The 10 best comic book panels of 2022

The comedian guide panel is like an atom. With only a handful of them, you may construct something.

Surprising reveals, narrative mic drops — even comedic timing, in a medium during which timing itself is within the palms of the reader. The seek for a “finest panel” will not be the identical as a seek for “finest comedian.” It’s the search an ineffably placing second captured on the web page, a picture that forces a response from you even you probably have no thought what the comedian is about. Listed here are the ten comedian panels from 2022 that we are able to’t cease fascinated by.

(And for extra on what’s occurring within the pages of our favourite comics, be certain that to learn Monday Funnies, Polygon’s weekly listing of the books that our comics editor loved this previous week.)

Supergirl cradling Comet’s corpse

Supergirl: Girl of Tomorrow, Tom King, Bilquis Evely, Mat Lopes, Clayton Cowles

Picture: Tom King, Bilquis Evely, Mat Lopes, Clayton Cowles/DC Comics

The query isn’t “Is without doubt one of the finest panels of the 12 months in Supergirl: Girl of Tomorrow?” It’s “Which panel in Supergirl: Girl of Tomorrow do I select?” I’ve beforehand stated Girl of Tomorrow is essentially the most Sandman-like factor Tom King has written, and whereas some portion of that’s the semi-contained fable of every challenge, it’s additionally the craft that artist Bilquis Evely brings to the comedian’s worldbuilding, in an area journey by means of the inexplicable creatures of Star Wars fairly than the scientifically enumerated biomes of Star Trek.

However what makes Evely’s single panels wondrous is her compositions and her appearing. Artists have used the iconography of Superman to recreate Michelangelo’s Pietá earlier than, however Evely might have completed it finest, choreographing cape and clouds and solar onto the important pose. The place Evely attracts Kara Zor-El with a gaze arduous sufficient to pierce the reader’s coronary heart, Mat Lopes pops her irises with ice blue flecks, his work a fastidiously carried out symphony, emphasizing the essential even because it highlights Evely’s intricate linework.

Jen Walters off her heels

She-Hulk, Rainbow Rowel, Rogê Antônio, Rico Renzi, Joe Caramagna

Picture: Rainbow Rowel, Rogê Antônio, Rico Renzi, Joe Caramagna/Marvel Comics

Generally an amazing panel is three panels, like Rainbow Rowel and Rogê Antônio pulling off this small however excellent visible gag within the first challenge of their She-Hulk. We don’t consider a comic book guide panel as having its personal level of perspective, as a body of a film has a degree the place the digicam was positioned. However Rowel and Antônio present that it may be actually humorous if you happen to do.

The chic freeze frames of Do a Energy Bomb

Do a Energy Bomb, Daniel Warren Johnson

Picture: Daniel Warren Johnson/Picture Comics

The story of Do a Energy Bomb is that Daniel Warren Johnson bought into skilled wrestling for the primary time throughout the pandemic, and that is his love letter. There’s not a web page of Energy Bomb that’s ashamed or sheepish of its subject material, it’s all sincerity, all camp, all coronary heart, and all spectacle. However the place the comedian takes your breath away is motion.

Comics are a deceptively nonetheless medium, during which we use phrases like “movement traces” to imply “a developed iconography of summary traces that are invisible to the characters however point out to the reader that movement has occured.” Wrestling, then again, is a pastime during which motion — actually “wrestling strikes” — are the complete deal.

Johnson takes the attention of a Renaissance painter to Energy Bomb. He picks the precise moments that convey each earlier and impending movement; the precise level within the shot the place someone like Zack Snyder would swap to slo-mo; the second each voice in a crowd would gasp in unison — and blows a cut up second out on the web page in order that the stress and great thing about it hangs perpetually.

Not an offended god, however an offended good friend

Batman #127, Chip Zdarsky, Jorge Jimenez, Tomeu Morey, Clayton Cowles

Picture: Chip Zdarsky, Jorge Jimenez, Tomeu Morey, Clayton Cowles/DC Comics

Hollywood has made positive that everyone knows the iconography of an offended Superman — he floats impossibly within the sky, his eyes glowing a radioactively livid pink, a promise that appears can kill and perhaps he’ll too. And look, red-eye offended Superman is a temptingly robust visible. However Batman #127 says: It’s additionally a crutch.

What if as an alternative, Superman’s anger was righteous and managed, a protecting reflex? What if it wasn’t a burning laser, however an icy breath that douses a home fireplace and hangs within the air as he makes a closing try at deescalation? What if we all know that Superman is offended as a result of his eyes are merely these of a protector defending his good friend, fairly than an enraged god destroying his enemies?

Hitting the bottom operating

Saga #55, Brian Ok. Vaughan, Fiona Staples

Picture: Brian Ok. Vaughan, Fiona Staples/Picture Comics

Author Brian Ok. Vaughan and artist Fiona Staple’s epic is the exception that breaks each rule in American comics publishing — a success with Wednesday Warriors and trade-waiters alike that solely grows extra common over time, by no means loses narrative steam, and can most likely by no means get optioned for a cinematic adaptation. Not less than not till Hollywood is chill with an X-rated, hyperviolent, particular effects-heavy household journey.

