We’re continuing our ten-year celebration of borg today with our favorite comic books. If you missed them, check out our Top 40 movies here and our Top 40 TV series here.
We reviewed thousands of books and comics that we recommended to our readers since June 2011, and some even made it onto our favorites shelf. We don’t publish reviews of comic books that we read and don’t recommend, so this shortlist reflects 21 comics and creators we view as the Best of the Best.
So let’s get going!
A long time from now in a galaxy far, far away–actually at your local comic book shop–Free Comic Book Day is returning for 2021. Often overlapping with the annual Star Wars Day–May the Fourth–this year it’s being pushed out a few months to Saturday, August 14. A good excuse to visit your local comic book shop and get re-introduced to some series you may have missed, the annual FCBD is also a way to check out some titles you may otherwise have overlooked. This week comic book retailers revealed the results of the FCBD committee’s selections for this year’s freebies. What made the cut? It seems plenty early, but now you have no excuse to know what you want when you get to the front of the line. Below, check out some of the covers and titles coming your way for FCBD 2021 this August!
Our borg Best of 2019 list continues today with the Best in Comics. If you missed them, check out our review of the Best Movies of 2019 here, the Kick-Ass Heroines of 2019 here, and the Best in Television 2019 here.
We reviewed comics from every major publisher this year, and were pleasantly surprised with all the new characters and content available. You’ll find both some new creators on the list this year and some fan favorites who keep making better comic books each new year.
Here are the best comic books for 2019:
Best Limited Comic Series (tie) – Sara by Garth Ennis and Steve Epting (TKO Studios) and Goodnight Paradise by Joshua Dysart and Alberto Ponticelli (TKO Studios). The new publisher TKO Studios began with a bang with these two incredible stories. Sara is what every fan of war comics hopes for, and Goodnight Paradise brings the realities of life in the 21st century to the comics page in a story that will stay with readers a long time.
Best Ongoing Comic Book Series – Ghost Tree by Bobby Curnow and Simon Gane (IDW Publishing). Haunting, mythic, and sweeping, this story of a man reflecting on his past and coming to terms with the present combines with Asian legend tropes to form an emotional and curiously funny tale. Sure to leave readers begging for more.
Best Sci-Fi Comic Series, Best Comic Book Writing – Ascender by writer Jeff Lemire and artist Dustin Nguyen (Image Comics). Lemire owned this category with two fabulous science fiction tales, both with strong female lead characters. Runner-up: Sentient by Jeff Lemire and Gabriel Walta (TKO Studios).
Writer/artist Ed Piskor broke new ground with his epic history of the Marvel universe in a tiny package, with his Grand Design and Second Genesis trilogy series (reviewed here at borg only last year). A complete throwback in style to comics of the 1930s through the 1970s, Piskor’s series included small, tightly crammed panels allowing for only minimal detail, lots of content per page, bright classic colors, and good ol’ fashioned newsprint pages (mmm… just smell that newsprint!). But Piskor covered only one segment of the Marvel universe in his books: The X-Men. This week writer/artist Tom Scioli enters the picture with his own take on Marvel’s Grand Design series, focusing on the Fantastic Four in the new series Fantastic Four: Grand Design.
In Issue #1 Scioli takes readers through an origin story of the Fantastic Four: Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm, as they become Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Girl, the Human Torch, and the Thing, all in a similar style to Piskor’s series. As expected, readers can look for a lot of history in 45 pages, including meeting one of the Watchers, Doctor Doom, Black Panther, Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner, the Mole Man, the Hulk, the Celestials, the Inhumans, Galactus, Silver Surfer, and lots of other characters tucked into the corners. Since the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I find it difficult to separate the comics from the movies, and every comic I read pulls me into the thought of how it might be adapted for the big screen. If you haven’t been keeping up, along with the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer, and Namor all moved over to Disney’s MCU, and Scioli lays out one possible way the Fantastic Four could be introduced into the reel world dominated thus far by the Avengers. Could the first Fantastic Four movie, or a Fantastic Four sub-series of films (like the Avengers) segue moviegoers into the missing pieces never before seen on the big screen like Namor, and pull in the above heroes and villains? We’ll know in a few years.
