The 12 Best Graphic Novels and Comics of 2022

I found this book to be so deeply beautiful, translated from French by Montana Kane. An itinerant bookstore owner and a retired city mayor have been in love for decades and finally do something about it in their twilight years. Told in reverse order, Lafebre slowly reveals the ups and downs of their distant relationship and origin story.

This was the biggest event on the Marvel Comics calendar this year, and it definitely lived up to the hype. With Druig as Prime Eternal, he declares mutants as Deviants, setting the full force of the Eternals against mutantkind. The Avengers try to help, resurrecting a dead Celestial, who then decides to test all of Earth. Will they be worthy of survival or all perish together?

Surely when you think of The Walking Dead, you think of young readers, right? With Clementine, that’s exactly what you get. Set in Robert Kirkman’s zombie universe, Clementine is a teenager trying to put her past trauma behind her. Then she meets Amos, and the two try to make it to Vermont with dreams of a walker-free zone run by like-minded teens.

I wrote extensively about this comic a while back, and it still holds up as one of the best comics of 2022. This 100-page special contains a dozen eight-page stories about LGBTQIA+ characters, written and drawn by LGBTQIA+ creators. This book is as ambitious as it is good.

While not quite as expansive as AXE: Judgment Day, Devil’s Reign is pretty epic even as it focuses on Marvel’s New York City. Years of planning have paid off for Kingpin, who has successfully won the seat of the mayor of NYC. Now he’s targeting the heroes of the Big Apple like Daredevil and Spider-Man. Oh, and he has an army of supervillains and his own Thunderbolts at his command.

The Flash has been around in DC Comics for a long time. Like any long-running character, there have been up and down years, and 2022 was one of the best for DC’s speedster. Adams and company put Wally West back in the red jumpsuit and recaptured the magic of the Flash family, speeding through worlds and time with brilliant storytelling.

The X-Men are a perennial favorite of mine. When Jonathan Hickman decided to step aside after breathing new life into the mutants, many were skeptical. I should have trusted Kieron Gillen, who navigated the change by leaning into how controversial the X-Men’s newfound immortality can be, as well as how it can be leveraged in fascinating ways.

Feminism and horror collide in this wild and gruesome ride of a horror comic. Marion Angela Weber needs to escape the booze, so she and her sister head to a feminist retreat. An assault on their first night changes everything, though, awakening a hunger in Marion and a horrifying transformation. Will anyone survive Marion’s monstrous new form?

This story is so weird and so genius — similar to Chew, if I think about it. The Monkey Meat company has built a corporate empire out of selling cans of, you guessed it, monkey meat. Now they have their own private, hyper-capitalistic island where they perform bizarre, supernatural experiments. Needless to say, the citizens of this island are…interesting.

Chip Zdarsky again? Yes, he had a banner year, and you need to read this detective comic ASAP. Easton Newburn is a PI with unusual clientele. He works for rival crime families, loyal to none, and that means every case is more dangerous than the last.

If you don’t know about Saga already, you’re living under a comic book rock. It’s one of the absolute best comics out there, blending science fiction, fantasy, and family drama in perfect balance. After a long hiatus, Saga made its return early in 2022, and the comic book world is better for it.

Whether you enjoyed Disney’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law series or not, Rainbow Rowell’s take on the character has been an incredible ride. No longer “savage” (that’s a whole other story), Jen Walters is trying to be a superhero and rebuild her life as a lawyer and friend. We all know how well that tends to go for most superheroes, and Jen is no exception.