The 10 best comic book panels of 2022

The comic book panel is like an atom. With only a handful of them, you’ll be able to construct something.

Shocking reveals, narrative mic drops — even comedic timing, in a medium through which timing itself is within the arms of the reader. The seek for a “best panel” shouldn’t be the identical as a seek for “best comic.” It’s the search an ineffably hanging second captured on the web page, a picture that forces a response from you even when you’ve got no concept what the comic is about. Here are the 10 comic panels from 2022 that we will’t cease excited about.

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

Supergirl cradling Comet’s corpse

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

Against a backdrop of blinding sun and billowing clouds in a blue sky, a bloodied and battered Supergirl cradles the body of her companion Comet, his naked form wrapped in her tattered cape, and says “I don’t know. Maybe you just. need a little help,” in Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow.

The query isn’t “Is one of the best panels of the year in Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow?” It’s “Which panel in Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow do I choose?” I’ve beforehand stated Woman of Tomorrow is probably the most Sandman-like factor Tom King has written, and whereas some portion of that’s the semi-contained fable of every situation, it’s additionally the craft that artist Bilquis Evely brings to the comic’s worldbuilding, in an area journey by manner of the inexplicable creatures of Star Wars quite than the scientifically enumerated biomes of Star Trek.

But 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 accomplished it best, choreographing cape and clouds and solar onto the important pose. Where Evely attracts Kara Zor-El with a gaze laborious 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 necessary even because it highlights Evely’s intricate linework.

Jen Walters off her heels

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

Titania, with a stop sign resting casually on her shoulder, sneeringly asks how it is that Jen Walters keeps successfully reinventing herself, while she keeps “landing on my face!” A pissed Jen looks at her in silence for a panel. The next panel shows her feet, kicking off her purple heels. The next panel shows her face again, but cuts off the bottom of it because she’s shorter now. “Maybe it’s because you keep picking fights with Hulks,” she answers in She-Hulk #1 (2022).

Sometimes a fantastic panel is three panels, like Rainbow Rowel and Rogê Antônio pulling off this small however excellent visible gag within the first situation of their She-Hulk. We don’t assume of a comic book panel as having its personal level of perspective, as a body of a film has some extent the place the digicam was positioned. But Rowel and Antônio present that it may be actually humorous when you do.

The chic freeze frames of Do a Power Bomb

Do a Power Bomb, Daniel Warren Johnson

Lona Steelrose launches off the corner into her signature flying move, hanging suspended upside down in the air above the wrestling ring. Her opponent, a sentient orangutan, lies fearful in her shadow. The ref is gripping his head with both hands. The crowd is going absolutely insane. In Do A Power Bomb.

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

Comics are a deceptively nonetheless medium, through which we use phrases like “motion lines” to imply “a developed iconography of abstract lines which are invisible to the characters but indicate to the reader that motion has occured.” Wrestling, then again, is a pastime through which motion — actually “wrestling moves” — are the total deal.

Johnson takes the attention of a Renaissance painter to Power Bomb. He picks the precise moments that convey each earlier and impending movement; the precise level within the shot the place anyone like Zack Snyder would change 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 wonder of it hangs without end.

Not an offended god, however an offended pal

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

Superman is a dark silhouette, frost streaming from his mouth, only the whites of his eyes to communicate his disapproval. “I’m going to need you,” he says to the Failsafe robot, “to back away from my friend” in Batman #127 (2022).

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 purple, a promise that appears can kill and perhaps he’ll too. And look, red-eye offended Superman is a temptingly robust visible. But 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 hearth and hangs within the air as he makes a last 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 pal, quite than an enraged god destroying his enemies?

Hitting the bottom working

Saga #55, Brian Ok. Vaughan, Fiona Staples

“This is how an idea survives,” reads narration text, as Hazel runs from a voice accusing her of thievery, clutching her blue top hat to her head in Saga #55.

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

In 2022 Saga confronted one other rule to interrupt: Returning from a three-and-a-half yr hiatus with, if something, an even bigger viewers than the book had when it paused in 2018. Even extra exceptional, 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 book had by no means left. And it’s a testomony to Vaughan and Staples’ abilities that the primary panel of their comeback is a straightforward reframing of the very first web page of their comic, and a leap cut-style time leap, but nonetheless felt just like the pure subsequent step.

The ardour of Victor Fries

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

Depicted in icy blues and black negative space, Victor Fries falls to his knees in agony before the capsule that holds his sick wife in frozen stasis in Batman: One Bad Day — Mr. Freeze.

It’s laborious to present a well known story a recent retelling, however that’s what DC Comics has been doing all yr with it’s Batman: One Bad Day line: Handing the origin tales of the most important names in Batman’s Rogues Gallery over to the most important abilities working for the corporate. Batman: One Bad Day — Mr. Freeze stands out from its friends, not least as a result of of Matteo Scalera’s lovely use of adverse area (to not point out the borrowing of Mike Mignola’s indelible character designs created for Batman: The Animated Series).

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

How to introduce your self

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

A snowy landscape of the bank of a still and icy stream. On the left, a small, naked child reaches for the glowing fruit of a dangling plant. On the right, in the distance, a larger than life figure in a suit of black armor battles messily in the snow with a fanged monster in Step by Bloody Step.

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

Part of the hook of Step by Bloody Step is that it’s fully 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 comic.

Superman in a Pride cape

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

Corporations ought to keep out of Pride — and deep down, Big Two superheroes are populist iconography, because the closest factor America has to fashionable people heroes. We can acknowledge the reality of each of these concepts on the identical time. In phrases of story impression, it doesn’t get a lot stronger than making Superman into a possible PFLAG mum or dad.

And we will acknowledge that even when a “Superman” is Clark Kent’s son, quite than Clark Kent himself, having Superman make out together with his boyfriend in mid air above a Pride parade whereas he wears a cape lined with each Pride 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

Human bodies fall suspended, disintegrating in a blast from above. The small figure of Captain America raises his shield against the blast uselessly; the person he cradles against his chest is already a crumbling skeleton in AXE: Judgment Day #4.

AXE: Judgment Day was the best Marvel Comics spectacle in years, however there’s only one picture from the occasion collection and its voluminous tie-ins that’s caught indelibly in my mind. It’s mortals disintegrating underneath 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 top of the world, and the huge hole between the wrestle 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 — in the end notice they have to change how they share their items, and this single panel explains what simply took me over 100 phrases to say.

Hera’s prophecy

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

“Not a THOUSAND,” Hera roars, swinging her fan. Feathers fly off of it in the curve of the Golden Spiral, the feathers transform into birds, and behind all of it are scenes of women suffering and fighting through all history, in Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons.

The goddess Athena tells Hera, whose thousand eyes see a thousand futures, that she wish to preserve the woman-avenging Amazons hidden from Zeus’ retribution “long enough for women to see justice.”

Hera sighs in disappointment. “There will be no justice for women. Not now.” Her lip curls and her brows furrow in divine disgust, as she imperiously raises her fan. “Not a hundred years from now.”

Then you flip the web page.

Sometimes a panel is so brilliantly conceived, so fantastically crafted, so flawlessly executed, so emphatically offered in its unique kind, that there’s merely no higher approach to inform somebody how good it’s than to press a book into their arms and beg, “Read this, read this, read this.”

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