Well, it’s December, which means the end of the year, which means: time to talk about our favorite stuff from the year! Without further ado, here are my favorite comics from 2012 (in no particular order):

—Scott Pilgrim color editions! OK, this content isn’t new, and Scott Pilgrim has historically been one of my ALL-TIME FAVORITE series (second only to Love and Rockets), but these color versions are really great. They’re bigger and in hardback, making for a more impressive presentation, plus they are in color! This is especially helpful when you lend the series to friends who don’t usually read comics and who have trouble telling the characters apart. Now you can easily see which girl has pink hair and is therefore the love interest!

—Drama by Raina Telgemeier! I think I actually liked this better than her very well-known and perpetually best-selling memoir Smile. It’s the story of a bunch of middle school theater kids dealing with drama in all its definitions — with super-cute Telgemeier art! Perfect for kids of all ages.

—A Wrinkle in Time by Hope Larson. A really stellar adaptation of a classic book — Larson brings the characters to life in a whole new way. This is a really beautiful version of the story, just in time for its 50th anniversary. I bought this for my favorite literate small child for Hanukkah. That’s how excited I was to pass it on!

—God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls by Jaime Hernandez. Look, Jaime Hernandez is my all-time favorite comic writer, so anything by him is basically automatically on my best-of-the-year list. And this is no exception! Here’s Hernandez doing superheroes, — only most of them are coming out of retirement to save the world from one last crisis. Multiple teams of lady superheroes collide! Can they save the day with the help of comic book fan Maggie??

—Princeless by Jeremy Whitley. Another great one for the younger set, this story involves a young princess who’s forced to live in a tower and wait for a prince to rescue her . . . until she gets tired and waiting, and takes her dragon guard for some adventures! Super cute!

—Finally, two of my favorite ongoing series are wrapping up — 20th Century Boys had its last volume come out, and this crazy conspiracy story ended on a high note. And Locke and Key is heading into the home stretch. This family drama-cum-horror-story has been on my end of the year list for several years running, with good reason. I can’t wait to see how it turns out!

And before I sign off, let me alert you to what will probably be one of my favorite books of 2013: a choose-your-own-Hamlet brought to us by Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics. Watching comic book people run successful Kickstarter campaigns to get their books published/distributed has been pretty fascinating the past couple of years, but this Hamlet book is on track to be the most successful Kickstarter campaign of all time. Mainly because it looks SO AWESOME! Enjoy!

 

(Thumbnail by tmatt1075 via Flickr)

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