Around this time of year I like to list what I would consider the most notable, unique and all around best comics, webcomics, and graphic novels of the year. It’s really hard to be all-inclusive, so I had to limit myself to a Top 25. If you have some favorite comics of the year, talk about them in the comments below!

25. Pearls Before Swine

By Stephan Pastis and Bill Watterson (Yes, that Bill Watterson)

syndicated

No one believed that the mystery guest cartoonist drawing Stephan Pastis’ daily newspaper strip Pearls Before Swine could've possibly been Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson. This summer, the mystery strips ran for three days and comics experts examined the evidence and debated the possibility on social media. It wasn’t until Pastis blogged the whole amazing story of how he coerced the famously reclusive Watterson out of retirement that we all accepted the truth. Watterson’s original artwork was soon auctioned off, raising over $70k for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. (Buy at Amazon.)





***********************************************************

24. Alex + Ada

By Jonathan Luna and Sarah Vaughan

Image Comics

The description for this series could easily be “What if Stanley Kubrick directed Weird Science?” It's the story of a lonely guy named Alex who receives a gorgeous android named Ada, and it's all drawn in Jonathan Luna's deadpan style. When Alex decides that Ada deserves free will, he helps her unlock a pre-programmed sentience within her A.I. and the series starts to go down some interesting paths.

Image Comics has put out too many amazing books to list this year, but Alex + Ada is one that is flying under too many people’s radars. Part will-they-or-won’t-they relationship drama/part commentary on “otherness" and civil rights, Alex + Ada is an engaging examination of what it means to be human and free at a time when true artificial intelligence seems just around the corner. (Buy at Amazon.)

*******************************************************************

23. She-Hulk

By Charles Soule, Javier Pulido, Muntsa Vicente and others

Marvel Comics

Charles Soule is a lawyer turned comic book writer, which makes him the perfect guy for She-Hulk, who is a lawyer turned superhero. Working with the art team of Javier Pulido and Muntsa Vicente, he has created one of Marvel’s funniest and most stylish books. Soule’s legal knowledge comes in handy here as the series focuses on Jennifer Walters starting her own firm and taking on cases like Dr. Doom’s son's extradition and Captain America's civil suit. Pulido and Vicente give us a She-Hulk with a contemporary and realistic sense of fashion you don’t often see in superhero comics.

As much fun as this series is, its low sales recently led to cancellation. Hopefully Marvel only did it to get the opportunity to release a new #1 in the near future. (Buy at Amazon.)

*******************************************************************

22. Afterlife with Archie

By Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Francesco Francavilla

Archie Comics

One of the biggest surprises of the year has been how willing Archie Comics (the publisher) has been to take risks. Afterlife With Archie, where Riverdale has been overrun with zombies, really lets them cut loose. This is due in no small part to the stylish artwork of Francesco Francavilla, who approaches this book with a bold use of color and design that looks unlike any Archie Comic that has come before it. He and writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa are taking this material seriously, mixing classic horror elements from the likes of George Romero, H.P. Lovecraft, and the Warren Publishing horror magazines of the 1970s with the core essence of characters like Archie, Jughead, Betty, Veronica, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. (Buy at Amazon.)

*******************************************************************

21. The Love Bunglers

By Jaime Hernandez

Fantagraphics

One of the greatest accomplishments in the history of comics is the rich and emotionally rewarding story that Jaime Hernandez has been telling for over 30 years in the pages of Love & Rockets. It’s one of the best examples of extended long form comics, but what has made it so successful is how Hernandez structures each installment in Maggie Chascarillo's story to be as standalone as possible so new readers can jump in at any point, while also rewarding longtime readers with little callbacks. In The Love Bunglers, Hernandez delivers a big, tear-jerker of a payoff for those longtime readers with what could conceivably serve as a climax to Maggie’s story and her on-again, off-again romance with Ray Dominguez. (Buy at Amazon.)

