Best Comics of the Year - 2020

My contributions to MultiversityComics.com’s Best of 2020 coverage is below. Each blurb was included as part of a larger list of content, which I highly recommend checking out. You can find a link to the full article with each blurb, and you can find Multiversity’s full 2020 end of year coverage here.

Best Limited Series: Far Sector

America’s reckoning with police violence has been long overdue. Several new cases of police brutality against black citizens and activists drove another wave of Black Lives Matter protests this year, this time reaching nearly every major city in the country and sparking solidarity protests around the globe. As the summer stretched on, it became clear that familiar crime stories, with hero cops fighting against dastardly criminals, are not going to cut it anymore.

Enter “Far Sector,” this year’s most topical series, a sci-fi noir that digs into the contradictions of policing—and of superheroism—that place one individual as a powerful authority over another in the service of a slippery definition of right and wrong. N.K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell crafted the perfect modern recruit for DC’s longstanding space cops in Sojourner “Jo” Mullein, a Green Lantern who is a veteran of American prejudice and knows an abusive bureaucracy when she sees one. Jo is brash and emotional, everything that the government of the emotion-free planet at the edge of the universe dislikes. She’s also a pretty compelling detective and the best new hero DC has introduced in years.

George Floyd was killed on May 25, and the protests that followed are extremely reminiscent of issues of “Far Sector” that were released in January–this isn’t a prescient book, however. Although Campbell’s gorgeous spreads of the City Enduring are Afro-futuristic, the book offers a cutting analysis of the cruelties and abuses of the past that brought us to our present reality, underscoring the science fiction with images of Japanese internment and Nixon’s campaign posters. “Far Sector” links that past to questions that challenge the very underpinnings of the superhero genre. It’s a testament to what can happen when you bring in underrepresented perspectives to tackle familiar concepts—they’ll show you a side of those stories that you’ve never been able to see before.

Best Original Graphic Novel - Shadow of the Batgirl

Writer Sarah Kuhn gets what makes Cassandra Cain tick. She’s a girl who has trouble seeing herself as a hero, and has to fight against other people’s definitions of who she ought to be. A stripped down version of Cass’s origins, “Shadow of the Batgirl” is a meditation on imposter syndrome, and on the feeling that everyone else understands what’s going on and you’re the only one in the dark. It’s also just a hell of a lot of fun.

This is a gorgeous book, with kinetic cartooning from Nicole Goux and vibrant colors from Cris Peter offer a vision of Gotham that’s both softer and more alive than the grim and gritty urban warzone we usually see. There’s romance and found families in there, as well—this is a YA graphic novel, after all—but the tropes never feel perfunctory. The supporting cast is rooted in Cass’s identity, from Erik, her mixed race romantic interest who similarly tries to push against the expectations others have for him, to Jackie, the kind Japanese American woman who is just as ready to help a dumpster diver as she is to fight for what she loves, to her mentor Barbara Gordon, who sees Cass for the incredible person she is.

“Shadow of the Batgirl” digs into Cassandra’s simultaneous defiance and embrace of legacy. It takes place mostly in the Gotham City Public Library and Jackie’s noodle shop. We never see the Batcave—and we never see Batman. “Shadow of the Batgirl” is better for the absence of Bruce Wayne—this is Cass’s story, and it’s not the story of her convincing the heroes that she is worthy of wearing the cowl. This is a story of Cass learning how to believe that about herself.

Best Film Adaptation of a Comic - The Old Guard

It’s the rare adaptation—let alone comic book adaptation—that manages to improve on its source material. But that’s the case for Netflix’s The Old Guard, which takes Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernandez’s already strong graphic novel of the same name and breathed new life into it. That’s easier to do if you have Gina Prince-Bythewood at the helm and a stacked cast that includes Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Matthias Schoenaerts, but it also certainly helps to have the original writer on hand, especially if that writer can approach the work without an ego. Rucka did an outstanding job of recognizing the areas where his story of immortal mercenaries needed some touch ups. In fact, as a result of some of the changes, The Old Guard is often deeper and more philosophical than the graphic novel, filled out with richer characters that feel like fully realized human beings.

This isn’t your average Netflix programmer. Prince-Bythewood’s camerawork defies the trademark “made for Netflix” flatness that plagues a good number of the streamer’s original properties. She perfectly balances the emotional centers of her characters with some of the most entertaining action beats of the year. Just like its characters, The Old Guard it hits hard, moves fast, and has a warm, beating heart at its core. Here’s hoping this franchise will pick up another of its heroes’ traits—a nice long life.

Best One-Shot: X-Men: Marvel’s Snapshots

Cyclops has been a much maligned hero ever since his first appearance. The goody-two-shoes, stick in the mud, no nonsense leader often looks, at first glance, like the X-Men’s most uninteresting main member with the strangest and most impractical power set. Most people wouldn’t call Cyclops their favorite X-Man—who would want to have eye beams you can’t control when you could surf around on ice or read people’s minds?

Jay Edidin, however, is not most people. He writes Scott Summers with trauma bubbling just under the surface, only to channel that difficulty into an internal drive. Like all the Marvels Snapshots, “X-Men: Marvels Snapshots” #1 is about an everyday person—in this case, it’s Scott Summers before his powers kick in, before his life’s passion, and before he had any sense of what his place in the world might be. Scott, feeling lost and unsure, becomes driven to learn how to solve… everything. In that drive, he finds a reason to keep going, and an ability to change the world. This is a take on him that is rooted in insecurity and unaddressed pain, but also in warmth and empathy. Namely, it lets Scott be a complicated person trying to figure out how to live in an increasingly complicated world, just like all of us.

The glimpse into Cyclops’ headspace is only made more compelling by the visuals. Tom Reilly and Chris O’Halloran artwork renders Scott’s mundane life at the orphanage with clean, mostly monochromatic panels. Those, just like Scott himself, eventually give way to a burst of color and energy as what lies dormant in him is awakened. “X-Men: Marvels Snapshots #1” is easily the standout of the Marvels Snapshots issues, and will likely go down as an essential piece of Cyclops’ canon. A must read.

Best digital first comic: quarantine Comix

“Ice Cream Man” was one of the most consistently stellar ongoing series this year, and one its primary assets is its ability to defy categorization, shifting and changing week-to-week while pushing formal boundaries. So it isn’t really a surprise that during the printing stoppage caused by COVID-19 the “Ice Cream Man” creative team was able to so successfully morph their twisted horror book into a series of digital shorts.

Released weekly in the early days of the pandemic to raise money for struggling brick and mortar shops, the stories W. Maxwell Prince, Martin Morazzo, and Chris O’Halloran worked up for “Quarantine Comix” are very of the moment. A Shakespearean short in iambic pentameter that uses the madness of King Lear to illuminate the creative drought of quarantine; a trip to the Garden of Eden that ends in modern capitalist malaise; a convention of Mikes (all aspects of the same Mike, obviously) learning that who we are, for better or worse—each story is concentrated “Ice Cream Man,” the themes of the ongoing reflected through COVID-era uncertainty. That’s before even getting to the guest series, which enlisted creators Declan Shalvey, Christopher Cantwell, Deniz Camp and more. All of the guest stories are great, but I’m not sure I laughed harder at a book this year than I did at a page turn in Al Ewing and PJ Holden’s short story, a riff on Animal Crossing that I refuse to spoil.

“Quarantine Comix” is the best kind of art that came out in the midst of the pandemic: fun escapism from the chaos of the daily news cycle that also feels specific to 2020, a social commentary with just enough bite to cut to the heart of the year while still going down smooth. The fact that it was put together for a great cause is just (sorry) the cherry on top.