The best comics of 2021

The Good Asian (Image)Rich with history, style, and emotion, Image Comics’ The Good Asian delivers noir excellence at every turn. Written by Pornsak Pichetshote with art by Alexandre Tefengki, colorist Lee Loughridge, and letterer Jeff Powell, the miniseries follows Chinese American detective Edison Hark in 1936 as he investigates the disappearance of a young woman who worked for his white surrogate father. It’s a mystery that puts Hark in the crosshairs of racist police officers and a hatchet-wielding killer terrorizing the Chinatown underworld, forcing Hark to confront his own self-loathing as he tries to work within a system that is actively hostile toward him and the community he is trying to serve.After working as an editor for Vertigo Comics for years, Pichetshote made his comics writing debut with 2018’s Infidel, a devastating horror story that highlighted his razor-sharp understanding of both the medium and genre, as well as his trust in his artistic collaborators. All of those qualities are on display in The Good Asian, and the book’s back matter reveals the extensive research Pichetshote has done into both crime noir and the historical context of Edison Hark’s world. The visuals from Tefengki and Loughridge have the intense contrast and stark brutality expected from a noir story, but there’s added liveliness in Tefengki’s animated characterizations and inventive layouts, like a rainy scene depicted in panels shaped like puddles of water that will later run red with blood. [Oliver Sava]