My Favorite Comics of 2022

I read a lot of comics. And even though superheroes are now a billion-dollar industrial complex, comics are still best on the page. I love the way the action in the panels leaps directly into my brain, and I love how I can hear the sound effects and the different voices in the word balloons. It’s still the only medium where writers and artists have such a free hand to play across genres and worlds, and experiment with mythology and legend and horror and other mind-altering substances. There’s something primal and pure in comics, and these books delivered it for me this year.

• Census — Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman and Sebastian Piriz’s Comixology Unlimited series is about a guy who takes what he thinks is an easy job as a census-taker. Turns out he’s actually keeping track of every weird, demonic, and inhuman resident of New York City. I thought I’d seen every possible story about the hidden world behind the everyday, but it’s nice to be surprised again. This is a fresh new take on a normal guy dealing with the paranormal. Piriz’s art goes from cartoony and happy on one page to the terrifying and sublime on another, demonstrating an impressive range that matches the story perfectly. It’s fun and smart, which is not easy to do.

• Follow Me Down — The latest (and last, for a while) installment in Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ Reckless series about a freelance troubleshooter solving mysteries and breaking heads in the 80s. Ethan Reckless is a man trying to keep his inner demon on a leash so it doesn’t destroy him, and he meets a woman who’s doing the same thing. A sort of updated version of the iconic Travis McGee, these books are nostalgic time capsules while also serving up another one of the twisting crime stories that Brubaker and Phillips have perfected together.

• Frontiersman Vol. 1 — This is a rare thing these days: an actual indie superhero comic. A lot of writers and artists have ceded straight-up capes and tights action to DC and Marvel. But Patrick Kindlon and Marco Ferrari throw the reader directly into an entire, well-conceived world of super-people with a long history of battles and losses. The title character is a retired crimefighter who wore a fur hat and mask and embodied the ideal of the American frontier. He’s living in the deep woods, off the grid, when he’s recruited to protect a redwood forest from clear-cutting. But as he becomes a public figure again, old enemies and friends emerge to settle unfinished business. Ferrari’s art is kinetic and fluid and rich in both emotion and detail. The book is a delight, and I hope we get to see more of all these characters.

• The Human Target — Tom King turns a C-list character into the star of a superhero murder mystery: Christopher Chance, one of my favorite minor detectives in the DC Universe, has to find out who poisoned him before he dies while investigating the Justice League. Aside from J’onn J’onzz, it’s surprising how well the “Bwa-ha-ha” Giffen/DeMatteis lineup fits into a noir framework. Admittedly, sometimes I’m not wild about how King chooses to play with the action figures of my childhood. He can bend them until they break under the pressure. But I admire the hell out of his skill. He is one of the very best writers working now when it comes to the structure and pacing, and his ability to drop the exact right line in the exact right panel is something to behold. King also includes neat little touches that show just how much he thinks about these characters; he obviously loves them too. And his story transcends the page thanks to the art of Greg Smallwood. Smallwood creates a stylized world that evokes the Jet Age and art deco, a setting that grounds the action while also making it impossibly, untouchably cool. I mean, just look at it. Christopher Chance is a mere mortal among super-geniuses, time-travelers, aliens, and costumed lunatics. And yet he stays ahead of the game with nothing more than his wits and his hip flask. This is my kind of parable.

• Minor Threats — Comedian/actor/writer Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum and Scott Hepburn give us another take on superheroes failing to live up to their image, but from the villain’s point of view. A group of small-time supercrooks are caught in the crossfire when a villain does the unthinkable and kills a major hero’s sidekick. This sends the hero over the edge, and nobody is safe from his revenge. That leads the group to go after the bad guy themselves in an act of sheer self-preservation and maybe a little nobility. It’s a mix of crime caper, character study, and old-school superhero action.

• Miracleman: The Silver Age — In 1982, Alan Moore reinvented a British Captain Marvel ripoff with his first take on a realistic (and occasionally terrifying) look at superhumans. After revolutionizing the comics industry, he handed the book off to Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham, and then it collapsed along with its publisher, Eclipse, becoming a legendary unfinished symphony. (The whole convoluted history is summarized here in a great piece by Sam Thielman.) After years of litigation and false starts, the book is finally back, and finally about to reveal whatever happened to Young Miracleman. Maybe the completion of this story will enable us all to move into a new era in comics, but honestly, I am just looking forward to seeing the next chapter.

• Once and Future — I’m on board with almost anything Kieron Gillen writes. His run on Eternals continues to be the best thing in the Marvel Universe. But my favorite this year was his Boom! series with Dan Mora about the return of King Arthur and the monster-hunters who desperately try to undo Britain’s descent into mythology. Gillen uses the story to demonstrate the power of narrative and to shape the world, while Mora’s art creates that world, turning modern-day Britain into a nightmare land of fairies and dragons and Questing Beasts. His illustration of Lancelot slicing through an army makes the greatest knight appear truly dangerous for the first time to me. I don’t think the series has ever gotten enough credit, and I’m sorry to see it end.

• A Righteous Thirst for Vengeance — This is a near-wordless action flick rendered in panels by Rick Remender and André Lima Araújo. A man stumbles upon a contract killer’s work and decides to step in to save his next victim. Blood and terror ensue. Remender is a master at delivering ever-escalating tension from his plots and his characters’ choices, but Araújo’s art delivers on his script like no one else ever has before. It’s worth studying each page despite the urge to see what happens on the next one as soon as humanly possible.

• The Six Sidekicks of Trigger Keaton — This story of six sidekicks to a famous martial artist/actor by Kyle Starks and Chris Schweizer is one of the cleverest things I read all year. Trigger Keaton is what would happen if those old Chuck Norris memes came to life, but also happened to be a world-class bastard who abused and tortured his on-screen sidekicks for decades. Everyone hates him, but everyone thinks he’s too tough to die — until he does. His former partners team up to learn who killed him, and also remove themselves as suspects. They find themselves neck-deep in mayhem, comedy, and violence, while turning into the world’s unlikeliest support group. Most importantly, it is so funny, and God knows we all need a little more of that.