The best comics of 2021

The Comics Panel team picks its top 10 comics of 2021

By Justin Carter, M.L. Kejera, Caitlin Rosberg, Oliver Sava | January 14, 2022 | 5:00pm

Books Lists Comics

Clockwise from top left: Alexander, The Servant, And The Water Of Life (Image: Reimena Yee), Djeliya (Image: TKO Studios), The Good Asian (Image: Image Comics), Graveneye (Image: TKO), Look Back (Image: Viz Media), No One Else (Image: Fantagraphics), Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons (Image: DC Comics), Radiant Black (Image: Image Comics), Tiger, Tiger (Image: Petra Erika Nordland), Wayne Family Adventures (Image: DC Comics/Webtoon) Graphic: Natalie Peeples

The comic book industry has shifted after the massive disruption of 2020. Publishers started exploring new distribution partners in 2021, and big-name creators joined forces with Substack to make the newsletter platform a surprising power-player. Seeing the massive success of the Webtoon digital platform, DC and Marvel both launched their own vertical-scroll digital comics, with the former partnering with Webtoon directly (and seeing much better results). Change often inspires creativity, and this year saw some exceptional releases from all corners of the industry. Here are the 10 best comics of 2021, according to our Comics Panel writers.

Alexander, The Servant, And The Water Of Life

Alexander, The Servant, And The Water Of Life (self-published)Reimena Yee’s ongoing webcomic is the latest addition to the long tradition of the Alexander Romance. Having received omens of his impending death, a frightful Alexander is told by a green-clothed servant of the Water of Life that will grant him immortality. They set out from Babylon in search of it, recounting the legend of Alexander on their journey.As with Yee’s The Carpet Merchant Of Konstantiniyya, which was also a webcomic, the mesmerizing comic is chock full of historical and archaeological references. They make frequent use of lavish splash pages, the details of which the footnotes elaborates on. Most of Yee’s work is steeped in the visual—and often sequential—traditions that came before it, but with their take on the Alexander Romance, they are directly adding to one. The narrator of the webcomic is, technically, the character of the Author within the larger frame narrative, creating the rest of the pages for the reader. What’s fascinating about the webcomic are the additional layers of metatextuality that Yee adds. With Alexander, The Servant, And The Water Of Life, the reader is quite literally witness to the continuation of the Alexander Romance tradition. That tradition is primarily rooted in the written word, and Yee incorporates that while expanding the accessibility of their book with captions, often poetic in nature, describing what occurs in the panels. The captions, which arguably function as sequential poetic images in their own right, further expand the notion of what constitutes a comic. [M.L. Kejera]

Djeliya (TKO)

Djeliya (TKO)Juni Ba’s Djeliya is a graphic novel retelling, recontextualization, and remix of the West African Sundiata epic of Mandé origin. Awa is the jeli, known in Western languages as griot, of Mansour, the scion of a once great kingdom. After the apparent near-total destruction of the world by an all-powerful wizard, Souamoro, Awa guides Mansour on a journey to Souamoro’s tower.The book stands out in Western publishing for its subject matter, but its lasting appeal is in its craft. Ba not only hits, and subverts, major thematic aspects of the Sundiata epic, but essentially adapts the jeli craft to the sequential page. The three narrative modes that jeli move through in their performances, accompanied with kora playing, are praise-singing, genealogy, and oral history. Djeliya re-creates these modes through layers of inset narration, having Awa speak in one mode and then switch to the other, with accompanying artistic changes. The musicality of the jeli is also included within the book, with multiple pages featuring songs, music being played, and musical notation.Additionally, the book serves as a mesmerizing look into how a creator’s influences shape their work. There are some sections of the book that are narratively and aesthetically different from the general jeli influence, drawing from Nollywood, for example. As the book is meant for all ages, there is a helpful, heaping amount of back matter, in addition to footnotes, that the reader can use to re-examine the book. [M.L. Kejera]

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The Good Asian (Image)

