Best of 2023
As you all can see I wanted to make this thing as truly all-encompassing as I could, so let's get to it. My thoughts will be a little shorter this time than last year for some of these; the broad point remains 'check these out', with nothing listed in any particular order unless otherwise noted. Comics are notables, everything else is everything I watched/played/etc. this year to the best of my recollection.
Comics
Along with keeping up with 2023's output I had a few big readthroughs last year, mainly Bleach a ways into the Arrancar arc, the oeuvre of Tille Walden, and inexplicably even to myself, every solo Kon-El/Conner Kent Superboy title (excepting the New 52 take which I understand turned out to ultimately be a different thing). Among my other library reading I particularly loved Blue Period (WHICH AS RECENTLY NOTED I HAVE BEEN WAITING ON THE FIFTH VOLUME OF SINCE NOVEMBER), Boxers & Saints, This One Summer and (I think during this last year) Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, and the remarkable comic artifact of Lynd Ward's Novels in Woodcuts.
Honorable mentions
Didn't head-over-heels love but very much worth noting: The Seasons Have Teeth, Parasocial, Boy's Weekend, The Unlikely Story of Felix and Macabber, Children of the Vault, All Against All, Danger and Other Unknown Risks, Behold, Behemoth, Waller vs. Wildstorm, Go! Go! Loser Ranger, Eden's End, "In Xanaduum...", Hungry Ghost, Peacemaker Tries Hard!, The Infinity Particle, Swan Songs, Ultimate Invasion + Ultimate Universe, The Mysteries, Rare Flavours, Now Let Me Fly: A Portrait of Eugene Bullard, Cuckoo, Eden II
Special distinction in the field of pizza comics: Moon Knight #25, Big Game which thankfully wrapped before Millar went full shithead on main, Thunderbolts #1
Mostly a 2022 comic: 20th Century Men, Goodbye, Eri (read last year but released physically this year), The Boxer, Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise, Agent of W.O.R.L.D.E., Sleeping While Standing (which I could have sworn was a 2023/2024 release - was it reissued this year? My store got a new copy!), Matchmaker
Seal of approval in the field of Superman comics: Superman vs. Meshi, Superman: Lost, Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor #1
Favorite regular monthly ongoings: Detective Comics, Fantastic Four, The Flash once Spurrier/Deodato took over, The Immortal Thor, Ice Cream Man
A few favorite single issues outside the titles listed above: Immortal X-Men #10, Batman/Superman: World's Finest #12, Venom #18 + #24-25, Saint John #1, Marvel Zombies: Black, White & Blood #1
Year's favorites
Achewood: THE KING HAS RETURNED. LONG LIVE THE KING.
Danger Street #9: I'll surely reread Danger Street as a whole at some point, and I'll probably like it a lot, but issue #9 is the apex of Tom King's career. It may not be the single best issue he has ever written, but it is the one I am most convinced stylistically that no one else ever could have written but him.
Jon Kent: Rebirth: A fancomic by @solointhewinter exploring the obviously undredged emotional implications of DC's short-lived Superman II; this isn't just vindication for my longstanding crank take that the character would have been phenomenal if handled well instead of blatantly left to die, but it feels like a coming-out party for an incredibly promising young talent. Clunky in bits in the way you'd expect from an amateur putting out this kind of OGN-sized work, but really, really wrenching and effective stuff and I sure hope I'll get to see far more from her in the future.
Ayashimon (released this year in the US): A perfect little self-aware sugar-rush action comic, gone too soon but thankfully managing to wrap itself up coherently and satisfactorily given the circumstances.
Riddler: Year One: Jesus Christ, how is Paul Dano this good at comics and how had I never heard of Stevan Subic before? They for real need to do something for Image or Fantagraphics or whatnot, this utter unabated descent into Hell should be a blank check at any publisher as proof they can punch miles above 'movie tie-in vanity project'.
Clementine: Book Two: Year's new Tille Walden, pretty much in by default. Kirkman loves his 'I'm rich enough that I can fuck around like this with the direct market' stunts like Die! Die! Die!'s midnight reveal and launch or the printed shitpost that is Solid Blood #17, but getting Walden for your spinoff video game's spinoff OGN trilogy because you simply can is the true flex.
Crow Time, Castle Swimmer, and assorted webcomics: As subscribers saw in the last post I actually keep up with a lot of webcomics - it's where my little-shown schmaltzy side tends to indulge itself - and those were enjoyable as always, my two favorites of the year being the consistently charming and engaging Castle Swimmer and the essentially perfect Crow Time. Special mention to Mage & Demon Queen and Night Owls & Summer Skies, which both wrapped up this last year.