*******************************************************************

20. The Short Con

By Aleks Sennwald and Pete Toms

Study Group Comics

A stand-out this year among some great webcomics on StudyGroupComics.com is The Short Con, a brilliant take on the Hollywood detective drama set in an all-girl orphanage. It follows two partners: Pops, the hot-headed, rule-breaking, lollipop-sucking maverick, and Branwell, the new girl who comes from a good upbringing and writes depressing poetry. They report to the Chief, a hard-nosed nun who keeps a “Rule Jar” and makes the detectives put five cents in whenever they break the rules. As of this writing, their first case together is not yet complete, but hopefully there is a lot more to come because it’s the kind of concept you can see becoming something much bigger than just a webcomic.

*******************************************************************

19. Ant Colony

By Michael DeForge

Drawn & Quarterly

Michael DeForge has built a strong body of work in just a few years, between various webcomics and his own print anthology Lose (the sixth issue of which is so good it could easily make this list as well). For those interested in getting into DeForge, there wasn't an accessible, bookstore-friendly graphic novel that you can point new readers to. That is, until Ant Colony came along.

Originally serialized as a webcomic and now collected as a beautiful hardcover, it follows a group of weird-looking but likable ants—a gay couple, a young boy turned prophet, a corrupt cop, and an outcast female “infertile”—who find themselves separated from the colony when war breaks out. Like anything by DeForge it’s downright odd and looks like it takes place on another world, yet it’s so witty and touching that it deserves to be DeForge’s first mainstream hit. (Buy at Amazon.)

*******************************************************************

18. The Wrenchies

By Farel Dalrymple

First Second

At first, The Wrenchies seems like post-apocalyptic “Lost Boys” fare that we’ve seen a million times before. But there’s a meta comic-within-a-comic called “The Wrenchies," and other story lines that contribute to this dense, imaginative, and often disturbing book. The layers of subtext and the sheer man hours that Farel Dalrymple has put into drawing this graphic novel (it took him five years) are apparent the more time you spend with it. (Buy at Amazon.)

*******************************************************************

17. The Nib

Edited by Matt Bors

Medium.com/thenib

Editorial cartoonist Matt Bors, known for his work in various Alt-weekly publications around the country, was hired in 2013 by Medium to start a new section called The Nib to give a home to non-fiction comics from a variety of politically and socially minded cartoonists. This came at a time when the typical home for such comics—the free alt-weekly—was fading into history.

The Nib burst out of the gate running this year with a daily schedule of different cartoonists publishing comic essays, political cartoons, info graphics, and comics journalism. Bors has assembled a rotating cast of contributors that include people like Tom Tomorrow, Rich Stevens, Erika Moen, Jen Sorenson, Ted Rall, Susie Cagle, Zach Weinersmith, and, of course, Bors himself. In a short amount of time, it has become a respected source for progressive opinion and is now one of the most highly-trafficked comics-related websites on the web.

*******************************************************************

16. Transformers vs. G.I. Joe

By Tom Scioli and John Barber

IDW Publishing

It's a great time for licensed property comics and more and more are coming out every month—many boasting quality creative teams. Still, even good creators can be hobbled by the restraints of a licensed brand, and that’s why Transformers vs. G.I. Joe is such an unexpectedly creative and mind-blowing comic.

Tom Scioli is a bit of an oddball who is not the first person you’d expect to see given free rein on a comic like this. His quirky, “naive” outsider-art style may be in vogue with the art-comix crowd, but he is far from what the average G.I. Joe or Transformers fan would want to see in a comic like this. Inspired by the over-the-top layouts of Jim Steranko’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. comics from the 1960s, Scioli loads each issue with some of the most innovative page compositions you’ll see this year. It all looks like it was drawn by a sugared-up twelve-year-old using his toys for model reference, but Scioli makes so many brilliant creative decisions in this delightfully strange read. (Buy at Amazon.)

*******************************************************************

15. Nimona

By Noelle Stevenson

Gingerhaze.com