We asked a wide array of our contributors and other comics figures to share their favorite comics from the past calendar year. In the interests of keeping things individual and unpredictable, we let our listmakers choose their own criteria for inclusion, and decide for themselves whether or not their selections needed explanation.

Zainab Akhtar (publisher):

Judas, by Jakub Rebelka and Jeff Loveness (Boom!)

Land of the Sons, by Gipi (Fantagraphics)

Say It with Noodles, by Shing Yin Khor (Catapult)

My Hero Academia, by Kohei Horikoshi (Viz)

Persephone, by Loic Locatelli-Kournswky (Archaia)

Mare Internum, by Der-Shing Helmer

To Your Eternity, by Yoshitoki Oima (Kodansha)

Space Academy 123, by Mickey Zacchilli (Koyama Press)

Kingdom, by Jon McNaught (Nobrow)

Petit: The Ogre Gods, by Hubert Boulard and Bertrand Gatignol (Lion Forge)

Yotsuba&! 14, by Kiyohiko Azuma (Yen Press)

Rich Barrett (critic):

This is the first year in about a decade that I didn’t keep up on much of what’s new in comics with the exception of elementary and middle school graphic novels. My kids and I read just about everything that came out this year in that category and here’s 5 books we liked the most, in no particular order.

The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang. (First Second) One of the best-looking comics of the year (in any category) and one that should make Jen Wang a superstar. It’s a heartwarming and unexpected story about romance, royalty and being yourself that you couldn’t imagine anyone in children’s lit publishing even five years ago.

The Hidden Witch by Molly Ostertag. (Scholastic/Graphix) A sequel to Witch Boy that’s even better than the original and continues to cleverly explore gender roles through the eyes of a boy who is not permitted to practice witchcraft within his matriarchal society.

Wolf’s Class by Aron Nels Steinke. (Scholastic/Graphix) A delightful first-day-of-class tale about some anthropomorphic fourth graders and their new teacher. Despite being animals, the kids and their antics are so silly and relatable it reads like cinéma vérité for early elementary school readers.

Be Prepared by Vera Brosgol. (First Second) Brosgol is such an underappreciated cartoonist and she’ll make you fall in love with her cute, awkward adolescent self in this wonderful memoir about trying to fit in at a Russian scout camp.

The Creepy Case Files of Margo Maloo: The Monster Mall by Drew Weing. (First Second) Weing draws some of the cutest, nerdy little monsters in this wonderful series about gentrification, urban planning and showing empathy for others.

Jonathan Baylis (writer):

So… 2018 was more of a toddler year for me than a voluminous reading year. And after bedtime, barely able to turn a page, I cuddled up with Rachel Maddow and dreams of Robert Muellers dancing in my head. And I still need the world to stop and my family to go on vacation without me so I can have a nice bottle of wine all to myself so I can read My Favorite Thing is Monsters (from 2017!), but that hasn’t happened yet! Still… I probably read more than the average schmuck.

This is what I loved this year.

Wash Day by Jamila Rowser & artist Robyn Smith. (Black Josei Press) I’m a mini-comix guy. Been making them for over a decade. So I love picking up books at the few cons my three-nager allows me to go to. My favorite mini this year was Wash Day by writer Jamila Rowser and artist Robyn Smith. It’s a perfect mini-comic and I love that it’s a collaboration, as collaboration’s my jam. It’s simply about a woman from the Boogie Down Bronx (where I was born) who.. washes her hair. But the slow, deliberate pace really clicked with something inside of me (maybe because I’m a neurotic that can’t allow himself to slow down and add the same kind of pacing in MY books). And I can’t imagine anyone picking this book for me, a 40-something, balding, Jewish guy. It was a lovely surprise and I adored it.

Liz Prince’s monthly Patreon diary comics. (Self-Published) Boy, do I love getting comics in my mailbox. I feel like I missed out on really having the home delivery experience when my Crystar, the Crystal Warrior expired after like one issue and I never picked up another subscription after that. But now? I subscribe to Liz Prince’s Patreon and every month I receive a 30-to-31 page mini-comic of her journal comics. I relate to Liz’s anxiety though not her vegan lifestyle, but I need to see how that other 1% lives, you know? She always cracks me up and I’m showing strips to my wife Ophira all the time. She has collected these into Look Back & Laugh published by Top Shelf, but I like my minis. She does something fun with the covers each month.

That Box We Sit On by Richie Pope. (Self-published) I always try to buy some Ignatz winners when I attend SPX and this one did not disappoint. Two kids sit on a box and pontificate what’s inside. It might as well be a Schrödinger Box. A great small press book, that’s not quite a mini because of its size, but it’s a mini at heart. And it’s got a perfect ending, which is hard for a lot of minis.

All the Sad Songs by Summer Pierre. (Retrofit) Summer Pierre is having a moment right now and I am loving that moment. I enjoy hanging and chatting with Summer at the cons and we’re more than mere acquaintances, but I had no clue that we were the exact same freaking age. So I’m telling you right now that she wrote this book for me. Not you. Me, you whippersnappers. You don’t know what it’s like to create mixtapes on cassette and pretend they sound good and know that they will win that person over that you are in love with and they are in love with you too but they don’t know it yet and that one perfect song is going to take them over the edge. Ah, mixtapes… you kids today think that word means something completely different. You’re wrong.

Alack Sinner – The Age of Disenchantment by Muñoz and Sampayo. (IDW) In the early Oughts, I scoured Ebay and hidden corners of the Internet for all the Alack Sinner I can find. The Fanta series of big floppies, appearances in Prime Cuts and Raw magazines, etc. It wasn’t enough, but it was all I could get… in English. I wasn’t the only one who loved this noir series. Some people say Ted McKeever and Frank Miller were inspired by it and that Keith Giffen outright stole from it. One person’s swipe is another one’s homage. Whatever. Now? In 2018, I’ve got every Alack Sinner ever made in two bricks put out by IDW (the 2nd part in 2018). Why am I not hearing more about this goddamn miracle? What? You flipped through Torpedo or something and now you’re done with the genre or something? Idiots.

Stray Bullets by David Lapham. (Image) And speaking of noir, when Stray Bullets went on hiatus, what, 15 years ago? It was a freaking tragedy. Now, Lapham’s back and putting this stuff out like clockwork and why am I not hearing anyone talk about it? You like dirty 70s New Hollywood crime drama? This is your book. It’s the golden nectar you left in the closet but just rediscovered! It’s Pappy Van Winkle and it’s yours! Go read it you fools!

Saga by Brian Vaughn and Fiona Staples. (Image) I don’t care that your friends (or enemies) who aren’t as cool as you are reading this too. It’s still the best. Just because some assholes read Sandman in the 90s after you did, doesn’t make you an asshole for originally liking Gaiman’s opus. It’s still great! So is Saga. It’s fantastic. Every TPB is a gift. My babysitter agrees with me.

Blammo #10 by Noah Van Sciver. (Kilgore) Blammo is like my Sandman or Saga. I read that book FIRST (well maybe 2nd after Dan Stafford). Go ‘way. But seriously. Have you ever really been able to see the growth of a great artist like you can through each issue of Blammo? #9 was a gamechanger for Noah I think and #10 continues that quality, plus color! There are a couple of familial moments with his brother and father that deeply touched me. Blammo’s the best.

X-Men: Grand Design by Ed Piskor. (Marvel) – How do you not love Ed Piskor? From Harvey Pekar to his Wizzywig series to the multimedia extravaganza that is/was Hip-Hop Family Tree. (So great to read those comics on the web at BoingBoing about the music and have the videos right there lined up for you to hear it and feel it at the same time). And this X-Men project? Uncanny. He was like, “I can see the thru-line of 300 issues as one story” and I can spit it out as something cooler and more succinct.” And he’s doing everything. Writing, drawing, lettering, best boy-ing and gaffering that shit. He’s bringing a certain new audience to Marvel that they’ve creamed about having for years. Just let Ed do whatever he wants. He brings it. (Also go catch his Cartoonist Kayfabe show with incredible artist Jim Rugg where they dissect… Wizard Magazine page by page from issue freaking One! You know, when those stupid covers had Logan wearing a wizard cap?

Rookie Moves by November Garcia. (Self-published) So it looks like November already wrote one of my future minis for me. I’ve been wasting my time doing my internship comics from the 90s when what I really wanted to do was write about my crippling insecurity at small press cons like SPX and CAB. It even basically contains the story where I awkwardly talked with Gabrielle Bell once at Desert Island (It just ends differently where they become friends. Hollywood ending, pshaw.) But really, if I could draw, I would want to draw this exact book. I loved it, and again, thought it was written just for me. I’m super jealous that she seems to feel accepted in this corner of the industry, something I struggle with and feel like I’ll never achieve that myself. Waitaseccond, did I say this was one of my favorites? Forget it, now I’m depressed and done. There’s your lousy Top Ten.

Full disclosure – I’ve commissioned work from Noah Van Sciver and Summer Pierre for my auto-bio series, So Buttons, but that’s because they are really freaking GREAT. OK, now I’m going to take a nap while my toddler naps and dream of a time that I might actually have time to read Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina.

Walter Biggins (editor/scholar):

Here are my five (well, six, and sorta seven) fave comics of 2018, in no particular order:

Olivia Jaimes, Nancy (Andrews McNeel Publishing): Who thought there was anywhere else to go for Ernie Bushmiller’s shopworn classic? (Even Scott McCloud’s interactive reinvention seems more like a parlor trick—because it is—than a new breath for it.) Yet, here is Olivia Jaimes, making Nancy smart and funny, practically every day. Nancy’s as much of an endearing hellion as ever; Sluggo and Aunt Fritzi are terrific foils to her, in part because they respond to Nancy in very different ways. Jaimes’s welcome addition is as simple as a Bushmiller line—she brings the strip into the present. Smartphones, social media, and video games are ever-present, as they are in the lives of actual kids. Jaimes maintains Bushmiller’s flat, even line but is more visually antic, less prone to repetition and more willing to add background details. Her comics make me do something that Bushmiller has never, ever done—laugh out loud.

Hugo Pratt, Corto Maltese: Tango and Corto Maltese: The Golden House of Samarkind (IDW): In its English-language reprints of Pratt’s masterpiece, IDW is doing the Lord’s work. This year, we see 1974’s The Golden House of Samarkand and 1977’s Tango. They share Pratt’s moody compositions, slightly off-kilter pacing (we seem to realize that something’s happened a half-beat late), deep shadows, endearingly clunky line work, loads of characters, ever-convoluted plotting, and the most lyrically attractive use of smoke in comics. But the differences are instructive. Samarkind hopscotches across the globe, uses dream sequences, and seems to still be introducing major characters three-fourths of the way through the book. Tango, which is half as long, takes place entirely on the night streets of Buenos Aires, is committed to realism (or at least naturalism), and is relatively restrained character-wise by Pratt’s standards. (There’s only two shadowy conspiracies here.) Both are great. Tango’s a good intro to the Corto Maltese universe; Samarkind is a dive into the deep.