The Good Asian (Image)Rich with history, style, and emotion, Image Comics’ The Good Asian delivers noir excellence at every turn. Written by Pornsak Pichetshote with art by Alexandre Tefengki, colorist Lee Loughridge, and letterer Jeff Powell, the miniseries follows Chinese American detective Edison Hark in 1936 as he investigates the disappearance of a young woman who worked for his white surrogate father. It’s a mystery that puts Hark in the crosshairs of racist police officers and a hatchet-wielding killer terrorizing the Chinatown underworld, forcing Hark to confront his own self-loathing as he tries to work within a system that is actively hostile toward him and the community he is trying to serve.After working as an editor for Vertigo Comics for years, Pichetshote made his comics writing debut with 2018’s Infidel, a devastating horror story that highlighted his razor-sharp understanding of both the medium and genre, as well as his trust in his artistic collaborators. All of those qualities are on display in The Good Asian, and the book’s back matter reveals the extensive research Pichetshote has done into both crime noir and the historical context of Edison Hark’s world. The visuals from Tefengki and Loughridge have the intense contrast and stark brutality expected from a noir story, but there’s added liveliness in Tefengki’s animated characterizations and inventive layouts, like a rainy scene depicted in panels shaped like puddles of water that will later run red with blood. [Oliver Sava]

Graveneye (TKO)

Graveneye (TKO)This is Sloane Leong’s second year in a row on The A.V. Club’s best of the year list. While A Map To The Sun offered a colorful and emotional reprieve from the chaos of 2020, Graveneye is a dark echo of two years trapped inside houses that aren’t always homes. Leong and artist Anna Bowles tell a story of two women orbiting around each other and the dangers that can come with legacy.Graveneye leverages classic horror tropes to great effect, building on a history of women and queerness in horror. It can be easy for backgrounds to be ignored or underplayed in comics in favor of focusing on people and action, but Graveneye does the opposite: The house that the women occupy is just as much a character as they are, and contributes to the story as they do. After long months of isolation thanks to COVID, the almost oppressive sense of place that Graveneye offers feels particularly heavy and hard to bear. Bowles’ work is lush and visceral, fighting for a delicate balance of beauty and terror that brings both characters and setting to life. There is an unflinchingness to the violence and body horror that Leong and Bowles deserve particular credit for. Readers aren’t spared the details of the characters’ bad behavior, but it doesn’t feel hyperbolic or like an attempt to vilify any of them. In the way that excellent horror often does, Graveneye offers only observation and almost loving renditions of terrible things without judgment. The effect is gothic in both romance and horror, making Graveneye a must-read for fans of either. [Caitlin Rosberg]

Look Back (Viz Media)

Look Back (Viz Media)It is always exciting when a creator branches out into a new genre, in particular one that feels like a departure from their usual work. Tatsuki Fujimoto is best known for action-packed ongoing manga like Chainsaw Man and Fire Punch, so news of a more introspective one-shot was met with delighted anticipation by many fans.Written and drawn by Fujimoto, Look Back is in many ways quieter than a lot of his previous work but leverages his dynamic and kinetic style to highlight and draw out the most mundane details of life. It is the story of two girls, both aspiring manga creators, who work together as they grow up. It is a coming-of-age story in which youthful ideals and desires meet with the inflexible reality of adulthood. But it is also a story about the conflicts between creative and commercial success, and the emotional upheaval that those conflicts can create. Though there are some references and tropes that are more common in manga, Look Back is very accessible for any reader. Remarkably, it also manages to portray the specific feelings and fears of creative people in a way that anyone will be able to understand, even if they’ve never tried to make something as ambitious and involved as a comic series. Fujimoto twists the story back, folding the plot in on itself referentially and chronologically in a way that should be dizzying but instead feels freeing. The characters, and through them the readers, are given an opportunity to consider what could be instead of what has been. [Caitlin Rosberg]

No One Else (Fantagraphics)

