Gallery: The Best Comics of 2013 — And How to Read Them Online
01Something Terrible
The best comics of 2013 took many forms, from superhero stories to intensely personal autobiography, and digital-only releases distributed directly by artists to webcomics collected in books. But thanks to the rise of digital distribution, almost all of the best comics published in the last year are little more than a click away. Check out our choices, and then check them out yourself. *Something Terrible* -------------------- In *Something Terrible*, cartoonist Dean Trippe takes on a difficult and personal topic: the sexual abuse he experienced as a child, and the psychological damage caused by not only by the assaults but the belief that victims like him were likely to perpetuate a cycle of abuse. Torn between his desire to be a father and his fear that there was “something terrible” inside of him, “I swore to take my own life if I ever had sexual thoughts about children,” said Trippe in the afterword of the comic, which depicts his threat as an invisible gun held against his head. In the years that followed, Trippe found solace in superhero stories, and particularly in Batman, a character who endured his own childhood trauma and became a hero who protected the innocent, rather than a villain who harmed them. "It was the message of all good superhero stories," said Trippe. "You are who you choose to be." At 18 pages and 99 cents, *Something Terrible* is a short read but an unforgettable one, about how fiction and myth can not only help us escape the pain of our lives, but give us the tools to make sense of it and even transcend it. --*Laura Hudson* __Where to find it online__: [Available directly from the artist](http://www.tencentticker.com/somethingterrible/).
02Young Avengers
*Young Avengers* ---------------- It’s been a long time since I’ve read a superhero comic that had a spark of life like the one writer Kieron Gillen and art team Jaime McKelvie and Matthew Wilson have brought to the 2013 season of *Young Avengers*. Formally clever, breezily witty, and as pretty as mainstream superhero art gets, *Young Avengers* is about a group of teenagers with superpowers who struggle with cosmic parent figures, their own imminent adulthood, and a child version of the trickster god Loki who hangs around and alternates between acting benevolent and sociopathic. The dialogue snaps, the plot clicks, and the characters all have that patented Marvel two-and-a-half-dimensional quality that makes for satisfying and aggressively charming genre fiction. Though a slighter effort than the previous Gillen/McKelvie/Wilson project, *Phonogram: The Singles Club*, certain qualities carry over, notably that work’s thorough understanding of pop music as organizing principle. *Young Avengers* is built on rhythms and hooks, frothy and bouncy like a throwaway melody, yet perfectly capable of transmitting the kind of melodrama and pathos that can sneak into even the most seemingly banal Top 40 song. It is probably a good thing that the comic is ending in January 2014 after 15 issues. No pop record should go on forever, and the best ones are usually short, sharp, and to the point. Pop music is also often of its moment, and I can’t say that *Young Avengers* is for the ages. But I also can’t say that I had more harmless fun with any other comic this year. —*Jason Michelitch* __Where to find it online__: [ComiXology](http://www.comixology.com/Young-Avengers-Vol-1-Style-Substance/digital-comic/55319)
03Hyperbole and a Half
*Hyperbole and Half* -------------------- Long-time readers of Allie's Brosh's *Hyperbole and a Half* webcomic should need little prompting to buy the first collection of her work -- which includes all new, print-exclusive comics -- [only the knowledge that it exists](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/underwire/2013/10/hyperbole-and-a-half-allie-brosh/). But for the uninitiated: welcome to one of the most hilarious webcomics in existence. Most of Brosh's best comics are simply amazing stories, from the time she showed up at a child's birthday party while [heavily sedated](http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/09/party.html) or the time a terrifying goose invaded her home. Other times, she manages to make the most mundane problems -- [anxieties about growing up](http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html), the [mental limitations of her two dogs](http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/11/dogs-dont-understand-basic-concepts.html) -- seem as just compelling. But her greatest triumphs are her [two](http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html) [comics](http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html) about her struggles with depression, not only because they captured the pathos and absurdity of the experience so perfectly, but because they still managed to be so goddamned hilarious. "It was liberating to be able to take this thing, the worst thing that had ever happened to me, and really look at it," Brosh told WIRED. That fearless, penetrating gaze is ultimately what makes *Hyperbole and a Half* so funny, not only because it allows her to see herself, but because somehow it allows us to see ourselves too. --*Laura Hudson* __Where to find it online:__ Read the webcomic [here](http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/); buy the book at online book distributors.
