Top Books and Comics of 2020
It’s December here at Do You Know What I Love The Most?, and that means it’s time for Year End Lists! I’ll be devoting the rest of this month to rounding up and discussing the various media released in 2020 that meant the most to me — just like every other website on the internet! Isn’t that special?
This week we’re onto the written (and illustrated) word! These are the books and novels, the comics — be they monthly periodicals, graphic novels, manga, or webcomics — the stories released in 2020 that touched me, thrilled me, and sucked me in like no others, listed in no particular order.
BOOKS:
Anyone by Charles Soule (Harper Perennial)
My first exposure to Soule was through his comic books, where he made a name for himself by putting out a truly superhuman number of titles each month, and by finding a smart take on every character he took under his wing. Soule has truly carved out his niche in the world of prose, though, where he manages to combine globetrotting adventure and intrigue with harrowing speculative fiction about the potential dangers of misused technology. Anyone’s two interweaving stories — about the creation of a technology that lets people take “rides” in other people’s bodies, and about the world that technology has brought about twenty years later — are gripping from the very start, and only get more tense as the book progresses. Soule has truly thought through both the positive and negative repercussions of his invented technology and the way it would effect people, and has used them to craft a nail-biting, often emotionally devastating tale. Anyone left me absolutely shocked multiple times, and it stuck with me long after I finished the book, its events and the fates of multiple characters weighing heavy on my mind. I can’t recommend this book enough.
[This one is a bit of a cheat, as Anyone was actually released in 2019, but given that it was also released in December of that year, I think it missed out on most of the year-end buzz, and I can’t have that. I read it in 2020, so I’ll let myself slide…just this once]
Hollywood Park: A Memoir by Mikel Jollett (Sceptre)
This memoir follows Airborne Toxic Event frontman Mikel Jollett through his early years in a cult orphanage, his childhood with his narcissistic mother, and his young adulthood trying to work through the wreckage both left on his psyche. There’s a truly harrowing — but often inspiring — story here about the lifelong damage such events can cause, the effort and rewards working through them can take and make, and the power even just one individual can have to help you move forward and turn your life around. Jollett has a remarkable story to tell, but the most impressive thing about this book might just be how he tells it, fully inhabiting the mind of the child he once was, writing from the limited perspective of a kid who doesn’t understand what’s going on around him but is clearly affected by it nonetheless. I’m sure it was a challenging and cathartic endeavor for Jollett, but it puts the reader right in his shoes and allows them to feel Jollett’s confusion as he does, and to truly care about what happens to him next, even though (by the sheer fact that this book exists) they know he eventually turns out okay. I spent so much of this book stressed, worried, and outraged, and the sheer emotional investment involved made sure that this story and my experience reading it has stuck with me for a long, long time.
[I also spoke about Hollywood Park in the “Check Out” segment of this newsletter.]
The Answer Is…Reflections on my Life by Alex Trebek (Simon & Schuster)
This memoir isn’t as intense or immersive as Jollett’s, nor is it some kind of juicy tell-all, just a pleasant recounting of Jeopardy host Alex Trebek’s life and rise to stardom. If you’ve never watched Jeopardy this probably won’t interest you, but if, like me, you’ve been mourning Trebek these past couple of months, then this book might just be the perfect balm. Its final section, written in the early days of the Covid pandemic and deep into Trebek’s cancer treatment, is easily the most affecting, describing simply, honestly, and powerfully how he was getting through both with the help of his family, his hopes for the future, and the joy filming Jeopardy brought him even at his most physically drained. It’s an elegant, charming, and no-nonsense read, just like Trebek himself.
Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas (Swoon Reads)
I’m still a sucker for some Young Adult literature, and Cemetery Boys was easily the best I experienced this year. The story follows a young trans man named Yadriel practicing to become a brujo so that he can prove to his family not only that he has what it takes to carry on his magical heritage, but that he truly is the man they’re not-so-convinced he is. There’s mystery, there’s romance, and there’s some of the best perspective writing I’ve seen in quite a while; even though Thomas writes in third person, the reader always feels what the characters feel intensely and viscerally. The central characters of Yadriel and Julien are vivid and well-realized, and I spent the whole book just wanting the best for them even when it seemed almost impossible. These characters and topics are clearly dear to Thomas’ heart, and that passion seeps through onto every page.
COMICS
Daredevil — Chip Zdarsky (writer) Marco Checchetto (artist) [Marvel]
Some of the most fun I’ve had over the past four or five years has been watching the progression of Chip Zdarsky’s career. He first came to prominence as “that guy who talks to Applebee’s,” and in the comic world, as the (excellent) artist of Sex Criminals, where his touches of visual humor stood out in a book already jam-packed with great gags. Zdarsky’s earliest writing gigs stayed within that range, silly and humor-filled, but quickly revealed a beating heart of real humanity and pathos that elevated Zdarsky’s work to unexpected levels, allowing him to slip seamlessly behind the wheel of big-name titles like The Fantastic Four or X-Men.
