moment with Barry Allen, and make his way around the workforce. Plus, the Lantern rings are acting, so different you’ll want to know what is happening with the Emotional Spectrum and the ring bearers. There are some losses. and there’s also a major gain that’ll will excite all fans, so jump in now while it’s still retro and fresh.
— Christopher Franey
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest
Courtesy of DC Comics.
The characters in Batman/Superman: World’s Finest seem almost to know that they must be timeless, exciting, and joyful versions of themselves — the perfect versions of themselves, that is, to welcome a long-neglectful reader not only of the DC universe, but comics altogether. The timeframe is indistinct, erasing the necessity of understanding a larger continuity, and the story arcs are more-or-less self-reliant stories where a good, solid Batman and a good, solid Superman do good, solid adventuring. Few comics on the stands wholly embrace their medium and genre like this one does.
— Colin Moon
Best Writer
Al Ewing
From X-Men: Red #14. Courtesy of Marvel.
Al Ewing is a rare writer, where everything he touches feels like gold. I can’t recall a single thing he’s written that I didn’t like, and yet, he somehow manages to outdo himself time and time again with his already high bar for storytelling. Sometimes I find that writers are often either people who are great storytellers but their character voices and attention to existing canon is lacking. Or, they are great with character work and operating within canon, but the stories themselves aren’t at the same level. Al Ewing is the rare writer who can do all three and is above and beyond at each. He will pull characters or moments from history that I had forgot existed, or never expected anyone to really invest in, and turn them into major players of an epic saga. X-Men: Red has been stellar across every issue, and it only ever seems to get better. Storm is such a character that is synonymous and vital to the X-Men (not to mention absolutely beloved by fans), but seemed so pushed to the wayside in the early years of Krakoa.
If Chris Claremont is the definitive writer for the X-Men, Storm is arguably the definitive character of his run. The way Al Ewing has written her feels like the best content Storm has gotten in years, giving her the spotlight, importance, and storytelling she deserves. (Even the inclusion of characters of like Sunspot in Red are superb.) It’s been a real treat.
— Lia Williamson
G. Willow Wilson
From The Hunger and the Dusk #2. Courtesy of IDW.
It’s a little bit funny that the year Marvel killed (and resurrected) Kamala Khan in the most bad, cynical, and annoying way possible, her co-creator G. Willow Wilson is busy writing both the best superhero and the best fantasy comic on stands. Poison Ivy just keeps going and being incredible, and The Hunger and the Dusk is actually living up to its promise of “fantasy racism but not awful.” Wilson’s having her best year since 2014, which shouldn’t really come as a surprise, but the degree is nice to see.
— Keigen Rea
Best #1 Issue of the Year
Transformers #1
Courtesy of Image/Skybound.
As a massive fan of all things mecha, and a lifelong lover of the robots in disguise, this new outing by Daniel Warren Johnson from Skybound is the exact shot in the arm the Transformers comics have needed for years to actively pull in a fresh audience. Being made as an appealing new reboot for newcomers, and an exciting new take for old time fans, it’s got you covered either way. With how much massive hype this drummed up, I couldn’t think of a more high-profile relaunch to come out of 2023.
— Crooker
Shazam #1
Courtesy of DC Comics.
In its first issue, Waid and Mora’s Shazam delivered more zany fun per panel than nearly any comic I’ve read in decades of collecting. That alone is a feat; that it did so sincerely is a miracle. Dinosaurs on spaceships are something that a jaded comics reading audience might not have accepted in any other time or place than our own post-COVID cultural depression. Still, readers needed a win: they needed to feel like childlike glee was still possible and they also needed to feel like Calvin in that Sunday strip where he dogfights with a T-Rex in a fighter jet. This issue gave us all of that and then some.
– Colin Moon
Best Original Graphic Novel
A Fog in the Fall (and Later On) by Linnea Sterte
Courtesy of Linnea Sterte.
Though the Kickstarter for this book happened way back in 2021, the book landed in my mailbox this year and immediately blew me away. Meticulously crafted in the “book as art object” fashion, the narrative itself delivers a consistent sense of simple wonder. With sparse penwork and a vast world of possibility, A Frog in the Fall (and Later On) feels like it should have been a medium-altering landmark of a book, but it landed with barely a whisper. And maybe that’s how it was intended.
– Colin Moon
A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll
Courtesy of First Second.
