Top Comics of 2023 (Part 2)

Jan 15, 2024

It’s January here at Do You Know What I Love The Most?, and that means it’s time to sum up the last 12 months with Year End Lists! I’ll be devoting the rest of this month to rounding up and discussing the various media released in 2023 that meant the most to me — just like every other website on the internet! Isn’t that special?

Today we’ll be diving into probably my favorite medium of all, comic books! These are the comics — be they monthly periodicals, graphic novels, manga, or webcomics — released in 2023 that touched me, thrilled me, and sucked me in like no others.

Due to size restrictions for these emails, we discussed the first half of this list in Wednesday’s Part 1.

Fantastic Four (Marvel)

Ryan North doesn’t approach Fantastic Four like your typical superhero series. Instead, under the pens of North and artist Iban Coello, each issue is something more akin to a mystery. Every month the Four are presented with a problem that must be solved, and most often they do so, not by throwing punches, but by using their brains and compassion. It’s incredibly fun, as a reader, to match wits with the Four to see if you can figure out what’s going on and/or the solution to the problem, but it’s just as satisfying to see what solution the Four eventually come up with; not once has a solution failed to live up to the premise. Four’s format is also a huge advantage; every story is told in one or two issues, allowing North and Coello to tell a wide variety of stories in a short timeframe. There’s a seemingly bottomless well of creativity these two are tapping into each and every month, and their tales of time-displaced space stations, language-deteriorating assaults, alternate dinosaur universes, and sentient apps never fail to light up my imagination, tug on my heartstrings, and put a big ol’ smile on my face. North and Coello’s Fantastic Four is a consistently clever and heartfelt book that can (and should) be enjoyed by any audience; it’s truly got something for everyone.

One Piece (Shonen Jump/Viz)

One Piece has often been a manga that’s read best in its collected edition, rather than as chapters release week-to-week, but the last few years have been one of the most exciting times to follow the manga weekly that I can remember in my nearly 20 years of doing so. I wrote last year that the new “Egghead Island” arc moved at an uncharacteristically breakneck pace with just about every chapter dropping a new revelation that left readers’ jaws on the floor, and this certainly continued to be the case throughout 2023, but for me, the most exciting thing about the past year of One Piece has been the way that it’s highlighted Eiichiro Oda’s skill at creating a vast world full of characters every bit as compelling as our protagonists. We actually only spent about a third of the year with our main characters, but the series never once suffered for this, and often was more exciting than ever! A large chunk of story early in the year was spent following a handful of the supporting cast on various adventures, while the final few months of 2023 dove deep into a flashback focusing on the mysterious Bartholomew Kuma, transforming him from a near cipher to one of the most sympathetic, heart-wrenching, and beloved characters in the entire series with brutal efficiency. One Piece is sometimes a series that can be bogged down by excess, but 2023 really drove home Oda’s ability to make each and every one of his hundreds of characters complex, compelling fan-favorites who will leave readers transfixed.

The Relentless Lark (Weekend Warrior/Kickstarter)

The Relentless Lark lives up to its name; each of its three issues are concise, action-packed, and continuously push their story forward while somehow never feeling slight or rushed. Lark is the next entry in writer Mark O. Stack’s “Weekend Warrior” imprint, a spin-off of one of my “Best Comics of 2022” entries Young Offenders, and a three issue mini-series that features a different artist in each issue (Max Pinelli in Issue #1, Kaylee Rowena in Issue #2, and Beck Kubrick in Issue #3). Together, these three issues tell a tale of the allure and danger of trying to please distant parents, about how we never really know our parents, and about the ways families can come together to try to heal and move past these strained relationships. It’s powerful stuff that has really stuck with me since my first read, but I’m just as impressed by how Stack and his collaborators tell their story. Each issue of Lark explores a unique scenario (an assault on a gang hideout; infiltrating a high society party; a contest of wills in an arctic tundra) that always keeps the action and story feeling fresh, and which allows for each issue to tell their own story with a beginning, middle, and end but to also be part of a larger, overarching story that runs the entirety of the series; within these issues, Pinelli, Rowena, and Kubrick are granted plenty of space to bring the Lark and her world to life with their unique styles and takes on the action. The Relentless Lark is a masterclass in doing a lot with a little, and a series I won’t soon forget.

