My Favorite Comics of 2014
I read a lot of comics. And as such, I have many opions about ones that are good. Some of those opinions line up with the opinons of others on the internets. Some do not. But under the presupposition that you're interested in what I thought about comics this year, I have compiled a list of comics that I have read and enjoyed this year. Since this seems to be the customary way to ring in the new year; Happy 2015!
So, here we go (in no particular order of importance):
Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man
WHY?
I've been reading Ultimate Spider-Man for years and it's one of those "book you'd take with you to a desert island" sort of comics with me. Brian Bendis has maintained a level of storytelling and fresh-faced enthusiasm in this title that has never fallen off. This book is always doing something new and it's always doing it in a way that puts fresh paint on an old house. An old house that you really love and have a lot of good memories in.Rat Queens
WHY?
When you play D&D in high school, you have a vision about the noble quest you and your friend's characters engaged on. It's epic with the faint aroma of Tolkien's best parts. Rat Queens is the actual story that you and your friends acted out in one of their basements. Complete with the off-color jokes, the snide remarks about monster/NPC behavior and player-instigated tavern brawls. The book is endlessly enjoyable from the humor, the deft characterization and it's willingness to sideline the male characters and let the female leads shine on their own.Ms. Marvel
WHY?
G Willow Wilson is a good writer and the new Ms. Marvel comic is a testament to this. She has managed to take old, tired superhero comic tropes and slap a new paint of narrative authenticity and nuance onto them. You might be seeing a pattern here. Everything I liked this year was trying to do things differently. I'm a sucker for that. Doubly so when it's skillfully executed. Ms. Marvel is a smart super-hero book that takes standard tropes, sets them on their side and waits to what falls out. And what's been falling out is damn fine storytelling.Lumberjanes
WHY?
Lumberjanes is a comic about an all-girl summer camp in the middle of a forest full of haunted ruins and populated by mythological creatures. It's an all-ages book and has the reckless enthusiasm of childhood and is written with a cleverness that appeals to the literary snob in me. The art is loose and expressive. There is very little not to like about this comic. Especially in a day when most comics are targetted at teenage and older readers.Umbral
WHY?
Antony Johnston and Christopher Mitten are one of my absolute favorite creative teams in comics right now. Umbral is probably one of the best comics out there that nobody is reading. It's a dark medieval fantasy thriller about a conspiracy of shadow creatures from an alternate dimension that want to take over the "real" world. The characters are flawed and endearing and there's swords and sorcery. There are a lot of marvelous character moments and the story keeps you guessing about exactly what's going on.Saga
WHY?
It's really difficult to say what Saga is. It's a space opera. It's a family drama. It's a story of rebellion fomenting within a corrupt galactic empire. It's a story about a war between fairies and demons. It's Romeo and Juliet. Rocket ships can grow like trees. It's vulgar and touching. It's all of these things, but none of these things individually. It's the sort of book that you can't define because it's the sort of thing that hasn't really happened before. Fiona Staples draws it with a sense of exactly how a story like this should look and Brian K Vaughn is writing, what I think, will come to define is most important work when we look back on his writing career.Veil
WHY?
Veil is a difficult comic to explain to someone. The first thing you notice about it is how pretty the art is. And while the story, on its surface, isn't something that struck me as particularly unique in horror comics; it does take an unexpected turn that leaves you mulling things over long after you set it down. It's most interesting as a comic because of the questions it asks in the telling of the tale about how the world works and how maybe things should be different.Legend of Bold Riley
WHY?
Legend of Bold Riley is a myth-telling comic. The protagonist is displaced royalty, wandering far and wide and experiencing the world. And while she wanders, she stumbles around a variety of magical places and falls in with ghosts and deities of the places she visits. It's a road-novel of sorts that weaves it's way through one of the most original magical settings I've run across in quite a while. And while the setting is the object of the comic, the characters in the locales that Riley visits bring all these folk-tales to life in a way that feels like an older tale.Gotham Academy
WHY?
Gotham is one of the most mysterious places in the DC Comics Universe. And if you think about it, it must be a pretty crazy place to live. There has to be a reason people don't just up and move to a place that's relatively safe from the Joker and Batman's antics. I find the people of Gotham to be a fascinating and largely unexplored topic. Gotham Academy is a comic about a rich-kids boarding school in Gotham and it gives you a little taste of what it must be like to be a resident of that strange city. Where you have to balance getting to class on time with life-threatening supernatural occurrances. Also Becky Cloonan's art is phenomenal.Shutter
WHY?
Shutter is really not the comic I was expecting when I picked it up. I am a huge fan of Joe Keatinge's other comic with Ross Campbell. But Shutter didn't look like it was going to be my thing. But when I picked it up I discovered a world that reminded me of the old Longest Journey computer game with an action adventure plot. Also they had me at fedora-wearing, anthropomorphic lion gangsters.
So, obviously, this isn't meant as an exhaustive list. And there was a lot more than this going on in comics for 2014. But these are the ones that I was reading and have managed to really stick out for me as doing Interesting Things this year or were just plain fun to read. Most of the time; both.