Look for two covers by Scioli for the first issue of Fantastic Four: Grand Design, and one variant, a very cool homage to Frank Miller’s second issue of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns featuring the Thing in place of Batman, re-created by Ed Piskor (shown above with Miller’s original). Want to have a look inside the first issue? Here’s a preview of #1, and a sneak peek at Issue #2:
Our borg Best of 2018 list continues today with the Best in Print. If you missed them, check out our review of the Best Movies of 2018 here, the Kick-Ass Heroines of 2018 here, and the Best in Television 2018 here.
So let’s get going. Here are our selections for this year’s Best in Print:
Best Read, Best Sci-fi Read – The Synapse Sequence by Daniel Godfrey (Titan Books). The Synapse Sequence is one of those standout reads that reflects why we all flock to the latest new book in the first place. The detective mystery, the future mind travel tech, the twists, and the successful use of multiple perspectives made this one of the most engaging sci-fi reads since Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. Honorable mention: Solo: A Star Wars Story novelization by Mur Lafferty (Del Rey).
Best Retro Read – Killing Town by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime). The lost, first Mike Hammer novel released for the 100th anniversary of Mickey Spillane’s birth was gold for noir crime fans. This first Hammer story introduced an origin for a character that had never been released, in fact never finished, but Spillane’s late career partner on his work made a seamless read. This was the event of the year for the genre, and a fun ride for his famous character. Honorable mention: Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner, by Donald E. Westlake.
Best Tie-In Book – Solo: A Star Wars Story–Expanded Edition novelization by Mur Lafferty (Del Rey). Not since Donald Glut’s novelization of The Empire Strikes Back had we encountered a Star Wars story as engaging as this one. Lafferty took the final film version and Lawrence and Jon Kasdan’s script to weave together something fuller than the film on-screen. Surprises and details moviegoers may have overlooked were revealed, and characters were introduced that didn’t make the final film cut. Better yet, the writing itself was exciting. We read more franchise tie-ins than ever before this year, and many were great reads, but this book had it all. Honorable Mention: Big Damn Hero by James Lovegrove (Titan).
Best Genre Non-fiction – Hitchcock’s Heroines by Caroline Young (Insight Editions). A compelling look at the director and his relationship with the leading women in his films, this new work on Hitchcock was filled with information diehard fans of Hitchcock will not have seen before. Young incorporated behind-the-scenes images, costume sketches, and a detailed history of the circumstances behind key films of the master of suspense and his work with some of Hollywood’s finest performers.
There’s much more of our selections for 2018’s Best in Print to go…
You may not remember it, but if you were a kid in the 1980s you probably heard of GoBots before you ever heard the word Transformers. The Tonka transforming machine toys hit the shelves in 1983, a year in advance of Transformers, although Tonka (the classic truck toy company) was unable to give its characters and toys the success Transformers would achieve. GoBots only were available as toys for a few years in the States, plus some book and animated series offerings. With the legal rights to the toy designs later reverting back to the Japanese toy company Bandai, the character names and stories were assumed by Hasbro, merging with the Transformers family after business consolidation in 1991.
The return of GoBots for the 35th anniversary of the release of the toys was announced by IDW Publishing executives at the retailer panel at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. IDW’s Transformers vs GI Joe writer-artist Tom Scioli has created a new five-issue series, and the first issue arrived Saturday for the annual Local Comic Shop Day. It will get a wider distribution everywhere this Wednesday. The new Go-Bots series (now with the hyphen) is both written and drawn in that “neo-Golden Age” style of comic books like those created by Matt Kindt and Ed Piskor. The artwork has that blend of retro styling that rejects the latest comic book capabilities, a de-evolution from modern artistic mainstays and tropes built over the past 50 years. It also reflects a bit of the style of the 1980s animated series.
