ComicsAlliance's Best Of 2016: The Best Factual Comic of 2016

While 2016 was a tough year in many regards, it produced some amazing comics, including a lot of great factual, historical, or biographical comics. Our writers and editors have made their picks of the best comics of the past year, and you, the readers of ComicsAlliance, have voted for your favorites.

Now check out the best factual, historical, or biographical comics in 2016, including our critics' picks, listed in alphabetical order, and the comics you voted the runners up and winner in this category! This is the very best of 2016!

Critics' Pick: Cook Korean
Robin Ha / Penguin Random House
It can be daunting to learn how to cook a new cuisine; the new ingredients, techniques and even intended final appearance of a dish can be hard to figure out, especially when doing them all at once. Enter Robin Ha’s Cook Korean. Ha, the creator of the webcomic Banchan in Two Pages, makes learning how to cook Korean food fun and easy with her comic book guide to it. [James Leask]
Critics' Pick: Dreaming Eagles
Garth Ennis and Simon Coleby / Aftershock Comics
Garth Ennis has written a lot of war comics, but few are as important as this collaboration with Simon Coleby, about the Tuskegee air force pilots of World War II. They battled the Axis, and they battled discrimination in America, and Ennis carefully examines all the angles of these conflicts, communicated via the carefully constructed storytelling of Coleby. The story of race in America is a never-ending one, sadly, and it’s one that’s more important than ever to properly learn. [Charlotte Finn]
Critics' Pick: Tetris: The Games People Play
Box Brown / Macmillan
Tetris is a video game so famous, you’re probably humming the theme song to it right now. It has a cultural impact few games can match, and its story has been begging for a serious examination. It found one this year in Box Brown’s comic covering not just the game’s creation, but the legal battles around it that drew in everyone from Nintendo to Atari. An insightful and exhaustive look into one of the flashpoints of modern gaming culture. [Charlotte Finn]
Runner-Up: Oh Joy Sex Toy
Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan / Self-Published, collected by Limerence Press
Oh Joy Sex Toy is the sexual education that everyone in the world needs. One of the most queer-friendly, colorful, and out-right positive webcomics out there, and cartoonist Erika Moen — along with her husband Matt Nolan and a large number of guest collaborators — reviews sex toys, discusses fetishes, and covers basically all things sex-related in a bright, positive, and extremely NSFW, manner. [Tara Marie]
Winner: March Book Three
John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell / Top Shelf Productions
The conclusion to the award-winning March trilogy, March: Book Three documents the civil rights movement from the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, to the infamous 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery. John Lewis’ graphic memoir, co-created with Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, is an arresting and crucial book reminding us of the power of individuals in the struggle against oppression. [Emma Lawson]
Nate Powell / Top Shelf
Nate Powell / Top Shelf

ComicsAlliance’s Best Of 2016: The Best Factual, Historical, or Biographical Comic of 2016