Lisa Hanawalt, Coyote Doggirl (Drawn & Quarterly): I once overhead someone asked a friend to describe the Grateful Dead to him, and the guy responding simply said that they were a “San Francisco country band.” The first guy nodded. I think I understand that now, though I didn’t then. The Dead were deeply steeped in country music—well, what country music meant in 1968, anyway—from the black Delta blues to the white Appalachian bluegrass, and all points in-between. But the Dead was also just as deeply a product of its particular locale, and all of the popular-culture nodes of San Francisco at the time. They wrote of outlaws and brakemen and down-and-outers, but they were cosmic and acid-laced about it. You can’t extract “San Francisco” from “country” with them—note that the guy didn’t say they were “a country band from San Francisco”—for each inflects the others. Anyway, Coyote Doggirl is a San Francisco western, in the best way possible, with a dose of feminist punk thrown in to spike the punch even further.

Jason Lutes, Berlin (Drawn & Quarterly): An Altman-esque portrait of a city both in its prime and teetering on its collapse, Berlin’s ambition is met by Lutes’s astonishing skill as a portraitist and architectural designer. This comic is a wonderwork, in which pre-Nazi Berlin is as vivid a character as any of the protagonists within it—and precisely because of their presence. Dense with the weight of history but compositionally light on its feet. He did it. It was worth it.

Chris Reynolds, The New World: Comics from Mauretania (New York Review Comics): Reynolds draws with such a thick, black line that his comics evoke woodcuts, like they are folktales set in stone, imprinted on us through centuries of tradition, and thus readily accessible and understandable. But they’re the opposite of that—cryptic, melancholy, mesmerizing, with stories that get stranger and somehow less revealing the more you read them. And, among other things, this may be the book Seth was born to design.

* * * * *

Best book that’s not quite a comic but not quite not a comic, by a cartoonist genius who’s done comics for both children and adults, who has done both comics deeply simple and deeply dense as this one, and who is as uncategorizable as this work (and, full disclosure, I know a bit):

Eleanor Davis, Why Art? (Fantagraphics).

*******

Walter Biggins is a book editor at the University of Georgia Press, and the co-author (with Daniel Couch) of Bob Mould's Workbook (Bloomsbury, 2017).

Robert Boyd (critic):

When I started writing about comics in the late '80s, it was possible for me to read every important English-language work. Now, reading all the potentially great comics in any given year is impossible unless that’s all you do. I’ve been reading year-end “best of” lists all week and have been embarrassed by how many comics on the lists I haven’t read. With that in mind, keep in mind that the list below is a subset of the good comics published 2018. It is not in any particular order.

Berlin, by Jason Lutes. I almost gave up on this one. I can’t believe the story kept Lutes’ interest so long. The story became strangely more relevant as he drew it.

Piero, by Edmond Baudoin. (NYRC)

All the Sad Songs, by Summer Pierre. (Retrofit)

I, René Tardi, Prisoner Of War In Stalag IIB, by Jacques Tardi. (Fantagraphics)

Your Black Friend and Other Strangers, by Ben Passmore. (Silver Sprocket)

From Lone Mountain, by John Porcellino. (D&Q)

One More Year, by Simon Hanselmann. (Fantagraphics)

Soft X-Ray/Mindhunters, by A Degen. (Koyama)

Drawn to Berlin, by Ali Fitzgerald. (Fantagraphics)

The New Yorker Cartoons, by Johnny Ryan (Secret Headquarters)

Live/Work, #1 and #2 by Pat Palermo. (Adhouse)

Yellow Negroes, by Yvan Alagbé. (NYRC)

And I nominate New York Review Comics as publisher of the year. But they had some great competition.

Robin Brenner:

I am a comics enthusiast who prefers bound volumes (graphic novels) to single issues. This is true for me both as a reader, who wants more story per volume, and as a librarian, who collects almost entirely comics in book form.

As a teen librarian, I am on the lookout for comics that appeal to teens in subject, artistry, characters, and representation. So while I (and honestly a number of my older teens) enjoy adult-content fare, my favorites are those that build a connection with young readers as well as give them either mirrors to see themselves or windows to the wider world.

Runaways by Rainbow Rowell and Kris Anka. (Marvel) YA novelist superstar Rainbow Rowell and Kris Anka make an excellent team to reboot this beloved early 2000s series. Younger readers have grown up with superheroes on screen rather than on the page (remember, today’s youngest teens were only two years old when original first volume of Runaways dropped), so it’s grand to have a snappy, thoughtful, teen-centric superhero title to hand them.

Check! Please by Ngozi Ukazu. (First Second/Self-published) Check! Please pulls together elements I crave: humor, heart, vulnerability, identity, sports action, and stress baking. Like queer folks of all ages, teens look for romances that give them hope rather than drag them back to gritty reality. A slow-build romance with snappy character design, dramatic editing and pacing, and did I mention heart?

That Blue Sky Feeling by Okura and Coma Hashii and Got for It, Nakamura! by Syundei. (Viz & Seven Seas) I and my teens love manga’s wacky romantic comedies and know full well that realism in gay romance is not why you pick up most manga series. Thus the happy surprise that these two manga offer sweet queer romance and deftly avoid problematic tropes. That Blue Sky Feeling is especially welcome given its from an out gay creator. Teens are keenly aware when a story feels inauthentic, so after so many frothy manga fantasies, it’s lovely to find new titles that are much more grounded.

On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden. (First Second/Avery Hill/Self-published) This sci-fi epic shows off Walden’s extraordinary visual world-building and attention to detail while telling an emotional tale punctuated by silence. The length and limited color palette suit the emotional pull of the characters’ journeys and the vistas of space shine.

Sleepless by Sarah Vaughan and Leila del Duca. (Image Comics) I grew up a fan of fantasy political intrigue, and Sleepless brings together all of the scheming, magical twists, romance, and beautiful costumes one could ever want. With the majority of the characters, including both leads, people of color, it also visually and culturally shifts the traditionally white high fantasy population toward much needed diversity.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson and Emily Carroll. (FSG) Speak has been a modern classic of YA literature since it was published almost 20 years ago. Emily Carroll’s style is the perfect match for Anderson’s landmark exploration of how to reclaim your voice after sexual assault. Both versions make me cry, which is no small feat.

Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide by Isabel Quintero and Zeke Peña. (Abrams) This gorgeous black and white biography of photographer Graciela Iturbide leans in to how a life can be made up of waiting, of images, of decisions, and of memories. Zeke Peña’s lines enrich the stories in and around the included photographs, and Quintero’s poetic, precise language completes the portrait of a woman and her works.

Upgrade Soul by Ezra Clayton Daniels. (Lion Forge) While this may not seem like a story that will leap off the shelf into teen hands, you’d be surprised. YA novels are filled with cautionary tales about the volatile combination of scientific ambition and people determined to improve humanity. Upgrade Soul, beautifully paced, deploys meticulous art to lead the reader toward looming tragedy.

There are a number of ongoing series that have included wonderful work this year. While the comics industry lists have ways to recognize series, series that span longer than a year lose out on awards in the book industry. This year, there’s been so much richness in Saga, Giant Days, Lumberjanes (including the newer stand alone titles), and the satisfying conclusion to The Nameless City trilogy. The Teen Room in my library is crammed full of series in all formats, from prose to comics, and with so many of us loving the slow unfolding of story arcs it’s important to recognize the beauty in the middle of the journey.

Andy Brown (publisher):

A masterpiece which got less attention, was Andy by Dutch artist Typex, recently translated into English. Each chapter of Andy Warhol's life is drawn in the style from the time. A virtuoso performance.

Also, this year saw the Collected Dirty Plotte by Julie Doucet. Having spent twenty years living in Montreal I saw firsthand Doucet's influence on so many cartoonists, but it is amazing to see the work today, still ahead of its time!

No best of 2018 list in comics can ignore the monumental achievement Berlin by Jason Lutes. I've been following this series and stopped at one point so I could have it all collected to read through in one sitting. I didn't realize it would take over 20 years! The thing that strikes me which doesn't get mentioned often enough is that Lutes channels the writing of the High Modernists, but in comics.

Well of course my best of list would be filled with books by Conundrum Press but I can't choose between my babies so here is another list.

One of my all-time favorite artists is also Dutch, Joost Swarte, who released the French edition of New York Bookin 2018. This is all the work Swarte has done for The New Yorker magazine, including covers and process drawings.

Staying in Europe, I discovered the work of Swiss artist Anna Sommer, who's brilliant and disturbing book L'Inconnu (The Unknown) was released in German at the Erlangen Comic Salon, which hosted Canadian publishers this year. I got to meet Anna at the festival and Conundrum will bring out the English version in 2020.

Finally, I picked up The Tiny Report #5 from Robyn Chapman at SPX. It reminds me of the old school Comics Journal, or Factsheet Five but in a classy minicomic form.

Jeffrey Brown (cartoonist):

I always have a hard time with these end-of-the-year best of lists, because I can never remember what came out when, or when I read what, or even what I read. Life is just one unending continuum of making and reading comics. So this is really just a few thoughts about a few comics I read this year.

A Bubble by Geneviève Castrée. (Drawn & Quarterly) I guess this is a picture book as much as a comic, but it's the last completed work we get from Geneviève Castrée, and it's perfect and self-contained, and a bittersweet reminder of how good all of her art was, and how much she is missed.

A Perfect Failure and One Dirty Tree by Noah Van Sciver. (Fantagraphics & Uncivilized) I always enjoy reading Noah's comics. A little sad to see the end of the Fante Bukowski books, but glad to see Noah continue to make all kinds of different stories.

Dirty Plotte: The Complete Julie Doucet, by Julie Doucet. (D&Q) Julie Doucet had always been a big influence and inspiration. I have an original page of hers on my wall that I look at every day while I'm drawing, and any excuse to revisit her comics is the best.

Dog Man: Lord of the Fleas by Dav Pilkey. (Scholastic) I'll be honest, if I didn't have a five year old son, I don't think I would've read these. Normally, reading comics out loud to someone is kind of a pain, but these have been great. Only one came out this year so far, but there's another coming out just before Christmas, and I hope a couple come out next year, too.

That's my list. Everything else is either not the best, or I haven't had the chance to read it yet.

Billy Burkert (cartoonist):

Sunday (& Parallel Lives), Olivier Schrauwen. (Fantagraphics & Self-published) Alien transmissions, delivered via comics. I think you could re-read these constantly, and be blown away by how inventive and interesting they are every time.

Songs of the Field (An S.F. Supplementary File), by Ryan Cecil Smith. (Self-published) Ryan Cecil Smith is the heir apparent to Leiji Matsumoto’s throne. Every S.F. comic is a mastery of comic production, where it’s clear the author is both hilarious and absolutely loves to draw.