04Saga
*Saga* ------ Brian K. Vaughan is an extremely accomplished, competent, slick writer, and therein lies the problem I’ve had with most every comic he’s ever written. Critical and fan favorites like *Y: The Last Man* and *Ex Machina* are perfectly well-crafted comics, but at times they're so hyper-competent that they feel bloodless, devoid of spontaneity and life. You don’t feel a human pulse beat through those pages, but rather a perfectly timed metronome. Instead it's *Saga*, his ongoing sci-fi story of frantic, improvisatory survival and longing for freedom in a restrictive, chaotic world, that feels like the first real aesthetic statement he's ever put forth. Prog-rock rather than punk-rock, *Saga* is all big sweeping gestures, far-out ideas, and endless reaching beyond one’s grasp. The story of Alana and Marko, two star-crossed lovers from warring alien races, *Saga* is quite literally a space opera narrated by an infant, their daughter Hazel. Vaughan and artist Fiona Staples seem determined to cram *Saga* full of ridiculous concepts: a giant cat that can act as a lie detector, an alien race with CRT monitors for heads, a forest of functional space-faring wooden rocketships. It all verges on unbearable whimsy, but somehow manages to throttle back at the edge of the void. That "somehow" certainly has a lot to do with Staples, who has been earning much-deserved attention for her expressive and imaginative work on the series. *Saga* is a vision of pop comics unburdened by the needs of either commerce or vanity, that isn’t afraid to look silly as it tries to be exactly as big and weird and sprawling as it needs to be. This is Vaughan's messiest, most interesting work to date; here’s hoping that he keeps working without a net, and that Staples keeps tossing him back in the air for even more spectacular falls. —*Jason Michelitch* __Where to find it online__: [ComiXology](http://www.comixology.com/Saga/comics-series/7587), [Image Comics](https://www.imagecomics.com/comics/series/saga) for DRM-free versions
05Sex Criminals
*Sex Criminals* --------------- It was a big year for *Sex Criminals*, the dangerous-to-Google comic by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky. Part heist drama, part sex comedy and part love story, *Sex Criminals* is the story of Susie and John, a couple who fall for each other only to learn that they happen to share an unusual sexual quirk: their orgasms can stop time. Mainstream comics haven't historically done a great job at portraying sex and sexuality with nuance – choosing “mature content” over actual maturity -- but *Sex Criminals* not only leads us forward into the exciting world of bank robbery, but backwards in the often embarrassing sexual histories of its two leads. It feels generous, funny and most of all, *real*, which is itself a funny thing to say about a comic book about magical orgasms. Too bad all that was lost on Apple, which [banned *Sex Criminals* #2](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/underwire/2013/11/sex-criminals-apple-app-store/) from the App Store in November for "objectionable" content. That doesn't mean that you can't still buy it at the click of a button (see below), only that Apple's content decisions in the App Store continue to make [no](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/business/2010/04/apple-bans-satire/) [damn](http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/14/apple-reverses-block-of-oscar-wilde-graphic-novels-gay-kissing/) [sense](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/business/2010/06/apple-bans-cartoon-boobs-in-joyces-ulysses/) [at all](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/22/sweatshop-game-apple-app-store). Rather than the distant titillation of pornography, *Sex Criminals* is a lot more like the best kind of sex: playful and personal, honest and vulnerable, and most of all, a [hell of a lot of fun](https://www.imagecomics.com/content/view/sex-criminals-1-4th-printing-cover). --*Laura Hudson* __Where to find it online__: [ComiXology](http://www.comixology.com/Sex-Criminals/comics-series/11424) on your computer (where the [first issue](http://www.comixology.com/Sex-Criminals-1/digital-comic/46453) is free) or [Image Comics](https://www.imagecomics.com/comics/series/sex-criminals) for DRM-free versions.
