Due to my year-long daily posts about artists, I fell behind on reviewing and even reading comics in 2014. I continued to read single issues, but it took me three weeks into January to finish all the collected editions and graphic novels I bought last year, and of course I didn't review many of them. So instead of doing a detailed "best-of" post, which I enjoy doing, I'm just going to write about some comics I really liked this past year. Sound good? I know, why should you care? Well, you shouldn't, but if that's the case, feel free to skip this post!

You might recall that I like to break down my posts into ongoing series, mini-series, graphic novels, single issues, and recently, collected editions. I'm still going to write about ongoing series and graphic novels, but we'll have to see about other categories. Bear with me! And, as always, remember that these are my opinions. I read a lot of comics in 2014, but I didn't read all of them, and I have my preferences for the kinds of things I like just like anyone else. Let's all be friends, okay?

So what did I like in comics in 2014?

Well, my favorite ongoing series tend to stay the same year-to-year, unless the quality goes way down. Of course, new series keep getting launched, and some of them break into my favorites. Chew, of course, is always near the top of my list, and despite only 7 issues of the "regular" book shipping in 2014, plus one Poyo special and the Revival crossover (which makes a more respectable but still frustratingly meager 9 issues), it's really humming along, especially the last two issues that came out in 2014, #44 and #45. Layman continues to do a superb job of blending insane humor with brutal gut punches, and while the ending of #45 wasn't as horrific as that other issue (you know the one!), it was still a shocking ending. If Layman didn't piss off fans with that one, he just might with issue #46, which I've read. Man, it's hilarious and gut-wrenching all at the same time, and it's another reason why I love the comic so much.







The other usual suspects that show up on my lists were all solid this year. East of West and The Manhattan Projects continue to show that Hickman is amazing on creator-owned work even if his Marvel stuff is less so, Elephantmen continues to unspool its sprawling story in a fascinating manner, Mind Mgmt is amazing every single issue, and The Sixth Gun hurtles toward its ending with great aplomb, as Cullen Bunn has ratcheted up the tension this year as we near the conclusion. One of my favorite series from the past decade, Wasteland, basically ended, with the final "epilogue" issue coming out in March, when I'll write more about it. The final story was a bit of a curve, but it worked out pretty well. Astro City and Batman '66 continued to hum along nicely, as well.















Some new series were superb, as well. Manifest Destiny, which shipped two issues in 2013, was really strong in 2014, and it appears that it's on good enough footing, sales-wise, that the creators can continue telling their story of Lewis and Clark fighting monsters. Letter 44 also shipped two issues in 2013, and it also got very good as Charles Soule got more into his story. Antony Johnston and Christopher Mitten's follow-up to Wasteland, Umbral, is a nice dark fantasy. My favorite new series are The Wicked + the Divine, Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie's excellent story about mortal pop culture gods, which is kind of the dark side of Phonogram, and Lumberjanes, which might seem odd as I am not a tween girl, but which is hilarious and exciting and pure fun to read. I've enjoyed the B-list Marvel titles, too - I don't love Ms. Marvel quite as much as some people, but I enjoy it; I'm going to miss She-Hulk; and I dig Loki: Agent of Asgard, although I have stopped buying the single issues because Marvel raised the price to $3.99. Stupid Marvel!















I've also really been digging the new Bat-books. Batgirl is a lot of fun, even though I have to try to ignore the de-aging and de-maturing of Barbara - as long as I pretend it's a completely new character, the book is a hoot. Arkham Manor is interesting (although doomed), Gotham Academy is charming, and I love Gotham by Midnight. I can't help thinking that DC should have launched these books, or at least books with these kinds of creators, back in September 2011. Duggan/Crystal are different from Stewart/Fletcher/Tarr are different from Cloonan/Fletcher/Kerschl (although they share Brendan Fletcher, of course) are different from Fawkes/Templesmith, and even if you hate all the books, you can't deny that they have completely different vibes, which was something that was lacking in the initial reboot. I haven't checked, but I think I'm buying more DC single issues than Marvel at this moment, which I would never have believed a year ago. But Marvel keeps jacking up their prices, and DC has seemed to figure out that diversity in tone is a good thing, so huzzah!







