2017 was a good year for comics. Creators young and old sent green shoots up through desiccated genres — everything from memoir to textbook to all-ages fantasy burst with talent this year. Kids continued to storm bookstores, libraries, and specialty comic shops for gems like Ru Xu’s NewsPrints and Victoria Jamieson’s All’s Faire in Middle School. Superhero aficionados enjoyed thoughtful beat-em-ups courtesy of Christopher Priest and Carlo Pagulayan’s Deathstroke. Nonfiction readers were stirred by Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do and Roz Chast’s Going Into Town.

Winnowing down this embarrassment of riches is no small feat — but the people demand their end-of-the-year lists, and I am here to provide. The following is one comic creator, critic, and retailer’s idea of what constitutes the best comics of 2017. That it was such a difficult task is a testimony to the talent currently deluging the industry, and a tantalizing look at what’s coming next.

Supergirl: Being Super by Mariko Tamaki and Joëlle Jones

Writer Mariko Tamaki and artist Joëlle Jones take on the Maid of Might with a sensitivity and wryness that makes their take on her origin story one of the strongest entries in the character’s history. This is a book that glories in quotidian detail — one of the most memorable sequences is of Kara and a friend reminiscing over diner food — because, crucially, this is a book that understands how vivid that sort of minutiae is to a teenager. Though the chasm between Kara’s normal life and her not-so-normal powers yawns ever wider over the course of four issues, Tamaki and Jones never forget that she is still a kid with chores, school, and friends to text. It is, to risk a cheesy joke, a wonderfully down-to-earth tale of the girl inside the super.

What is Left by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell

This comic opens with a fanciful conceit: the sole survivor of a spaceship explosion has become trapped, like an insect in amber, within physical globules of memory. As she explores the life of a woman she never knew, our protagonist reckons with the life she left behind, the life she finds herself trespassing in, and the death that certainly awaits her as her body floats through space. Valero-O’Connell’s lines are sinuous: hair is lustrous, vegetation snakes upward, and even the explosion of memories is rendered as a gorgeous flood of mauve gel. Alienation is terrifying and complete in these pages — but also, somehow, gorgeous.

Cucumber Quest by Gigi D.G.

Gigi D.G.’s luminous, all-ages adventure has been an online hit for years now, but in 2017, its first volume was released in print giving a whole new crop of young readers a chance to view the world of Dreamside and its cast of rabbit-eared heroes, villains, and all those who lie between. It is that last group that elevates this story of a brother and sister facing down an ancient evil — that wide swath of henchmen, princesses, knights, and even the ancient evil himself that are not all that they appear. Paired with D.G.’s luxurious visuals, including some of the deftest and most inventive coloring and lettering in modern comics, Cucumber Quest continues to fire on all cylinders for all possible readers.

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Nagata Kabi

Few might have predicted that Nagata Kabi’s autobiographical tale of 28-year-old virginity would become the hit manga of the summer. But that’s just the thing: nothing about My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness is predictable. It is funny, yes, as the cheeky title implies; Nagata’s face, flushing comically as she exclaims that she is “saving this!” while looking at a sexy pin-up is one of the funniest moments from a comic this year. But beneath the sillier experiences of sexual awakening lie Nagata’s wrenching journey from depressed shut-in to… slightly less depressed shut-in. Though this is, ultimately, an uplifting tale, its triumphs are hard-won, and never saccharine. Nagata has something of an eye for dark details; the blood speckling the dry blocks of noodles she wolfs frantically down is one of the most memorable images of the book. In its honesty and specificity, Nagata creates, somehow, a universal story: though we may not all be lesbians with tendencies towards disordered eating, we have all felt lonely and we have all longed for change.

Mirror Mirror II edited by Sean T. Collins and Julia Gfrörer

Darkness is as intimate as a caress and as distant as history in this chilling anthology of horror comics. New and old ground alike are explored to tremendous effect; some work, like Gfrörer’s inventory of historic misery, does both. So masterfully does she detail the malignancy of the human soul so masterfully through her dry recitations that I was certain no other creator could match her. But Mirror Mirror II proved me wrong — again and again and again. Though every reader’s experience of this book will differ, there is no installment I could single out as weak. This collection doesn’t just feel haunting; it feels corrosive.

