From haunted memoirs to cosmic love stories, 2023’s best comics proved the medium’s boundless range. “Guides,” “Comics,” and “Darlin and Her Other Names” each redefined what a graphic novel can feel like-intimate, strange, and unforgettable.
Comics were considered eligible if they were graphic novels published for the first time in 2023 or series that were collected for the first time, or published their final collection, in 2023. Everything on this list is available in paperback or collected form for your eager hands – no worries for trade-waiters.
Darlin’ and Her Other Names (Part 1: Marta)
Darlin’ and Her Other Names: Marta introduces the reader to a quiet small-town life shaped by memories and hidden tensions. The story follows Marta, a woman whose calm demeanor conceals unspoken grief and an itch for change. Through muted colors and contemplative pacing, the comic builds an atmosphere where each glance, gesture, and silence carries weight, drawing the reader into Marta’s fractured sense of self and the uncertain kindness that still lingers around her.
by Olivia Stephens
The first installment of Olivia Stephens’ self-published werewolf-Western-horror-romance comic is one of the most striking things I’ve read all year. Brought to life in stark black and white, Stephens crafts a haunting yet hopeful tale of two strangers who meet in the wake of violence and come together to gain the vengeance they both so desperately desire.
This is the kind of comic that, despite being 88 pages long, will immediately have you hungry for more. It’s soulful, moving, beautifully rendered, and uniquely atmospheric. Stephens has already showcased her talent with the lovely graphic novel Artie and the Wolf Moon, but while that was a charming book for younger readers, Darlin’ is unabashedly for adults, with emotional heft, deep thematic resonance, and brutal violence that will leave you thinking long after you finish reading. -Rosie Knight
Darlin’ and Her Other Names
$12 $12 $12 at Gumroad$12 at Itch.io
Shubeik Lubeik
Nadia Shammas’s Shubeik Lubeik blends magical realism with sharp social commentary, imagining a Cairo where wishes can be bought and sold. Through intersecting stories of class, faith, and choice, the graphic novel explores how access to magic reflects deeper inequalities. Its rich artwork and layered narrative make it one of 2023’s most distinctive and thought-provoking comics.
by Deena Mohamed
Whenever Egypt comes up in Western art, it’s usually flattened and caricatured under the Western gaze. But what happens when you reverse the perspective? Deena Mohamed’s brilliant saga – a work by an Egyptian creator originally serialized for an Egyptian audience in Arabic – does just that. Her seminal comic is finally available in English, with Mohamed herself translating it, and with pages that read right-to-left just like any familiar manga, reflecting its origin.
Set in a modern day Cairo, the book pulls the reader into an alternate history wherein humanity can wish their dreams into reality – for a price. Following multiple characters from varied class backgrounds, Mohamed explores how a world shaped by Western colonialism and capitalist impulses even systematizes impossible powers like wishes and dreams – and what that does to the Egyptian people living in such a society. Deploying slick back-matter, infographic pages, charts, and transitions between color and black and white, this work of bold science fiction/fantasy reads like no other comic out this year, or any year.
There’s talking donkeys, deadly dragons, clever world-building, and best of all: heartrending characters that stick with you. -Ritesh Babu
Shubeik Lubeik
$23$3534% off $23 $33 at Bookshop.org$23 at Amazon
Where I’m Coming From
I came to these comics as someone who reads across genres but always gravitates toward character-driven stories, especially those that sit between literary fiction and genre work. My background is more with prose novels and indie zines than superhero monthlies, so I pay close attention to pacing, visual storytelling, and how text and art carry emotional weight together. I’m drawn to books that take formal risks, foreground marginalized voices, and linger in ambiguity rather than neat resolutions. That bias shapes why Guides, Comics, and Darlin and Her Other Names stood out to me among 2023’s graphic novels, and why I value them less for hype and more for how they stay with you after you close the book.
by Barbara Brandon-Croft
In the last few years Drawn & Quarterly has cemented itself as one of my favorite publishers, thanks to its commitment to collecting hard-to-find work by brilliant women in beautiful and thoughtful editions. Where I’m Coming From showcases that perfectly, collecting the beautiful, funny, heartfelt, and achingly cool strips by Barbara Brandon-Croft, the first Black woman to be a nationally syndicated newspaper cartoonist.
Croft’s work is so enjoyable that this is the kind of book you’ll reread again and again. It’ll also shock you that her work hasn’t been widely collected before, as this is some of the best strip cartooning of the modern age – it feels just as fresh today as it did when it was first published. As both a fantastic celebration of Black womanhood and cartooning, and a gorgeous archival piece of publishing, this is easily one of my favorite comics of 2023. And luckily for us, Croft still publishes new and brilliant comics online. -RK
Where I’m Coming From
$18 $18 $28 at Bookshop$18 at Amazon
Do a Powerbomb!
