ComicsAlliance’s Best Of 2016: Outstanding Writer/Artist Team Of 2016

Chelsea Cain and Kate Niemczyk created a fantastic comic with Mockingbird. Bobbi Morse is grumpy but likeable agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. moving through both the big superhero moments and the slice of life situations. Even when Cain's story structure could be complicated, Niemczyk directed the flow expertly. The art propels the story without sacrificing the humor. Both Cain and Niemczyk walk that fine line between funny and unsettling; they make for a magnificent pairing. [Emma Lawson]

For a book as idiosyncratic as Doom Patrol, it is absolutely essential that the creative team be on the same page, or else the whole thing will fall apart. Fortunately, Gerard Way and Nick Derington, through whatever their collaborative process, have found a way to produce stories with a very clear and singular authorial voice. The legacy of the Grant Morrison and Richard Case era of Doom Patrol is a huge pair of shoes to fill, but the Way/Derington team has managed to blaze forward while still paying respectful looks back to that run. [Benito Cereno]

Brittney Williams delivers bright, fun, cartoony art that perfectly matches the tone of Hope Larson's eternally curious Goldie Vance, girl detective. She's cheerful and charming and can do anything, and Williams' excellent facial expressions show the wide range of emotions and thoughts that flit through a young person's mind. Larson and Williams, as young women themselves, do a fantastic job telling this young woman's story. [Emma Lawson]

Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta don't have a long history as a team, but after just one issue of The Vision, you would think this duo had been crafting comics together for years. It's hard to separate these two from the work, particularly given how tightly constructed not just each issue's script was, but each page and panel as well. That's the kind of synchronicity you typically only see from teams that have been at this for far longer than The Vision has been around. In a perfect world, these two will team up again for something just as special. [Luke Brown]

Every so often, there comes a creative team that's so in-sync that it's almost impossible to truly separate the individual aspects of their contributions to the work. Ryan North and Erica Henderson on Unbeatable Squirrel Girl are one such team, and over the course of two volumes and an original graphic novel they have not only made Squirrel Girl matter to both their readers and the industry; they have created a pocket of the Marvel Universe where empathy and friendship win over punching and killing. [Kieran Shiach]