By Zack Quaintance — So my own picks for the Best Comics of 2020 have been somewhat delayed this year due to — waves hands wildly — everything being insane, but I’ve powered through the distractions and put them together nonetheless. As always, I’ll break them down into three separate lists, with #16 - #25 today, #6 - #15 tomorrow, and the Top 5 by the end of the week…enjoy!

Oh, and I also used a set of rules last year to govern picks, and I think they’re still pretty good. So once again, here they are:

• Check our other categories: We’ve written at length about many comics this year in our Staff Picks, Best Single Issues, and Best New Series lists. Also, later this week we’re posting Best Original Graphic Novels. So, check back for that one too!

• Monthly periodicals: We’ve got a webcomics column as well as a Kickstarter column coming this year, and we’re still looking for folks to cover manga (so hit us up if you’d like to write about manga for the site!). This list, however, is for monthly comics via the direct market.

• Longevity matters: Finally, choices here considered how many issues were published in 2020. This makes it harder to put debuts or series that wrapped early on our list, barring some exceptions. Basically, I’m looking for comics closely associated with 2020.

Best Comics of 2020 - #16 to #25 - Zack’s Picks

25. Killadelphia
Writer: Rodney Barnes
Artist: Jason Shawn Alexander
Colorer: Luis NCT
Letterer: Marshall Dillon
Publisher: Image Comics
Issues in 2020: 10
Featuring the show-stopping talents of SPAWN series artist JASON SHAWN ALEXANDER and the writer behind such hit shows as Wutang: An American Saga, Marvel's Runaways, and Starz's American Gods—RODNEY BARNES. When a small-town beat cop comes home to bury his murdered father—the revered Philadelphia detective James Sangster Sr.—he begins to unravel a mystery that leads him down a path of horrors that will shake his beliefs to their core. The city that was once the symbol of liberty and freedom has fallen prey to corruption, poverty, unemployment, brutality... and vampires. Welcome to KILLADELPHIA.
Why It’s Cool: Few comics were as consistent and powerful as Killadelphia in 2020, which uses a horror mystery (plus fantastic art) to raise questions about a number of timely issues.
Buy It Digitally: Killadelphia

24. Sex Criminals
Writer: Matt Fraction
Artist: Chip Zdarsky
Publisher: Image Comics
Issues in 2020: 7
A SEX COMEDY FOR COMICS: Suzie's a normal girl with an extraordinary ability: when she has sex, she stops time. One night she meets John... who has the same gift. And so they do what any other sex-having, time-stopping, couple would do: they rob banks. In the vein of THE 40-YEAR OLD VIRGIN and BRIDESMAIDS, Image Comics invites you to come along with MATT FRACTION (Hawkeye, SATELLITE SAM) and CHIP ZDARSKY (Prison Funnies, Monster Cops) for the series that puts the "comic" back in "comics" and the "sexy" back in "sex crimes."
Why It’s Cool: It’s always refreshing when a long-running series climaxes (ahem) in a satisfying way (ahem!), and that’s certainly what happened in 2020 with Sex Criminals, which put out seven fantastic issues as it wound down a singular and intensely personal story that changed quite a bit from its start to its finish.
Buy It Digitally: Sex Criminals

23. The Plot
Writers:
Writer: Michael Moreci and Tim Daniel
Artist: Joshua Hixson
Colorist: Kurt Michael Russel
Letterer: Jim Campbell
Publisher: Vault Comics
Issues In 2020: 4
In order to receive... first you must give. When Chase Blaine's estranged brother and sister-in-law are murdered, he becomes guardian to MacKenzie and Zach, the niece and nephew he hardly knows. Seeking stability for the children, Chase moves his newly formed family to his ancestral home in Cape Augusta -- which overlooks a deep, black bogland teeming with family secrets.
Why It’s Cool: Few series in comics feel as immersive and fully-formed as The Plot, which in this year both concluded its stellar first arc and got right up to the end of its story, which is slated to wrap up with The Plot #8 in early 2021.
Buy It Digitally: The Plot

22. Lonely Receiver
Writer: Zac Thompson
Artist: Jen Hickman
Letterer: Simon Bowland
Publisher: AfterShock Comics
Issues in 2020: 4
Catrin Vander, a lonely video producer, buys an Artificial Intelligence partner that’s meant to bond for life. After ten years together, her holographic wife suddenly discon-nects without a warning. The breakup drives Catrin to the point of near insanity. She's alone for the first time in years and reeling from a loss she can’t comprehend. Set in the new future, drenched in pastels and sunshine, LONELY RECEIVER is a hor-ror/breakup story in five parts. Written by Zac Thompson (UNDONE BY BLOOD, THE REPLACER, HER INFERNAL DESCENT, No One’s Rose, X-Men) and illustrated in color by Jen Hickman (MOTH & WHISPER, Test).
Why It’s Cool: We may never get a comic that looks like this one again, at least not in a monthly format via the direct market. This is a dark tale of heartbreak, individuality, body horror, and tech dystopia. It’s a bleak and personal story that reels you in and stops you from looking away. Simply put, we need more stories that take risks like this in comics.
Buy It Digitally: Lonely Receiver