As kids would see with Transformers, Go-Bots in the States were sentient robots, as opposed to the human-operated machines as seen in Japan. Familiar characters Cy-Kill, Turbo, Scooter, and Leader-1–and more–make a return in the new series. Go-Bots have some 1980s “cartoony” backstory bits to overcome, but in Issue #1 Scioli uses them to update the character origins and begin to forge a 21st century comeback for this 1980s franchise. For many, the vibe of the series will reflect their favorite Transformers and GI Joe animated series from the 1980s.
Take a look at some interior pages and variant covers from Scioli, Dash Shaw, Ben Marra, and Diego Jordan Pereira (and a blank sketch variant) for the first three issues:
Synthesizing and consolidating 30 years of X-Men lore, writer/artist Ed Piskor surprised everyone last year with his first issue of a groundbreaking new series X-Men: Grand Design. With a retro look only he–or several of the best classic artists of the past coming together–could create, Piskor brought to a new generation of comic book readers a way to catch up on a lifetime of Marvel Comics. All in a single mini-series. It’s all coming together in six issues. The first two issues, discussed here at borg.com and available in a new trade compilation at Amazon here, were successful sell-throughs, immediately going to second printing. The middle chapter (Issues #3 and #4) subtitled Second Genesis begins tomorrow with Issue #3. Take a look below at some preview pages from tomorrow’s issue.
The series is printed on a classic newsprint type of paper stock with unique inks and trademark white inks that really pop on the page. What Piskor has called a love letter to the medium of comics as much as a love letter to decades of X-Men comics, the series was inspired by several artists, including the obvious ones:, Robert Crumb and Jack Kirby, but also Jim Steranko, John Byrne, Alan Silvestri, Jim Lee, Katushiro Otomo, and Moebius. When you flip through one of these issues it brings back sitting on the curb reading when you were a kid.
Elite Comics will have plenty of these available tomorrow in case you forgot to add them to your pull list. If your nearby comic book shop doesn’t have it you may have a long wait, as the trade X-Men: Grand Design–Second Genesis Treasury Edition isn’t coming until October.
Here’s the preview:
Most fans of the sixty-year Marvel Comics multi-title property X-Men have been reading X-Men books for years. Hundreds of characters have been woven into more than 8,000 pages and dozens of monthly titles, and very few can really count themselves experts on the entirety of the history of the mutant heroes. To catch up, new readers can pick up omnibus editions from any of the past six decades going back to 1963. But a new mini-series beginning with only two hefty 40-page, no advertisement issues aims to get you caught up on the series first 30 years in the time it takes Quicksilver to zip around the world and back.
X-Men: Grand Design is exactly that, an epic story pulling together every major story and many minor ones in what is in essence new, classic style comic strips assembled into a comic book anthology. Cartoonist Ed Piskor, known for his Eisner winning series Hip Hop Family Tree, came up with the idea, pitched it to Marvel, and took off on his own as the sole creator, writer, artist, letterer, and colorist. Both the first and second issues, the “First Genesis,” are available at comic book stores now, and like a musician’s “fake book,” anyone can read these two issues with no prior knowledge of the X-Men, jump into the movies or grab a recent spin-off series, and walk away with a firm grasp of the characters.
You’ll meet The Watcher as he hones in on Earth primarily to witness the impact of the Phoenix Force on Jean Grey–the best character that surfaces in the first issue. Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner decimates New York, followed by the birth of Charles Xavier, then we witness Magneto’s backstory, Xavier’s relationships with step-brother Cain Marko aka the Juggernaut, Moira MacTaggert, and Gabrielle Haller, and Xavier’s collection of mutants Jean Grey, Scott Summers, Angel, Hank, Red Raven, Iceman, Pyro, Rogue, and Marvel Girl. Magneto recruits Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. And villains abound, including the Mutant Master, Shi-ar, Mister Sinister, Bolivar Trask, The Conquistador, Morlocks, the Blob, Unus the Untouchable, Mesmero, Mastermind, Count Nefaria, the Mimic, Banshee, and Sauron. We even learn of Xavier’s son David (the focus of the current FXX series Legion) and Magneto’s daughter Lorna (but we see no apparent connection yet between Magneto and Quicksilver).
