Key Issues : Ten Series That Stood Out In ’13
2013 has been a conservative year for comic books. By comparison, 2012 saw the launch of Monkeybrain, the return of Valiant comics, and the epic creator-owned title Saga started. 2013 has had no new books that rocked the comic book community as hard as Saga did, and its biggest news on the publishing side was that Boom! and Archaia merged, and Nancy Silberkleit, Co-CEO of Archie comics, used the word penis as a pejorative pet name for her male employees.
While there have been the usual number of start-ups, an increasing number of Kickstarters, and a few notable returns for old properties, 2013 has seen the bulk of the comic book shelf store, as usual, being stocked by the big three companies, DC, Marvel, and Image Comics. However, the tide of social networking seems to be turned as much by what is going on at independent publishers, like Boom, Archaia, and Valiant comics.
In ranking the ten best comic series of 2013, preference was given to the quality of each issue first, and consistency from issue to issue second, and no bearing at all in quantity of pages and issues. There were some excellent single issues that appeared in 2013, such as Grant Morrison’s last few issues of Action Comics, but this is an evaluation of series, not single issues. Some may be surprised to see Bandette, which was only published twice in 2013, appear on this list, but it is vastly superior to a majority of franchised material that was not inspired, but xeroxed, from past efforts. Which is not to say that mainstream comics do not appear; they are, in fact, disproportionately represented due to the amount of quality work produced at the Big Two in 2013. Similarly, some may take umbrage with Bandette’s relatively low station on this list, but again, that is mainly due to the title’s inconsistency, this being a rating of serial fiction, and two issues only barely constitute a series.
10) Fearless Defenders
This title took the conceit of the all-woman team and, by not taking it too seriously, created a fun book that deserved to be appreciated by a wider audience.
9) Batman ’66
The first Batman ’66 story was best experienced on comiXology, and allowed those who read it to finally admire the “comiXology vision” for what a digital comic can be. The animated transitions and panels that dropped into place demonstrated that there was another dimension of storytelling for sequential art to explore.
The title remains a rare example of a working period piece, and succeeds so well that it feels like a lost episode from the 1960s Batman TV show.
8) Bandette. This darling of the Eisner Awards deserves inclusion due to the painterly panels, and its mixture of panache and wit which is a staunch refusal, at all times, of the base sarcasm upon which much comics humor depends. It is also an admirable thing to begin a story about a couple of thieves engaged in a battle of wits and not be tempted to decorate either as an antihero or the typed villain of the piece. It would be more admirable were it to appear more often, but as it is the five issues that we have are must reads.
After a lackluster introduction, J.M. DeMatteis took over the book in January 2014 with #4 and resuscitated the comic. The Phantom Stranger had become basically a Mortal Kombat kind of comic, with the hero battling demons in every scene. From the wreckage, DeMatteis extracted the thread of a poetic narrative, and the Stranger, like Dante, began to explore a Hell and Heaven that were at one and the same time geography and psyche. Lest the narrative become too allegorical and irrelevant, The Phantom Stranger went to the school of suffering, losing his wife, kids, and a few of the thirty pieces of silver that shackle him to eternity.
6) FF
Under Hickman, FF was a wonderfully innovative book about an eccentric school for the differently adapted that was established by genius super-hero Reed Richards. Under Fraction, FF has become downright Quixotic, as substitute teacher Scott Lang aka Ant-Man pursues a vendetta against quintessential Marvel heavy, Doctor Doom, and enlists his student body to assist him in a kind of honors project. It’s a delightful book with priceless observations and witticisms, such as The Watcher being like a doctor with the ability to save lives in a car crash that pulls over and does nothing instead.
There is also the obvious asset that anything drawn by Michael Allred is the best thing you have ever seen for so long as you are reading it. His line has a hypnotic excellence that keeps you in the story until it is over.
2013 marked the beginning of the end for A Distant Soil, one of the more original science fantasies in any form. While Colleen Doran’s art style is a highly unique force that will remind you at times of Art Nouveau, Gustav Klimt, and 1970s comic art innovators like Starlin, Byrne, Simonson, and Miller, it is the story that is unique. Starting in 1983, when science fiction was thought mainly to be a vehicle for ideas, Doran put her characters first; in a time when comics were still considered (and often were) ephemera, Doran allowed A, B and C arcs to mingle and develop over years of narrative; and, while today same sex relationships are but one of the many popular tropes commodified in today’s arts of all media, Doran was one of the originals that depicted a same-sex relationship between two of her most powerful heroes.
