Best of 2012 – Thom Obarski

Best Writer: Every one of these authors have managed to capture, define or expand a character in ways I never thought imaginable. Story, theme and character are my primary focus when reading comics; and thanks to these writers heroes have never felt more human, villains as frightening, nor the common man more empowering.
1. Matt Fraction
2. Scott Snyder
3. Darwyn Cooke

Best Artist: The backbone of comics is sequential art, thus I based my picks not necessarily on the best glossy poster frames; but rather on whose overall style best complimented the given story, utilizing their art to lend as much to the sequence, style and character as the words on the page.
1. Greg Capullo
2. David Aja
3. Darwyn Cooke

Best Ongoing Series: You’ll find Hawkeye sweeping a lot of my categories this year. The stelar writing, unique art style, snarky sense of humor, and visibly flawed titular character got me to start my first regular pull list in years! The Death of The Family event reintroducing the Joker puts Batman in a solid second place. Saga, however, came out of nowhere for me in the last few months. I hadn’t paid it much attention until the TPB was released, the epic storyline of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances captured my heart and imagination, sneaking into my #3 slot just at the end of the year!
1. Hawkeye
2. Batman
3. Saga

Best Ongoing Series (Superhero)
1. Hawkeye
2. Batman
3. Aquaman

Best New Series
1. Hawkeye
2. Saga
3. Deadpool

Best Mini-Series
1. Before Watchmen: Minutemen
2. Death of The Family (Batman)
3. Hawkeye: The Tape

Best Single Issue or One-Shot

1. Hawkeye #3

2. Minutemen #3

3. Captain America #19

Favorite Character
1. Hawkeye: Clint Barton
2. Hawkeye: Kate Bishop
3. Night Owl: Hollis Mason

Honorable Mentions (titles)
1. World’s Finest
2. My Little Pony
3. Debris

Best Publisher: Marvel
Comments: The Marvel Now reboot is giving fans a fresh place to jump in on old characters.  While individual titles still rise or fall depending on their individual creative teams, it doesn’t feel as forced or artificially as massive a project as DC’s New 52.  The staggered release gives people a chance to sample what they might like, the continuity doesn’t feel shoe horned into the titles (and thusly disagreed upon or contradicted) like DC. Detective might be able to hype an event better than anyone else as even Zero Month felt like it had better reach than AvX; but as Before Watchmen has more or less just fizzled out, Marvel certainly puts some follow through on it’s punch.

Favorite other things

1. Play Arts Kai- Arkham Asylum Premium Format Figures

2. Cartoons: My little Pony, Young Justice, Spiderman

3. Movies: Avengers, Looper, Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fans Hope

4. Webseries: The Guild, Save The Supers, Video Game High School

5. Arrow’s fanboy drops in EVERY episode, culminating with the mid series finale reveal of Merlin