Some other stuff I liked this year included:

And Then Emily Was Gone. This is a very creepy, horrifying mini-series that ended a bit oddly, but was still a terrific horror book. I like horror books that aren't ridiculously gory, relying more on disturbing images, and this series, set in the Orkney Islands, is full of creeping dread. Go find the trade!

Avengers 100th Anniversary. James Stokoe does the Avengers. It should be 'NUFF SAID with that, but I will also point out that this book ends with Captain America adrift in a Negative Zone filled with watermelons. Marvel or DC should just get Stokoe to do a quarterly book about whatever the hell he wants. Man, I miss that theoretical comic.

Westward. Ken Krekeler's masterpiece has but one issue to go, and after events in recent issues, I cannot wait to see how he's wrapping everything up. Like Wasteland, I'll write more about this when the final issue comes out, but I really hope he can afford to put out a complete volume of the series, because it deserves a much wider readership.

Warren Ellis's good year. His six-issue run on Moon Knight was brilliant, while Trees and Supreme: Blue Rose have both been fascinating. I usually like Ellis's work, so I'm not surprised he had a good year, but he seemed to drift from basing his stories around the typical "Ellis bastard" in these series, which was nothing but a good thing.

The return of Grant Morrison. The God of All Comics never went away, of course, but 2013 wasn't a great year for him - the final issue of Happy! came out, and that was pretty bad, and the ending of his Batman run was a let-down. He rallied in 2014, however, as he's killing it on Annihilator and Multiversity. I'm sure many, many more people are reading Multiversity, but you should really check out Annihilator, because it's pure distilled Morrisonian weirdness, if that's your thing. I'm just glad that Morrison seems to be re-energized about comics.

















I'll move on to graphic novels, even though I was worse about reviewing them than I was about single issues! I won't try to rank them, just write about some of the very good ones I read this year. My favorite graphic novel this year was probably Displaced Persons, which I actually did review. It's a terrific family drama about three different generations living in San Francisco and their connections over the decades. It's a compelling plot, but Derek McCulloch also manages to make each character fascinating and involve them in gripping emotional moments as well as the overall plot. Of the graphic novels that I did review this year, I really liked The Absence (which I reviewed here, and it's technically a six-issue mini-series, but I'm counting it as an OGN, confound it!) and The Rattler (which I reviewed here). I'm never sure if foreign-language comics count because I imagine they're published in their native countries first, but I'm counting the first time they appear in English, damn it, and Cape Horn (review here) was terrific, as were Blacksad: Amarillo and Station 16, neither of which I reviewed for the blog. The Blacksad book was just another gorgeous comic with a nifty, twisty mystery to tell, while Station 16 was a creepy story about Russian soldiers investigating an abandoned nuclear testing site where strange, horrible things start to happen. I was really impressed by Family Ties by Eric Hobbs and Noel Tuazon, which is a King Lear story set in Alaska about an aging crime boss and the decisions he needs to make about his empire and his three children (two daughters and a son), all of whom want different things from him. I didn't love their last collaboration, The Broadcast, but Family Ties is extremely intense and gripping, even though it's very bleak (I mean, it's King Lear, so naturally it will be). I liked The Guns of Shadow Valley, even though I thought the ending was a bit too opaque - I knew what Dave Wachter and James Andrew Clark were trying to do, but I didn't think it was as clear as it could have been. Still, it's a neat, creepy Western with terrific art by Wachter. Jeff Parker and Sandy Jarrell's Meteor Men was a nifty twist on an alien invasion, while Bryan Lee O'Malley's Seconds was a fine read even if the main character, Katie, needed to be smacked in the head a few times because she was just that stupid. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention two very small comics that got collected editions this year - I was pleasantly surprised by The Gifted, which is the first in a series about certain animals (in this case, a wolf and a bear) gaining consciousness and taking over from men as the world's dominant species. It's a beautifully illustrated book, by Nathan Gooden, while the minimalist script, by Damian and Adrian Wassel, is great at making men seem like aliens while the wolf becomes more aware of what's happening to him. Second is Weapon Brown by Jason Yungbluth, which is a collection of comics he's been doing since 2001. If you've ever wanted to read a comic in which an adult Charlie Brown wanders a post-apocalyptic landscape fighting with and against dozens of other newspaper comics characters, you should check this out. It's absolutely insane (I won't spoil who Charlie Brown's big nemesis turns out to be, but it's an inspired idea), and Yungbluth's art is in the best Wally Wood tradition.

























