Thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel had a particularly awesome 2018. If you want more, though, then you need to dive into the comics!

It can be a little intimidating when you see all those comics on the shelves and long boxes of back issues. How can you pick the best ones for your bottom dollar?

Simple: with our help! Keep reading to discover the best Marvel Comics of 2018.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl

Looking back, 2018 was a good year for Marvel. There was big screen success with things like The Avengers: Infinity War, but that movie was very serious. Sometimes, we just prefer something a little lighter.

And that’s what makes The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl one of the best Marvel comics of 2018 as well as one of the best Marvel comics for beginners. Written by Ryan North and illustrated by Erica Henderson, this comic combines off-kilter art with absolutely hilarious writing. From the word balloons to the pop-up commentary, each page will leave you with an absolutely huge grin.

Buy The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl

Domino

Domino is a character that had a pretty fantastic 2018. While she was a Marvel fan-favorite character for years, her prominent appearance in Deadpool 2 helped bring her to the masses. And just as she became more popular than ever, she ended up headlining one of the best Marvel comic series of the year!

Drawn by David Baldeon and written by the iconic author Gail Simone, this Domino solo series combines equal parts quirkiness and unforgettable action. And for longtime fans, it’s cool to focus on just Domino instead of her being shoved into yet another ensemble cast or friendly sidekick role.

Buy Domino

Marvel 2-in-One

For fans of a certain age, the Marvel team-up formula is a classic. The idea is simple: take two characters that don’t normally interact, throw them together, and see what happens! This simple-but-brilliant idea is what made the original Two-in-On comics such a big hit in the 1970s and 1980s.

Decades later, Marvel resurrected this formula with an all-new and improved 2-in-One series. It’s written by the hilarious Chip Zdarsky and drawn by Jim Cheung, and each issue is likely to be the most entertaining thing you read all week. Instead of featuring rotating characters, it now focuses primarily on The Thing and The Human Torch. That makes it one of the best Marvel comics if you’ve been having Fantastic Four withdrawal.

Buy Marvel 2-in-One

Ms. Marvel

We mostly put this list together by looking at which comics were the most entertaining. Every now and then, though, a comic goes beyond entertaining and becomes groundbreaking. And that’s exactly what happened with Ms. Marvel, which has become an absolute cultural phenomenon.

The series is still written by G. Willow Wilson and illustrated by Nico Leon. It focuses on Kamala Khan, a Captain Marvel fangirl who becomes a superhero in her own right due to her Inhuman abilities. Every issue effortlessly balances humor, action, and social commentary on things like racial and cultural diversity. And in our humble opinion, the young hero is the modern successor to Peter Parker, who once struggled to balance a teenage life and a superheroic identity as Spider-Man.

Buy Ms. Marvel

Old Man Logan

The original Old Man Logan miniseries was flawed but interesting. Once it served as a loose blueprint for Logan, though, the comics incarnation was bound for new life. And that’s what happened with Old Man Logan, a comic that follows an old and hardened Logan from another dimension now surviving in “our” dimension.

Written by Jeff Lemire and drawn by Andrea Sorrentino, this is one of the best Marvel comics series you can pick up. It returns Logan to his roots of being a cranky old Clint Eastwood type, and his interesting backstory makes his interactions with the X-Men especially poignant. If nothing else, this series deserves full credit for making the character fresh and interesting once again.

Buy Old Man Logan

Star Wars

Speaking of the struggle to stay fresh and interesting, the next series is Star Wars. Now, some fans may be leery: the lukewarm reception for Solo: A Star Wars story showed that fans aren’t always that excited to revisit old characters. So, what makes this story so interesting?

First, there’s the writing. Kieron Gillen is able to write your favorite characters convincingly while adding new wrinkles to their stories. And Salvador Larroca’s art is the next best thing to seeing a series come to life. And in the finest Star Wars tradition, you get a steady introduction of new characters that help this galaxy far, far away feel appropriately big in one of the best Marvel comics of all time.

Buy Star Wars

X-Men: Blue

To find your future, you need to look to the past. No, that’s not fortune cookie wisdom: it’s actually Marvel’s editorial policy towards the X-Men. That’s why the large roster of X-Men was once again split into multiple color-coded teams, just as they were back in the 1990s.

X-Men Blue is one of our favorites and one of the best Marvel comic series of 2018. Written by Cullenn Bunn and drawn by Matteo Buffagani, this comic focuses primarily on the time-displaced young X-Men as well as some new and unlikely allies like Daken and Xorn. If you’ve been waiting for X-Men to find the balance between something old and something new, may we suggest you try something “Blue?”

Buy X-Men: Blue

X-Men: Gold

Okay, you caught us: X-Men comics are a lot like your favorite potato chips—it’s hard to stop at one! X-Men: Gold is another of the best Marvel comic series of 2018. And if you want to follow more of the adult X-Men than the young, time-displaced ones, then this is your best choice!

Written by Marc Guggenheim and drawn by Ken Lashley, this comic focuses on a lineup that includes Colossus, Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde and Storm and, later, Iceman, Rogue, and Magik. There are some fun new faces such as Old Man Logan, but this comic is primarily a love letter to some of your favorite characters from the 1980s and 1990s era of X-Men. And that’s fine by us!

Buy X-Men: Gold

Final Thoughts

Now you know what the best Marvel comics of 2018 are. Stay tuned to 101 Comics for more news that true believers can use!