Guides blasts through 2023’s comics scene with raw power, matching Darlin and Her Other Names in sheer impact. This graphic novel slams readers down like a wrestler executing a perfect powerbomb, crushing expectations with brutal storytelling and unforgettable art. No holds barred, it pins you from the opening page.
by Daniel Warren Johnson
The story of Do a Powerbomb is that Daniel Warren Johnson got into professional wrestling for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic, and this is his love letter to the form.
The story within Do a Powerbomb is that a necromancer offers a spot in his supernatural wrestling tournament to one young wrestler from our world, where wrestling is performance. If she wins, he’ll bring her late mother back to life, but to do that, she’ll have to tag team with the masked wrestler who accidentally killed her during a fateful match. Twist! That masked wrestler is her dad. Twist! They have to fight God! Like, the Judeo-Christian God!
The joy of Do a Powerbomb is that there’s no inch of it that’s ashamed or sheepish: It’s all sincerity, all camp, all heart, and all spectacle. The glory of it is how Johnson takes the eye of a Renaissance painter to its action. He can blow a split second out on the page so that the tension and beauty of it hangs forever, and mostly he does. –Susana Polo
Do a Powerbomb
$21$2516% off $21 $23 at Bookshop.org$21 at Amazon
Blood of the Virgin
Matthew Thurber’s Blood of the Virgin follows a struggling film editor in 1970s Los Angeles whose work on a low-budget horror movie blurs into his chaotic personal life. The comic mixes satire, absurd humor, and melancholy nostalgia, capturing the desperation behind artistic ambition. Thurber’s dense drawings and sharp dialogue create a portrait of filmmaking as both grotesque industry and fragile dream.
by Sammy Harkham
Seymour, if we’re being honest, is a bit of a schlub. The protagonist of cartoonist Sammy Harkham’s Blood of the Virgin lives in 1970s Los Angeles, where he does solitary film editing on the worst sort of grindhouse film. He dreams of being a screenwriter, but then it’s seedy: His magnum opus is called “Blood of the Virgin,” and its artistically bereft production unfolds over the course of Harkham’s comic. Seymour doesn’t have nearly as much to offer as he wishes he did, and he’s running out of ways to disguise it from his parasitic boss, his wife Ida, and even himself.
All of this risks making Blood of the Virgin sound like the kind of navel-gazing comic about narcissistic men reliably found on highbrow reading lists, but that doesn’t come close to what Harkham is doing here. Because alongside all that, Seymour is an Iraqi Jewish immigrant and the child of Holocaust victims, attempting to situate himself inside a culture with which he can never entirely relate.
So like Boogie Nights (a film with which this comic shares a general similarity), Harkham’s work uses a small lens to illuminate sprawling themes: the history of Iraqi Jews; survivor’s guilt; Hollywood exploitation; the burning desire that all of us have to belong somewhere. Blood of the Virgin might be a masterpiece. -Zach Rabiroff
Blood of the Virgin
$25$3017% off $25 $28 at Bookshop.org$25 at Amazon
20th Century Men
Set against the backdrop of a fragmented America teetering between past ideals and future uncertainties, 20th Century Men merges political drama with speculative history. The comic reimagines Cold War tensions through the lens of superpowered soldiers and ideological warfare, offering a brutal, thought-provoking commentary on power, patriotism, and the myths nations build about themselves. Its gritty realism and striking art make it one of 2023’s most distinctive and ambitious graphic works.
by Deniz Camp, Stipan Morian, Aditya Bidikar
The clearest critiques of the United States flow easily from the pens of those who have lived outside of it, where the cruelty of the nation’s foreign policy exists in stark opposition to the fabulist posturing of its leaders. 20th Century Men does this with superheroes, spinning an alternate-history tale full of Avengers-style super-soldiers, genetic experiments, and patriotic figureheads in a battle for the soul of Afghanistan. Deniz Camp, Stipan Morian, and Aditya Bidikar have crafted a powerful, searing fable set in a version of the Soviet-Afghan War of the ’80s, where a Russian soldier with metal armor contends with a superhuman American president and his crazed cyborg weapon – and a determined Afghan woman struggles to build paradise for her people amid the plunder.