The gritty street-level domain of Daredevil adds another notch to Zdarsky’s ever-expanding thematic belt, but as always, the most important aspect of any Zdarsky title is the heart, which, in this case, is Matt Murdock’s overwhelming feelings of guilt and responsibility. The combination takes Daredevil to exciting, unexpected places (most notably, putting Daredevil on trial for murder), but Matt isn’t the only featured player. Zdarsky gets to play with politics by pitting the new Mayor and former Kingpin, Wilson Fisk, against real estate developers so rich they put him to shame, as well as focusing in on Detective Cole North, whose evolving sense of justice doesn’t just put him at odds with Daredevil and Fisk, but with his own job. Artist Marco Checchetto is a vital partner, his moody, ink-splattered pages creating the grimy atmosphere Daredevil’s Hell’s Kitchen deserves, but his characters always moving with a bombastic dynamism. His take on Elektra’s hair, especially, is a thing of sheer beauty.
Dial H For Hero — Sam Humphries (writer) Joe Quinones (artist) [DC]
The concept behind Dial H For Hero is one of my favorites in all of comics for its sheer potential alone — an object that can turn the user into a different random superhero every time it’s used. Humphries and Quinones also nail the execution, though, turning each new hero into a parody of a different kind of comics, with Quinones adapting entirely new, spot-on recreations of their original styles with each one. The characters and themes also hit home, teaching Miguel and Summer to embrace hope over despair, showing how even the benevolent power of something like the H Dial has the power to corrupt, and most radically and beautifully, redefining a hero’s “secret origin,” not as the moment where they acquire superpowers, but instead as the moment they decide to use their powers to do good. This fun, heartfelt, one-of-a-kind series deserves all the praise it can get.
One Piece — Eiichiro Oda (writer/artist) [Shonen Jump/Viz]
2020 and the quarantine found me diving head-first back into One Piece, re-reading my favorite manga over the course of almost six months, from the very beginning up through Volume 95 (!!!), the most recent English release. This reignited my passion for Eiichiro Oda’s brilliant, best-selling series, and made the new weekly chapters released this year resonate even stronger. The dawn of 2020 saw the ending of the Kozuki Oden flashback, which explored bits of lore that have been hanging for hundreds of chapters and, some, for close to two decades in real time, building anticipation in the way that only a series preparing to enter its Endgame possibly can. The triumphant return of Jimbei saw the full force of the Straw Hats Pirates reunited for the first time since 2014, and the countdown to the momentous Chapter 1000 (which, sadly, looks like it will miss dropping this year by only a week or two) has created continually escalating stakes and tension, all seemingly leading to Luffy’s showdown with the two strongest pirates in the world — a moment made all the harder-hitting by One Piece’s peerless world-building, which spent hundreds of chapters building these threats up and showing the influence they have over the world even as Luffy dealt with weaker opponents. It’s big moment after big moment, and I’m so psyched to see what’s gonna happen next.
[I talked more about One Piece in this newsletter, and this one as well.]
Ludocrats — Kieron Gillen and Jim Rossignol (writers) Jeff Stokely (artist) [Image]
The Ludocrats — the titular ludicrous aristocrats — revel in the absurd, and so do Gillen, Rossgnol, and Stokely in Ludocrats. No pun is too corny, no concept too surreal, no joke too outrageous, no image too shocking for this creative team nor their hedonistic protagonists. The plot, involving a group of Ludocrats trying to stay focused long enough to investigate why their leader seems to be putting aside the ludicrous and embracing normalcy, is largely an excuse for a string of outrageously wild and fun set pieces, but eventually coalesces into an examination of what it means to be ludicrous that isn’t exactly deep, but at least provides a complete arc and a couple neat twists and turns that make this a story and not just a joke machine, though it’s a pretty extraordinary joke machine. There’s nothing else on the shelf with the non-stop fun factor of Ludocrats.
Something Is Killing the Children — James Tynion IV (writer), Werther Dell'Edera (artist) [Boom! Studios]
As you might guess from the title, this is a pretty grim story. Tynion and Dell’Edera dive head first into the darkness of a town whose children are being hunted and killed by monsters. Their slow and deliberate pace provides tons of atmosphere, reveling in the fear and uncertainty surrounding the town, but also provides the space to explore the ramifications these deaths and disappearances are having on the townspeople. Erica Slaughter is a brilliant protagonist, steely and badass but with so much hidden heart. Erica is also readers’ eyes and ears into the secret society of monster hunters she belongs to, and this element is handled brilliantly, with this society providing intrigue and mystery but not dominating the narrative. This engrossing story is always at the top of my stack of comics every time a new issue comes out.