Monica: A secret: I read Ice Haven and Death Ray as a teenager and thought they sucked, so I've long held the smug private belief that Dan Clowes isn't really all that. Unfortunately this is a towering, heart-shattering achievement, an intimate and all-encompassing and devastating portrait of a human life, so I must rescind my longstanding contempt. Which fuckin' sucks, y'all.
Girl Juice: Best comedy comic out there right now by leaps and bounds, Bunny and Britney's three boyfriends are the collective sensational character find of 2023.
Mobilis: My Life with Captain Nemo: Juni Ba's other OGN this year(!) was nice, but this was the real stand-up-and-cheer entry. At turns thrilling, wholesome, and haunting, Ba's one of the supreme cartoonists of our time and anything he does is a must-see.
Roaming: I didn't personally love it quite as much as the Tamaki cousins' previous collaboration but as a portrait of a feeling, of a brief moment in time where the world feels porous and charged and unknowable, it can stand strong with anything you care to put it next to.
Dandadan: My favorite fight comic of the moment, it's more than a little awkwardly horny for a comic about teenagers (even if I'm certain the teenage audience is more than fine with it) but it simply kicks undeniably stupendous amounts of ass even as it makes you cackle, ironically anchored by a really sweet and deeply wholesome central (pre-)romantic relationship.
Akane-banashi: One of the most unconventional series I've checked out in these early days of really going for manga in earnest, but the ways it's been managing to wring drama, top-class comics storytelling, and fascinating granular detail out of how it depicts the central artform works really well for me. I'm not positive if it would've made it into my favorites of the year in a vacuum, but I suppose I'm giving it a few bonus points for excitement if it continues to keep up the pace and further develop everything it's introduced thus far.
The Way of the Househusband: Everyone and their mother knows this is the best straightforward gag comic out there (though I've been hearing good things about Bocchi the Rock!), and that hasn't suddenly changed.
Bea Wolf: Don't know if it counts for or against this as a comic and me as a critic that I thought 'holy cow, this feels like a proper epic in all its dopiness' and didn't realize until the Afterward that this was a blatant Beowulf riff, when I have experienced that story before. Either way though get this into the hands of every kid you know and also your own, I could scarcely have loved it more.
untitled: Jesus fucking Christ (and I'm assuming that while it says it was written in 2020, it's just now been illustrated, so I'm counting it as 2023). Very serious self-harm and gore trigger warnings on that one, folks.
Mimosa: I'm surprised I'm finding myself putting this with all these other top-tier comics, but the net of relationships here in all their stickiness and pettiness and love and weakness and honesty feels like something that's going to stay with me for awhile.
In Limbo: My favorite memoir comic of the year, easy. Lee's writing is engaging and excruciating and unflinching but it's their art that really captivates me here. Like a shocking sight through a frosted windowpane; as inclined to swing between hazy and unforgivingly clear, as powerful and true, as memory.
untitled: Perhaps on the short list of what could be called perfect comics.
The Chromatic Fantasy: While reading this I found myself thinking of one of the comments on Akira Toriyama's passing, that if his body of work proves anything it's to go wholly and unapologetically for your own aesthetic. By that metric H.A. has a towering success here, the landscape he molds utterly unique and joyfully intoxicating.
Shubeik Lubeik: Just about everyone’s favorite comic of the year and for good reason, and for that matter one of the closest things I've seen to the kinds of comics I'd like to make myself in its construction. Outstanding near-perfect stories three times in a row succeeding on pretty vastly different terms while still functioning as a whole, I imagine her design work pays better than the comics but I sure still hope Deena Mohamed finds reason to make more in the future.
The Horizon: Prior to my beloved The Boxer JH did several other manhwa, and this one finally got translated and released physically, and superlatives largely fail. Devastating. Magnificently crafted. Fully reaching the nigh-religious experience it's trying to lead you towards. For sure a contender for my favorite comic of the year, if not for...
a Guest in the House: I don't know for sure whether it'd beat the prior two in a 'fair fight', but as those were existing works that were translated whereas this actually dropped this year period, I'm giving this the winning roll of the dice in terms of '2023 comics'. A comic on writhing inside a life that feels at a wrong angle to the universe, and how easy it is to excuse and be strung along and hollowed out by anyone who might seem like an out, not only gorgeous but using colors in ways I believe I have never seen before in the medium. If I'm giving it to any single thing, a Guest in the House is my favorite comic of 2023.
...I didn't mean for it to be 23 for 2023 the way I did 22 for 2022, but that seems to be how it worked itself out.