In 2022 Saga confronted one other rule to interrupt: Getting back from a three-and-a-half 12 months hiatus with, if something, an even bigger viewers than the guide had when it paused in 2018. Much more outstanding, the one factor there actually was to say about Saga #55 was that it was simply pretty much as good as Saga #54.

It felt just like the guide had by no means left. And it’s a testomony to Vaughan and Staples’ abilities that the primary panel of their comeback is an easy reframing of the very first web page of their comedian, and a bounce cut-style time bounce, but nonetheless felt just like the pure subsequent step.

The eagerness of Victor Fries

Batman: One Dangerous Day — Mr. Freeze, Gerry Duggan, Matteo Scalera, Dave Stewart, Deron Bennett

Picture: Gerry Duggan, Matteo Scalera, Dave Stewart, Deron Bennett/DC Comics

It’s arduous to provide a well known story a contemporary retelling, however that’s what DC Comics has been doing all 12 months with it’s Batman: One Dangerous Day line: Handing the origin tales of the largest names in Batman’s Rogues Gallery over to the largest abilities working for the corporate. Batman: One Dangerous Day — Mr. Freeze stands out from its friends, not least due to Matteo Scalera’s stunning use of unfavourable area (to not point out the borrowing of Mike Mignola’s indelible character designs created for Batman: The Animated Sequence).

However credit score to author Gerry Duggan: He offers Scalera the area to work. Mister Freeze is plagued by full web page spreads, every worthy of framing. However this one stands out. The essence of a tragic villain’s turning level, distilled to a single, impeccably composed body.

How you can introduce your self

Step by Bloody Step, Si Spurrier, Matias Bergara, Mat Lopes

Picture: Si Spurrier, Matias Bergara, Mat Lopes/Picture Comics

Comedian books don’t have opening credit sequences, filled with scrolling phrases and scene setting montages — but when they did, this double web page unfold is unquestionably the place Si Spurrier and Matias Bergara’s names would seem. Spurrier and Bergara take a couple of pages to introduce the central duo of their opus — the bare baby and the armored guardian — after which pull out to introduce the comedian’s third character: the hostile, useful, wondrous world round them.

A part of the hook of Step by Bloody Step is that it’s utterly wordless, however this web page is the place Spurrier and Bergara remind their reader to be quiet, too. By taking a second away from persevering with the story to underscore their intentions and their abilities, Spurrier and Bergara are introducing themselves as a lot as their comedian.

Superman in a Delight cape

DC Delight 2022, Devin Grayson, Nick Robles, Triona Tree Farrell, Aditya Bidikar

Picture: Devin Grayson, Nick Robles, Triona Tree Farrell, Aditya Bidikar/DC Comics

Firms ought to keep out of Delight — and deep down, Massive Two superheroes are populist iconography, because the closest factor America has to trendy people heroes. We will acknowledge the reality of each of those concepts on the identical time. When it comes to story influence, it doesn’t get a lot stronger than making Superman into a possible PFLAG mum or dad.

And we are able to acknowledge that even when a “Superman” is Clark Kent’s son, fairly than Clark Kent himself, having Superman make out along with his boyfriend in mid air above a Delight parade whereas he wears a cape lined with each Delight flag the artist can match on it is potent iconography, and a strong assertion.

Judgment Day arrives

AXE: Judgment Day #4, Kieron Gillen, Valerio Schiti, Marte Gracia, Clayton Cowles

Picture: Kieron Gillen, Valerio Schiti, Marte Gracia, Clayton Cowles/Marvel Comics

AXE: Judgment Day was the most effective Marvel Comics spectacle in years, however there’s only one picture from the occasion sequence and its voluminous tie-ins that’s caught indelibly in my mind. It’s mortals disintegrating beneath the wrath of god, whereas the tiny silhouette of Captain America stalwartly raises his protect — and the cosmic forces flip the harmless in his arms to a husk anyway.

Judgment Day continually reminded the reader of the human stakes of the tip of the world, and the huge hole between the battle of common residents to keep away from god-meted carnage, and the super-strong, super-regenerative, in-many-cases-literally-deathless heroes who fail to guard them. Even Captain America, Marvel’s most iconic everyman, survives when each man round him is obliterated.

It’s a crucial dichotomy for a narrative the place two of Marvel’s strongest teams of superheroes — the Eternals and the Mutants — finally understand they need to change how they share their presents, and this single panel explains what simply took me over 100 phrases to say.

Hera’s prophecy

Marvel Girl Historia: The Amazons #2, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Gene Ha, Wesley Wong, Clayton Cowles

Picture: Kelly Sue DeConnick, Gene Ha, Wesley Wong, Clayton Cowles/DC Comics

The goddess Athena tells Hera, whose thousand eyes see a thousand futures, that she want to preserve the woman-avenging Amazons hidden from Zeus’ retribution “lengthy sufficient for girls to see justice.”

Hera sighs in unhappiness. “There might be no justice for girls. Not now.” Her lip curls and her brows furrow in divine disgust, as she imperiously raises her fan. “Not 100 years from now.”

Then you definately flip the web page.

Generally a panel is so brilliantly conceived, so superbly crafted, so flawlessly executed, so emphatically introduced in its unique type, that there’s merely no higher strategy to inform somebody how good it’s than to press a guide into their palms and beg, “Learn this, learn this, learn this.”