Comicon’s Best Comic Artists Of 2023
by Erik Amaya
Welcome to Comicon.com’s Best of the Year Awards, gathering the best comics and comics talent of the strange year that was 2021. This year we will be awarding in the following categories: Best Original Graphic Novels, Best Comic Series, Best Single Comic Issues, Best Writers, Best Artists, Best Cover Artists, Best Colorists, Best Letterers, Best Digital/Webcomics, and Most Progressive Comics.
Contributors to Comicon’s Best of the Year Awards this year include: Rachel Bellwoar, Richard Bruton, Scott Redmond, Tito James, Tom Smithyman, and Tony Thornley.
The following are Comicon’s 5 Best Comic Artists of 2023
5. Filipe Andrade
Comic book art comes in varieties — flavors if you will. Pairing the right art and writing can be a truly game-changing moment; the two merge in perfect symbiosis and create something beyond words or thoughts. Andrade and Ram V together always achieves this. There is just something whimsical, yet rough, and so vibrant about what Andrade brings to the page. Depth, weight, layers, and more are easily felt, helping create truly tangible worlds. Characters have a slight exaggeration to them, going for a tone and feeling more than trying to actually create pure representation of reality. It segues from horrifying to beautiful to melancholy in a heartbeat so smoothly. It reminds us how diverse and expansive comics can and should be.
— Scott Redmond
4. Andrea Sorrentino
Sorrentino amazes in just about anything he touches. But his work on Bone Orchard: Tenement continues to defy belief. He routinely deconstructs page into panels that seem to come untethered. And then there are the flies that are buzzing around each page. Even the seemingly mundane pages are interesting. Sorrentino worked with frequent collaborator Jeff Lemire to deliver a cover for Fishflies, he finished the final issues of Ten Thousand Black Feathers, and he drew a short story in Colonel Weird and Little Andromeda. His non-Lemire work during the year included a variant covers for Cobra Commander #1 and Blue Book: 1947 #2.
— Tom Smithyman
3. Nic Klein
Whenever Marvel names an artist as one of their Stormbreakers, you know he’s one to watch. German artist Nic Klein isn’t just one of those superstars, but he’s also set himself apart as an artist you need to keep an eye on. On Thor, he created an epic fantasy that had a layer of roughness that made it feel like the Norse legends that birthed the thunder god. On Hulk though, he dived into southern-fried horror with a cosmic undercurrent. It was horror storytelling that stunned. But not only that — he used cosmic horror, body horror, creature features and more to create one of the most visually arresting and stunning ongoing comics on the stands today.
— Tony Thornley
2. Daniel Warren Johnson
There are rare peanut-butter-and-chocolate combinations where an artist’s unique talent matches the iconic pop-culture characters they depict. Such is the case with Daniel Warren Johnson’s grand, gritty, and glorious take on Transformers. His love for the characters and world is felt in every line and stroke of ink. Johnson’s collection of Transformers toys is always present in the background of the videos on his popular YouTube channel. This is clearly a passion project for him and it’s a win-win for the readers.
Johnson’s artwork captures the classic designs of the original cartoons as well as the gritty realism and epic sci-fi scale of the films. Whatever generation of Transformers fan you are, his work is a treat sent straight from Cybertron.
— Tito James
1. Dan Mora
If you don’t know Mora’s work by now, you haven’t been paying attention. He’s become one of the most prolific artists in the industry over the last five years, and this year made that even more prominent. After wrapping his long-time gig on Once & Future in late 2022, he took a short break before adding another DC Comics series to his ongoing Batman & Superman: World’s Finest gig- SHAZAM! He breathed youthful life into Billy Batson’s adventures — something the concept had been missing for years — while still drawing one of the best runs of Batman/Superman in the characters’ shared history. No one else in the industry can do that one title, let alone a three, considering he also drew a Power Rangers/Ninja Turtles miniseries this year as well.
— Tony Thornley
