With the ongoing global pandemic and the ensuing social distancing measures, we’ve all spent more time in our homes this year. Add to that a number of other injustices and headline news calamities, and it’s largely been a stressful time at home. To take the edge off while filling the time, we’ve all turned to comics. And today we have a list of the books that have helped us make it through, put together by the fine contributors to this website.

Without further adieu, we now present the Comic’s Bookcase list of Pandemic Reads — The Comics That Got Us Through 2020…

Pandemic Reads - The comics that got us through 2020

The Comics of Jack Kirby
Writer/Artist: Jack Kirby (natch’)
Publishers: Various
Why We Liked Them This Year: During the early phase of the pandemic, when the distributors temporarily shut down, small publishers were hit hard by this. One such publisher was TwoMorrows Publishing. To raise emergency funds, they held an emergency sale, putting all of their back catalog on deep discount. Out of a combination of selfless desire to help them out, and selfish desire to take advantage of the sale. I bought a few thousand pages worth of The Jack Kirby Collector.
Not only did I spend my summer reading Kirby Collector, a magazine stuffed with rare Kirby art, this naturally led to months spent pouring through my Kirby collection: 70’s DC, 60’s Marvel, a couple 50’s monster books. I pulled out the Marvel Masterworks, and the back issues, and the Marvel Treasury Editions. I went through hundreds of issues, which meant that hundreds more stayed on the shelf because, damn, Kirby was one prolific dude.
I’m normally someone who starts at the beginning of a run and works their way through, but this summer I would open books and just flip through and look at the art, the composition, the line work. I’d read a Kirby Collector, full of reprints of Kirby’s original pencils from some random issue, and I’d pull out the finished product and compare. I’d grab five books with five different inkers and compare the work. (Colletta really is that bad.) I’d flip through early Fantastic Four, then mid-run, then the late stuff to feel the evolution. In the middle of all this, Tom Scioli’s Jack Kirby biography came out and just added to the Kirbyness of the summer.
It is not a bold or interesting statement to say that Jack Kirby is the greatest comic book artist of all time, but I do believe it to be true. Hiis work has been consistently present in my life, since I was twelve and read my first Marvel Masterwork. His work has always been there, and it has always been great. This summer I immersed myself with Kirby and I saw the work with fresh eyes. (Isaac Kelley)
Read Them Digitally: The Work of Jack Kirby

Grafity’s Wall
Writer: Ram V
Artist: Anand RK
Colorist: Anand Radhakrishnan, Jason Wordie, Irma Kniivila
Letterer: Aditya Bidikar
Publisher: Dark Horse
A coming-of-age graphic novel about rebellion, ambition, self-expression, and acceptance, expertly painted against the backdrop of Mumbai's ever-changing and evolving street culture. Giving brief glimpses into the incandescent lives of four teens chasing their dreams impeded and inspired by the impossible city that they live in.
Why We Liked It This Year: “There is no frigate like a book, to take you worlds away.” Emily Dickinson probably wasn’t talking about a graphic novel about a teenage graffiti artist set in the tenement houses of Mumbai, but Grafity’s Wall was my frigate of the year. Even while trapped indoors 24/7 with a grumpy husband and grumpier cats, this book made me feel like I was traveling to new lands, and encountering new languages. The art is wild and colorful as the abstract seamlessly blends into the concrete. The newly released Expanded Edition is a lovely book with all the trimmings, so this is an ideal opportunity to check out the work of this most excellent creative team. (Ariel Baska)
Read It Digitally: Grafity’s Wall

Infidel
Writer: Pornsak Pichetshote
Artist: Aaron Campbell
Colorist: Jose Villarrubia
Letterer and Designer: Jeff Powell
Publisher: Image Comics
A haunted house story for the 21st century, INFIDEL follows an American Muslim woman and her multi-racial neighbors who move into a building haunted by entities that feed off xenophobia.
Why We Liked It This Year: The last couple of years I had watched as more and more horror comics were released and seemed to continue getting praised, and the only one I followed was Immortal Hulk. During quarantine, however, I decided to dive into some, because what better time to be horrified than during a pandemic?
I honestly don’t really know why Infidel hit me so hard during quarantine, but it did, and it pretty much single handedly pulled me into horror comics, or at least non-big 2 ones.
Between the genuinely horrible visuals and the focus on racism, this is a wholly unique comic that felt very 2020 for me. It’s one of my favorite horror experiences I’ve had in any medium ever, where the horror has become cathartic in this strange and awful year. There were plenty of comics I’ve read this year so I could feel better, and ones that succeeded in a major way, but none made me feel like it was okay to feel bad like Infidel did. And that’s basically ignoring how excellent it is as a comic, one that I absolutely still would have loved if I read it in other circumstances.
Even if I came to it late, Infidel is one of my favorite comic reading experiences I’ve had, not just this year, but ever. (Keigen Rea)
Read It Digitally: Infidel