When Emily Carroll puts out a new OGN, you read it. She’s the best horror artist working today, and A Guest in the House solidifies that in ways both fantastical and mundane. An unmatched imagination, and the best pacing imaginable, it’s worth all of the money, time, and thought that you can spare.
— Keigen Rea
Best Miniseries
Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty and Captain America: Symbol of Truth
Courtesy of Marvel.
Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty and Captain America: Symbol of Truth both were stellar minis that combined into each other seamlessly at the end. The directions that the writers (Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly on Sentinel and Tochi Onyebuchi on Symbol) take Steve and Sam in are great explorations of their characters. Lots of love for the series and characters were poured into both series, and it truly felt like a great time to be a Cap fan. Carmen Carnero, RB Silva, and the various other artists who worked on these comics really knocked it out of the park each and every time. The plots set up were exciting, and left me eager to see where Lanzing and Kelly will pick up those plots for Sharon, Bucky, and Natasha in Thunderbolts as well as where other writers will take Steve and Sam next.
— Lia Williamson
I 100% agree with Lia about Captain America comics for the year. The two teams played amazingly with each other and also told awesome stories with their own cast of characters. The hidden messages in Sentinel of Liberty were a fun way to get fans involved. If you didn’t pick these up, score the trades or back issues for the holidays!
— Christopher Franey
Briar
Courtesy of BOOM! Studios.
I didn’t expect to be so taken by Briar. The solicits made it seem as if it might be yet another ho-hum fairy tale deconstruction the sort that we’ve been seeing for decades. Look, the princess doesn’t want her glass slipper! Who needs princes anyway? What the book was, however, was a deep plunge into a unique and compelling world of carefully crafted fantasy. Every issue was packed with an unseen mythology so much deeper than “Sleeping Beauty but not Sleeping Beauty.” It begs a follow up – and it begs to be explored.
– Colin Moon
Biggest Surprise
Love Everlasting
Courtesy of Image Comics.
Though its first six issues landed last year, delivering the first surprises of a very strange, genre-defying book, Love Everlasting delivered its largest surprise this year. And that was that a book with such a seemingly narrow gimmick could continue to press against its own boundaries and inject new, compelling twists and turns into a subversion of a neglected genre. Never quite romance, never quite sci-fi, and never quite direct in its goals, the book plays with the reader almost as much as it plays with conventions. Artist Elsa Charretier is an unsung hero of understated illustration.
– Colin Moon
DSTLRY
This new publishing outfit was a surprise in a couple different ways, and not all of them good! DSTLRY — by the guys who brought you ComiXology and at least one of your favorite comics — promised to disrupt the comics industry through a combination of shared ownership, artificial digital scarcity, and an interesting publishing format. The roster is strong, but Devil’s Cut (the launch anthology) seemed more or less dead on arrival from what I witnessed between shops and online chatter. Plus, the digital storefront is, well, awful and confusing so far. Add to this that everything they’re doing would be easily replicated at Image Comics or probably any other small publisher (all of which are also carrying some or all of DSTLRY founder’s books), and I can’t help but scratch my head at all of this. It’s certainly been surprising, if nothing else. (Also, read Somna, because it’s very good).
– Keigan Rea
Best Event
The Flash: One-Minute War Special #1
Courtesy of DC Comics.
The Flash: One Minute War Special was such a fun idea – and a great way to play with the notion of super speed. Jeremy Adams did a great job as head writer of Flash, and he redeemed Wally West oh-so perfectly. Adams also brought back the family feeling to the Flash titles, which was perfectly tested as they faced this invasion. Watch as generations of speedsters, from Jay to Ace, come together to save the world in under a minute.
– Christopher Franey
Dawn of DC
Though it doesn’t exactly feel like an event, per se, the Dawn of DC initiative has been marketed as something altogether more than a simple soft reboot. All told, it’s been successful where other such jumping on points have mostly failed. Nothing has been demolished in order to rebuild, and nothing has been rewritten. Instead, things have been made slightly more accessible, shinier, and given the sort of hooks present in the best pop songs. Every book has an easy elevator pitch, essentially, and to great effect.
– Colin Moon
Best Letterer
Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
From Poison Ivy #15. Courtesy of DC Comics.
I don’t know how many times I’ve talked about Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou’s letters glowingly, but it’s probably more than any other creator in any given year. That’s partly due to how prolific they are in working across both indie titles and DC Comics. However, it’s just as much due to how inventive and varying their letters are. There’s a time and a place for letters to be very simple and easy to read, but Otsmane-Elhaou’s letters always excite, add something to dialogue, and draw you into narratives with depth and efficiency.