You & a Bike & a Road by Eleanor Davis

Eleanor Davis has been one of modern comics’ most exciting talents for a while now —but this travelogue, created as she crossed the southern half of the US on her bike, cements her as a master of the form. There is a breathless energy to her work, from the simple scribble of an approaching horizon to the hunch of her own back as she heads into a stiff wind. It is, from its thrilling high points to its devastating observations of border-town racism, an exhilarating chronicle of achievement, solitude, and sacrifice.

Diana’s Electric Tongue by Carolyn Nowak

It is tempting to describe Carolyn Nowak’s work as whimsical. Her characters, and the world they inhabit, are round-edged to the point of gelatinousness, colorful, and, — in the case of this short exploration of loneliness and love — in the habit of purchasing sex robots. But Diana, attempting to recover from a brutal break-up and the motorcycle accident that severed her tongue, can only obscure the crater at the center of her life with her synthetic boyfriend for so long. By the final panel, Nowak’s flights of fancy have given way to a lingering gloom, and it is this contrast that makes her one of comics’ most exciting new creators.

A young girl named Shiva and her teacher, a demon-headed “outsider,” live peacefully together, gathering firewood and making daisy chains. But sometimes, they happen upon corpses in the woods. The villages that surround them are abandoned. And though Shiva insists she has family that will retrieve her some day, weeks go by without word. Nagabe’s fantasyland is as splendid as it is eerie — even as Shiva naps in forest glades, snacks on buns and fried eggs, and crowns Teacher’s horns with flowers, negative space and inky darkness threaten to swallow her. Tension is as lingered upon as beauty; the head of an arrow poised to strike is as prominent as a cozy cottage. Like all great fairy tales, this is a story of love and wonder… and the darkness that lies beneath.

Spinning by Tillie Walden

Expectations were high for Walden’s memoir, which encompasses figure skating, coming out of the closet, the discovery of artistic passion, and more. Somehow, she not only met those expectations — she exceeded them. Spinning is an absolute thunderbolt of talent, from Walden’s elegant line work to her innovative panel layouts. A sequence in which she drives to practice in the wee hours of the morning, comprised of panels of her face and the road, is one of the most truly powerful moments of fiction I experienced this year. This isn’t just a tremendous work of art unto itself — it is a herald of wonderful work to come.

The Girl Who Flew Away by M. Dean

The year is 1976, and Greer Johnson has been sent to Key West by the boss who impregnated her. Lonely, bored, and threatened by the future, she begins to dream about Eugenie, a wealthy young girl living 50 years prior. Dean won the inaugural Creators for Creators grant, and it’s not hard to see why: her work is impeccable on every level. Visually, her inky lines and warm colors evoke the heat and torpidity of Greer’s tropical pregnancy in all its beauty and frustration. Thematically, she plumbs the depths of everything from the uncertainty of racial passing to the paranoia of the 1970s political landscape. It is, in short, a tremendously complete work — and it isn’t even finished yet.

The Man Who Came Down the Attic Stairs by Celine Loup

Horror starts at home in Celine Loup’s exploration of postpartum desolation. Emma has found a man to love, a gorgeous house, and finally the pièce de résistance: a beautiful baby girl. But that beautiful baby girl won’t strop screaming. The house seems more and more full of shadows by the hour. And the man she loves has changed, somehow, ever since the day he came down the attic stairs. Loup’s visuals are deeply sensual: the countryside teems with life, chair upholstery is plump and shiny, and the baby’s screams tear across the page in jagged, dry-edged black. At some point, the line between beauty and brutality becomes blurred by this profusion of detail, and the reader becomes as overwhelmed as Emma is, cowering on the floor with her baby in her arms. This is horror of the most visceral sort: of birth, of death, of hearth and home. Emma’s descent into darkness is complete, and will linger long after the final page is turned.