My favourite article to write every year! The Irish Times' Comics & Graphic Novels of 2018. Harder and harder to keep down to a printable word count since the world may be a pus-filled bedsore but, in comics at least, we're living in a mighty age.
irishtimes.com/culture/books/…
irishtimes.com/culture/books/…
To go deeper on the selections, @TomKingTK was unmissable for Mister Miracle but I particularly loved his Batman this year, especially the COLD DAYS mini-arc which has Bruce Wayne pontificating at his moralistic best. 
He and Lee Weeks (@Inkdropinc) turn what could be a quotidian jury duty thing into something which really maps the frontiers of Batman's consistent, if wilfully contradictory, ethics.
Immortal Hulk by Al Ewing and Joe Bennett takes the surly green giant's big plot drag - he can't die so what's the point - and it turns it into an existential horror plot - I cannot die so what IS the point? Starts off monster-of-the-week and broadens beautifully out from there.
Oh Squirrel Girl. My jewel, my darling. More laughs than a prestige TV comedy could hope for, delivered at a rate that would embarrass 30 Rock or Naked Gun. And so much bloody charm. Ryan North and Erica Henderson craft tales of real care and we are lucky to have them.
I mean ffs there are more jokes on the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl's CREDITS page than most books have in their main pages. Pour. It. Into. My. Veins.
Perhaps because it's been going for five years, the temptation is to just say Saga continues to be Saga, but it really is impressive how well it keeps momentum while developing plots and - gasp - shedding beloved characters.
Image had a strong year and among my favourite new works was Sarah Vaughan and Leila Del Duca's spellbinding and seductive SLEEPLESS. It also boasts some of the finest art of any title on the stands and the secrets of its core lore (clore?) still has me hooked.
Gonna break from the piece and really emphasise how hard it was to include all the titles I wanted to. I buy all these myself so I'm limited by cash and time so 1. COMICS PEOPLE, SEND ME STUFF and 2. There were loads of titles I just didn't have space for, including...
ICE CREAM MAN by W Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo. Creepy anthology from Image, which boasts that chewing sense of horror I adored in the likes of Locke & Key or Clean Room. Moving, funny, and sometimes genuinely nasty, it would have made the cut if I wrote slightly leaner.
Unfortunately another shelved pick was also on Image, and genuinely was among my favourites of the year, Joseph Keatinge and Wook Jin Clark's GORGEOUS chef-fantasy-manga mystery FLAVOR. A walled city filled with food-mad locals, fantasy restaurants and underground spice markets..
Flavor has that quality you always look for in a title - a world and players that immediately feel lived in and real, with enough details to reel you and in, but enough witheld to keep you returning for every reveal. And ffs look at that art. JUST LOOK AT IT!
Right so back to the list. One of my big discoveries of the year - AKA someone on here told me to read it - was LONG LOST by @MatthewErman and @lisa_sterle. A gorgeous familial horror that winds its twisty threads via beautifully human dialogue and superhumanly beautiful art.
LONG LOST is at home in itself whether the topic is motherly abandonment, woodland zombie creatures or the perils of a pooping pup. This is subtle, lovely storytelling that rewards multiple reads.
Few things I've ever read make me grin ear to ear like WHY ART? by Eleanor Davis. God I adore it. Starts off as such a funny, silly thing, then becomes one of the most poignant, life-affirming AND STILL FUNNY stories you'll ever read. Have you any idea how hard that is to do???
Reading WHY ART? gives you the reassuring nudge that weird, difficult concepts and narrative choices can still be instantly comprehended so long as they're wielded with care and wit. Also it has giant papier macher heads.
Staying with the expansion of minds, ON A SUNBEAM by @TillieWalden is pretty much a must-buy if you love super dope shit. It's genre-defying, dense storytelling with cosmic scope and a human core. It's also TOO BEAUTIFUL FOR WORDS. You deserve this.
Also, not to sound like an Irish mammy about it, but ON A SUNBEAM is also super luxurious in size and presentation so is a delight to read over a few days. This is a weirdly specific benefit to cite, but so much of comics is bitty and piecemeal and this felt BIG and SPECIAL.
Believe everything you've read about Nick Drnaso's pummeling, poignant, near-perfect SABRINA, but whatever you do, just read it. This is a story, at once subtle and sparse, restrained and infinite. A book that hangs around your head for days after, like a slowly airing wound.
Ending my Irish Times Comics Of The Year, though, is my favourite of 2018, @MKupperman's majestic and moving memoir ALL THE ANSWERS, which traces his father's life through his childhood as a Quiz Kid to his decidedly aloof performance as a parent.
ALL THE ANSWERS balances small scale family dynamics with astounding tales from the bafflingly big time celebrities his father orbited as a child. Moving, memorable, painful, funny, it shows exactly how comics can scratch the deepest corners of ourselves.
I believe the breadth and depth of comics storytelling far outpaces where it's been at any point in my lifetime. I also think people agree (#1 baaaaby) and might be up for reading more about what's out there on a more regular basis. And I would TOTALLY receive payment to do that.
Anyway - there were as I said, loads of other books I loved this year which just couldn't make the cut. A seriously high recommendation goes to Hartley Lin's YOUNG FRANCES. Which has an uncanny knack for realising an outwardly dry world and rendering it vibrant and fascinating.
The YOUNG FRANCES of the title is Frances Scardale, star of Lin's Pope Hat series, a young solicitor making waves at her work, surrounded by the mundane trappings, and tribes, of office life. These are captured with rare brio and his insanely toothsome line drawing style.
