What a year Tom King has had! Coming in as a co-writer on Grayson, this former CIA operative was new to comics writing at the start of the year, but ended 2015 as a prominent writer for DC, Marvel, and Vertigo.

His comics show a sense of importance that readers relate to, as he prefers to take what’s weakest about them and use that to fight back. He and Tim Seeley took Dick Grayson’s fears about identity and put them into the forefront of a dashing spy series which freshened up the character; he took the Vision’s uncertainty about what humanity is and built a family at Marvel; and most noticeably, he used the Green Lanterns as a launchpad to explore cosmic politics as part of The Omega Men. Throughout, he’s kept an eye on the wider scale of comics, dropping short experimental pieces in various Vertigo anthology projects before, last month, launching an ongoing Vertigo series with Mitch Gerads, Sheriff of Baghdad. His writing feels honest and real, without growing stale, and 2016 is going to be a fascinating one for him. [Steve Morris]