Poochytown, by Jim Woodring. (Fantagraphics) How do you even talk about Frank comics without perfectly failing to describe them? Everyone should be reading them instead of almost everything else.

NYE Piss Rodeo, Night School, Cloud, HellCop, etc etc etc, Tom McHenry. (Self-published) I don’t even know the official names of all these things that Tom is churning out, but they all read like a continuous, cohesive thought about… everything, I guess. Hilarious, smart, and in abundance. I really hope a huge book of all these things exists one day.

Frankenstein, Junji Ito. (Viz) A beautiful brick of horrific nightmare comics. Where else are you getting your comics about people’s insanely long necks? To me, these things ooze stress and anxiety, but in a good way.

Copra: Round Five, by Michel Fiffe. (Bergen Street Press) A fully-formed, living and breathing world of characters, influences, ideas, design choices, etc that don’t seem like they should work together but really really really do. Pretty certain that every action comic wishes it was this incredibly well-done.

Cherry, by Inés Estrada. (Kilgore) A whirlwind of a “do whatever the hell you want” story full of really interesting drawings and scenes. Says and does only what it needs to, and nothing more.

Captain Harlock: The Classic Collection, by Leiji Matsumoto. (Seven Seas) Sheds all of the noise and nonsense you’d expect in a sci-fi work, and just leaves the tasty meat. And if you liked it, you can get the Queen Emeraldas books from last year, the Yamato book next year, and hopefully some Galaxy Express 999 reprints soon...

Brat, by Michael DeForge. (Koyama) As always, DeForge seems to try something completely different and new with every page/scene. In Brat, everything he tries works incredibly well.

Art Comic, by Matthew Thurber. (D&Q) Not 100% sure I’m smart enough to understand a lot of what was happening/referenced in this comic, but so what. Still a really interesting thing that I want to read a few dozen more times.

Ryan Carey (critic):

This was a good year for challenging comics that pushed the medium’s envelope in new, unexpected, even necessarily uncomfortable directions. Certainly career-defining works such as Jason Lutes’ Berlin and Julie Doucet’s Dirty Plotte richly deserve every accolade they’re bound to receive, but for this list I’d like to concentrate on wholly new and original works that caused me to consider new ways of looking at comics, art, the world, or any combination thereof. Not so much a numerical “top 10,” any of these selections are what I would consider to be fine representations of why and how the medium is ushering in a new age of frankly limitless potential.

Mike Taylor’s In Christ There Is No East or West (Fantagraphics Underground) is a triumph both conceptually and physically, boasting incredible production values (love that massive fold-out poster!) befitting the challenging, highly personal material it presents. A metaphysical inward journey that limns the mental landscape of Taylor personally as well as society as a whole, illustrated in a breathtaking array of styles that range from the deliberately “scratchy” to the finely-detailed, this is a book that asks a lot of probing questions and then leaves you in the deep end to work out the answers on your own.

Sarah Romano Diehl’s From Crust Till Dawn (self-published) continues her dream-like exploration of her own past, and establishes this ongoing series as one that is all about the business of re-writing the rules of how memoir comics are done --- honing in on the essential feelings and core truths of the various instances in her pizza-delivery past moreso than any of the exact details, this is probably the most realistic invocation of how memory actually works than I’ve seen since I don’t know when. Diehl’s loose, expressive illustration is getting more confident with each release, too, and the riso-printed color palette she employs is pitch perfect.

Sarah L. Jackson’s The Woman Minotaur (self-published) likewise explodes the notion of memoir from within, albeit with a heavy dose of metaphor thrown in, painful memories “buffered” by the insertion of the fantastic and grotesque into the proceedings. And while we’re talking about “fantastic,” Jackson’s arresting, vaguely Steadman-esque watercolor art is certainly that. A visual tour dee force through a harrowing emotional landscape that you can’t turn away from now matter how uncomfortable the journey.

Alex Graham’s Cosmic BE-ING #6 (self-published) is not only the most darkly funny read of the year, but proof positive that Graham doesn’t need her stand-in protagonist Angloid to tell a truly memorable story, as her creepy-ass clowns in their creepy-ass sky castle who go to creepy-ass soulless jobs and have creepy-ass interactions with one another are every bit as intriguing as her metaphysically-challenged doppleganger ever was. Graham is a special talent fully coming into her own, with a singular outlook and an equally-singular way of expressing it.

The long-running monograph series Frontier (Youth In Decline) continues to impress, with issue number 17, Lauren Weinstein’s Mother’s Walk, being its most exemplary release yet. Weinstein establishes a visual vocabulary entirely her own in this elliptical exploration of the thoughts, feelings, and ideas that accompany the act of bringing new human life into the world. Exceptionally fluid, even and especially where circumstance would seem to dictate it should be disjointed, this is a lot more than simply the most heartfelt read of the year --- it’s also one of the most formally ambitious and artistically intuitive. Everybody’s been talking about this one, and those conversations are sure to continue for a very long time.

Eleanor Davis’ Why Art? (Fantagraphics) has also been the subject of much “buzz,” and again it’s easy to see why : essentially an illustrated short story that addresses its central question both obliquely and thoroughly by largely allegorical means, it reads as something akin to a stream-of-consciousness rumination on the nature of creative expression itself, using art to examine the idea, even the necessity, of art itself on levels that range from the conscious to the subconscious to the unconscious. This is a work that isn’t simply read, but experienced and felt and worked through. Astonishingly self-assured expression from one of the most gifted cartoonists of our time.

Laura Lannes’ John, Dear (Retrofit/Big Planet) is without question the most soul-shattering release of 2018, its ingenious marriage of physical, psychological, emotional, and sexual abuse with established tropes of the “body horror” genre carving you out and leaving you leaving you as hollow as its protagonist --- and don’t even get me started on the sheer power of Lannes’ gorgeously-dark graphite illustrations. She’s channeling something held so deeply inside here that I honestly don’t know how she got through the making of it without having a complete nervous breakdown --- certainly reading it will bring you right up to the threshold of one yourself. In a word --- devastating.

Alex Nall’s Lawns (Kilgore Books) is my pick for the best of the bunch in a year filled with books that attempt to capture the tone and texture of this preternaturally-confusing “cultural moment.” Written in a disarmingly straight-forward and non-judgmental manner that eschews the easy editorializing of its fellow travelers (I’m looking at you, specifically, Sabrina) and illustrated in a manner that evokes comparisons to the best of classical “cartooning” while being something entirely its own, this is a smart, insightful, at times deeply funny look at “Trump’s America” that never mentions the orange wildebeest-in-a-suit himself because it frankly doesn’t need to. Vaguely Lynch-ian at the margins, absolutely, but in a manner that informs the work rather than detracting from it.

Lale Westvind’s Grip Vol. 1 (Perfectly Acceptable Press) is my pick for most formally accomplished book of the year, as well as the most visually exciting. A non-stop whirlwind of conceptually-grounded action that pairs super-heroics with the real-life heroics of working women (especially those in the blue-collar trades), this is sequential feminist genre fiction at its most confident and fully-developed, each page literally impossible to peel your eyes from and presented in four riso-printed colors that accentuate the pace and tempo (which is well and truly breakneck) flawlessly. Lots to think about, looks to look at, lots to enjoy.

D.R.T.’s Qoberious Vol. 1 (self-published) stands above, and apart from, anything else published in this year or any other, an artifact from another dimension where everything we thought we knew simply doesn’t apply. An entirely different read every time you go through it, certain themes such as physical bondage and disability and emotional/psychological alienation from both the world at large and oneself are constants, but the manner with which one engages with their presentation is never the same twice. The cartooning itself is exemplary --- washed out colors over vaguely “cartoony” human/sheep hybrid figures give the proceedings the look of faded animation cels, while mysterious geometric shapes and symbols vie for one’s attention and interpretation. Not so much a narrative as a road map to a landscape composed purely of possibility, this is the work of someone with more to say than the act of artistic creation may be able to convey, but he’s packed his slim volume with more sheer conceptual and thematic density than perhaps any single cartoonist has attempted before. More than just a “standout” work, this is absolutely staggering.

Okay, that went on a bit longer than expected, but these works --- as well as others --- have me feeling a lot more optimistic about where comics are at, as well as where they’re going, than a lot of folks seem to be. By and large it’s an exciting time to be reading, commenting on, and creating work in this medium, as the arbitrary boundaries silently imposed for so long are being shattered left and right with precision and intent. No sacred cows seem to be left standing, and I for one couldn’t be more excited.

Joe Casey (writer):

Bloodstrike: Brutalists, Copra Versus & Negativeland, by Michel Fiffe. (Image, Copra Press)

Street Angel Goes To Juvie & Street Angel Vs. Ninjatech, by Jim Rugg. (Image)

The Green Lantern, Wonder Woman: Earth One, Heavy Metal (Various Strips), by Grant Morrison. (DC Comics & Heavy Metal)

RJ Casey (critic):

These are the comics that made me feel something this year — in alphabetical order by artist's last name and not including any Fantagraphics titles, because I work there.

Sabrina by Nick Drnaso. (D&Q)

Qoberious Vol. 1 by D.R.T. (Self-published)

Passing for Human by Liana Finck. (Random House)

John, Dear by Laura Lannes. (Retrofit)

Winter Olympics coverage by Edward Steed. (New Yorker)

Chattering #1 by Walker Tate. (Variety Pak)

"Bergmann's Battle" from Victory Journal #14 by Jacob Weinstein

Frontier #17 by Lauren Weinstein. (Youth In Decline)

Grip Vol. 1 by Lale Westvind. (Perfectly Acceptable)

Our Wretched Town Hall by Eric Kostiuk Williams. (Retrofit)

Honorable Mentions: Dead Dead Demon's De De De De Destruction by Inio Asano, "Biopsy" by Rebecca Kirby, "A New Tattoo" by Sara Lautman, Young Frances by Hartley Lin, Voices in the Dark by Ulli Lust, "Shetland Squadron" by Steven Weissman, "Daphne Duck" by Garrett Young

Henry Chamberlain:

1. Amongst The Liberal Elite by Elly Lonon and Joan Reilly. (Powerhouse Books) To be able to take a popular column made up of clever repartee and turn it into a graphic novel is quite remarkable.

2. Prism Stalker by Sloane Leong. (Image) For a comics critic who also both writes and draws comics, I am confident in sharing with you what sets Ms. Leong apart. If the cartoonist is particularly driven, the transition can be made from bohemian poet to career path. In this ideal case, the work retains that same idiosyncratic vibe and integrity.

3. Berlin by Jason Lutes. (D&Q) This is the omnibus we've been waiting for, the complete Berlin! It has been twenty years in the making and looks wonderful all in one place.

4. Art Comic by Matthew Thurber. (D&Q) Mr. Thurber actually works out his satirical narrative to such a precise degree that it reaches a peak of whimsical perfection.