[I talked briefly about Something Is Killing the Children, as well as some of Tynion’s other horror comics, in this newsletter.]
Lords of Empyre: Emperor Hulkling 1 — Anthony Oliviera and Chip Zdarsky (writers) Manuel Garcia (artist) [Marvel]
Marvel’s summer crossover event, Empyre, was a fun and unoffensive (if somewhat forgettable) series, but I checked it out almost solely because it featured two of my favorite characters at Marvel, the Young Avengers power-couple of Wiccan (Billy Kaplan) and Hulkling (Teddy Altman). As the hybrid Kree/Skrull heir to both thrones, Hulkling was at the center of Empyre, but his stand-out moments came in the Emperor Hulkling one-shot preceding the event, which dove deep into Teddy and Billy’s relationship and what Teddy’s taking up the empire’s throne means to them, all while giving their lives and friends on Earth plenty of chances to shine. This is the second time Oliviera has written these characters and he just gets them, bringing a lived-in sense of humor and compassion to Billy and Teddy. I want him to write an ongoing with these characters so badly. This is also the comic where an alien tyrant refers to Wiccan as a “Twink,” and that alone should earn it a spot on this list.
Suicide Squad — Tom Taylor (writer) Bruno Redondo (artist) [DC]
Tom Taylor has done the impossible: he’s finally made me love the Suicide Squad. Taylor’s take on the property captures the spirit — fast pace, high stakes, anything could happen, anyone can die — without falling into some of the same old tricks that have plagued the franchise over recent years. Taylor’s new characters are especially a breath of fresh air, be they the Squad’s sadistic new handler or the Revolutionaries who make up most of the new Squad, characters with fun abilities and designs, complex motives, and interesting relationships to each other. By the end of its run Taylor’s Suicide Squad reads more as a back-door pilot for a Revolutionaries ongoing, but man oh man did that back-door pilot work, because I wanna read that book today.
[I wrote more about Suicide Squad in this newsletter.]
DCeased: Unkillables — Tom Taylor (writer) Bruno Redondo (artist) [DC]
DCeased: Dead Planet — Tom Taylor (writer) Trevor Hairsine (artist) [DC]
I think we, as a society, are kinda collectively over zombie stories, yet 2019’s DCeased — in which a techno-infused Anti-Life equation swept across the Earth, turning many of DC Comics’ mightiest heroes into, essentially, zombies — ended up being a comic worth writing home about anyway, I think because it didn’t revel in the gore and death inherent in zombie stories, but instead used them to explore what it means to survive such a catastrophe, and found hope even when the world was at its bleakest. 2020’s sequels, though, blow the original out of the water. The three issue Unkillables mini-series examined what a group of anti-heroes and villains were doing throughout the original DCeased series, giving Taylor a chance to take somewhat-neglected characters and make them shine (Issue 1 is the best Jason Todd story I’ve ever read). Dead Planet, meanwhile, explores the legacies of the original survivors and what a chance to save the Earth could mean when so many have already died, pitting idealism vs. pragmatism in fascinating ways. Taylor’s love for these characters and the DC universe shines through on every page of these series — even as he simultaneously destroys so much of it — making them a must-read for any DC fan.
[I wrote more about DCeased in this newsletter.]
The Old Guard Book Two: Force Multiplied — Greg Rucka (writer) Leandro Fernandez (artist) [Image]
The second volume of Rucka and Fernandez’s series about a squadron of immortal warriors (now a major motion picture on Netflix, which I shamefully haven’t gotten around to watching yet) is the Empire Strikes Back to the first volume’s New Hope — a darker, more personal installment that doesn’t just find pathos in the curse of immortality, but in the actions it can cause one to take and the way they can damn one’s future. There’s a fascinating dual-storyline going on here, with the team starting to discover a purpose to their eternal lives they never would have expected, even as their personal dynamics unravel in devastating ways. The ending of this one is already making the wait for volume three beyond painful.
Dumbing of Age — David Willis (writer/artist) [webcomic]
Dumbing of Age is the culmination of a lifetime of work for David Willis, who has been putting out stories about these characters since he was literally a child. After establishing his career as a cartoonist by publishing four different interconnected webcomics, he started anew with Dumbing of Age, a series that takes all his previous characters from all his previous series, throws out everything that came before, and tosses them together into a college setting. The primary storyline follows Joyce, a homeschooled fundamentalist Christian making her first foray into public education (including, gasp, befriending an atheist!), but with a cast of dozens of diverse characters, the strip eventually tackles almost any story you could imagine (including masked vigilantism!) with a perfect blend of humor and pathos. 2020 was Dumbing of Age’s 10th anniversary, and thus much of the year was devoted to the culmination of a decade’s worth of story, with devastating, cathartic results. Then the narrative jumped forward a few months, creating a new status quo that still has readers trying to suss out just what happened to these kids while we were away. I care about these characters like dear friends, and that’s an ode to Willis’ skill as a storyteller.