Love and Rockets
Cartoonists: Jamie and Gilbert Hernandez
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Reading Order: How to Read Love and Rockets
Why We Liked It This Year: To state the obvious, this year has been rough, oscillating as it did between shock, uncertainty, fear, outrage, injustice, and back through them all again. In the early days of the pandemic, I felt an intense need to escape, and not into the simplistic superhero or even sci-fi/fantasy escapism that has sort of subsumed the word during our modern era of mass market properties that fit those descriptions.
No, what I wanted after the night of March 11 — after watching the NBA shut down, Tom Hanks come forward with the virus, and our oblivious president seem to take the thing seriously (though that would not last, not even hardly for an entire week) — was something immersive. I wanted to get lost in the lives and problems and worlds of others. What I needed was a story that could pull me in and keep me there for the foreseeable future, that could make it so I didn’t have to so much as think about what came next, at least not while I was lost in those pages.
I turned to prose by day and found solace in books like 100 Hundred Years of Solitude as well as Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, both of which I’d been meaning to read for many years. By night, however, I’ve always read comics, always found the medium more useful to stave off the temptation to watch television or get lost in my phone. While doing that, I turned to another stack of books that had been on my shelves for years — the anthology collections of Love and Rockets. Like those literary classics, these were books I had long known I would love, only stopped by the inconveinece of schedule. With the pandemic confining me to my home, I dove right it — and what I found was the greatest comfort for this difficult year.
Love and Rockets is perhaps the finest long-form American narrative ever spun. If you’re totally uninitiated, it is a series of comics created by brothers Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, dating back to the ‘80s. They each have spun ongoing stories that never intertwine, yet have been published together since the start. The characters age in real-time, and between masterful cartooning and an unbelievable committment to the reality of the people in the pages, they add up to the most immersive narrative experience I’ve ever had. I can’t recommend reading these books enough, be it to escape the end of the pandemic or simply to broaden your horizons as a comics reader. (Zack Quaintance)
Read Them Digitally: Love and Rockets

One Piece
Story & Art: Eiichiro Oda
English Adaptation: Lance Caselman
Publisher: Viz Media
As a child, Monkey D. Luffy dreamed of becoming the King of the Pirates. But his life changed when he accidentally gained the power to stretch like rubber…at the cost of never being able to swim again! Now Luffy, with the help of a motley collection of pirate wannabes, is setting off in search of the "One Piece," said to be the greatest treasure in the world...
Why We Liked It This Year: Comic Books make for a very sophisticated medium. The tensions between the static nature of the panels and the illusion of movement caused by juxtaposing those panels; The subtle interplay between text and image; The unique variance in tempo possible by controlling the gap between panels. Comics can do anything. And sometimes, when the world is gripped by a terrible, slow moving disaster and your country is ran by idiots and monsters and you no longer leave your house out of fear of getting someone killed, what you want comics to do is tell the story of a pirate crew led by an idiot with stretchy powers.
One Piece, Eiichiro Oda’s goofball pirate epic is the slight, breezy comic I needed in 2020. It’s about a deeply stupid young man named Monkey B. Luffy (My friend who is into anime assures me it is pronounced “Loofy”). Luffy wants to be the greatest pirate in the world, despite having no nautical experience and a body lacking in buoyancy because he has stretchy powers. Also, he seems to be unaware that piracy involves stealing. He slowly puts together a crew and they have many long meandering adventures.
This book is so charming. The art is the right mix of gooberish and kinetic. Thin as the characters are, they have heart by the bucketful. The worldbuilding, full of werereindeer and bananagators, is endlessly creative and hilarious. The fights go on for way too long. Way, way, too long. But that’s okay. Everything is going on for way too long these days.
I honestly don’t remember how or why I started reading One Piece, which is slightly worrisome. One Piece is a staggeringly popular manga, but I’m not a huge manga guy, and the title is aimed at a younger audience. Somehow I ended up with the first three volumes. And once I started reading, I just kept going and going. Now at the end of the year, I’ve read 24 volumes, or 226 chapters. There are only… 72 more volumes. And counting. Holy shit, I thought Cerberus was long. I’m going to keep reading and by the time I’m caught up, with a little luck, I’ll be able to go to a bar or smile at a stranger or give my grandma a hug. (Isaac Kelley)
Read It Digitally: One Piece

