The Best Comic Book of 2020: SOMETHING IS KILLING THE CHILDREN

 

     Maybe after the horrible year that was 2020 a book titled Something is Killing the Children wouldn't be greenlit. Maybe a book about dead children shouldn't have ever been greenlit. I admit...it's a dark book, obviously, but it was also the best comic of 2020. The funny thing is...writer James Tynion had a much bigger book out this year and it was borderline terrible. His Batman run is a colorful mess (unfortunately it's still going on). Strange how he can write such a wild, exciting, compelling book like Something is Killing the Children while also writing such a bland, unexciting, no-good-ideas Batman book. I suppose the reasons don't matter why he's sometimes a great writer and sometimes not. At least we got this. Something is Killing the Children has a fairly simple premise. Monsters are real and they're killing children. Tynion has created an intriguing world around this premise, though. There's a secret society that trains people to fight these monsters. The main character, a young woman who was attacked by monsters as a kid and survived, has joined this secret society and heads to a small town that's besieged by these beasts that lurk in the woods and can't be seen by adults. She also has a teddy bear that just happens to be alive with the soul of a monster she killed. And in the last few issues of 2020, the book turned into an all out action movie with the monsters attacking and the townsfolk and police running to the high school to hide in the gym while all hell breaks loose. The art, by Wether Dell'edera (pencils/inks) & Miquel Muerto (colors), fits this book perfectly. The art is ragged and dark. The monsters actually look scary. The members of the secret society with their white face masks look evil and cool at the same time. And the best thing about this book is that it's gotten better since #1. I'm glad it's been a big best seller for the smaller Boom! Studios. It deserves all the accolades it's gotten. 

The Best Art of 2020: MITCH GERADS @ EVAN SHANER "STRANGE ADVENTURES"

 

The Best Writer of 2020: ED BRUBAKER

     Ed Brubaker didn't write a monthly book in 2020, but he still made quite the impact. He decided that graphic novels are the future instead of monthly floppies so he put out two original graphic novels this year, Pulp and Reckless. He also wrote two issues of his book Friday that were released on a pay-what-you-want scale for the Panel Syndicate website. All three books were pretty different, but they all featured Brubaker's classic writing style. He loves using the inner monologue of his main characters to tell the story, and it's the perfect way to do it in a comic book. 

    

 

    His stuff flows wonderfully and is so easy to read, everything just washes over you and you're instantly alive in this fantasy world that feels oh-so real. His books have always been dark, but they're also filled with emotion, despair, longing. His characters just seem to jump right off the page, and his plots are always so intriguing and often wild. Reckless had perhaps the best opening sequence of any comic this year. It's the first in a series of a guy that solves problems. Kind of a gangster superhero type. Friday was a book about a girl coming home from college and getting swept back up in the small town mysteries she used to help solve as a teenage detective. And Pulp is about a down on his luck, old writer. It also happens to feature Nazis and cowboys, go figure. All three of these books were different but they were all compelling and entertaining. Brubaker's been one of the best comic book writers for the last 20 years at least, and in 2020 he proved that he's still at the top of his game. 

The Best Pages & Panels of 2020

BIRTHRIGHT #42

BASKETFUL OF HEADS #8

BIRTHRIGHT #44

                                                        

                                                    STRANGE ADVENTURES #2

JOHN CONSTANTINE: HELLBLAZER #8

The Best Covers of 2020

 

JUSTICE LEAGE: ENDLESS WINTER #2 (PART 9)

 

 

     If you're wondering what happens in this issue, the big finale to the ultra-lame "Endless Winter" story, then The Flash can fill you in. Aquaman shows up late and so The Flash tells him, "Batman, Wonder Woman, and Hippolyta discovered the real Frost King in a cavern...Superman and Black Adam are having a slight disagreement...and we summoned the spirit of the viking prince to inhabit a giant Swamp Thing body...who is currently fighting a huge Frost King avatar that's absorbed Kryptonian energy crystals." This is ridiculous and ludicrous, yet this is comics in its purest form. This kind of reminded me of how the new Wonder Woman movie got a few negative reviews and I thought: you know what? The people that don't like this movie don't like comic books...because Wonder Woman 1984 is kind of the apotheosis of comic books. It's fucking ridiculous! Silly, over-the-top, and with a child's sense of story and adventure. It's not serious Nolan Batman...which the critics adored. Most comic books are not Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns or Alan Moore's Watchmen. Most are like "Endless Winter," at least if you consider the whole history of comics since the 1930's. Granted, the dark, serious stuff tends to get the accolades these days, but comic books were born for kids. Maybe "Endless Winter" is just old school, and that's why it feels so irrelevant. This issue is the best of the series, though mostly because it's pretty much just an issue long fight scene. The Justice League does not kill the Frost King...he just ends up turning back into his human self. Stagg gets arrested. And we see that Black Adam was imprisoned back in the 10th century. Alls well that ends well! This issue does kind of put a period on DC comics for now. Starting next week, DC is only publishing Future State books for January, February, and March. And when the regular books return, there will be some new books and some new creative teams. The only Future State book I'm interested in reading is John Ridley's Batman. That book was actually supposed to the regular Batman book for the forseeable future but DC fired Dan Diddio and got rid of his 5G idea which was supposed to be forever but is now just 3 months long. So this ends the saga of the Frost King. I kind of wish they had killed him off...because I never want to see him again. *1/2

BLACK ADAM SPECIAL #1 (ENDLESS WINTER PART 8)

     The evil scientist dude, Stagg, has unearthed the Frost King's wife and kid. They were frozen in a block of ice below the Fortress of Solitude. So of course the Frost King shows up, as does Black Adam, since, well, this book has his name on it. There are also a bunch of other superheroes that show up at Stagg's lab for some reason. These are heroes you've never heard of and probably never will again. Multiplex? Dude's named after a movie theater. Catman? That has to be a bad joke. Is Catman a real superhero? Like he's actually been in other books? Do I have to look it up? Well, his first appearance was in Detective Comics #311 back in 1963 and he was a Batman villain. I'm guessing Catwoman came first. So who was the lazy idiot that created Catman? Really scraping the bottom of the barrel on brainstorming day that week. At the end of this issue, part 8 in the "Endless Winter" event, the Justice League shows up to fight and possibly defeat the Frost King. That, or to save him and defeat the evil Stagg. I will admit that at least the art in this issue is fairly decent. Brandon Peterson did the pencils and inks for the modern stuff (Marco Santucci is still doing the 10th century flashback stuff every issue). But back to more interesting things: Catman. Apparently, "a modern revival of the character in the pages of Green Arrow many years later depicted a Catman down on his luck, clinging to past glories, overweight, and pathetic." What past glories? I mean...he's in shape in "Endless Winter." Catman "was originally Thomas Reese Blake, a world famous trapper of jungle cats who turned to crime because he had grown bored with hunting and hand squandered most of his millions." Seriously, if you're ever bored, look up some lame comic book characters from the 60's and read their Wikipedia entries. They're hilarious. As for this issue? It's less entertaining than doing that. *1/2