As covers are easy to check out, I'll do the best covers of the year.

1. Chew #44 by Rob Guillory.



Guillory's cover to this brutal issue is great, as he shows the characters reflected in the blade, the blood on the point indicating it's already been used, and the fierce red of the background making everything seem more violent. It prepares you a little for what's inside, but probably not enough.

2. Little Nemo: Return to Slumberland #3 by Gabriel Rodriguez.



Rodriguez's work on Little Nemo has been amazing, and this cover shows that well. This issue is a "mirror" issue - many pages are exact mirror images of the one facing it - and Rodriguez shows that well on this cover (the "woman" on the cover becomes a bearded man when upside-down). It's a very cool cover for a very cool comic.

3. And Then Emily Was Gone #1 by Iain Laurie.



I like the cover of the final issue (see above), but I like issue #1's cover a bit more. Laurie uses negative space well, creating the dark silhouette of the monster and then placing the principals of the series within it, implying the trap they find themselves in. The way the creature bleeds off the page is nice, too - it makes it seem all-encompassing, which in a way it is.

4. Mind Mgmt #24 by Matt Kindt.





Kindt uses the wraparound nature of the cover wonderfully, as the front shows us Henry Lyme and little else, while the fires lead us to the back cover, where we see the wreckage that Lyme leaves in his wake. Many artists do very nice wraparound covers, but Kindt takes it to another level, as he often does with comics-related stuff!

5. Secret Six #1 by Dale Eaglesham.



Secret Six #1 was pretty lousy, but at least it had this tremendous Eaglesham cover! The whole Snakes and Ladders motif is very neat, and the theme of the issue - the "secret" - is teased nicely. Too bad the inside isn't very good!

6. Manifest Destiny #4 by Matthew Roberts.



I'm a fan of images that seem to cut off without showing the entire thing, so Roberts's cover of Sacagawea kicking ass is great because we don't exactly know what she's carving up, but we can guess it's something terrible. Her face is great, too, as Roberts draws her intensity really well.

7. Batgirl #37 by Cameron Stewart.



Disco Batgirl. 'NUFF FUCKIN' SAID!!!! (This isn't Batgirl, of course, but Dagger Type, the villain. This is the issue for which Stewart and Fletcher issued an apology, which I thought was completely idiotic. Anyone with basic reading skills can tell that Babs wasn't disgusted by a cross-dresser, just surprised by the fact that the "woman" she was chasing was a man. I'm usually on the side of the offended, but this was really, really pushing it.)

8. Grindhouse: Drive In, Bleed Out #2 by R.M. Guéra.



The new series of Grindhouse has been just as twisted as the first one, and Guéra's art on the first story is wonderful, as we can see from this cover. It's another nice collage of events from inside the book, but Guéra's use of the skeleton chains adds just that nice touch of weirdness.

9. Detective Comics #30 by Francis Manapul.



I haven't been buying the Buccellato/Manapul run on 'Tec (waiting for the trade, yo), but I picked up the first issue just to check it out, and it featured this terrific cover. Manapul uses silhouettes wonderfully to create several different layers to the cover, all alluding to action inside, while the background of yellow is a bold and excellent choice. I've read that the comics have been a bit mediocre, but this cover, at least, is coolio.

10. Astro City #13 by Alex Ross.



It's always nice to see Alex Ross stretch his creative muscles a little, and for this trippy issue, he gave us a cool trippy cover. What makes it work really well, I think, is how Jack-in-the-Box and Gundog (yes, really) are staring at the weirdness behind them as they fight. It makes the cover a bit more fun.

So those are some of the things I liked about comics this year. When I do this again next year, I hope to return to my more comprehensive review, because I am planning on doing a lot more reviews of books this year (including my weekly posts now that I have some time). As always, I hope you find some books you might have missed in here, and if you want to pick on my choices or ask why something you really liked didn't show up, feel free to sound off in the comments!