Richard Stark’s Parker
Writer/Artist: Darwyn Cooke
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Darwyn Cooke, Eisner-Award-winning writer/artist, sets his artistic sights on bringing to life one of the true classics of crime fiction: Richard Stark's Parker. Stark was a pseudonym used by the revered and multi-award-winning author, Donald Westlake. The Hunter, the first book in the Parker series, is the story of a man who hits New York head-on like a shotgun blast to the chest. Betrayed by the woman he loved and double-crossed by his partner in crime, Parker makes his way cross-country with only one thought burning in his mind - to coldly exact his revenge and reclaim what was taken from him!
Why We Liked Them This Year: In the height of the pandemic, nothing got me out of my own head quite like looking at the world through the cold, lifeless eyes of a professional killer and sociopath. Darwyn Cooke adapted the brilliant crime novels by Donald Westlake to perfection, creating a new form of graphic novel that features a sleek style, inked in 1950’s nostalgia. My purchase of the reprinted Martini edition was the perfect opportunity to get up close and personal with the world of mob bosses, tricky dames, and crime capers. Every touch of the heavy, oversized page let me feel just a little bit more of Cooke’s holy magic, as characters the size of my head sprang to life beneath my fingers. A perfect work in a perfect format that let me lose the world around me for a time. (Ariel Baska)
Read Them Digitally: Richard Stark’s Parker

Shade, The Changing Man
Writer: Peter Milligan
Artist: Chris Bachalo
Inker: Mark Pennington
Colorist: Daniel Vozzo
Letterer: Todd Klein
Publisher: DC Comics - Vertigo
The otherworldly Rac Shade is back from the Meta-Zone, only this time, he's got to inhabit the body of a psychopathic killer on death row. And the day he takes up residence is the day the killer's scheduled to be executed.
Why We Liked It This Year: What to say about Shade, The Changing Man. In many ways, this comic is responsible for who I am as a writer and, in part, who I am as a person. I was given the first thirty-some issues when I was 13 and I read them all in just a few days (at bedtime, no less) but for all that, I only ever read it that one time. When I got back to New York at the height of the first wave of the pandemic, though, I tore through my collection in my downtime. I wasn’t able to get new books much at the time, so I was rereading a lot and making my way through things I’d bought and hadn’t gotten to. Among those was the first volume of Shade in paperback, which I had picked up a year or two back and not read. Saving it for the pandemic turned out to be the right choice.
Every part of it seems to have been written for 2020. The mammoth first issue touches on random violence, loneliness and loss, racist policing, and the horrors of the death penalty. The second and third issues form an arc about celebrity culture through the lens of the assassination of JFK, timely considering I read it around when the second season of Umbrella Academy came out, and the current landscape of celebrity worship. The final story of the volume focuses on Hollywood and the voyeurism and violence that movies and film industry culture breed. While it may not sound at all uplifting, I can certainly say that reading it in 2020 was refreshing and just what I needed. Reading just that little bit has me looking to read the rest of it (full collection when, DC?) and I highly recommend that you do the same. (Harry Kassen)
Read It Digitally: Shade, The Changing Man