Once and Future — Kieron Gillen (writer) Dan Mora (artist) [Boom! Studios]
This tale of a semi-retired monster hunter training her grandson to take over the family business has a lot going for it. The repartee between Duncan and his grandmother is top-notch, their relationship complex and endearing. The classical English legends they face (King Arthur, Merlin, Beowulf and Grendel, etc.) are a nice change of pace from American monsters, and the ideas of people becoming the stories they inhabit is another piece of heady meta-commentary from Gillen. Yet, the true star of Once and Future is Dan Mora. Every fight scene he touches is a thing of beauty, gritty and visceral and dynamic as hell. If this book was just twenty pages a month of Mora fight scenes it would still probably make this list. Everything else is just icing on the cake.
Old Head — Kyle Starks (writer/artist) [Kickstarter]
On a similar vein, Old Head is the tale of an ex-basketball player who gets the chance to regain his honor when he inherits his deceased mother’s grudge against none other than Count Dracula himself. Old Head is classic Kyle Starks, meaning that it’s a parody of masculinity (making fun of Dracula’s bro-tastic followers), but one that also gets quite a bit of mileage out of the visceral thrill of violence. Also in classic Starks style, there’s at least two or three LOL-worthy lines on each and every page. Old Head is the brilliant fusion of an 80s sports biopic and an 80s action movie, and that’s exactly the kind of comic I needed in my life.
Hawkeye Freefall — Matthew Rosenberg (writer) Otto Schmidt (artist) [Marvel]
Modern Hawkeye stories all face the same issue: comparisons to Matt Fraction and David Aja’s seminal run on the character back in 2013. Freefall does as good a job as any of both embracing and shaking off the shackles of that run; Rosenberg’s Clint is immediately recognizable, clearly cut from the same “perpetual screw-up who means so, so well” cloth as Fraction’s, but Rosenberg’s greater focus on action, super heroics, and politics also helps his take on the character stand alone. Clint’s mission has both grave personal stakes and something real to say about society, making it a bit of a slam-dunk of a story, and Schmidt has a kind of electricity running through his art, imbuing every page with the absolute coolest style and action that just kinda leaps off the page. Fan outcry helped all six issues of this series see print after it was nearly moved to digital-only due to Covid — listen to those fans, they know what’s up.
Batman — James Tynion IV (writer) Guillem March, Jorge Jimenez, Tony Daniel, etc. (artists) [DC]
Tynion took over Batman this year like a man with something to prove and no time to do it, each and every issue of his first arc packed with new inventions, breathless action, revelation after revelation, and a swerve I truly didn’t see coming that I ended up talking about for weeks. It worked like gangbusters, not just for me, but even for DC; turns out Tynion was only supposed to be on the book up until issue 100, but the buzz around those early issues earned him an indefinite run instead. Tynion’s used that power to take a guiding hand in shaping the world around Batman, including introducing a succession of well-received characters (Punchline, Clownhunter, Ghostkiller) meant to freshen up the series and move away from using the same old villains over and over. Since each of those characters has a well-defined niche to fill in Gotham City and something new to add to his stories, Tynion’s succeeded with this gambit as well.
About the only weak point of this run has been the need to constantly rotate through artists (since it’s released every two weeks instead of monthly), but thankfully, the majority of the artists have put in excellent, exciting work as well. March still struggles to draw women, but otherwise creates a spooky vibe that goes well with Tynion’s darker issues and Gotham’s underworld. Jimenez, meanwhile, just vibes with the action-oriented direction most of this run has operated under, creating a surprisingly bright and kinetic take on Batman that feels fresh, fun, and new without feeling jarring or out of place. I don’t think there’s any comic I’ve looked forward to reading more this year than Tynion and company’s Batman, and I’m glad that it looks like it will be around for a long time to come.
Do You Know What I Love the Most’s “Best Of 2020” series:
December 3: Top 10 Newsletters of 2020
December 9: Top Television, Podcasts, and Movies of 2020
Today: Top Books and Comics of 2020
December 17: Let’s Talk About Substack
December 23: 2020: A Playlist
December 30: Top Albums of 2020
ABOUT
“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and he can be found on Twitter at @ThatSpenceGuy. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!