No One Else (Fantagraphics)A work of heartbreaking subtlety, R. Kikuo Johnson’s No One Else looks at how a fractured family deals with a sudden but inevitable loss. As a young boy comes to terms with new feelings of guilt and fear, old resentments rise to the surface for his mother and her estranged brother, who comes back home for the first time in years.After his 2005 graphic novel debut, Night Fisher, Johnson dedicated himself to editorial illustration, working primarily for The New Yorker. That experience has given him an uncanny ability to imbue images with complex emotion through composition, environmental details, character acting, spatial relationships, and specific pops of color. In the case of No One Else, a bright orange that pops against the otherwise monochromatic pale blue artwork. Going beyond the literal landscape, the island of Maui plays a major role in Johnson’s emotional storytelling, tying the main character’s personal crisis to the collapse of the island’s commercial sugar industry and the end of the annual practice of burning sugar cane fields. These connections are not aggressively reinforced in the script, which instead relies on visuals to deliver more poetic and abstract introspection that invites the reader’s own experiences. [Oliver Sava]

Radiant Black (Image)

Radiant Black (Image) wears its love for the tokusatsu genre, and especially Power Rangers, all over its body. Having previously written the Rangers’ comics, a run that concluded with the massive “Shattered Grid” event, writer Kyle Higgins brings a similar sensibility to his creator-owned comic, but with a larger canvas to work with. After a few early issues showing writer Nathan Burnett’s struggle with his new cosmic powers, things take a hard shift as the mythos grows in big, exciting ways, and that naturally includes bringing in more Radiants. Big and weird as things can get, Radiant’s focus remains on its ragtag multicolored team and their personal struggles in adjusting to their powers and newfound connection to one another. Art from primary artist Marcelo Costa (and guest artists Eduardo Ferigato and Darko Lafuente) excels at conveying the heightened reality the cast now inhabits. In a recent issue, things get trippy thanks to stellar guest colorist Igor Monti, all while keeping the relationship between Nathan and his friend Marshall in the center. With an exciting cast and a universe that’s starting to expand, it’s hard not to get sucked into Radiant Black’s charming pull. [Justin Carter]

Tiger, Tiger (self-published)

Tiger, Tiger (self-published)Rapidly approaching its fourth anniversary, Tiger, Tiger is a remarkable webcomic by Petra Erika Nordlund that merges genres and defies neat explanation. It stars Ludovica and Remy, siblings in a wealthy merchant family, as well as Ludovica’s fiancé and a cast of supporting characters that range from sweet to scalawag and everything in between.Tiger, Tiger isn’t set in our own history, but Nordlund has drawn all the clothing and backgrounds as deliciously over-the-top. Much of the first few arcs of the comic focus on the science-obsessed Ludovica, who sneaks onto her family’s trading ship in Remy’s place in an attempt to get more specimens to study, particularly sponges. There are all sorts of delightful hijinks, and Nordlund has a particular skill with comedic timing and expressive faces that bring each character to life.Though the trappings of Tiger, Tiger’s setting might be familiar, the world-building goes well beyond that, offering glimpses into a complex and sometimes frightening system of old and powerful gods. These gods feature some very creative and detailed creature designs. What has made this year remarkable is that the focus has shifted from Ludovica and her adventure to Remy and his inner life. Up to this year, Remy has acted mostly as a foil for his sister’s shenanigans, but Nordlund has taken the time to tell a story that adds lovely heartache and struggles with identity and legacy to a story that was already so strong. The added depth balances Tiger, Tiger well and only makes the laughter and the overarching plot that much sweeter. [Caitlin Rosberg]

Wayne Family Adventures (DC/Webtoon)

Wayne Family Adventures (DC/Webtoon)Over the last several years, it’s been very easy to be sick of Batman, or at least one specific version of him. While most of the Dark Knight’s media has focused on him saving a city under constant turmoil with his constantly expanding entourage, Webtoon’s is a considerably lighter and breezier affair. CRC Payne, Maria Li, and Starbite’s weekly webcomic is superhero slice of life at its most fun, and the format works extremely well for Batman and his entourage of young adult vigilantes. While these characters are no strangers to crime fighting, the series is more about delivering fans what they’ve been making up on the fly for years as the various Batfamily members get into easily digestible misadventures. There’s a lot of fun in just seeing them all bounce off each other, whether it’s Bruce getting upset that his kids have non-Batman merchandise or the Robins trying to outclass each other in exercising. Wayne Family Adventures is one of the best Bat-books out right now, and an exciting start for DC’s first deal with the online platform. [Justin Carter]