The best comic books of 2017

2017 has been, all up, a pretty great year for comic books. DC Comics ran high on their well-judged and hugely enjoyable DC Rebirth books, Valiant made huge strides in varying their titles and publishing a constant stream of fun, smart four-issue miniseries, and Image and Boom Studios ran neck-to-neck in launching interesting and inventive creator-owned books. Really the only publisher to struggle this year seems to have been Marvel who, despite some stand-out books, have found it very difficult to relaunch its books in a manner that actually grabs audiences. The current spate of new books are almost entirely scheduled for cancellation next March.

Under the cut are the books that grabbed my attention the most in 2017. To qualify, I had to have read three issues in the past 12 months. Some are returning to my Top 10 from last year, while others are new entries. It was actually very hard this year to whittle the year's best list down to just 10 books. I've added a few runners-up just to give them their due.

Top 10 films of 2016

This is a top 10 list with a pretty big caveat. I simply do not get the time to go to the cinema with anywhere near the kind of frequency with which I used to manage. In total I have managed to see just 27 films first released in 2016, and that really is not any kind of list from which to assemble a legitimate top 10. That said, the 10 I enjoyed the most are all films that I would enthusiastically recommend to others. My recommendation is to view this not as a proper "Top 10" - there are almost certainly films I have not yet seen that would supplant others on this list - but simply as a list of 10 films released last year that I think are well worth viewing.

The list got delayed by about a week because I took a while to successfully see Moana, and given my opinions on other Walt Disney animated features, it seemed a likely bet for a top 10 slot. Let's count them down from #10 to #1, and see if it made the list.

Top 10 comic books of 2016

2016 was a horror show year for celebrity deaths and international politics, but for what it is worth it was a sensational year for American comic books. A huge number of exceptional books were published over the past 12 months, which actually made whittling down my favourites to just a top ten about as difficult a task as it has ever been.

DC Comics really picked up their game in 2016 with the launch of Rebirth, a shift to fortnightly release on numerous key superhero books, and a tighter focus on characters and settings that the readership most wanted to see. Meanwhile Marvel struggled a little, releasing plenty of solid titles but staggering under the weight of delayed and generally invasive event miniseries like Secret Wars and Civil War II. What is most striking to me, however, is how despite the excellent books published by 'the big two', only one Marvel and one DC superhero universe book made it into my top ten. They may have done great work, but the independent publishers and creator-owned books were generally producing even better material. Like I said, 2016 was a sensational year for American comic books. Here are my personal favourites.