The ‘50s/’60s animation juggernaut churned out beloved property after beloved property, but wasn’t particularly known for the transgressive storytelling on display in DC’s Flintstones comic, for instance, which uses the charming, dinosaur-slave-labor-exploiting prehistoric family as a way to discuss class and workers’ rights or Wacky Raceland, which transports the goofy drivers of Wacky Races to a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Well, no one expected this from DC Comics’ revival of its Hanna-Barbera properties. Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles Steve FoxeĮxit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles Cover Art by Ben CaldwellĢ5. We only relegated Nancy to an Honorable Mention because our friends at the AV Club beat us to the punch-and because nothing else on this list would stand a chance against Nancy’s big mood. Bizarre pushback aside, Jaimes’ strips are drolly hilarious, utterly self-aware and one of this garbage year’s most consistent treats.

Jaimes is a pseudonym, but we know that she is the first woman to ever write and draw the strip, and she’s probably wise to keep a distance between her expertly crafted daily comics and the weirdos who suddenly decided to care about the purity of a nearly century-old fictional character. If you choose to read Nancy on the GoComics website, do yourself a favor and never scroll below Jaimes’ whip-smart, thoroughly modern jokes about technology, art and the long-running rapscallion’s adorably selfish quirks. Olivia Jaimes’ deeply relatable update to Ernie Bushmiller’s iconic little brat did what most things related to women on the internet do: set the hellish bowels of the comment section on friggin’ fire. But if you want to know the 25(ish) titles we feel best represent 2018’s sequential-art bounty, keep on scrolling.

There are bound to be inclusions-and exclusions-that frustrate you, but what’s a year-end list without a little heated discussion? If your favorite didn’t make the cut below, keep an eye peeled for the rest of our lists arriving throughout December. Paste always aims to take a wide view of the medium when compiling our Best-of ranking, which means high-minded “literary” releases sit side by side with Men of Steel and delinquent super-teens.

That’s not to say that comics were lacking in 2018, but that the playing field felt more even-which is reflected in the breadth of choices below, from self-published wrestling comics to superhero horror stories, pseudo-magazine comics journalism to a lit-AF update of one of the longest running comic strips around. Unlike the past few years, this list came together in fits and starts, not as one massive roll call that needed to be whittled down.

Klaus and the crying snowman