06Michael DeForge
Michael DeForge --------------- Judging by the throngs of enthusiastic people who mobbed his table at the recent Comics Art Brooklyn festival, his three 2013 Ignatz awards and continued work on the hit cartoon *Adventure Time*, Michael DeForge is well on his way towards enshrinement as one of the seminal cartoonists of his generation. Palpable physical phenomena is a looming concern in DeForge's psychedelic body horror, not only of human/mammalian/animal bodies, but social bodies. His comics place halting, despondent, confused individuals into quietly hostile worlds that at first seem sparse but are revealed to be spacious and complicated, with isolated classes of people (or animals) so stratified as to seem alien to one another. Bizarre and semi-mythical authority figures lurk in the periphery of understanding, from ghostly androgynous Canadian royalty to a hallucinogenic god-mother Ant Queen. DeForge gives us a darkly comic and often disturbing vision of life as ruled from a distance by vaguely understood social structures, and ruled more immediately by grotesque physical forces that are even less understood. Even otherwise innocuous physical contact takes on a pulsating menace when strained through DeForge's pen. Displaying a keen awareness that there is no such thing as totally hermetic originality, DeForge is able to layer references from the history of comics as well as a wealth of high, pop, and trash culture sources without his work ever feeling beholden to references. His work displays obvious and pervasive influences -- Chris Ware, Hideshi Hino -- but DeForge doesn't merely borrow style tricks from these masters, instead transforming them into something entirely original. This year alone saw the release of the fifth issue of Deforge's monumental one-man anthology series *Lose* and the book *Very Casual*, a collection of early and shorter works. Early copies of his 2014 *Ant Colony* (above), a print collection of his popular web-comic, have already made a huge splash with dedicated readers and critics. More recently, the comics internet topped off the holiday season by passing around this [two-page](http://kingtrash.tumblr.com/post/48937744648/x-mas-comic-part-1-of-2) [Christmas comic](http://kingtrash.tumblr.com/post/49044293038/x-mas-comic-part-2-of-2-part-1) DeForge posted earlier this year, and it is brief, dense, elliptical, mysterious, funny, sad, and strange -- in other words, a perfect celebration of and introduction to DeForge's disturbing and fascinating world. --*Jason Michelitch* __Where to find it online__: *Ant Colony* is available [on the web](http://kingtrash.com/ants/index.html) with a print collection on the way from [Drawn & Quarterly](http://drawnandquarterly.blogspot.com/2013/12/michael-deforge-on-tour-for-ant-colony.html); [*Lose*](http://koyamapress.com/projects/lose-5/) and [*Very Casual*](http://koyamapress.com/projects/very-casual/) are available from Koyama Press;
07Zombo
__*Zombo: You Smell of Crime and I'm the Deodorant* \-------------------------------------------------__ Imagine a world where Donald Trump is the President of the U.S., humanity is under attack from an evil, sentient planet hurtling towards us in outer space, and the future of law enforcement is a hybrid of man and zombie currently controlled by a back-up brain literally located somewhere in his pants. This is the world of *Zombo*, a riotously funny series that's part science fiction adventure, part pop culture parody and one of the funniest and smartest comics of the year. British comics writer Al Ewing -- now receiving attention stateside for his *Mighty Avengers* series for Marvel -- and artist Henry Flint have created something that opens with the absurd and builds in terms of weirdness and comedy from there, satirizing everything in its path from Hollywood action movies to [Situationism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International), with the institutionalized sexism of the Fantastic Four, creepy group-think of boy bands and importance of thumb war all thrown into the mix. Long live the new flesh -- even if it is rotting and occasionally cowardly. *-Graeme McMillan* __Where to find it online__: Print version available at [2000AD](http://shop.2000adonline.com/products/zombo_you_smell_of_crime_and_im_the_deodorant) and online book distributors
08Boxers and Saints
__*Boxers and Saints* \-------------------__ A pair of historical graphic novels by *American Born Chinese* creator Gene Luen Yang, both *Boxers* and *Saints* deal with [the Boxer rebellion in late-19th-century China](http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/76364/Boxer-Rebellion) through the eyes of those affected by the event -- one, a peasant who joins the pursing after a life ruined by Westerners, and the second an abandoned child raised by those same Westerners. The narratives of both books run up against each other but never fully intersect, instead providing a particularly nuanced context for the events surrounding the revolution that allow the reader to make up their own minds about what happened. Yang's art for the two books is both simple enough to engage the novice comic book reader and filled with enough beauty to make it irresistible to the most jaded. Surprisingly approachable for such an ambitious project, *Boxers and Saints* is a triumph that brings a piece of history somewhat unknown to American audiences to life, making the trick seem almost effortless. -- *Graeme McMillan* __Where to find it online__: Print version available at [Macmillan/First Second](http://us.macmillan.com/boxerssaintsboxedset/GeneYang) and online book distributors.
