Wow. Admittedly, 2023, was a great year for comics. There were many compelling new single-issue series, original graphic novels and trade paperback collections not only from the Big Two, but also from the indie-press renaissance. I am unsure how to approach my favourites because they are legion. Where to begin?
(I will add images as I find time, but I realize in blogging that I am spending far too much time on process-trying to post a certain format, font size, etc., and just want to get the word out my latest passions. In 2023, I wrote most of a novelette (about 8,000 words) in a spiral notebook on luncch breaks because I got too frustrated with how slow and obfuscating Word is. The horror-comedy story's about, in a nutshell, what Jehovah's Witnesses might fear the most. And what if a queer ex-JW was called in for help? But more on that later... So in 2024, I guess I am going to try to worry less about process and more about producing work.)
Marvel and DC still manage to surprise, even while caught up in the mire of event storyline, printing a seemingly infinite number of X-books (Marvel) or Bat-books (DC). Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Nic Klein’s The Incredible Hulk is rich with monsters, continuing in the vein of Al Ewing’s The Immortal Hulk. Steve Skroce's Clobberin' Time, a fun romp starring the Thing, was a hoot, pairing everyone’s favourite blue-eyed brawler with the Hulk, Doctor Strange and … Doctor Doom? From DC, I enjoyed Mark Waid and Dan Mora’s beautifully retro-yet-new Batman/Superman World's Finest and Shazam!, the most charming and entertaining reminting of that title in years, Ram V’s Swamp Thing and Kelly Sue DeConnick’s Wonder Woman: Historia, sort of the Amazonians’ epic year one.
Some indie titles of 2023 prove true
my claim that this is an indie-press renaissance, jumpstarted by the onset of
the pandemic. Comics creators want to get their creator-owned, original works
out there. We have Black’s Myth, a black-and-white, film-noir werewolf
police procedure with all the can-do spirit of a 1980’s upstart indie (Editor’s
note: Read that phrase again if you like!). Alex de Campi’s latest books prove
once more that she can write across genres with ingenuity. In the creator-owned
Parasocial, she teams again with artist Erica Henderson of Squirrel
Girl (comic-book) fame, with whom she did, Dracula! Motherf**ker!
and is a cautionary tale about the fan-celebrity relationship. Her original
graphic novel Bad Karma, with art by Canadian Ryan Howe, feels like a
1980’s-action-film, but shrewder, featuring two damaged vets trying to save a
man wrongfully convicted and on Death Row. Both remain top-notch storytelling
with incisive social commentary. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillip's Reckless,
their pulpy, immediate original graphic-novel series from Image continues
to astonish. Not to mention Humanoid’s fascinating bio-comic Bela Lugosi
and Monstrous Books’ Kolchak The Night Stalker 50th Anniversary Graphic Novel tells
stories from before and after the character’s network-television existence.
In keeping with my predilection for outcast characters, here are three of my hands-own most-loved titles about loner characters from 2023. Coincidentally, two are about green guys. One is about a werewolf. Guess they all change shape, though.
The Incredible Hulk (Marvel)
Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Nic Klein, taking their cue from Al Ewing and Joe Bennett’s Green Door mythology and Bruce Banner’s dissociative personality disorder developed in 50 issues of The Immortal Hulk, have steered The Incredible Hulk into a full-out, pedal-to-the-metal monster horror comic. Their tenure comes hot on the hells of Greg Pak’s, which elicited a lukewarm response from many faithful readers. The book is a free-for-all as all the monsters in the Marvel Universe take a run at Ol’ Greenskin, from encounters with the Man-Thing and a vintage Ghost Rider to any number of supernatural nasties. The Hulk is, in turn, suppressing the Bruce Banner personality. Gone are the gentle multiple-panel, almost magical green-to-flesh tone (and vice versa) transformations of yesteryear instead replaced by flesh-ripping and bone-cracking sequences which Ewing laid all the body-horror groundwork for. The Hulk is also a wander again, particularly in the South, giving the book the feel of the syndicated TV series of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s and of the comic during much of the eighties, for that matter. Johnson is clearly delighting in playing with Ewing’s toys.
Writer Ram V and artist Mike Perkins stick the landing, as the Americans love to say in podcasts, on Swamp Thing. The final six issues of their 16-issue run, which I recently discovered was supposed to be ten issues, is a visual delight and an intellectual stimulant. The combination of Mike Perkins’ realistic penciling style and Ram V’s Green musings and keen understanding of Swamp Thing mythos and character are a one-two punch. Parliament of Gears was touted as the finest ST fare in years for a reason. It’s a satisfying, thunderous finish to V’s cerebral-horror arc. Like Phillip Kennedy Johnson on The Incredible Hulk, V takes the foundations of a seminal writer, in this case Alan Moore, from his legendary tenure on the title, and develops them in interesting yet logical and intelligent ways. Perkins’s jaw-dropping work ranges from the pedestrian and mechanical to the utterly fantastical, gory, and alien. Want to see wondrous vistas, unsightly horrors, and some fine character mannerisms? Perkins has you covered. New Swampie avatar Levis Kamei (who I maintain looks very suspiciously like a shorter-haired Ram V …) faces off with his brother Jacob, a preternatural contender who wants to bring a cold older to the world. The green guy must unite the Green with its different fellows for the final showdown. It's a dense, sprawling and epic conclusion.
Guest
stars include Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern, the Authority’s Jack Hawksmoor, King of Cities (how cool a title is that?) and Tefé Holland, Swamp Thing’s daughter, whom Levis’ love interest Jennifer asks for help. A virtuoso, Perkins gives readers gore, but
also phantasmagoric tableaus. Mike Spicer deserves a shout-out for his
astonishing colour palette. Perkins also pulls off an astonishing trick. Aside
from all these other merits, he depicts new character Trinity, created by
nuclear tests in Trinity, New Mexico, and as a result unnervingly powerful
(it’s comics, after all, as they say) as a sultry, glowing entity. Ram V also
goes beyond the established Moore lore and adds a whole cosmic or psychedelic
aspect to the green guy’s lore, expanding on the mythos of the Green, the Red,
the Rot and the Parliament of Gears, literal man-made machinations trying to
elbow into these ecosystems.
Black’s Myth (Ahoy Comics)
Here’s another fine example of a creator-owned comic offering a unique vision, thanks to Ahoy Comics, delivered with aplomb. Comics creator Eric Palicki has gone and made a series about a supernatural police procedural, a clever fusion of genres, starring lycanthrope Jamie “Strummer” Jones, the bi protagonist. It’s black and white, so readers can see the art as it was meant to witness, on the drawing board. Wendell Cavalcanti’s linework is classical human form stuff, and stunning as a result. comics-in-arms include Saladin Ahmed’s 1970’s/early 1980’s Abbott series or even Mark Waid’s Black Magick (one with a bi intrepid reporter, the other with a bi intrepid witch detective), involved, sensual and compelling. This second arc is on the racks now but will come out in the second collected trade paperback. It’s this kind of bi rep and can-do-it attitude that you often don’t find at jaded bigger houses, and I’m all in.
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