The story continues to remain unique in terms of tone compared to its North American counterparts. In A Distant Soil, we have heroic and optimistic characters that remain positively sunny and Wagnerian despite the insidious and malevolent backdrop. This kind of contrast we expect in Tintin and manga, but in the U.S. only a few indie titles can sustain this kind of creative contradiction for long.
What is immediately captivating and will haunt you, though, despite any attempts to sell you on the story, is the strong clear line that, once drawn upon your imagination, will never be forgotten.
Dan Slott continues to write one of the most deeply philosophical comics that has ever existed in the mainstream. Doctor Octopus has used his inventive genius to one-up the mystics by enabling the metempsychotic migration of his soul prior to death; a mind as rarified as Doc Ock’s needn’t abide patiently for death to vacate the premises of his body. He also chose the form and housing for his mind– that of his enemy Spider-Man, and his afterlife as Spider-Man becomes both punishment and reward. He gets the acclaim and recognition he has always sought for himself, but does it only by elevating the fortunes of the enemy he has possessed. And Doctor Octopus becomes an agent of much good, using his manipulation of robots and minions to dominate the super-villain underground in a way it has never known under the benevolent guardianship of Peter Parker; he also does more good for Peter Parker’s family and friends, including miraculous transformations like “healing the lame,” e.g. his Aunt May and his old frienemy Flash Thompson. If you have any empathy at all, you start rooting for this monster, and you might catch yourself admiring the “superior” Spider-Man. His desire for a fresh start seems genuine, and he applies such method to the art of moral re-creation that new terms need to be coined, such as “strategic redemption” and “moral aggressor.”
Perhaps you are one of the many who have called out Dan Slott on Twitter, or (hopefully not) sent him the death threats that he reported. Well, there’s no accounting for taste. You are looking at the future of comics, though. Slott, with his 26 issue “season” full of interlocking arcs, has anticipated how the digital marketplace will transform the comic books of the future. Without the logistics of delivering physical books to readers, story lines can be of any length, not only 12 monthlies of 19 to 26 pages. With a less limited tableau to work with and a storefront on every smartphone, big ideas like Slott’s opus on the soul-murder of Peter Parker will be more common.
3) Batman
Certainly Scott Snyder has been tricking out the most complicated of plots in these past two years of Batman, and no doubt that this is the first Batman comic book in a long time that has elevated past crime fiction to detective fiction that sucks you in and makes you think, react, and theorize, but the more compelling reason to keep coming back is that Greg Capullo has set the new standard for Batman art. Every page of Capullo’s is magnificent and every cover an instant classic. Reading a Capullo Batman today must be like reading a Barks Uncle Scrooge comic in the 50s, or a Jack Kirby Fantastic Four comic in the 60s; the feeling is very strong that you are holding and experiencing something special and above the norm.
2) Hawkeye
Life happens to Hawkeye in a way it doesn’t happen to other Marvel super-heroes. Sure, superhero stuff like supervillains happens to him, but since ordinary life befalls him as well, the two kinds of experience get tangled up, usually in a comical way, but sometimes tragically. In one issue, he helps his new friend evacuate his friend’s elderly father during Hurricane Sandy, and a few issues later the new friend is shot dead due to superhero complications.
The title’s breakout character, though, is Lucky aka Pizza Dog. Hawkeye’s pet comes into his own in a Rashomon-styled split narrative in which we see the same event from the points of view of Hawkeye, Kate, and Pizza Dog, and truly understand, from the dog’s perspective even, why the dog left Hawkeye. Hawkeye is selfless to the point that he errs on the side of self-destructiveness, and his friends get caught up in it. Rather than getting mad at Hawkeye, like the rest of Hawkeye’s friends do, Pizza Dog steps out and rides with Kate to the west coast.
1) Saga
Saga would be still be notable if it was only a genre-bending, trope usurping, art object that deconstructed many of the assumptions of fantasy literature, science fiction, and sequential art, but since it is also a good story with well-crafted characters, it appeals, as so few comics do, to both the head and the heart at the same time. And the most bizarre thing is that this is just the prologue, and the narrator, from the future, is steering our heroes from the past into her present day. There is a lot of Saga left to come, and it is not too late to jump on board.