09Pretty Deadly
*Pretty Deadly* --------------- For whatever reason -- the end of American exceptionalism, lifestyles that’ve never been further from the frontier, housing developments that spread like a virus across the West -- the time-honored genre of the western has fallen out of vogue. *Pretty Deadly* makes a compelling argument for bringing it back. Gorgeous, lyrical, and bloody, Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Ríos’ series takes place on eerie moonlit plains and in whorehouses of questionable repute; with music and gunfire, we’re told the strange story of Ginny, the vengeful daughter of Death, and the people whose lives Ginny affects... and ends. Not only is *Pretty Deadly* unlike any other western, it’s also unlike anything else that came out this year. —*Erik Henriksen* __Where to find it online__: [ComiXology](http://www.comixology.com/Pretty-Deadly/comics-series/11683), [Image Comics](https://www.imagecomics.com/comics/series/pretty-deadly) for DRM-free versions
10EOTFW
__The End of the Fucking World \----------------------------__ At once beautiful and disturbing, *The End of the Fucking World* tells the story of James and Alyssa, two teenagers trying to escape the banality of their surroundings without any real idea of what they hope to discover to replace it. Writer and artist Charles Forsman builds their world slowly and carefully, contrasting their slowly eroding innocence with everything around them both visually -- both Alyssa and James look like *Peanuts* characters grown up, unlike the adults they encounter -- and through sparse dialogue and scenes that play out at times like a cross between movies from Harmony Korine and David Lynch. Filled with a sense of unease and growing tension, *TEOTFW* should feel difficult to get through, but it doesn't; Forsman knows just how much (and, often, how little) to show to keep everything moving quickly without sacrificing the reader's emotional connection with the characters. Watching two teenagers become increasingly abused by a cruel world that doesn't even try to understand them may not sound like the kind of heartwarming fare often suggested at the holidays, but this book -- as harrowing as it is -- is the debut of the year. *-- Graeme McMillan* __Where to find it online__: Print version and 19-page preview available at [Fantagraphics](http://www.fantagraphics.com/browse-shop/the-end-of-the-fucking-world.html?vmcchk=1).
11My Dirty Dumb Eyes
__*My Dirty Dumb Eyes* \--------------------__ Trying to properly describe *My Dirty Dumb Eyes* isn't easy: a collection of cartoonist Lisa Hanawalt's work that includes movie reviews, parodies of banal magazine articles (The illustrated suggestions in "What Do Dogs Want?" include "the chance to sit down and chat with a squirrel" and "a tennis ball bride") and more restrained, surreal pieces that border on the avant garde, it's a contradictory book that can lack cohesion and clarity at times. But it's also an amazingly funny book, and one where Hanawalt's blunt, childlike sense of humor is often contrasted by her subtle, even quiet artwork. At times oblique, at times laugh out loud funny -- it's possible I concerned some nearby onlookers with my laughter the first time I read it -- *My Dirty Dumb Eyes* is something that denies easy classification. There is one way to properly sum it up, however: A must-read. -- *Graeme McMillan* __Where to find it online__: Print version available through [Drawn & Quarterly](http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/shopCatalogLong.php?item=a50f6e43962a06) and online book book distributors.
12Girl Mountain
*Life Zone*/*Girl Mountain* --------------------------- There is a wave about to crest, and its name is Simon Hanselmann. In April 2012, fed up with the minimal reach of self-published mini-comics, Hanselmann started a Tumblr called [Girl Mountain](http://girlmountain.tumblr.com/), and began posting "Megg, Mogg, and Owl" strips, featuring a witch, a cat, and an owl who live together in a shambolic house and are prone to drug abuse and depressive anxieties. Although Hanselmann has been working on comics for years, within a month of starting the Tumblr, Hanselmann was contacted by the publisher Fantagraphics, and within six months he had signed a book contract with them that lead to the recently-announced 2014 release *[Megahex](http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Fantagraphics-Books-To-Publish-Simon-Hanselmann-s-Megahex.html&Itemid=113)*. Crude stoner comedy and horror drug trips are presented in a hazy, sleazy, disgustingly cartoony aesthetic in Hanselmann's work, and beneath the uncomfortably dark humor are even darker thoughts and feelings about friendships, mental illness and adulthood. There's an amorality to the characters that is never condemned nor reveled in, but rather is examined with an eye both compassionate and ever-ready to cut to the bone. Hanselmann has been bravely open about drawing on his own experiences with self-destructive behavior, depression, and drug use for inspiration in the strip, and though his style is cartoony and the humor often absurd, his work does feel lived in, authentic in a way that matters. The prolific Hanselmann released a slew of material in 2013 through Girl Mountain along with other websites and zines, and two significant print projects: the newsprint-broadsheet short story *St. Owl’s Bay* and *Life Zone*, a 62-page full-color digest of new stories. Any of Hanselmann's output would be worthy of inclusion on a best-of-year list, and his rise from obscure Tasmanian cartoonist to international art comics superstar has been a real-time demonstration of both the potency of his talent and the power of the internet as a platform for young artists. -- *Jason Michelitch* __Where to find it online__: [Girl Mountain](http://girlmountain.tumblr.com/) is published on Tumblr; *Life Zone* is available from [Space Face Books](http://spacefacebooks.com/store/storeLIFEZONE.html); *St. Owl's Bay* is available at [Floating World Comics](http://www.floatingworldcomics.com/main/2013/02/04/st-owls-bay-wet-swords-by-simon-hanselmann/).