Movies
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One: Henry Czerny's "Ethan the next world war isn't gonna be a cold one, it's gonna be a shooting war, it's gonna be a ballistic war over a rapidly shrinking ecosystem. It's gonna be a war for the last of our dwindling energy, drinkable water, breathable air. Whoever controls the Entity controls the truth. The concepts of 'right' and 'wrong' can be clearly defined for everyone for centuries to come...your days of fighting for the so-called 'greater good'...are over." deserves to be remembered as one of the great ham monologues of our time.
Barbie: Fun movie but bullshit that at no point did the Kens angrily declare that they aren't DOLLS, they're ACTION FIGURES.
Killers of the Flower Moon: Ernest giving away the very last of his soul at the end because he is deep down, at the core of who he is, still a stupid enough motherfucker to think he can get at least a little bit away with it is gonna stay with me forever.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: I liked it a lot - in fact, think I clicked with it more than the first one, Miles felt like a much more central and distinct lead this time around - but not enough to be a big-time 'well I liked it' guy about it amidst debate.
Asteroid City: I guess I've seen three Wes Anderson movies at this point, huh? Not that many - I should still do The Royal Tenenbaums someday if nothing else - but still enough I'm slightly surprised.
Shin Ultraman (US release this year): Rules.
Shin Kamen Rider: Rules even harder imo, though I'm sad the 'post-credits scene' I got - putting shots from the movie side-by-side with the shots from the original series they were recreating - was apparently a feature of the theatre chain I watched it at rather than universal.
Creed III: Pretty near perfect movie, for sure an astounding directorial debut and I can't wait to see what MBJ does next, that's gonna be kind of hard to ever watch again when it so banks on the ability of Jonathan Majors to radiate overwhelming discomfort.
John Wick: Chapter 4: I can't believe they strung together a coherent character arc by implication and action across these four movies of nonstop slaughter and that it all culminates on him saving the fucking dog the way he couldn't the first time. I actually caught 1 and 2 years after the fact because while I couldn't originally stomach the dog biting it, by Parabellum it was clear this was A Thing and I needed to catch up; that one I then saw on one of its last theatrical showings in my area. Getting to close out this miracle series with a proper big screen for the first time for me? I may have been late, but I couldn't have been happier with my own experience.
Justice League X RWBY: Deeply mediocre aside from a few inspired character bits but also the universe conjured this two-parter into existence solely for me so it still makes me very happy. Also Yang somehow manhandling the entire JL for a few moments there basically confirms Goku solos the DCU, so I guess that's WB's official surrender.
Merry Little Batman: Not great but I liked Luke Wilson's doofy dad Batman with his hilariously mangled torso.
Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom: Went to this one for my dad's birthday, the definition of a two out of five star movie. Bumped up to three stars because Orm the Ocean Master as played by Patrick Wilson Naruto runs at one point and it ends up being the cleverest bit in the movie, but back down to two because it doesn't have the balls to actually kill Aquababy.
The Boy and the Heron: My last movie of the year and somehow my first Miyazaki movie because when I was six I thought Spirited Away sounded boring. This seems like it was a poor place to start as an epic deeply reflective on a career I was not witness to, and also I think I was kinda sleepy that day, but I intend to watch some of his prior work in the future and return to this with clearer eyes.
Deathtrap: The main non-2023 movie I saw last year, a 1982 comedy-thriller starring Michael Caine and a year-before-Superman-III Christopher Reeve. Completely rules, can't recommend it enough, don't look up the plot before watching.
Oppenheimer: It's the boring answer - I should probably say Killers of the Flower Moon, and hey, that movie is excellent! - but I can't pretend anything but the Christopher Nolan movie about the Terrible Work of Great Men shaping and dooming our world conveyed in large part through science lectures was my favorite movie of the year.
TV
Doctor Who/My Adventures With Superman/It's A Sin/Inside Man: Hey, you all read about those!
Rick and Morty: I didn't expect to bother with this at all - recast or not, Roiland left a horrific pall over the entire affair - but it's one of the couple shows I watch with my dad and he was still interested so I figured I'd watch a few, and oh ok it turns out this was maybe its best season in years. Huh. As the Lord's I think one normal Rick and Morty fan, in that I watch it and like it and then don't think about it again until it's back, that's fairly neat. I even thought the Ice T sequel episode was, like, fine.
Invincible: Man I got two episodes into S2 and fell off, couldn't even hit the benchmark of everything that aired in 2023 for this. I'll try the rest sometime but even having liked the comic I'm worried this might be a My Hero Academia situation where it turns out there's not really that much juice left after all once the wildly engaging Superman-Dad isn't regularly center stage anymore.
