Batman #51-53 (DC): Tom King wasted no time in diving into the aftermath of the sad Batman #50, which saw Catwoman leave Bruce Wayne at the altar. In this short arc, Bruce manipulates his way onto a jury after mistakenly apprehending Mr. Freeze for a murder he may not have committed, and proceeds to use the jury as a way to work through his own issues about Batman, God, and the break-up. With art from Lee Weeks, "Cold Days" is a strong, emotionally gripping follow-up to the failed wedding.

Exiles (Marvel): Enjoying pop culture in our internet-saturated age often involves fan fiction or alternate-universe hypotheticals, imagining how characters might be different with altered backgrounds or personalities. By resurrecting the time-traveling Marvel superteam Exiles, writer Saladin Ahmed and artist Javier Rodriguez got to take that stuff to the next level, assembling a coalition of characters from across the infinite Marvel multiverse (including a Peggy Carter/Captain America mash-up and a literal cartoon Wolverine) and sending them to worlds based on the Wild West, the Arabian Nights, and more. The results have been endlessly enjoyable.

Justice League Dark (DC): It was a big year for the Justice League. Having broken the Source Wall at the end of the Metal crossover, DC’s superheroes decided to rethink how they did things. Of all the new team-ups and refigured alliances that resulted, the most fascinating has been the new magic-focused superhero team led by Wonder Woman. Writer James Tynion IV and artist Alvaro Martinez, who first teamed up on Detective Comics, brought creepy horror and status-quo shake-ups alike to the magical side of the DC Universe.

Man of Steel (DC): Brian Michael Bendis kicked off his tenure as new Superman writer with a strong and compelling six-issue miniseries that affirmed why DC put him in charge of Boy Scout and made us excited to read both Action Comics and Superman.

Prism Stalker (Image): Writer-artist Sloane Leong’s breathtaking new series felt almost like a comic book equivalent of Annihilation in the way it brought the protagonist face to face with truly alien life forms. Too often when humans venture into space, they encounter extremely humanoid aliens. Not here! Almost everyone poor Vep talks to on her exploratory mission looks more like a dragon, or a beetle, or a wolf monster. Vep and Leong alike are in uncharted territory, and the journey of exploration is a mind-expanding delight to read.

Saga (Image): All good things must come to an end, they say. Luckily, Saga isn’t over yet; it’s just going on a well-deserved hiatus in the wake of the series’ most jaw-dropping cliffhanger to date. Sometimes growing up means leaving loved ones behind — a lesson writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Fiona Staples just taught young Hazel (and readers) in devastating fashion. More than 50 issues in, Saga hasn’t lost any of its power, and fans should probably gird themselves for whenever the creative team returns recharged.

Wonder Woman: Earth One, Volume Two (DC): Wonder Woman is hard to define as a character because she defies easy categorization. Luckily, DC has lately given her the same treatment as Batman and Superman, in which multiple creators can tackle her from multiple angles and show all sides of her. So while G. Willow Wilson’s incipient run on the flagship Wonder Woman title examines questions of global conflict and Shea Fontana’s DC Super Hero Girls comics continue to show Diana as a young student getting a handle on her own powers, writer Grant Morrison and artist Yanick Paquette can examine her job as an ambassador of peace, while also resurrecting some of the trippier Amazon concepts from William Moulton Marston’s original comics.