The best comics of 2017: a meta list

[UPDATE: added 9 more lists – Hollywood Reporter, Comicbook.com, AiPT, ComFor, Comicgate, Comic Report, Unwinnable, 2× WWAC, plus some comments below.]

[UPDATE: added 8 more lists – ANN, The Beat, CBC, Entertainment Weekly, Major Spoilers, PW Graphic Novel Critics Poll, Tanuki Bridge, The Verge; arrows next to entries indicate that their rank went up or down compared to the previous version.]

Another year draws to its close, and that means: best-of lists! Once more I’ve compiled all the comics lists I found online into one ‘master list’. This time I’ve only applied my own ‘weighted’ method that takes into account the rank of a title on each list by assigning points from 1 to 30 (see last year’s list for a more detailed explanation), but I have included the number of lists on which a title is found in brackets for fans of the ‘traditional’ method (and used this number to break ties). Sources are indicated at the bottom of this blogpost. Please note that this post will probably be updated a couple of times as new lists are published.

THE TOP 25 COMICS OF 2017:

1. My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris (335 points / 19 lists)
2. My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness by Nagata Kabi (210 / 10)
3. The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui (197 / 12)
4. Boundless by Jillian Tamaki (178 / 10)
5. Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads (152 / 8) ⇧
6. Spinning by Tillie Walden (151 / 8) ⇩
7. Batman by Tom King et al. (119 / 7) ⇧
8. S’enfuir. Récit d’un otage by Guy Delisle (117 / 8) ⇩
9. Black Hammer by Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston (116 / 6) ⇩
10. You & A Bike & A Road by Eleanor Davis (112 / 6) ⇧
11. Shade The Changing Girl by Cecil Castellucci et al. (104 / 8)
12. Sex Fantasy by Sophia Foster-Dimino (95 / 4)
13. Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang (90 / 4) ⇧
14. Everyone’s a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too by Jomny Sun (88 / 5) ⇧
15. The Mighty Thor by Jason Aaron et al. (88 / 4) ⇩
16. Coquelicots d’Irak by Brigitte Findakly and Lewis Trondheim (79 / 4) ⇧
17. My Brother’s Husband by Gengoroh Tagame (75 / 5) ⇧
18. Wonder Woman by Greg Rucka et al. (71 / 5) ⇩
19. Everything is Flammable by Gabrielle Bell (63 / 4) ⇩, tied with
    Siúil, a Rún by Nagabe (63 / 4) ⇩
20. –
21. Sticks Angelica, Folk Hero by Michael DeForge (63 / 5) ⇧
22. Golden Kamuy by Satoru Noda (60 / 3) ⇩
23. Black Bolt by Saladin Ahmed and Christian Ward (59 / 3) ⇩, tied with
    Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (59 / 3) ⇧
24. –
25. Le Rapport de Brodeck by Manu Larcenet (59 / 2) ⇧

Two observations from further down the list:

• It doesn’t seem to have been a particularly great year for (the international recognition of) German comics – the only one in the top 50 is Nick Cave by Reinhard Kleist (45 points / 3 lists) at #37. Part of the problem is that it takes so long for some German comics to be translated into English; if e.g. Ulli Lust’s Flughunde / Voices in the Dark would have come out in the same year in both English and German instead of 4 years later, it would have ranked much higher. The same is true for French and Japanese comics, of course.
• Speaking of Japanese comics: with only 4 of them in the top 25, there’s still a clear divide in comics readership. Manga on lower ranks include Yakusoku no Neverland / The Promised Neverland by Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu (50 / 2) at #33, and Fumetsu no anata e / To Your Eternity by Yoshitoki Ōima (49 / 2) at #34.

The following lists were evaluated: Adventures in Poor Taste, Amazon.com, Anime News Network, A.V. Club, Barnes & Noble (“new manga”, “comics”), The Beat (multiple mentions only), CBC, Chicago Public Library, ComFor (German), Comicbook.com, Comicgate (German), Comic Report (German, multiple mentions only), Entertainment Weekly, Forbes, Goodreads, Gosh (adult, kids), Guardian, The Hollywood Reporter, io9, Kono manga ga sugoi (English translation – male, female), Major Spoilers Podcast, NPR, Paste (kids), Publishers Weekly (Critics Poll), School Library Journal, Syfy Wire (ongoing), Tagesspiegel (German), Tanuki Bridge, Unwinnable, The Verge, Vulture, Washington Post, Women Write About Comics (big press, small press).

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