Birds of Prey (DC)

This is one of those comics that feels like it’s just made for me. Birds of Prey is the triumphant reunion of writer Kelly Thompson, artist Leonardo Romero, and colorist Jordie Bellaire after their fan-favorite 2016 Kate Bishop Hawkeye run, and this creative team just has so much synergy; their new take on DC’s classic all-female superhero/espionage team crackles with the energy of creatives working together at the peak of their skills. Romero and Bellaire provide Birds of Prey with a somewhat retro art style and flatter color palette that is a visual feast despite its simplicity, and under Romero’s pen the action scenes practically leap off the page with their exciting, yet easy-to-follow choreography. Thompson has assembled a unique team of characters here — a few of whom I believe have never appeared together before — and given them all clear and distinct personalities that bounce off of each other in really, really fun ways; and then she’s thrown them into one of the most dangerous and unpredictable missions possible, with clear, legit emotional stakes to boot. Birds of Prey is superhero comics at their best, and I am so, so happy that this book exists exactly the way it is.

Love Everlasting (Image)

Love Everlasting is not an easy comic to sum up. At first it looks like it’s going to be a parody of classic Silver-Age romance comics, but it ends up playing the stories rather straight — and, surprisingly, they work, thanks in large part to artist Elsa Charretier’s lush, elegant, classic style. Yet, there’s also a sci-fi mystery running throughout the series, as Joan Peterson — the protagonist of each and every story Love Everlasting tells — is pursued from story to story, scenario to scenario, by forces conspiring to force her to fall in love. In 2023, Charretier and writer Tom King changed up their formula for their second storyline, instead forcing Joan to stay stuck in a single classic romance story and watching how her entire life as a 1950s housewife with a reality-altering secret plays out from there. Writing about families, couples, and intimate relationships is what King does best, and he mines even the most mundane moments in Joan’s life for real drama and pathos; in fact, I was legitimately disappointed at times when the sci-fi elements butted in and interrupted the ongoing story of Joan’s life. This is just such a well-observed story about what it’s like to share your life with somebody, and it’s worth reading based on that alone — everything else King and Charretier are doing is just icing on the cake. Yeah, this is a hard series to explain, but that’s all the more reason you should get on it and check it out for yourself!

The Flash (DC)

I’ve made no secret of my love of Jeremy Adams and Fernando Pasarin’s run on The Flash over the past 3 years. Their relentlessly fun, endlessly creative take on Wally West and his family made my Top Comics lists in both 2021 and 2022, and I was hoping I’d be able to keep throwing it on here for years to come; seriously, I think this run is going to be remembered as one of the great Wally West runs, right up there with Mark Waid’s and Geoff Johns’. Sadly, 2023 brought Adams and Pasarin’s time on The Flash to an end, but at least they got to go out with a bang. “The One-Minute War” was a tremendous climax to Adams’ time on the title, allowing him to stretch new muscles and show that he’s just as good at big-picture plotting and action spectacle as he is character work — though the character work was as good as ever (every Bart and Wallace interaction was pure gold!). Even the short epilogue in Flash 800 — which explored the Flash’s reputation through the eyes of his villains — was a clever, funny take on the themes Adams had been building throughout his entire time on the title. I’m devastated to see this run end, but I’m so glad I was able to enjoy it — and proclaim my love for it here on this newsletter — as long as I did. Three years on a title is a feat in this market, and Adams and Pasarin should be proud of their time with The Flash.

ABOUT

“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin about his relationship with the stories he loves. 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!

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