21. The Department of Truth
Writer: James Tynion IV
Artist: Martin Simmonds
Letterer: Aditya Bidikar
Publisher: Image Comics
Issues in 2020: 4
COLE TURNER has studied conspiracy theories all his life, but he isn’t prepared for what happens when he discovers that all of them are true, from the JFK Assassination to Flat Earth Theory and Reptilian Shapeshifters. One organization has been covering them up for generations. What is the deep, dark secret behind the Department of Truth? From bestselling writer JAMES TYNION IV (Batman, Something is Killing the Children) and breakout artist MARTIN SIMMONDS (Dying is Easy)!
Why It’s Cool: Few comics tapped into the 2020 zeitgeist as effectively as The Department of Truth, an espionage story that involves conspiracy, as well as society’s increasing propensity to make false conspiratorial ideas reality in individuals’ minds. It’s also relentlessly well-done thanks to the veteran creative team of Tynion, Simmonds, and Bidikar.
Buy It Digitally: The Department of Truth

20. Finger Guns
Writer: Justin Richards
Artist: Val Halvorson
Colorist: Rebecca Nalty
Letterer: Taylor Esposito
Publisher: Vault Comics
Issues in 2020: 5
Two troubled teenagers discover they can manipulate emotions by firing finger guns. There will be laughs. There will be tears. There will be uncomfortable teen feelings and angst. Oh yeah... and chaos. So much chaos.
Why It’s Cool: Ariel Baska’s trade review for Finger Guns this year really captured the deeply-personal brilliance of this singular, idiosyncratic book, but it bears repeating — this is a comic that takes personal childhood trauma and translates it in a narrative way that really raises important questions about how those involve process the experiences through their lives. We’re all lucky to have a comic like Finger Guns in our lives.
Buy It Digitally: Finger Guns

19. Black Stars Above
Writer: Lonnie Nadler
Artist: Jenna Cha
Colorist: Brad Simpson
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Publisher: Vault Comics
Issues Published in 2020: 3
A young fur trapper flees her overbearing family only to get lost in a dreamlike winter wilderness that harbours a cosmic threat. The year is 1887 and a storm brews. Eulalie Dubois has spent her entire life tending to her family’s trapline, isolated from the world. A chance at freedom comes in the form of a parcel that needs delivering to a nameless town north of the wilderness. Little does Eulalie know, something sinister hides in those woods and it yearns for what she carries. A chilling historical cosmic horror tale of survival from the deranged minds of Lonnie Nadler (The Dregs, Marvelous X-Men) and debut artist Jenna Cha.
Why It’s Cool: Yet another singular and idiosyncratic book (sensing a pattern here?), Black Stars Above only had three issues in 2020, but the series was so good, that it earned its way onto the list. This is a series replete in a prose-driven historical fiction mixed with Lovecraftian cosmic horror visuals. It’s a powerful and deeply unsettling book that I would recommend to anyone.
Buy It Digitally: Black Stars Above

18. Daredevil
Writer: Chip Zdarsky
Artists: Marco Checchetto
Colorists: Sunny Gho
Letterers: Clayton Cowles
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Issues Published in 2020: 10
You will know fear! After a dangerous brush with death, Matt Murdock must piece together his shattered life. Years of trauma have taken their toll, and becoming the guardian of Hell’s Kitchen again won’t be easy. Mistakes will be made, and one might prove to be the end of Daredevil! With a criminal dead, Matt must go on the run in a desperate bid to clear his name. But even he can’t outrun judgment forever. And with Daredevil absent from Hell’s Kitchen, the real devils come out to play. Matt Murdock will emerge from his ordeals a changed man—but will it be for better or worse? And when he faces up to his choices, can he truly live a life without the suit? Chip Zdarsky unveils the next chapter in the ever-surprising saga of Daredevil!
Why It’s Cool: It’s hard to find new ground with a character like Daredevil, who has been the subject of some of the best superhero stories of all time, but this story continues to do it by raising questions about the role of well-intentioned individuals with power in state-sanctioned brutality and violence.
Buy It Digitally: Daredevil

17. That Texas Blood
Writer: Christopher Condon
Artist: Jacob Phillips
Publisher: Image Comics
Issues in 2020: 6
Sheriff Joe Bob Coates questions his effectiveness as the aging lawman of Ambrose County, Texas as chaos descends following an explosive highway confrontation and the mysterious death of local rogue Travis Terrill. Michael Lark (LAZARUS, Daredevil) calls the series "The best damn comic I've read in years."
Why It’s Cool: There was a bit of magic to That Texas Blood — a minimalistic familial murder drama splashed across gorgeous West Texas landscapes — in that it represented a powerful comics debut for both of its creators. It’s a great book on its own, but more importantly, I can’t wait to see what Condon and Phillips do next. If this debut is any indication, their next projects will without question be ones to watch.
Buy It Digitally: That Texas Blood

16. Low Low Woods
Writer: Carmen Maria Machado
Artist: Dani
Colorist: Tamra Bonvillain
Letterer: Steve Wands
Publisher: DC Comics - Black Label - Hill House
Issues in 2020: 5
THE LOW, LOW WOODS explores body horror down paths yet unexplored in comics. It will leave readers searching for their way back home and terrified of what they find changed upon their return.
Why It’s Cool: I think it’s pretty safe to say that the horror genre has been extensively mined, especially over the course of the past five or six years, and yet, here we are with a new comic that feels as if it has somehow found territory within the genre that is brand-new. Not only that, but the story around those fresh scary ideas is an excellent and literary one, rewarding to readers from the intriguing start to the surprising finish.
Buy It Digitally: Low Low Woods

Check out our Best Comics of 2020 — Staff Picks!

Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.