by Arpad Okay, Kate Kowalski, and Jarrod Jones. *Reading Watchmen upside-down* Oh, hello! I didn’t see you there. *Sets book down* Did you know that DoomRocket, your second- or possibly third-favorite review site, launched 10 years ago this month? 10 years! That’s a long time to do anything, let alone write opinions meant for strangers. We’ve sure reviewed a lot of things in that time — some we liked, some we didn’t, and some we loved. This feature is about the stuff we’ve loved, whether we’ve written about them previously, or not.
DOOMROCKET TOP 10 is how we’re going to celebrate 10 years of this site. Put simply, it’s our way of sharing with you all the things that gave us a charge of excitement and comfort — or, at the very least, kept us going for the last decade. To kick off this minor event, we here at DoomRocket have put on our nostalgic, rose-tinted shades to reminisce over the last 10 years’ worth of the comics that rocked us, in ways both big and small.
OUR FAVORITE COMICS OF THE LAST 10 YEARS
Lodger. (David Lapham, Maria Lapham, Black Crown/IDW Publishing) Lodger is crime comics from Shelly Bond’s now tragically defunct boutique imprint, Black Crown, which synthesized music with comics and teamed seasoned creators with new blood. Lodger broke convention in the latter case — David and Maria Lapham have long been responsible for, among many other things, Stray Bullets — and as for the former, the name’s a tribute to David Bowie. Lodger was a shifting of gears for Black Crown, a jet-black musing on revenge that turned out to be one of the more unforgettable reading experiences of the last 10 years. The Laphams, at peak powers, introduced us to Ricky Toledo, her gold-plated revolver, and the cunning, face-changing serial killer she aimed to put down forever. There continues to be nothing else like it. — JJ
Bark Bark Girl. (Michael Furler, Peow Studio) There’s no good time to lose your dog, but during the only days your constantly procrastinating ass has left to study for an important exam, uh, could be the worst. Bark Bark Girl keeps stalling, revisiting old artwork instead of facing reality. Funny and relatably harrowing. The joyously eclectic art style is a blend of retro and computer-age aesthetics, different comics in the comic fighting over space on the page. It’s Pantone precision with pixels on pulp paper, uniquely imagined and executed. Furler’s is a superior work of cartooning and a magical object in print. — AOK
Monstress. (Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda, Image Comics) Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda’s Monstress is some of the most beautifully ornate and original work I’ve encountered in the last 10 years. Liu’s concept for the saga and its mythology is rooted in Eastern legend and folklore, dressed in early 20th-century steampunk, where its main power players are the matriarchal leaders of its various warring factions — a refreshing gender ratio flip for such a grand and serious saga. Monstress is a complicated world laden with historical conflicts, which Takeda depicts in exquisite detail and a gorgeous sepia-toned palette. A true epic worth revisiting. — KK
The New World. (Aleš Kot, Tradd Moore, Heather Moore, Clayton Cowles, Image Comics) In the far-flung future, the heartland of America is a dusty no man’s land and California is a techno-corporate paradise. People didn’t change. Stella and Loki don’t want what the future offers — they want love and peace. They’ll make war to get it. The New World is a jarring psych-fusion of prescient concepts distilled to their purest essence: Corporations take, the wealthy uphold the status quo, and the people simmer until they’re brought to a boil. Living is cynical, but Kot finds beauty in its most unlikely places. The Moores make our eyes swim in them. My desert-island comic, to be read even if the bombs go off. Its dream of love isn’t radical; it’s human. — JJ
IRL. (Jen Wang, Square Fish) A young gamer uncovers the slimy underbelly of third-party microtransactions; she learns data-mining is labor befriending a miner. Trying to be the main character, she screws things up. Then, with a newly humbled perspective, she uses her power to facilitate the workers’ real needs. IRL is punk like Billy Bragg. A pro-union domestic story and a robust video game setting are united by Wang’s expressive brush skills. The time spent in both places and the important people found in each of them are of one world, not two. — AOK
Lore Olympus. (Rachel Smythe, WEBTOON) I believe Rachel Smythe’s Lore Olympus is largely responsible for the increased interest in and popularity of webtoons in the West. Classic Greek/Roman myths re-woven in a modern context, with special care and sensitivity given to some of these ancient tales’ rougher edges. The art is iconic and shows Smythe’s commitment to strong visual characterization, an achievement of bold color-blocking and design. Getting a new chapter every week since around 2018 has been a candy-colored treat for my mythology-obsessed inner child. — KK
Ryuko. (Eldo Yoshimizu, Titan Comics/Hard Case Crime) For far too many years, my manga experience was peripheral. (I know, Arpad, you kept telling me!) Eldo Yoshimizu kicked those doors open for me with Ryuko, his blistering, modestly smutty Yakuza revenge saga. It follows, yes, Ryuko, daughter of an infamous Yakuza crime lord, who after years away in war-hardened exile has returned to Japan to figure out who has kidnapped her mother. Ryuko doesn’t ask nicely. Or quietly. Yoshimizu’s energy is peerless; the way he builds Ryuko as an endless bombardment of shimmering ink scratches and frantic ballistic opera is, frankly, ultimate comics. It’s changed me for the better. — JJ
Robo Sapiens: Tales of Tomorrow. (Toranosuke Shimada, Adrienne Beck, Nicky Kim, Seven Seas Entertainment) Travel with Toranosuke Shimada through deep time, from the dawn of civilization to long after it crumbles. Robo Sapiens is the story of three robots built as guardians, their job to protect humanity for longer than humans could possibly last. A marvelous retro-future aesthetic that crumbles and mutates as it ages. They live to an age we only know in abstract, made redundant by the scope of their creators’ vision, enlivened by their proximity to humanity’s limitations. Humans will never become irrelevant! Or is that just my personal hubris projected onto the comic? Delicious. — AOK
When I Arrived at the Castle. (Emily Carroll, ) Emily Carroll’s When I Arrived at the Castle is over-the-top, gorgeous, gothic. Prose and visuals striking enough to stand on their own and, once combined, become an intense, beautiful nightmare. The eerie castle halls drip and morph, reflecting the main character’s interiority. The deeper and deeper into it we go, our own anxieties multiply. There’s an inherent sensuality in horror; as such, it requires vulnerability and willingness from its reader. Demands it. Macabre and metaphorical, Carroll leans into the seductiveness of blood and heart-pumping fear. — KK
Giant Days. (KaBOOM!/BOOM! Studios) Giant Days is a big deal. John Allison and Max Sarin’s tremendous BOOM! Box series follows three British university students who develop a trifecta of tenacity over the course of a few fleeting years, a lively, heartfelt, genuinely hilarious comic that is actually, I’m not exaggerating, ha-ha funny. It’s powered by Allison’s Bad Machinery wit, the kind with which he builds cathedrals of character, and the expressive, energizing cartooning of Max Sarin and Lissa Treiman. Whenever reading comics became a drag — and when you write about them, that happens — Giant Days was, and remains, my oasis. — JJ
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