5. Windowpane by Joe Kessler. (Breakdown) In a fit of petulant bravado, Mr. Kessler will take a gob of primary colors and fling them like a bolt of lightning. A blast of these harsh basic colors will blow up some characters to bits. Others will be saved for a proper decapitation. All in a day’s work.

6. The Furnace by Prentis Rollins. This work does indeed bring to mind and compare favorably with the best of the original Twilight Zone. That’s a tall order but this is an exceptionally unique work. I don’t take making such comparisons lightly and I have no problem striking down false claims that occur quite often. So, yes, this is the real deal with its finely modulated pace and attention to detail.

7. M.F.K. by Nilah Magruder. This is one of the most unusual and mysterious comics I’ve ever read.

8. Alpha: Abdjan To Paris by Bessora and Barroux. (Bellevue Literary Press) Alpha, our main character, while symbolic of all immigrants struggling against the odds, readily engages the reader with his own set of specifics. In this way, the creative team truly gives a face to a problem demanding our attention.

9. The Dead Eye and the Deep Blue Sea by Vannak Anan Prum. (Seven Stories) There are more slaves today, well over 40 million, than at any time in human history. A new book, a graphic memoir, by Vannak Anan Prumu provides a most vivid and compelling testimony

10. The Winner by Karl Stevens. (Retrofit) Mr. Stevens is engaging in the fine old tradition of presenting a portrait of the artist and having the reader take of it what they will. In this case, there is much to take and much to celebrate.

Helen Chazan:

2018 was a year where I was much more excited about comics than I had been in a while, but it was also a year where I had less time to read comics. I am nearly certain that I haven’t read “the best comic of 2018” yet, but I’ve read many that I wouldn’t want to see omitted from any best of the year list. Here are a few, and some words about them.

The Bacchae Vol. 1, by Sarah Horrocks. (Self-published) The first issue of this is exactly the kind of thing I want comics to be. I love Sarah’s comics and I think she’s on to some next level stuff here. She’s really got an inspired take on the vibe of Euripides, and the colors and textures in this comic alone are way cooler and more exciting than 90% of everything else right now. Really excited for more.

Windowpane, by Joe Kessler. (Breakdown Press) A lot of the comics on my list could be described as “video game influenced,” but Windowpane is the only one where the story paused at one point so the kid could pick up coins from the grass as a reward for completing a quest. It’s also the only comic I read this year where I had to reach for analogies to Dubliners and Yukio Mishima books to explain why it hit me the way it did. And really pretty too!

Cutie Honey, by Go Nagai. (Seven Seas) When I think about my favorite manga, there’s usually a horrendous image seared in my head from it. The horse on fire in Barefoot Gen, the kid on the cross in The Drifting Classroom, the last page of Devilman… anyway, Cutie Honey has a bit like that for me. Honey’s disguised herself as a statue to evade some bad guys, but she can’t turn back. Sooner than you can say Aphrodite of Knidos, a randy old man and a kid are groping what they think is an unusually lifelike statue. This goes on for like two chapters and it’s weird and unreal. I’m probably not a huge fan of the mindset that made this comic happen, but there’s a lot going on there and it’s a blast to read.

Superextrapaz, by Andrea Pazienza. (Repubblica/L'Espresso) Found this series of yuge art books being sold pretty cheaply at news vendors while I was in Italy this summer, hate to be a tease but these books are phenomenal. Zanardi blew my mind, and some of the art in these books blew my mind just as much. It’s a delicious little peek into the world of a brilliant artist us foolish Americans are barely catching up with now, full of pretty girls, animals, sight gags and sublime images. Not prohibitively expensive to import, either. I hope that North American publishers haven’t given up on Pazienza yet. He’s a gem.

Soft X Ray/Mindhunters, by Alex Degen. (Koyama) I almost feel wrong putting this here, because I don’t think I know quite what this book is up to yet. It’s a thrill to read though, so I couldn’t ignore it. Degen has come to such an incredible, fully realized idiom, at this point he might be to ‘90s anime what Jim Woodring is to Looney Tunes type stuff.

Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction, by Inio Asano. (Viz) Asano’s the cartoonist most likely to make me cry on the regular, and this is his best drawn comic ever. Demon’s is much more sedate than Goodnight Punpun, but I can feel the shoe slowly dropping. What a treat.

The Pervert, by Remy Boydell and Michelle Perez. (Image) I’m sure a lot of people are going to mention this one but, holy hell the world needs this comic right now. Boydell and Perez wage a two-person war on the ignorance that gave us SESTA/FOSTA, armed with great cartooning and cute furries. Also, it’s the only comic this year that gives us a meaningful glimpse into the dark side of Jon Arbuckle’s sex life. You can keep your Lit Sluggos, I’m here for the queer furry ennui.

Andrea Colvin (editor)

1. On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden. (First Second, Avery Hill, Self-published) I am an avid (maybe a little obsessive) Tillie Walden fan, and On a Sunbeam—in its webcomic iteration—was the gateway drug. I’ve been a huge evangelist for book and will crow about to whoever will listen. Though this book is, when boiled down, a delicate story of first love, it’s Tillie’s casually detailed worldbuilding and unique imagination that will draw you in.

2. The Unsinkable Walker Bean and the Knights of the Waxing Moon by Aaron Renier. (First Second) I feel like I’ve waited an eternity for this follow up to 2010’s The Unsinkable Walker Bean, but it was well worth it. Aaron picks up right where he left off in book one but adds new characters, new magic, new jeopardy, and whole new worlds to Walker’s continuing plight. This is one I’ll return to again and again.

3. The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang. (First Second) There’s not much to say about this amazing story that hasn’t already been said, so I’ll use an anecdote instead: When I handed the book to my eleven-year-old daughter she took one look at the cover and said, “No, thanks, it looks like a romance.” “Well,” I replied, “it’s really about a boy who wants to wear beautiful dresses.” She perked up: “So he’s trans? Well that’s more interesting.” It is indeed.

4. Hey, Kiddo by Jarrett Krosoczka. (Scholastic) I admit to being reluctant to crack this one open because I didn’t feel prepared for the difficult emotional journey I assumed reading this book would be. It sat on my reading pile for a good month before I finally picked it up. But once I did, I couldn’t put it down. There were hard moments, yes, but overall this is an uplifting story, and a lesson (for me and everyone else) that the hard parts of life don’t have to be the parts that make you who you are.

5. Crush by Svetlana Chmakova. (Yen) The third book in Svetlana’s Berrybrook Middle School series is the best one yet. Not only are these the most diverse and representative books for kids I’ve ever seen that are not about being diverse and representative, but Svetlana’s method of following different characters in each book (and letting us see our old favorites in bit parts), shows young readers the variety of experience there is. And each of her characters is nuanced, and each is unique.

David Dissanayake (publisher):

Ice Cream Man, by W. Maxwell Prince, Martín Morazzo, Chris O'Halloran, and Good Old Neon. (Image) A wonderfully weird and disturbing jem of a book, Ice Cream Man was one of the most delightfully surprising books of 2018. A Twilight Zone-esque anthology in structure, each issue of the series tells it's own closed story, with only the Ice Cream Man who floats on the periphery of each tale linking them together. Each story is more bizarre and unsettling than the last. I have long been an advocate for this storytelling structure in serialized comics, and Ice Cream Man does it better than any other book out there.

These Savage Shores by Ram V., Sumit Kumar, Vittorio Astone, and Aditya Bidikar. (Vault Comics) Full disclosure, I work for Vault Comics. Further full disclosure, that has nothing to do with why I included this book on my list. These Savage Shores is where Western horror meets Indian Myth. Think Alan Moore's From Hell meets Bram Stoker's Dracula, blended with Indian mythology, in a story set in colonial India, expertly told by two phenomenal Indian creators operating at the very top of their game.

Kingdom by Jon McNaught. (Nobrow) A new McNaught book is a rare and wonderful thing. His work is gorgeous, ponderous, and both quiet and dense simultaneously. Kingdom exemplifies McNaught's skill at gorgeously rendering reflections upon the more mundane parts of life that we rarely think about twice, like the silent moments of exploration on a beach during a summer vacation, or the ways we used to play when bored as a child. His panels and pacing effortlessly establish and guide you through the rhythms of his characters' lives in a way that will make you notice the quiet rhythms in your own.

Upgrade Soul by Ezra Clayton Daniels. (Lion Forge) There isn't much to say about Ezra's masterpiece that hasn't already been said. It is just that, a masterpiece of storytelling that is inevitably going to be on almost every "Best of 2018" list. It's such a staggeringly impressive work that trying to describe it here feels like doing it a disservice. I will say that it tackles the immensity of aging, mortality, identity, and self-hood, and in a way that's both harrowing and utterly beautiful.

Mister Miracle, by Tom King, Mitch Gerads, and Clayton Cowles. (DC) It's become a cliche at this point to talk about how big an impact Mister Miracle had this year, almost like talking about how adored Saga is. "Yeah, everyone loves it, we get it." Still, it has to be said, Mister Miracle was utterly superb. King & Gerads perfectly distilled, in superhero form, the anxiety that permeates America in 2018, while also paying proper tribute to the bombastic Kirby classic. It's subject matter, despite the capes, was incredibly intense. How does the universe's greatest escape artist escape a life of post-traumatic stress, on-going war and suicidal thoughts? How do we continue on when Darkseid is?

The Wild Storm by Warren Ellis, Jon Davis-Hunt, Ivan Plascencia, & Simon Bowland. (DC) No one is talking about this book which confounds me. Warren is firing on all cylinders here, and Jon Davis-Hunt matches Ellis' intricacy, sarcasm, and complexity like few artists can. To be clear, The Wild Storm is not a superhero comic. The Wild Storm is about futurism, waring intelligence agencies, and, of course, whiskey-loving aliens. It's is far from what you might expect from Jim Lee's original group of properties that helped define 1990's superhero comics, for good or ill. Warren is weaving a story that feels completely fresh and isn't retreading the territory he already covered in his now two decades-old work on some of these characters. The Wild Storm is a master class on how to tell fresh stories with old characters, and we should all be paying closer attention.

Alex Dueben:

1. The Complete Dirty Plotte by Julie Doucet. (D&Q)

2. Berlin by Jason Lutes. (D&Q)

3. The Ghost Writer by Jules Feiffer. (Norton)

4. Belonging by Nora Krug. (Scribner)

5. Flocks by L Nichols. (Secret Acres)

6. Wet Moon: Book 7, Morning Cold by Sophie Campbell. (Oni)

7. Why Art? by Eleanor Davis. (Fantagraphics)

8. The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt by Ken Krimstein. (Bloomsbury)

9. Che: A Graphic Biography by Jon Lee Anderson and Jose Hernandez. (Penguin Press)

10. Tie: Hawkeye: Kate Bishop by Kelly Thompson, Leonardo Romero, et al. and Oh S#!t It's Kim & Kim by Magdalene Visaggio, Eva Cabrera, et al. (Marvel & Black Mask)

Toussaint Egan:

1) LAAB #0: Dark Matter by Ronald Wimberly. (Beehive Books): For an entire generation of readers, the daily syndicated newspaper represents their first introduction to comics, the ur-text from which all other forms of interest for the medium springs. Cartoonist Ronald Wimberly takes this format, the broadsheet paper, and transforms into one of the most fascinating ‘books’ to come out this year. A comic criticism zine that owes as much to the artistic precedent of Emory Douglas as it does to the satirical bite and wit of the German weekly Simplicissimus, LAAB #0: Dark Matter is a remarkable and confident work that taps the ideological fault-lines of mythological blackness and the cultural construction of being to extract nothing short of pure ichors of critical wisdom and possibility.

2) Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures by Yvan Alagbé. (New York Review Comics): I first learned of French comics artist Yvan Alagbé’s latest work per an endorsement from my friend and fellow Comics Journal contributor Shea Hennum and I have to say, thank God for his good taste. The black felt-tip strokes, charcoal shading and gestural contours of Alagbé's comics ache with sobriety and sensuality, ennui and righteous fury. The inner lives of the downtrodden, the marginalized, and the undocumented leap from off the page in a stark palette of black and white that otherwise bellies the depth and dimension of their scope. I am an American, with only a fledgling impression of the cultural and political intricacies of modern-day France, but Alagbé’s Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures spoke to me through words and images of such profound empathic appeal, it’s almost like magic.

3) On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden. (First Second): Words fail me in attempting to convey the full breadth and beauty of Tillie Walden’s latest book, but I’ll try. Set between two separate points in time, On a Sunbeam is at once a whimsical mystery of circumstances set in a surreal boarding school in outer space which gradually gives way to an endearing and intimate portrait of star-crossed love set against the backdrop of a ruthless and beautiful universe dotted with impossible labyrinthine structures and teeming with fish-shaped starships. How could a love so tenuous, so cosmically coincidental, brave such extraordinary circumstances? You’ll have to read it in order to find out, but I promise you this, you’ll be thankful that you did.

4) Judas by Jeff Loveness & Jakub Rebelka. (BOOM! Studios): In the private journals he kept before his death, Mark Twain once wrote, “But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?” For writer Jeff Loveness and artist Jakub Rebelka, there's no sympathy for the Devil, but rather for the man whose fate was bound inextricably to that of the Christ's from the moment they first met. Judas is a harrowing and exculpatory fable of one man's dark odyssey of the soul across the penumbral plains of hell, a story that skirts precariously up to, beyond, and back acrosz the precipice of blasphemy to seize exultation and atonement on behalf of one of history's greatest “villains.”

5) Ghost in the Shell: Global Neural Network by Max Gladstone, David López; Alex de Campi, Giannis Milonogiannis; Genevieve Valentine, Brent Schoonover; Brenden Fletcher & LRNZ. (Kodansha Comics): When I first read Global Neural Network in October, I called it nothing short of the most interesting installment to come out of the Ghost in the Shell series in over a decade. Two months later, I stand by that statement emphatically. Global Neural Network is a phalanx of stories that probe at under-seen corners of Masamune Shirow's cyberpunk universe, eliciting its own questions regarding technology's ever-expanding role in the mediation of human civilization. If more Western storytellers were willing to take after Global Neural Network's example, the longevity of the Ghost in the Shell franchise as a whole would be assured for years to come.

Avi Ehrlich (publisher):

Cartoonists Benji Nate and Michael Sweater getting married at SPX 2. Thee Collected Cyanide Milkshake by Liz Suburbia (Gimme Action) The comic zines making up this collection are why I give a shit about indie comics today. If you like anything that Silver Sprocket publishes, go read what inspired the better parts. 3. Silver Sprocket getting shout-outs from "big time" press like The New York Times, NPR, and The Comics Journal. This including two publications that my parents have heard of. Oh and scheming our way into having a store-front! Listening in as people tell their friends about our comics fills me with a joy I didn't know existed. Are we a "real publisher" now? 4. Indie comic community banding together on "#defend the 11." 5. I got some good toothpaste this year. Mint is bullshit, you can have any flavor to still get that clean mouth feeling without a spinning-star-kick avalanche of mint to the mouth. Almond, banana, pineapple, grape, orange, strawberry -- all better than mint.

My only warning is to avoid the clove-flavored toothpaste, which I appreciated for not being mint, but still bad and available in Seattle at Gnartoons creator James Stanton's house above the fireplace for some reason.

Daniel Elkin:

Kindling by Xia Gordon. (2dCloud)

Your Mother’s Fox by Niv Sekar. (Shortbox)

Tongues #2 by Anders Nilsen. (Self-published)

Follow Me In by Katriona Chapman. (Avery Hill)

The Winner by Karl Stevens. (Retrofit/Big Planet)

Vanishing Act by Roman Muradov. (Fantagraphics)

Greenhouse by Debbie Fong. (Self-published)

How To Make A Sandwich by Vicky Leta. (Self-published)

The Lie and How We Told It by Tommi Parrish. (Fantagraphics)

Generous Bosom #3 by Conor Stechshulte. (Breakdown Press)

Kiana Endres (publisher):

On a Sunbeam, by Tille Walden, (First Second/Avery Hill/Self-published) WOW. Beautiful art with a beautiful story! I'm a sucker for teenage love stories AND space travel; Tillie Walden really made the world in this book seem very real and very important.

PP911 by Julia K. (Cold Cube Press) A searing roast of indie fuckboys and some other things she thinks about in lots of short strips. It's honestly one of my favorite things I've ever read.

Woman World by Aminder Dhaliwal. (Drawn and Quarterly) This one follows multiple women in a single community in a world where all the men died out a generation or so ago. I laughed out loud a bunch of times while reading and then make all my friends buy it immediately.

The Lie and How We Told It by Tommi Parrish. (Fantagraphics) Tommi Parrish's painted graphic novel about two friends trying to save their dying friendship. The paintings are amazing, there are two different types of paper (and a story within a story!) in the book, and it will definitely hit you right in the feelings.

Sabrina by Nick Drnaso. (Drawn and Quarterly) INCREDIBLE. This book is insane and it sort of feels less like a graphic novel and more like a regular novel. The internet makes everything worse and this book is kind of about that.

Austin English (critic, cartoonist, publisher):

Von Spatz, by Anna Haifisch. (D& Q) Haifisch’s work touches on the golden age of comics past and a potential beautiful future that she already inhabits. Her work would be at home if found in a used bookstore as some faded 60s paperback by a forgotten, but perfect, gag panel artist or as a dreamed up futuristic society’s version of sharp humor. Every Haifisch drawing feels like the final perfect edit of the Snoopy we never dreamed possible, and this excellent book is a great introduction for the uninitiated.

All Killer No Filler by EA Bethea. (Self-published) With this self-published zine, there’s no need to do mental gymnastics imagining a publishing industry that may, someday somehow, print something transcendent. That work is here and Bethea printed it herself.

The Complete Dirty Plotte by Julie Doucet. (D&Q) The only comic that matters gets its due. Publications that do not include this tome on their best of lists are invalid.

The Weaver Festival Phenomenon by Ron Regé Jr. (Self-published) Maybe someday Ron Regé will make a bad drawing or a bad book, but it’s not this one. It’s easy to take an artist like this for granted, but I think the extra serving of beauty available in this book, based on a novella by Banana Yoshimoto, should be a shock to the system for even the most jaded Regé fan. The production design alone feels electric/magnetic.

The best book I haven't read all the way through yet is The Whistling Factory by Jesse McManus.

Andrew Farago, Curator, Cartoon Art Museum:

The Prince and The Dressmaker, by Jen Wang. (First Second Books)

Be Prepared, by Vera Brosgol. (First Second Books)

Woman World, by Aminder Dhaliwal. (Drawn & Quarterly)

X-Men: Grand Design, by Ed Piskor. (Marvel Comics)

All the Answers, by Michael Kupperman. (Simon & Schuster)

Jared K. Fletcher:

10. “Diss Track" by Brandon Graham. (Self-published) 2018 was a year when the #metoo movement reverberated through the comics community, just as it has through the rest of American culture. We’ve now seen more than a few of these familiar cycles, with a victim coming forward via social media, the outing of the perpetrator, the backlash, and the cancelled projects and appearances. It’s usually capped off with an unsatisfying non-apology, but only Brandon Graham took the time to apply his cartooning skills to craft something so tone-deaf and ill-conceived as a comics “diss track” for his response to concerns raised online about his behavior within the comics community. In it he spends more than three pages taking shots at his accusers and fellow creators, diming out other backbiters, and, because he can’t seem to help himself, throwing in details about his sexual exploits that add nothing to the conversation except to fill the reader with disappointment at seeing how one prominent comics creator responds to these serious issues. Particularly when he’s been so outspoken against other creators for the very behavior he finds himself accused of.

9. Alter Ego #153 edited by Roy Thomas. (Twomorrows) A moving and informative tribute to Flo Steinberg, this issue covers her early days at a fledgling Marvel Comics where she worked as a gal friday for Stan Lee, as well as the changes she saw in the company when the popularity of its comics took off. It's filled with anecdotes from Steinberg about the many freelancers she had to wrangle and the relationships she built with the creative people she crossed paths with. There's also a lot of great stuff on her own foray into publishing with Big Apple Comix and its powerhouse lineup of artists. It ends with a group of comics notables contributing funny stories, fond remembrances, and a lot of love for Fabulous Flo. This issue also reprints the famous 1971 Rolling Stone article about the Marvel Comics office and the people working there at the time, which is filled with old pictures of the bullpen, a bizarre interview with Jim Steranko, wonderful Marie Severin stories, and Stan Lee dispensing some of his finest hucksterisms. The entire issue is a fond look back at a different time for Marvel Comics and the small group of people working there. It offers a personal window into what it was like to work for Stan Lee inside of a tiny rundown midtown office overwhelmed with fan mail.

8. Barrier by Brian K. Vaughan & Marcos Martin. (Panel Syndicate, Image) Comics looooves to put barriers between the reader and the actual comic. They do it all the time, and they’ve even invented new methods in the digital era to frustrate interested readers and discourage new ones. You like digital comics? Not anymore -- not when you have to buy them from a different app and then load the comic into a reader and pay Amazon so they can then pay slave wages to their employees so they don’t have to give Apple a cut. Apple can fuck right off and find a better way to pay for those safety nets outside their factory windows. Amazon will keep that 30% and you nerds can figure out how to work this out. God forbid it be simple. So Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin are doing everything they can to make getting this book under your eyeballs as easy as possible. You want it online? Just download it from the Panel Syndicate website. Name your price. You want a physical copy? The first issue was free on Free Comic book day this year. Just the names Brian K. Vaughn and Marcos Martin next to the word FREE should be enough to get you in the door. These two are a proven peanut butter and chocolate combo of comics creators, and Barrier is another great treat from them.

