Comics I liked in 2023

I really thought I would use this space more as a place to talk about comics.

That mostly hasn’t happened but there is always 2024. I buy an awful lot of comics but I’m slowish to get them read and my thoughts are usually no deeper than, ‘hey, I liked that.”

Or, “I really gotta quit buying this as I am not enjoying it.”

Here’s a few of the ones I liked in 2023.

1. Mark Waid and Dan Mora’s Batman / Superman World’s Finest

Mark Waid and Emanuela Lupacchino’s World’s Finest: Teen Titans.

Waid has carved out a little section of the DC Universe that is free from the current continuity. He sets the stories in different time periods of the character history and then just barrels along. When either of these titles shows up in my box I know I’m going to have a good time.

2. Daniel Warren Johnson’s Transformers. Johnson’s comics are the best thing in the comic shop every time they show up. Johnson took Beta Ray Bill, a cool side character in Thor and made the best miniseries of the decade with him. Now, the folks at Skybound took the license for Transformers and handed Johnson the keys.

I have never in my life cared at all about Transformers. I was a GI Joe guy and I don’t give a whit about robots. Ever.

And when I saw Johnson was doing this I just immediately added it. It’s the absolute best.

3. Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo. This year will be the 40th anniversary of Sakai’s samurai rabbit Miyamoto Usagi. It began as an interesting pastiche of Samurai films in an anthropomorphic world. Usagi began as the surly Yojimbo character played by Toshiro Mifune. And the book had analogs to Zatoichi, the blind samurai and Lone Wolf and Cub.

But it morphed into this wonderful ongoing story about wandering samurai who tries to help people, cares about his friends and mostly rejects the fatalism of the genre.

The book became a saga filled with Japanese mythology, history and culture. And, it’s ultimate strength is one of the great things about comics, it can be anything. If Sakai feels like it the book spends several chapters with a murder mystery. Sometimes he does supernatural horror. Sometimes it’s history lessons or gentle action and romance.

Sakai has a whole subset of books about Usagi’s descendent who lives in a futuristic Star Warsesque universe called Space Usagi.

These are always at the top of my reading pile and they never disappoint.

4. Tom King and Greg Smallwood’s Human Target

I can’t think of another comic writer who focuses on despair and defeat the way Tom King does. Mixing that tendency with Bwah Ha Ha era of The Justice League and the very human and small-scale concerns of The Human Target (a bodyguard who usually is a body double) made this book miles above anything else.

It was also, far and away the best-looking book on the stands.

King, like Waid, has been given his own section of the DC universe to just do what he wants. He’s currently writing Wonder Woman, Penguin and has the best Riddler story I have ever read in a collection of Batman books called One Bay Day.

5. Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo’s Nightwing

The first year of this was the best superhero comic out there. It’s firmly in a crunchy middle stage but is often the strongest book of the month and occasionally a wonderful, experimental ride into superhero joy.

The book I think that it comes closest to is Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye. If you know that book then you know how wonderful comics can be. This one remains the real deal.

6. Kelly Thompson and Leonardo Romero’s Birds of Prey

When I got to the last page of the kick ass first issue I howled/snorted and hooted with joy. A phenomenal book filled with great action and great jokes. I look forward to where this is headed.

7. Rick Remender and Max Fiumara’s The Sacrificers

You get tossed into the deep end of a weird world and so far, every issue builds to something terrifying and strange. Remender is one of the great comic book writers of his generation and Fiumara’s art takes the crazy setting and makes it sing.

Meanwhile, after buying this you mist also go pick up A Righteous Thirst For Vengeance the best comic of 2022 and a collaboration with Remender and artist Andre Lima Araujo.