With the crushing juxtaposition of devastation and hope illuminated by the glow of sunsets and gunfire, Moran brings visual poetry to Camp’s fiery prose for a story that seeks some kind of absolution for the superhero metaphor, and struggles to find it. Maybe it’s just another American crime, a reminder that this country was not born from one original sin, but many. -Joshua Rivera
20th Century Men
$17 $17 $23 at Bookshop$17 at Amazon
Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons
Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons reimagines the origins of the warrior women with bold artwork by Nicola Scott and a script by Kelly Sue DeConnick that traces their ancient history from creation myths to brutal exiles. This DC Black Label project stands out for its lush, detailed panels and unflinching look at paradise lost amid godly conflicts. It captures raw power and sisterhood in a way that elevates superhero lore into mythic tragedy.
by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Phil Jimenez, Gene Ha, Nicola Scott, et al.
Wonder Woman Historia was among the very first titles DC announced when it revealed the scope and theme of its new Black Label imprint – a place for the biggest names DC could attract to make canon-optional stories at a high production value. Five years later, the first collected edition of Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons is simply the the most stunning work of illustration to come out of the Big Two comics houses in years.
Phil Jimenez filled every inch of the 62-page first issue with with hugely detailed renderings of heavily researched character designs of the entire Greek pantheon and 30 original characters. It was an act that seemed impossible to follow, until Gene Ha returned with an issue full of hidden goddesses. Nicola Scott rounded out the trilogy with some of the best layout and character work in comics today.
And I haven’t even talked about Kelly Sue DeConnick’s expert prose, or her heart-wrenching story of Queen Hippolyta of the Amazons, as the Amazons tell it themselves. A primal scream in exquisitely worked gold. -SP
Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons
$20$3033% off $20 $28 at Bookshop.org$20 at Amazon
Damn Them All
Si Spurrier and Charlie Adlard’s Damn Them All stands out as a gripping blend of occult noir and hard-edged social commentary. The series follows a cynical magician navigating London’s underworld after the sudden death of her mentor, twisting familiar tropes into something sharp and morally gray. Gritty art and sharp dialogue create a story that feels both raw and stylish, capturing the sense of decay and defiance at the heart of modern urban fantasy.
by Simon Spurrier and Charlie Adlard
Simon Spurrier, Matías Bergara, and Aaron Campbell’s 2020 run on DC’s Hellblazer was one for the books: Urgent, clever, relevant, and very, very angry. It also ended too soon, canceled after 12 issues with so much more to say. Spurrier responded with Damn Them All, a creator-owned spiritual successor to his Hellblazer run that doubles as a fuck-you to the fates. Joined this time by The Walking Dead artist Charlie Adlard, Damn Them All follows occultist Ellie “Bloody El” Hawthorn, the niece of a thinly veiled John Constantine stand-in named Alfie, as she must damn 72 freed demons back to hell itself.
Calling Damn Them All nu-Hellblazer does the series an injustice – it has its own concerns. Where Hellblazer was a scathing Gothic nightmare about post-Brexit England, Damn Them All focuses its rage on the wealthy technocrats of the world. Demons become a metaphor for the power to reshape the world simply because they have the boredom and the means. Ellie Hawthorne isn’t a hero, either, but a junkie who knows someone is trying to screw her, and has the know-how to try and screw them first. Through Charlie Adlard’s inky pen and jagged lines, Damn Them All is a story about being pissed in all kinds of ways, and having no problem with finding a few more. -JR
Damn Them all
$19$205% off $19 $19 at Bookshop$19 at Amazon
Roaming
Raina Telgemeier’s Roaming captures the bittersweet pulse of early adulthood through the story of three college friends reuniting for a trip to New York City. The graphic novel balances humor and tension as old bonds are tested, new feelings surface, and each character faces the quiet distance that grows between who they were and who they are becoming. With its expressive art and honest dialogue, Roaming turns a simple vacation into a tender portrait of friendship and change.
by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki
It’s dangerously easy to take a book like Roaming for granted. The third collaboration between Jillian and Mariko Tamaki, the story of three young travelers going to New York City in pursuit of their individual aspirations is a feat of well-executed understatement. The dialogue is quick and clever, but never once draws attention to its own cleverness. The social satire on race and gender is sometimes biting but never belabored. And even the art is an accomplishment in effective minimalism, using deceptively simple linework and a two-tone palette of sepia and gray to somehow suggest the bewildering exhilaration of a small dreamers in a big city.