7. Street Angel Goes To Juvie by Jim Rugg & Brian Maruca. (Image) Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca released two more oversized Street Angel hardcover comics in 2018. Juvie was my favorite; let’s be honest, most of us enjoy a good prison tale. Rugg uses all parts of the buffalo as he covers every page from the first endpapers to the back cover with a variety of styles, storytelling techniques, and color palettes that all add up to a uniquely wonderful Jim Rugg cartooning experience. These guys have made five of these Street Angel hardcovers with Image, and it’s the perfect delivery system for shorter stories coupled with Rugg’s design ambitions. Street Angel has been around long enough to go through many different publishing formats, but these hardcovers read like it has achieved its perfect form.

6. Love & Rockets #5 by Los Bros Hernandez. (Fantagraphics) Any issue that advances the Maggie and Hopey saga running through this new volume of Love and Rockets should be particularly celebrated. The cover doesn’t pull any punches with its disdain for the situation in which we find ourselves in 2018's America. We are all Maggie now -- insert your own personal metaphor for the crumbling shit around your aging body. Thankfully for us, Love and Rockets marches on. All the hot-button issues of race, gender, immigration, and sexuality have been running through Love and Rockets since the beginning. This current climate isn’t new to the citizens of Hoppers. Love and Rockets has always been out here. Los Bros just continue to deliver cartooning of the highest caliber. These guys never fall off. So celebrate Los Bros while they continue to build on their long-running, always-growing, and thoroughly wonderful sci-fi punk luchador queer romance narratives. Don’t ever take Love and Rockets for granted.

5. LAAB #0 by Ron Wimberly. (Beehive Books) Comics doesn’t have a lot of real artists working in the medium. I mean artists. Not just people who can draw. Not a penciller or a cartoonist. Actual artists. People who want to use comics to talk about the important topics of race, culture, art, commerce, and politics as only they can. People who have something thoughtful and important they want to communicate to the reader using both words and pictures. The kind of people who make their own oversized newspaper and fill it with essays, interviews, and full-color reproductions of some of their best illustrations and short comics. People motivated enough to Kickstart that kind of project with a cover that screams “fuck Disney” in a year when all that most folks can do is debate the next DisneyMarvelStarWarsPixar movie on social media. People who want to leave you with something to think about. One of those rare people is Ron Wimberly. He's got some real shit he wants you to think about with LAAB, and we should be paying attention.

4. Young Frances by Hartley Lin. (Adhouse) Fans of Pope Hats can rejoice as the comic is finally collected for the first time in one volume. Now the gift of comics excellence can be spread freely as you hoard your ADHouse single issues, unwilling to lend them out for fear that you would never see them again. The book is that good. The New Yorker-style cover invites you into an anxiety-fueled millennial coming of age story about the kinds of young women who read the New Yorker. Drawn in something close to the “atomic style” of European cartoonist Yves Chaland, the clean brushwork and detailed backgrounds fill the pages with a sense of depth and strong composition that shouldn’t be overlooked. These are dense pages, but they are also balanced and never feel overwhelmed with information. It’s tremendously skillful cartooning on full display from Hartley Lin. The millennials finally have their own Optic Nerve. As an aging millennial myself, I’ve been waiting for a book like this for a while.

3. Lone Wolf and Cub Gallery Edition by Goseki Kojima & Kazuo Koike. (Dark Horse) Every comics company has come around to publishing their own version of these expensive, oversized, artist-focused hardcover collections of classic comics. I’ll commend Dark Horse for not only publishing the only manga volume of this kind that I’m aware of, but also for doing it with Lone Wolf and Cub, a masterpiece of manga that deserves all the attention this new edition will bring to Goseki Kojima’s masterful cartooning and rich brushwork. The original art has all been scanned in complete with margin notes, tape stains and all. Printed on a heavy paper stock, each page is accompanied by its flipped English-language reproduction on the left -- so it’s spread after spread of rich Kojima art in all its brutal samurai sword-slashing glory. I like my samurai manga the same way Ol’ Dirty Bastard liked it, raaaaaaw.

2. Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses by Dave Lapham. (Image) Dave Lapham returned to his comics magnum opus a few years ago, and since then he has been steadily grinding out some of the best crime stories in any medium. I can’t understand why more people don’t talk about how good this book is. My only complaint is how long it took them to start collecting this long arc into trade paperbacks. Stray Bullets is absolutely one of the best long-running crime stories that comics has to offer, and Sunshine and Roses has been another worthy addition from a veteran cartoonist doing the book he does best. Lapham puts in the work: page after page of eight-panel grids takes you through some of the best storytelling you can find in comics these days. Who else is stacking up pages like this? Month in and month out, Lapham delivers the goods. The characters and settings -- a seedy '80s Baltimore of low-level crooks, pimps, drug dealers, hustlers, monsters, liars, children, booze, guns, drugs, sex, and money -- all look and feel real. The stakes are always rising and the situation is always getting worse. The relationships are authentic and often uncomfortable. The violence is sudden and always brutal. If you like crime stories of any kind, you should be reading this comic because it has everything you’re supposed to want according to your Netflix algorithm. Stray Bullets isn’t in your streaming queue but if there was a just and fair God it would be.

1. Dork by Evan Dorkin. (Dark Horse) Evan Dorkin is the hilariously funny, insanely talented, neurotically self-loathing cartoonist genius behind Milk and Cheese (also reprinted this year) that comics needs now more than ever. But as funny as M&C is, for me, Dork is my favorite of all his works. Dork is a red pill for any cartoonist. Evan Dorkin will Morpheus you hard. It starts right on the opening title spread with the Monopoly riff “Get out of comics, free” card that he’s so known for. Dorkin doesn’t pull any punches as he eviscerates the comics industry, toxic nerd culture, music snobs, pop culture, himself, his career, and his mental health. It’s all there, and it’s brutal and gorgeous and honest and funny. Dorkin draws his hand off as he fills page after page with 20 panels of gag comics for the FUN strips, mixed in with the classic Fisher Price Theater stories, The Murderer Family, a few bonus Milk and Cheese pages and the Devil Puppet stories. They’re all there; it’s a dense book, crammed with as many words and lines Dorkin can fit onto the page. No square inch is left un-funny.

Colleen Frakes:

Draw Stronger: Self-Care For Cartoonists and Other Visual Artists by Kriota Wilberg. (Uncivilized Books) Best because it is necessary. Every artist should own a copy, or at least borrow it from the library and memorize the stretches to keep from getting a repetitive stress injury.

How the Best Hunter in the Village Met Her Death by Molly Ostertag. (Self-published) Ever been in a relationship where everything is good, except something is just off and you feel like a monster for even feeling that way? It's a metaphor. (Content warning for nudity, sexual themes, violence, and blood)

My Boyfriend Is a Bear by Pamela Ribon and Cat Farris. (Oni Press) Sometimes it's not a metaphor! Sometimes a bear is just a bear, and a reader just wants a fun, silly and totally unexpected romance comic.

To Know You're Alive by Dakota McFazden. (Self-published) As the cartoonists that I think of as part of my generation are getting older and having kids, I'm not seeing a lot of cute stories and poop jokes. It's refreshing to see them creating work about the emotional struggles of parenting, and how you balance that with the emotional struggles of a creative life.

"Being an Artist and a Mother", by Lauren Weinstein. (The New Yorker)

Erica Friedman (critic):

2018 has been a bumper-crop kind of year for English-reading manga fans. Classics we thought we'd never see translated are popping up like weeds, while innovative new manga are being licensed by a wider variety of publishers than ever before.

All four of the demographic genres (for boys, girls, women, men) of Japanese manga have seen their share of blockbusters this year. The segment of the market I refer to as "the fifth column," e.g., targeted more loosely and eclectically at anyone who might be interested is practically in gold rush phase of growth. New genres, new niches within genres are gaining ground every day.

In short, there's never been a better time to get into manga than right now. To get you started here is my Best Manga of 2018 curated specially for TCJ's readership.

Golden Kamuy, by Satoru Noda & Eiji Yasuda. (Viz) Set in the early 20th century, Golden Kamuy is the tale of a Japanese soldier and an indigenous Ainu girl searching for treasure in the Hokkaido wilderness. As Twitter manga put it, "Come for the history, stay for the food." The story provides a compelling mixture of history, anthropology, cuisine and action. Ainu girl Asirpa is a crowd favorite. The art is filled with stylistic features common to manga for adult men - smoothly drawn action, bold lines, dramatic use of light and shadow, and emotional visuals to emphasize the stark realities of war...and delicious-looking food. Golden Kamuy is clearly a crowd pleaser. Fans of history and food are in for treat with this manga.

Devilman: The Classic Collection, by Go Nagai & Zack Davidson. (Seven Seas) Published in English by Seven SeasOne of the very first magical superheroines in manga who did not require a man's assistance (and frequently excelled despite the men around her,) shape-changing android Honey Kisaragi, aka Cutey Honey, set standards for superheroines in manga for decades. Honey fights the criminal gang Panther Claw and their evil mastermind Sister Jill with the power of love and justice and spends her days as a student at Saint Jogakuen, but don't let that any of that fool you - this manga is both bizarre and extraordinarily violent. I'm a particular fan of Nagai's "creepy uncle" approach to manga. His art tends towards the grotesque and panders heavily with nudity, bondage, torture and a little light (but extremely unattractive) lesbianism This adventure tale isn't so much allegory as a 2"x 4" of heavy-handed symbolism to the back of the head and and the bodies pile up quickly.. Cutey Honey is a don't miss-classic.

Attack on Titan, by Hajime Isayama& Sheldon Drzka. (Kodansha) If you have not yet encountered the shockwave of popular culture known as Attack on Titan, you've come to the right place. This combination of zombie story and socio-political commentary blasted onto the manga scene in the late 2000s, establishing itself as a classic almost immediately. The art starts off crudely and although the Isayama's skill develops, the focus is less on the line work than the mood. Faces frequently are portrayed in suspended shock. The visible musculature of the Titans dominates every volume. With horrific violence and very little peace to break it up, this is a story of the end of humanity and the band of fighters who want to understand what happened and why before it destroys them. The story is coming to an end, which makes this a really good time to pick it up and watch as a 50-meter tall Titan slowly rears over the city walls and carefully, deliberately eats its defenders.

Sailor Moon Eternal Edition, by Naoko Takeuchi, Alethea & Athena Nibley. (Kodansha) Twenty-five years ago, Naoko Takeuchi created a story of a lazy, clumsy, crybaby of a girl who changed manga and anime forever. To celebrate this silver anniversary, Kodansha Comics is putting out a large-format version of the Japanese "perfect" edition of Takeuchi's classic, with holographic cover, color pages that have never made it into the manga since it first appeared. With original covers for this edition by Takeuchi, this is a simply gorgeous iteration of an enduring manga series. The story is a simple fight-based manga, the kind we're used to from boy's manga. Sailor Moon, along with her Sailor Guardians - each with powers bestowed by their zodiac aligned planet - meet, defeat and befriend the enemy until they face the ultimate boss. They must power up with each new threat which allows for regular upgrades to theirs costumes and merchandisable items. This fighting fantasy has endured for a quarter century because of lovable characters and enduring themes of friendship and powering up until you can love the enemy enough to defeat them.

