Clockwise from top left: Alexander, The Servant, And The Water Of Life (Image: Reimena Yee), Djeliya (Image: TKO Studios), The Good Asian (Image: Image Comics), Graveneye (Image: TKO), Look Back (Image: Viz Media), No One Else (Image: Fantagraphics), Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons (Image: DC Comics), Radiant Black (Image: Image Comics), Tiger, Tiger (Image: Petra Erika Nordland), Wayne Family Adventures (Image: DC Comics/Webtoon) Graphic: Natalie Peeples
The comic book industry has shifted after the massive disruption of 2020. Publishers started exploring new distribution partners in 2021, and big-name creators joined forces with Substack to make the newsletter platform a surprising power-player. Seeing the massive success of the Webtoon digital platform, DC and Marvel both launched their own vertical-scroll digital comics, with the former partnering with Webtoon directly (and seeing much better results). Change often inspires creativity, and this year saw some exceptional releases from all corners of the industry. Here are the 10 best comics of 2021, according to our Comics Panel writers.
7 Comments
pretty decent list overall! I would’ve argued for Jonathan Hickman’s inferno (although it is unfinished, which I guess is disqualifying,) Sakamoto Days, or Kaiju #8 belonging on this list, but I’m just glad Fujimoto made the cut!
Kaiju #8 is a blast and I hope it gets an adaptation at some point. My favorite series, Monstress, was up and down last year, but DIE has been phenomenal in filling the grim fantasy role.
Not sure I agree that Inferno is worthy of a best of list (I love Hickman, and I enjoyed it fine, but it wasn’t “top 10” good), but…
1) It’s not unfinished. The final issue came out in the first week of January.
2) If being unfinished was disqualifying, Wonder Woman: Historia (1 of 3 volumes released), The Good Asian (8 of 10 issues), Batman: Wayne Family Adventures, and Radiant Black (both continuing series with no announced end date that I’m aware of) wouldn’t have made the cut.
I enjoyed inferno as a work of “what could have been if everything went right.” if reality hadn’t intervened The event itself was hurt because it was only 4 issues and you can only do so much in 4 issues, and he was leaving x-men universe in the hands of people who may or may not hold up his vision. It did enough for me to feel satisfied on the promising if uneven krakoa era (I pretty much love everything he had direct writing involvement in, give or take a few books here or there)
Nice! I was worried that there wouldn’t be a year-end list for Comics after December has passed.
The only work I read here is Wayne Family Adventures and the lighter take on Batman and his many proteges and contemporaries is very enjoyable. I know little about his younger vigilantes apart from their names, so this was a great chance to get to know each one.
The one downside that I’m just realizing is I need to pay for coins to catch up on the locked chapters, particularly the Christmas/holiday chapter which was released for free earlier this week. I can’t fault them for this since the creators (and Webtoon) need to make money after all.
As a bisexual woman and longtime Batman fan, I appreciate how hot Bruce, Kate, and Talia all are in Wayne Family Adventures.
“Murder gremlin Damian Wayne” is hysterical, too.
Will have to check some of these out. Would be great if we could get a preview of a page in addition to just the cover for something like this in the future.