RWBY: Maybe up there with Volume 4 as my favorite of the series, what a goddamn coup for a perennially harried staff working through the pandemic and with a reduced episode count. I'm so happy CRWBY is apparently gonna be able to keep their jobs and keep on keeping on, and for that matter that I'll now be able to freely recommend the show to some friends now that it's no longer joined to Rooster Teeth. Does this mean the JL crossover is going to be semi-lost media though?
Letterkenny: The other big show I was watching with dad, can't say it wasn't organically time to conclude but I will truly miss every one of these weirdoes.
And RE: 2023 stuff I didn't see, I have no doubt I'll go back at some point and do Succession and The Boys, and probably The Bear.
Books
(Not specifically stuff that came out in 2023 like the above, just what I read this year)
The Ballad of Black Tom/Illuminations/This Is How You Lose The Time War/The Day of the Doctor: Wrote about these on here after I read them. Time War is why I read relatively little imo, blame the library for taking forever to get it for me.
The Atlas Six: I got a few chapters in, weathering my disappointment that I misunderstood the description and the premise wasn't nearly as wide-ranging genre-wise as I had thought, only to realize it kinda sucked anyway and bail.
The Obelisk Sky: Very good book but apparently unlike most I didn't like it as much as the first.
Babel: Read the first two 'books', absolutely remarkable, completely love it, but I stalled out to read and watch, well, a bunch of the stuff up above for this piece. Looking forward to getting back to it!
I also tried the infamous webnovel Worm somewhere in there, and actually liked it a lot but it quickly became clear there was going to be more going on than I could keep track of.
Misc.
Games: Got a PS5 this year, resent that after assuming I was being a savvy consumer by waiting until it'd be cheaper I still had to grab it at full price and I was still probably lucky to get one at all. Astro's Playroom might be one of my favorite games of all time tbh, the type of platformer I've been missing for years and years (Yooka-Laylee being a false grail in this department) and converted me instantly from 'ooo, so HAPTIC FEEDBACK is the big new thing, sure pal' to 'where do I sign up to be one of Elon's brainchip monkeys, I now believe in The Future™'. Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales was a lot of fun but if anything it being relatively close to the original got me off on the immediate wrong foot with starting Marvel's Spider-Man 2 proper right after given its significant combat overhaul. I think 2 suffers a lot for rehashing the beats of well-trod stories in a way the prior entries mostly didn't - even if it's threading them together ingeniously and frequently improving on previously lacking concepts - and there are obvious technical issues from the rushed development so blatant even I found them intrusive. However, they somehow managed to make swinging even better yet again, so it's still arguably the best superhero video game of all time. Still no real improvement after 23 years of 3D Spider-Man games on wall-crawling though.
Web originals (fiction): Decided to watch Skibidi Toilet so as to be down with the kids and y'know what? Pretty great, the kids are onto something with that. On the podcast end my much-loved Moonbase Theta, Out came to an excellent conclusion, while Welcome to Night Vale keeps trucking along, and I really enjoyed the wildly high concept (albeit in a different way I would usually use the term) Are You Afraid of the Dark Universe? despite familiarity with literally none of the source material.
Web originals (nonfiction): Like the rest of the internet I wound up watching hbomberguy's Plagiarism and You(Tube), and haha thank goodness that is not a concern I specifically have ever been on the receiving end of. Some More News remains a semi-weekly favorite, and of Patrick Willems' output I was especially taken with what I'd call his 'collapse' series last year of A.I. Filmmaking Is Not The Future. It's A Grift., Everything Is Content Now, Who Is Killing Cinema - A Murder Mystery, and When Movie Stars Become Brands. I don't think Nobbles the Content Gobbler has that Warmbo juice, but in fairness, I suppose that serves the bit. And besides, who...dare I ask, what...could?
Writing progress: I completed two scripts in 2023! The horror one I mentioned awhile ago was offered to a friend to be completed at her leisure, the more recent one has been taken up once again by David Lee Ingersol. I have ideas for more shorts I intend to work on this year; the long term plan if I haven't mentioned is to get enough shorts together to have the equivalent of a physical single issue I can show around as proof that hey maybe this David Mann has some goods and could be trusted to do some work well.
Oh my god this is finally done. As far as 2024 goes I've batted around potential new Whowatch-style projects with Sean and Justin, but for the time being I've got some stuff in the tank I wanna get through, including at long last the second Patreon poll on what I should write about in a future piece!