– David Brooke
Nate Piekos
From The Alternates #4. Courtesy of Dark Horse Comics.
Nate Piekos wrote the book on lettering – literally. He’s Eisner award nominated for his unique approach, which maintains a pretty distinct outlook and style even as he readily shifts to match the tone and look of each given book. In 2023, Piekos put in work for a suite of great titles; The Alternates – a personal favorite – was only as trippy and effective as it was thanks to Piekos’ way of capturing each characters’ essence in the word bubbles. (Also in 2023, his work on X-Cellent volume two is hugely stylized and utterly central to that book.) Sure, letterers are often unsung members of a creative team, but Piekos proves that you don’t need to stand out to shape so much of a book’s identity and depth. If anything, it’s that ability to fly under the radar, as it were, that lets Piekos get really inventive in ways that not every letter can achieve. He’s a man with talent to spare, and he’s willing to teach you the path toward true comics greatness.
– Chris Coplan
Best Single Issue
X-Men Blue: Origins #1
Courtesy of Marvel.
For years, the idea of Mystique and Destiny being Kurt’s parents felt like just another “almost” in the long history of possible parentage plots for Nightcrawler. It seemed like something fans would just always be able to say as a fun fact, or something in the trivia section of a fandom wiki article, But it never felt like something we’d actually get let alone something that would line up so well with the convoluted history of it all at this point. Si Spurrier, Marcus To, and Wilton Santos manage to do the impossible in X-Men Blue: Origins, giving fans the story of how Mystique and Destiny parented Nightcrawler in a tale that both addresses past versions of the story we’ve heard while managing to fit it all perfectly within the confines of X-Men canon. That’s the incredible thing about this story: it really is seamless in how it makes sense at virtually every angle, and Spurrier left no stone unturned.
Due to the long history of censoring queerness in media, the earliest instance of explicitly referring to the two as lovers that I have ever been able to find comes from 2011 in Louise Simonson, Chris Claremont, and Doug Braithwaite’s Chaos War: X-Men #1. However, it wasn’t until 2019 in Mark Waid and Javier Rodriguez’s History of the Marvel Universe #2 that the two were ever seen to share a kiss on panel. In both instances, Destiny had already been dead in the present time, leaving fans with their decades-long of history of heavy-handed queer coding across multiple writers, and the knowledge of stories we couldn’t get for years as “almosts” – much like the parentage of Nightcrawler. One of the best things about the Krakoa era is how Mystique and Destiny have been handled, and how those “almosts” no longer are the things we could have had but are things we actually have.
Comics are so often likened to soap operas for the nature of their long-running storytelling involving the same characters that span decades (and the convoluted nature that plots tend to take). Within that umbrella, X-Men has always been perhaps the soapiest of the soap opera that is inherent to comic books. X-Men Blue: Origins isn’t just a story that makes sense in the canon of X-Men, it’s a story that is so much a soap opera that it feels so intrinsically X-Men in every way – there’s a parentage lie, forbidden love, trysts with other lovers, complicated family dynamics, and false memories. It’s such a beautiful comic in all ways, from its writing and its art to it’s place within X-Men history and queer storytelling in comics. Dare I say it may be perfect?
– Lia Williamson
The Last Days of Lex Luthor #1
Courtesy of DC Comics.
The Last Days of Lex Luthor is the exact kind of vanity project DC’s Black Label was intended to help tell. Getting another definitive Superman story out of Mark Waid was a bygone conclusion, but how good this was still floored me nonetheless.
Waid found the perfect thread to pull on here, and Bryan Hitch can draw the hell out of a superhero story, especially with inker Kevin Nowlan punching his art up. They all work perfectly together to show the selflessness and compassion of Superman, even in the face of a Luthor who’s as snivelly and annoying as ever. It’s an issue that I’ve gone back to a few times since it launched in late July, and one that I haven’t gotten less enamored with. I’ll say it: it’s a perfect comic.
— Keigen Rea
Join the AIPT Patreon
Want to take our relationship to the next level? Become a patron today to gain access to exclusive perks, such as:
- ❌ Remove all ads on the website
- 💬 Join our Discord community, where we chat about the latest news and releases from everything we cover on AIPT
- 📗 Access to our monthly book club
- 📦 Get a physical trade paperback shipped to you every month
- 💥 And more!
You must be logged in to post a comment.