My Favorite Comics of 2023
Top comics of the year and updates from me as we close things out
I read a lot of comics this year. Most of them were not newly published in 2023, but enough of them were that I can construct a year-end list of my favorite.
The usual caveats: I don’t keep up on everything published, this list is subjective, and I still have many 2023 books in my to-read pile that I’m looking forward to, such as Roaming by the Tamaki cousins and Three Rocks, Bill Griffith’s biography of Ernie Bushmiller.
It also occurred to me as I was set to send this out that we are deep in holiday book buying season. Any of the books below would make great gifts for yourself or others, but let me also shamelessly plug Justice Warriors, my own comic that came out early this year. It is headed back to press for a third printing and you can buy one directly through me this week. Good comics are easy gifts for the mutants in your life!
My favorite comics of the year, in no particular order:
20th Century Men by Deniz Camp and S. Morian (Image)
In this alternate history of the world, the United States, Russia, and Afghanistan move toward global conflict as various human and superpowered characters brutally collide across cultures. Basically: very up my alley. No description quite captures this comic—this is a work swirling with big ideas, incredible visuals, with violence and politics that implicate both the superhero genre and the real history we inhabit.
Camp and Morian arrive like an already classic writer/artist team that I have to imagine we will see collaborating for years to come. 20th Century Men is a deep, challenging comic about empire—in the absolute best way—whose reputation will only grow over time. It’s one of the best comics I’ve read in years.
Social Fiction by Chantal Montellier (New York Review Comics)
A pioneering woman in French comics, Chantal Montellier has created editorial cartoons and science fiction since the 1970s, contributing most notably to Métal Hurlant. Social Fiction is the first collection of her work in English, compiling three stories from Métal Hurlant with her idiosyncratic art drenched in a very 1970s vision of dystopian authoritarian states.
“Wonder City” follows a couple in a society where reproductive rights are under complete control of a technocracy. In “Shelter” an apparent nuclear attack leaves 800 people living in an underground mall, where a woman finds a more brutal hierarchy than the world left behind. Montellier, who is now 76, is not as flashy and action-oriented as her male counterparts of the era. What comes through in these stories is her dark humor, feminism, and still-relevant political allegories about government control over our lives. We’re fortunate this work has finally been translated.
Boys Weekend by Mattie Lubchansky (Pantheon)
No surprise I’m a big booster of Mattie Lubchansky, who I worked with for nine years at The Nib. Their debut full length graphic novel is fantastic, funny, and touching. The story follows a transfemme person, much like the author, who is invited to a bachelor party on a hedonistic island in the near future. It is easy to find yourself identifying with the protagonist, Sammy, as they navigate a weekend bachelor party with an increasingly unsettling vibe and callous friends who seem blind to the state of the world around them. What begins as a satire of masculinity and hyper-capitalism gives way to Lovecraftian horror—and even a little hope.
Are You Willing To Die For the Cause? by Chris Oliveros (Drawn & Quarterly)
After three years living in Canada, I’m finally delving into some of its history. Are You Willing To Die For the Cause? follows the Quebec Liberation Front (FLQ) and their 1960s bombing campaigns that mirrored the actions of some of the radical leftist groups in the US, with a separatist bent. The title comes from the questionnaire they handed young and teenage recruits.
Oliveros is the founder of Drawn and Quarterly and served as their publisher for 25 years. He stepped back in 2015 to begin work on this project and his cartooning skills are incredibly impressive. His deceptively simple method helps to convey the FLQ’s blunders through bombings and gunfights that only seem to undermine their cause while also giving space to police abuses and various Francophone grievances that fueled the movement. In this book many of the group’s founders end up in prison but, as you may know, they would go out with a bang. This book outlines the first years of the FLQ and Oliveros is working on a follow up focused entirely on the 1970 October Crisis.
Dog Biscuits by Alex Graham (Fantagraphics)
This book came out in 2022, so I’m breaking the rules and including it here because I want to. Dog Biscuits was initially serialized over Instagram through lockdown and beyond. It follows a couple of young people in Seattle—all rendered as humanoid animals—through relationships, petty drama, confrontations with cops, and an overwhelming sense of anxiety as Covid runs rampant and the future is unknown. While I have not had any interest in stories taking place during the pandemic, something in Graham’s work really clicked with me. Dog Biscuits conveys the madness of the era in a way I found cathartic. May we never return to that.
Waller vs. Wildstorm by Spencer Ackerman, Evan Narcisse, and Jesus Merino (DC)
I have a fondness for the late-era Wildstorm comics and their synthesis of the superhero genre with deep state story engines. What better for a revival, then, but to have Pulitzer Prize-winning national security journalist Spencer Ackerman give Amanda Waller of Suicide Squad a Year One story while pitting her against Battalion of Stormwatch and an armed guerrilla movement of a small but geopolitically important nation. Ackerman, Narcisse, and Merino weave le Carré spy craft together with superhero assassins and stick the landing—the book’s final issue comes out next week (I’ve read it) and the trade collection comes out next month.
Featuring a young Lois Lane working to expose Waller, the story can be read and enjoyed without knowing or caring about much of Wildstorm history, which is I recognize is how most normal people live their lives.
Monica by Daniel Clowes (Fantagraphics)
Clowes is one of my absolute top cartoonists and, like many people, I eagerly anticipated his new work. I’m not sure what I can say that hasn't already been written about his book: I loved it. I found the unpredictability of its plot and direction exciting as a reader. It’s about a woman named Monica and her life and it’s hard to say much more than that—what it’s exactly about will be up to you and what you pull from the story. This is an unsettling work that will reward re-reading. In fact, after you finish, another read is almost required to fully wrap your head around the approach. I call that value!
In These Times: For many years I’ve been the comics editor at the lefty, labor-oriented magazine In These Times. That has mostly meant a two page section of reprints from The Nib, but with my publication shuttered we are continuing the section with some new and exclusive comics. I’m editing the page and even contributing my first political cartoon in two years to the next issue. You can subscribe to In These Times here to follow what we do over the next year and beyond.
Chupacabra is coming: I created a short story with artist Daniel Irizarri that is coming out in Project Cryptid #6 on February 24 of next year. Check out a preview here and call your local comic shop to reserve a copy!
I plan one more newsletter before the end of the year, something to take stock of 2023. Then we will get on with 2024, which will see the announcement of multiple comics projects and some new directions for me as a writer and cartoonist. I’ll leave you with a Christmas card from Ben Clarkson, my collaborator on Justice Warriors, featuring two cops I think you’ll be seeing more of.
Thanks for all the great recommendations!! This is a great list of mainstream, indie, and experimental comics with timely themes, I can’t wait to check them out.