My Solo Exchange Diary, by Kabi Nagata & Jocelyne Allen. (Seven Seas) The sequel to the blockbuster My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness is a fascinating intersection of three quickly growing manga niches: queer manga, essay manga (similar to Indie comic autobiographies) and medical manga. This autobiographical essay details a lesbian artist's difficult struggle with crushing depression, the aftermath of an eating disorder and her new-found international fame after the success of her first book, coupled with her desire for a "normal" adult life. Art in this volume is allegorical, and the three-color format becomes symbolic of the narrator's mood. The story is by turns hopeful and devastating, as Nagata reveals the ups and downs of her actual life. This is not an easy read, nor a comforting one, but it has struck a chord in millions of readers worldwide and has to be considered a groundbreaking book for manga in the west.

Battle Angel Alita, by Yukito Kishiro & Stephen Paul. (Kodansha) Sometimes a classic is actually worth the wait. In the junkheaps of Scrapyard, a scientist creates a cyborg of a young woman. Without memory, Alita seeks to discover what she can of her past, her life and her humanity, as she protects the weak and victimized. This science fiction classic is being reprinted in a gorgeous hardcover deluxe edition with color pages. Whether you've seen the movie or not, or you're a fan of the classic anime OAV, or any of the manga editions, Kishiro's tale is timeless dystopian work, with the kind of detailed art that one can get lost in for hours.

My Hero Academia by Kohei Horikoshi & Caleb D. Cook. (Viz) Izuku Midoriya has nothing to recommend him until a chance encounter with with legendary superhero All Might gives Izuku the ability to make his dream of becoming a superhero a reality. The "boy's manga" formula of competition against increasingly powerful opponents works well here, and the powers themselves encourage strategy over brute force. There's no pretense to realism in the art and it would be out of place in any case. My Hero Academia scratches the itch of superhero story and a young man's coming-of-age story for something less than literary, but still immensely satisfying.

Wotakoi, by Fujita & Jessica Sheaves. (Kodansha) Hirotaka Nifuji essentially blackmails coworker and fellow anime/manga enthusiast Narumi Momose into dating him. Unable to escape Nifuji and pretty much done with the dating scene anyway, Momose agrees. This unsavory set-up leads to what is a reasonably touching adult romance story. The tension of being "outed" as an otaku pairs nicely with the tension of being a working adult trying to date, and creates a snappy, sympathetic story. With a focus on real adult life, the art is tight and fitting for a manga that is meant to appeal to adult sensibilities, but reaches readers of all genders and ages. If fantasy leaves you cold, but the everyday mortifications and the triumph of love and life fill your ticket, this is for you.

Invitation from a Crab, By panpanya & Ko Ransom. (Denpa) Invitation From a Crab is a unique, surreal and ever-so-slightly dark tale of the paranormal that resides within an average life. The city we're familiar with has never looked so strange as it does here. And yet, everything is completely recognizable. With illustrations that combine western and eastern artistic techniques and both real and unreal scenarios, panpanya speaks to all of us, and about all of us. Originally published in an eclectic magazine with a presumed female audience, panpanya's protagonist is androgynous, the chapters building on psychological disruption and set in a world in which the unusual and inexplicable sits side by side with the average and normal. This is the perfect book for someone looking for something outside the ordinary.

Frankenstein: Junji Ito Story Collection, by Junji Ito & Jocelyne Allen. (Viz)Master of existential horror Mary Shelley's work is brought to life by master of psychological horror manga Junji Ito in this new translation of the classic story of existential crisis and the nature of humanity. This collection also includes six original stories by Ito that follow a high school student who lives in a decaying mansion connected to a haunted parallel world. Ito's art has to be experienced to be understood. His grasp of horror is unparalleled; never before has Frankenstein's monster been so sensitively portrayed nor has the terror of his existence beautifully rendered in images that match the mood of the narrative.

Marc-Oliver Frisch:

Shortbox's 2018 output, edited by Zainab Akhtar. (Shortbox) “The theme is quality,” according to the Shortbox website. This captures, succinctly enough, the well-earned confidence of Akhtar’s publishing enterprise. With the 2016 launch of Shortbox, Akhtar has emerged as one of comics’ most exciting curators. The quarterly box of original comics, nine volumes of which have been released to date, reveals an impeccable sense of aesthetics and storytelling, and covers a wide range of styles, genres, and sensibilities. Akhtar publishes work by some of the best cartoonists alive, delivered in one of the smartest and most compelling formats in comics history. (And in case you prefer ordering individual books, Shortbox also has the world’s best shipping envelopes.)

My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies & Kill or Be Killed, by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips. (Image) by Among the several hundred comic books Brubaker has written, there are very few bad ones, and all of those came out before he stopped doing work-for-hire gigs for DC Comics (in 2005) and Marvel (in 2013). More recently, Brubaker has been splitting his time between writing high-profile prestige-TV shows and creating, frequently with artist Sean Phillips, his own comics. The two creators, who have been collaborating for 20 years at this juncture, make one of the most thrilling writer/artist teams in U.S. genre comics, playing to each other’s strengths like few other collaborators. And though he’s been at this for three decades, Brubaker keeps finding new ways to twist genre expectations and wring new insight from old conventions. In 2018, Brubaker and Phillips completed the vigilante thriller Kill or Be Killed, but the standout is My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies, a finely calibrated 64-page noir drama following two addicts on the run. It’s a book about co-dependency, about knowingly making poor choices and holding on to bad relationships because that seems to be the only kind that’s available to you.

Beneath the Dead Oak Tree, by Emily Carroll. (Shortbox) At first glance, Carroll’s Beneath the Dead Oak Tree, a violent 28-page horror poem about beautiful anthropomorphic foxes in courtship, reads like one of the Brothers Grimm’s grimmer tales. But once you tune in to its rhythm, it turns into an intricate, timeless, terrifying dance of attraction and manners, of gender roles and class conflicts and existential dread, where nobody wants to be the first to bare their throat and every misstep might spell certain death. Lines and colors and words combine with musical precision in this comic, and the result is as powerful an experience as art can muster.

Why Art?, by Eleanor Davis. (Fantagraphics) Davis’s 2018 release wears its heart on its sleeve: Why Art? It’s one hell of a loaded question with a myriad of possible answers all of which are potentially true without being the least bit satisfying. And yet, Why Art?, originally conceived as a presentation, might be as close to that satisfying answer as we’re likely to get. With a few sparse lines, some drawn and some made of prose, Davis carefully and deliberately steers us towards the enormity of the query she is pondering, then pulls the rug and blows the roof when we least expect it, and suddenly our very lives are on the line. A didactic minimalist comic about abstract notions has no business being this urgent and funny and awesome.

Hanna Gressnich. The five comics Gressnich has published in 2018 all differ wildly from each other. Gressnich’s debut graphic novel Treibgut (“Jetsam”) is a tour de force of colors and shapes dealing with anxiety and friendship; in the minicomic Helga, drawn in puffy blue dashes, the mind of a cleaning woman turns massive bookshelves into roaring seas; the jittery ink scratches of Like a Virgin depict the awkward reunion of three old friends at a wedding ceremony; Brautkleid ungetragen (“Bridal Dress Unworn”), an acerbically funny yellow-on-white rizo zine, captures, in smooth lines and menacing blotches, the drama of abandoned dreams; and the defiant, whimsically told “Hanno,” about the eponymous elephant at the court of Pope Leo X, finds a grim yet sincere kind of hope in the fact that humanity’s at times limitless potential for casual cruelty will forever be outmatched by the stoic perseverance of plain old nature. Gressnich is one of the most imaginative and eclectic new voices in German comics.

Anna Haifisch. The most inspiring comics-related event I was fortunate enough to witness in 2018 took place in late April in Saarbrücken, Germany. Comics are a hard sell here, harder still perhaps than elsewhere in the country. The weather was great, and the room in which Haifisch, Germany’s best cartoonist, was about to read from her work seemed frighteningly large. But people came, and the room filled up and then filled up some more, and when Haifisch talked about her career and presented her work, the crowd hung on her every word and greeted the performance with chuckles and empathic oohs and aahs and roars of laughter and delight. It felt cathartic, like the beginning of something new. Things are changing in German comics; the old gatekeepers, incurious cowards with no taste who still dominate the country’s pertinent private and public award and funding institutions, are losing their grip on the industry. Haifisch, who also runs the annual small-press comics festival The Millionaires Club in Leipzig, is at the forefront of this sea change. This year, her publications include the 12-pager “A Proud Race,” the comb-bound fable The Mouse Glass, the minicomic Fuji-San, and an English-language edition of her 2015 work Von Spatz.

Prism Stalker, by Sloane Leong. (Image) Leong’s Prism Stalker is different from most American science-fiction comics in that it offers a vision of the future that doesn’t just involve advanced technology and run-of-the-mill dystopian cultures, but questions the very notions of technology and culture. Likewise, it’s a story not so much about perceptions that are deceiving, but about the deceptive nature of the very concept of perception. Leong depicts a world in which bodies shift shape effortlessly when minds will it and the borders between conventional notions of “technology,” “biology” and “culture” have long since been ground to dust. Prism Stalker is also different from most American science-fiction comics in that the art, and the color in particular, gets to do the heavy lifting when it comes to the telling of the story. The result is one of the most refreshing genre comics I’ve read in a while.

I Hate You, You Just Don't Know It Yet. (Rotopol) Nadine Redlich. In-between the static images of Redlich’s I Hate You, You Just Don’t Know It Yet, an abstract presentation-style comic told in full-page images made up of sparse red lines and words, it’s not characters doing stuff that we have to fill in when we read it, but the shifting and changing of the lies we tell ourselves to be able to have relationships. Redlich manipulates to great effect the mantras (“I love seeing the world through your eyes”) and similes (“Our love is like a beautiful vase”) we use to pin down, and make sense of, our romantic relationships as they rub against the growing resistance of reality. At first these notions kind of work, even though, having been through this before, we suspect there might be something not quite right with them. And sure enough, they eventually lose their power like totems of a faith we no longer share—until we start using them all over again. It’s a funny comic.

Olivia Vieweg. I wrote at length about Vieweg and her latest graphic novel Endzeit back in April. A manga-influenced book about two women stranded in the no man’s land (as in: there happen to be no men in this land) between two cities in the wake of a zombie apocalypse, Endzeit is easily the best German genre comic of the year. It’s also significant for other reasons, because Vieweg has been able to emancipate herself from the tired notions of literariness and seriousness that many of her peers still think they have to heed if they want to make a living in German comics, and from the structures—public funding, publishing contracts, media coverage, awards—that hinge on those notions retaining their clout. If there is a bright future for German comics, it will require work that’s not just Serious and Important, but also visceral and popular and entertaining. Vieweg is one of a handful of German cartoonists whose work suggests that such a future might not be entirely out of the question.