It all works because, at this point in their careers, the Tamakis are as seasoned as pros can get: They can reduce their story and their cartooning to the bare essentials, but lose none of what makes it funny, engaging, and effortlessly readable. Roaming isn’t anyone’s attempt at a magnum opus, or a boundary-pushing experiment in comics form. It’s a graphic novel about imperfect characters, perfectly told, and we’re lucky to have it. -ZR
Roaming
$33$356% off $33 $33 at Bookshop$33 at Amazon
Monica
Monica is a haunting and inventive graphic novel that redefines what a comic can be. Daniel Clowes crafts interconnected stories that blur the boundaries between the surreal and the familiar, tracing a woman’s life through mystery, memory, and loss. Each chapter shifts tone and style, creating a mosaic of identity and longing that stays with the reader long after the final page.
by Daniel Clowes
Monica, the latest graphic novel from comics’ young-iconoclast-turned-elder-statesman Dan Clowes, is the artist’s most ambitious book to date, and very likely his best. On its most literal level, it’s a story told in historical vignettes about the life of the titular main character as she tries to piece together the lifelong mystery of her family history and the identity of her unknown father. That narrative is conveyed in a mosaic patchwork of different episodes that capture the tone and form of different eras of American history and comic book genres, all leading up to a (literally) apocalyptic climax that’s both horrifyingly inevitable and exhaustingly purposeless at the same time.
And if all of this sounds disconnected, the disconnection is the point: Monica is a book about the bleak march of American history, but it’s also a book about how all of us grope, with imperfect success, to find some kind of meaning in the bewildering shapelessness of our lives. It’s the work of an artist who’s getting older and knows it, and is becoming vastly better because of it. -ZR
Monica
$26 $26 $28 at Bookshop$26 at Amazon
What is the plot and review of Immortal X-Men by Kieron Gillen
Series Overview
Immortal X-Men, written by Kieron Gillen with art by Lucas Werneck and others, ran from 2022 to 2024 as a key Krakoa-era X-Men title. It centers on the Quiet Council, the 12 immortal mutant leaders ruling Krakoa, exploring their political intrigue, secrets, and moral failings amid resurrection protocols and mutant nation-building. The series dissects hubris, betrayal, and leadership collapse, building on Jonathan Hickman’s foundation.
Core Plot Summary
Each issue spotlights a council member’s perspective, starting with Mr. Sinister’s schemes for power post-Inferno, involving Destiny’s resurrection and Hope Summers’ rise. Arcs cover Judgment Day, where Eternals attack after resurrection secrets leak, and the Fall of X after Orchis destroys Krakoa at the Hellfire Gala. Key threads include Xavier’s grief, Shaw and Selene’s villainy, Exodus’ fanaticism, and Sinister’s humbled evolution, culminating in the council’s dissolution.
Critical Reception
Critics hailed Gillen’s character-driven drama, comparing it to Succession for its backstabbing and depth on underused figures like Exodus and Destiny. Reviews praised the nuanced politics, satisfying finale in Vol. 4, and themes of failure, calling it a Krakoan highlight. Fans on Reddit noted its fulfillment of Krakoa’s unethical promise, with strong dialogue and arcs earning it “best X-Men ongoing” status. Volumes like 3 and 5 were lauded for plot resolutions.
How does Immortal X-Men connect to Hickman’s Krakoa era storyline
Krakoa Era Foundation
Jonathan Hickman’s House of X and Powers of X (2019) launched the Krakoa era by establishing a mutant nation-state on the sentient island of Krakoa, complete with resurrection protocols via “The Five,” diplomatic gates, and a Quiet Council of mutant leaders blending heroes and villains.[ from prior] This setup made mutants effectively immortal, shifting X-Men stories from survival to nation-building, ethics of power, and cosmic threats, with Moira X’s secret time-looped lives adding hidden layers.
Immortal X-Men’s Direct Ties
Kieron Gillen’s Immortal X-Men (2022-2024) picks up post-Inferno, Hickman’s Krakoa capstone that exposed secrets like Destiny’s resurrection and Sinister’s chimeras. The series spotlights the Quiet Council-formed by Hickman with members like Xavier, Magneto, Sinister, and Apocalypse-diving into their immortal politics, backstabbing, and hubris as Krakoa’s rulers. It fulfills Hickman’s promises of ethical decay, like resurrection’s moral costs, while weaving in his lore such as Moira’s timelines and Vulcan’s mysteries.
Key Plot Connections
Gillen expands Hickman’s council dynamics: Sinister’s schemes echo Inferno’s fallout, Destiny’s visions challenge Krakoa’s utopia (as hinted in Hickman’s X-Men), and events like Judgment Day (Eternals vs. mutants over resurrections) stem from Krakoa’s secrecy. The Fall of X arc dissolves the council amid Orchis’ attack on the Hellfire Gala, resolving Hickman’s setup of fragile mu