Starman #1 - #50
Writer: James Robinson (w/ Various)
Artist: Tony Harris (w/ Various)
Publisher: DC Comics
Jack Knight, the son of the Golden Age Starman, reluctantly assumes the family legacy as protector of Opal City, a bustling Metropolis with all manner of citizens--and deadly enemies. Join Jack as he discovers what it means to be a hero in adventures that traverse all corners of the DC Universe.
Why We Liked It This Year: When the pandemic hit, my job pivoted. I was now helping out of work union members sign up for unemployment. Eight hours every day was spent walking people through the process of filling out a form. It could be more accurately described as helping people through a terrible time, making sure they could get through these awful moments. As a Kentuckian, I couldn’t stop thinking about the labor movements that helped make these unions possible. Was this my place in that legacy?
It was during this time, I started reading Starman, a comic entirely about legacy. It modernizes the character for the 90’s but keeping it planted firmly in the history of the Golden Age. James Robinson writes better than he ever did before or after creating a new character that loves the old. It’s a man with one foot firmly stuck in the past struggling to be the future his family needs him to be. Rendered wonderfully by Tony Harris, it captures all my favorite parts of Vertigo while still firmly placing itself in the new.
Everything here is about the past being modernized - not for the sake of modernization but to reframe what made them so beautiful to begin with. Whether it be the recreation of Solomon Grundy, the depth brought to Shade or simply the history of a family legacy Starman can never live up to, Starman rebuilt the world into something perfect. It lived up to its history and it made me want to live up to mine. (Jacob Cordas)
Read It Digitally: Starman

Stray Bullets
Writer/Artist: David Lapham
Editor and Co-Creator: Maria Lapham
Publisher: Image Comics
Follow the lost lives of people who are savagely torn apart by events beyond their control. As the innocent world of an imaginative little girl is shattered when she witnesses a brutal double murder. Or an introverted young boy on the verge of manhood gets a lesson on just how far is too far when he falls for a needy woman who lives life in the fast lane. Or party with a pair of low-rent hoods who learn about what is really important in life just when they shouldn't. And even learn the story of the most infamous gangster who ever lived, Amy Racecar, who talks to God, lunches with the President, and just may be responsible for the end of the world.
Why We Liked It This Year: Most of Stray Bullets is a flashback. The first issue is set in “Summer 1997”, and is a gruesomely absurd tale of two men going to bury a body in the woods, only for them to keep killing witnesses and ending up with a car filled with corpses. The next issue jumps back to 1977, with seemingly completely unrelated characters or storylines. From there, Stray Bullets becomes a mind-blowing nonlinear mosaic, each issue a (mostly) self-contained piece which adds to a wider tapestry. The main ‘focus’ is the criminal organization of “Harry” – a figure who is never shown himself – and those operating around him, like the aggressive fugitive Beth. But Stray Bullets is about how such dark violence spreads outward, from central figure Ginny accidentally witnessing a gangland execution that sends her life spirally out of control, to background characters who are provided their own individual issues. All of this is kept memorable via creator David Lapham’s distinctive characterisations and storytelling, a blend of grim unpleasantness and dark humour, wrapped up with propulsive and satisfying plots. Stray Bullets doesn’t have stereotypical gangsters, it has Spanish Scott and Monster and Blue Ed or the Finger. It operates on an 8-panel grid, but roams from Baltimore slums to desert towns to the suburbs. It has stories about undergoing trauma, to “Amy Racecar” escapist fantasies, to a man desperately trying to have an affair. And there is still that car-trunk full of corpses, waiting and rotting at the end of the line. Lapham (alongside his wife Mary) has been irregularly publishing Stray Bullets since 1995, and with it has created an indisputable indie-comic, a richly realized messed-up testament to American violence and society. Stray Bullets utilizes long-form storytelling like little else, something that rips through individual lives and spreads throughout society; fast, raw and unstoppable. (Bruno Savill de Jong)
Read It Digitally: Stray Bullets

Swamp Thing
Writer: Alan Moore
Artist: Stephen Bissette, John Totlebein
Colorist: Tatjana Wood
Letterer: John Costanza & Todd Klein
Publisher: DC Comics - Vertigo
Before WATCHMEN, Alan Moore made his debut in the U.S. comic book industry with the revitalization of the horror comic book THE SWAMP THING. His deconstruction of the classic monster stretched the creative boundaries of the medium and became one of the most spectacular series in comic book history. With modern-day issues explored against a backdrop of horror, SWAMP THING's stories became commentaries on environmental, political and social issues, unflinching in their relevance.
Why We Liked It This Year: One of my biggest joys this year has come from connecting more deeply with online communities, a trend that first started for me during Comics Bookcase’s Twitter read-along of Doom Patrol. The series in the read-alongs that best matched my mood and my year, however, was Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing. Becoming imprisoned in another form felt like a metaphor worth thinking about, as well as the importance of nature and the life of the mind. Add the inexplicable horror with randomly inserted plots and bits and bobs from other creators and superheroes, and it matched my need for some form of controlled chaos to vary my days and break up the monotony. (Ariel Baska)
Read It Digitally: Swamp Thing