Poochytown, by Jim Woodring. (Fantagraphics) One of the less fathomable facts of existence in this mortal plane is that Woodring has been doing the work of his career with the graphic novels he’s published starting with Weathercraft in 2010, yet does not have one single Eisner Award to his name. Poochytown, the fourth book in the series, once again gets Woodring’s not-quite-funny-animal character Frank in trouble after stuff happens and Frank, as always, can’t help being relentlessly curious about it. It’s this constant and unapologetic curiosity that drives Woodring’s wordless Frank stories, and I can’t think of any other cartoonist who is this good at communicating that curiosity and passing it on to the reader. “It’s easier to read than it is not to,” Matt Seneca writes in his review, and there really is no better way to put it.

Shaenon Garrity:

1. Girl Town by Carolyn Nowak. (Top Shelf) My favorite book of the year. This collection of magical short stories about young women so smart they’ll cut themselves, in vividly imagined fantasy and science fiction settings, establishes Nowak as a major emerging talent.

2. On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden. (First Second) Each new book by Walden does the impossible and exceeds the previous one. This is at once a sweeping, decade-spanning science fiction saga, an intimate story of love and friendship, and just plain lovely to look at.

3. Nancy by Olivia Jaimes. (GoComics/United Feature Syndicate) The pseudonymous Olivia Jaimes updates the reality-transcending extreme formalism of Ernie Bushmiller’s original strip and transmutes it into self-aware post-post-modernist snark. But I’ll leave the analysis to the authors of How to Read Nancy and just retweet SLUGGO IS LIT memes.

4. The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang. (First Second) Wang’s luminous historical fantasy about a cross-dressing prince and the gifted girl who dresses him is Exhibit A in an argument for First Second as the best comics publisher today.

5. Be Prepared by Vera Brosgol. (First Second) And Brosgol’s warmly witty autobiographical story about an awkward Russian-American girl learning to navigate an all-American summer camp is Exhibit B.

6. From Lone Mountain by John Porcellino. (Drawn & Quarterly) Each new collection of Porcellino’s venerable minicomic, which started as a very '90s autobio zine and has evolved into a minimalist masterpiece, is cause for celebration. But, you know, a quiet Zen celebration where you stare at a sidewalk crack or something.

7. Devilman by Go Nagai. (Seven Seas Entertainment) Seven Seas is in the midst of publishing some of the untranslated classics of manga. Go Nagai’s outlandish, outrageous, gleefully id-driven action/horror epic is one of the most exciting releases.

8. Coyote Doggirl by Lisa Hanawalt. (Drawn & Quarterly) Hanawalt’s first graphic novel-length work is a cockeyed Western thrumming with her sharp sense of humor and glowing with genuine love of the setting (especially the horses).

9. Meal by Blue Delliquanti and Soleil Ho. (Iron Circus) Iron Circus is the future of comics, or one of the futures: a Kickstarter-driven publisher that crowdfunds diverse and surprising titles. This upbeat, manga-influenced cooking manga about entomophagy (that’s eating insects) is among the standouts.

10. Dead Dead Demon’s DeDeDeDeDestruction by Inio Asano. (Viz Media) Asano is so consistently good it’s almost unfair. Dead Dead Demon follows the mundane routine of a schoolgirl living in Tokyo during an alien invasion, and it boasts Asano’s usual smart, bleakly witty storytelling and intensely detailed art.

Tim Hamilton:

Phil Hartman died too soon. Werner Herzog DIDN’T DIE AT ALL.

This is not a list. Not doing a “top ten” as such. I’m Just going to tell a story. This story weaves from the good, Nay, GREAT feeling of that first time your Uncle gives you a taste of his Budweiser, to that shocking plot twist feeling when we find out our favorite character in that 15 episode true crime documentary on Netflix has been replaced by Jon Lovitz.

How messed up was 2018? So messed up I was going to start right off by giving my thoughts on the collected White Boy comic strip by Garrett Price that I’m always looking at. Then I realized that book was published almost two years ago! Back when we were rocking to 3 Doors Down at the Trump Inauguration. Check White Boy out though! It’s evergreen!

Got kids? Witch Boy is not a book aimed at old people like me. My generation was scarred by witchcraft while playing Dungeons & Dragons when we should have been enjoying that wholesome Amos 'N Andy television show. Witch Boy is a middle grade book that could also be for the younger, YA reader. I remember Molly from her web comic days and it’s nice to see her have this level of success! It’s a solid book with a good story, and a bit of a message in there to corrupt your kids! In fact, the sequel is already out!

Yellow Negroes. That was this past year right? Jesus, I’ll have to read that again! I think I read through it twice. The art is so wonderfully off kilter, almost abstract and ready to fly apart in some places. The story is something to slowly take in and reminds you that you need to read a bit more about the racial and military history of other countries. You know all about how America’s fucked, check out what other countries are up to. The world is a fun place!

Autobio? Not my favorite genre, but this year I read two! Here are my quick takes: Like Yellow Negroes, Liana Finck’s Passing for Human also utilizes art that seems ready to fly apart, although with more of a charming fantasy type quality. Liana’s fairy tale trappings unravel the real internal struggles of her family and her own journey as she tries to understand life and how to experience it. I will read through this again as it’s layered with ideas and metaphor.

Michael Kupperman’s All The Answers tells of Kupperman’s attempt to decode how his father’s time as a celebrity child on early television quiz shows affected his life. One of the earliest kids to be used and chewed up by the new medium of television celebrity, Joel Kupperman’s life reads like a mysterious dream that silently ate away part of his soul. I read this in one sitting, receiving and sending text messages only twice.

Must we speak of Batman? I guess so as this was the year that we got a “mature” Batman story that seemed to advertise the “mature” fact that his penis would smack us in the face. I’m not upset that you or your Mom saw Batman’s penis, I mean, we’ve all watched The Piano at least once with our mother and thought, “How awkward… we should have put that Watchmen DVD in the player!” Yes, there was a penis in Watchmen back when I read that book 60 years ago. It was not part of the advertising and it wasn’t really a big deal other than, “Oh, Dr. Manhattan has evolved beyond the need to put on a skintight leotard and leather boots.”

If you want naked comic characters fighting each other, check out Jason Shiga’s Demon books. I could have read all four of those in one sitting, but book four wasn’t out when I finished book three. Did book four come out in 2018? I’ll say it did. I’m tired of googling things.

Bloodstrike by Michel Fiffe! I read this only because I’m a fan of his Copra series. I have no sentimental feelings for any Image comics of the 90’s, as I was not reading them when they came out. Back then I was rocking to that new Red Hot Chili Pepper band with the girls at the ice cream social. The first issue was a bit detailed in the history of all the characters and I admit to wondering if I would be into the rest of the mini series. Issue two and three changed things up a bit and hooked me with more of a mystery-intrigue vibe. V-8 meter at 99%!

Automa, which I buy through Chuck Forsman’s Patreon, is a story in progress. Like most of his work, it has the feeling of moving forward as if off the top of his head without obvious hints as to where plot threads will end up. Which is how I like it. Watching the End of The F-cking World television series, I was happy to see it executed quite nicely. Except maybe for the fact that it looks like it could have a second season. I’m always wary of second seasons when the story seems to have come to a proper end in season one. Take, Life With Lucy for example! We only needed eight episodes of that action.

Speaking of second seasons, sad that Netflix cancelled those 13-hour Daredevil stories? Don’t worry; Disney paid a butt load of money for those Marvel and Star Wars properties. We’re going to be seeing a lot of those characters on the big screen, the little screen, in your dreams and basically for the rest of our lives! Just get used to it. Werner Herzog is even jumping on that Lightsaber action. He realized he’s about 30 years too late to go through with that plot to kill Klaus Kinski and has decided to just relax and go with the flow.

Sammy Harkham:

Thimble Theatre and the Pre-Popeye Comics of E.C. Segar by Segar and Maresca. (Sundays Press)

Love That Bunch by Kominsky-Crumb. (D&Q)

Sabrina by Nick Drnaso. (D&Q)

Prison Pit 6 by Johnny Ryan. (Fantagraphics)

Complete Dirty Plotte by Julie Doucet. (D&Q)

"The Third Remedy" by Chester Brown. (Self-published)

"Ditkoesque" by Daniel Clowes.

Poochytown by Jim Woodring. (Fantagraphics)

A Bubble by Geneviève Castrée. (D&Q)

Parallel Lives by Schrauwen. (Fantagraphics)

"Frank Lopez" (from Love and Rockets #6) by Jaime Hernandez. (Fantagraphics)

"If... Then... The Game" from Tales of the Mysterious Traveler no. 27 by Steve Ditko. (Self-published)

M.S. Harkness:

Angloid by Alex Graham. (Kilgore)

Parallel Lives by Olivier Schrauwen. (Fantagraphics)

Ski Mask Jerry Vol. 2 by C. Haack. (Self-published)

Dying of Thirst by Jon Mastantuono. (Drawdoer Comics)

Secret Prison 8: Glut edited by Ian Harker. (Secret Prison)

Charles Hatfield:

My gosh, what a year for comics it has been. Sticking strictly to new English-language comics in print (an arbitrary stipulation), the following list of a dozen captures some of what I found so delightful about comics this year. More selections (and further commentary) can be found at my KinderComics blog.

The Prince and the Dressmaker, Jen Wang (First Second) A sumptuous fairy tale of crossdressing and dressmaking, of gender nonconformity and romance, rendered with grace and emotional acuity by a topnotch cartoonist. Wang’s pages are beautiful evocations of feeling, flushed with desire.

The Dragon Slayer, Jaime Hernandez (TOON Books) Folkloric absurdism flawlessly adapted into charming miniatures by the masterful Xaime. One hell of a curatorial effort by TOON’s Françoise Mouly, I’m supposing, but also a showcase for Xaime’s lived-in storytelling sense and classic cartooning. You can see the John Stanley percolating in these comics—and much more. One problem: I want another volume, and I want it now.



On a Sunbeam, Tillie Walden (First Second) Queer school romance meets far-out space opera in a fearlessly imagined universe defined by Walden’s uncanny light touch. The romantic pair at the center are worth rooting for, but so is their crew of friends: a great cast. By turns tender and breathlessly suspenseful, this is an intimate epic. It started as a webcomic, and can still be read online, but it’s great as a book.

Flocks, L. Nichols (Secret Acres) A memoir about growing up queer among fundamentalists, and a meditation on how our identities come from the communities, or flocks, around us (though we may contest or even reject their terms). Visually inventive, with a graphic language like no one else’s, and a triumph of love over resentment.

From Lone Mountain, John Porcellino (Drawn and Quarterly) What can I say? Seven years’ worth of John P’s indispensab