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The core concept of Marvel’s Contest of Champions ongoing series is based loosely on an app based loosely on a comic from 1982. In the game, by developers Kabam, The Collector tasks you as a summoner, forced to compete against Kang The Conqueror by pitting heroes against each other, and plays like a beat ‘em up, only much more simplified for mobile play. In the comic, by Al Ewing, Paco Medina, Juan Vlasco and David Curiel, the Contest of Champions takes place between The Collector and The Grandmaster, who in turn have chosen Summoners to act as their champions, who in turn choose teams from across the Marvel multiverse to compete in the contest.

It’s been said that Doctor Doom is not just one of the greatest supervillains of all time but rather that he’s the supervillain, the one that defines them all. Whenever Doom appears, he's always a huge threat. That’s evident from his very first appearance in Fantastic Four #5 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, when he kidnaps Sue Storm and forces the rest of the FF to travel back in time to steal Blackbeard’s treasure to help him conquer the world. He later teamed up with Namor the Sub-Mariner to send the team into space --- by literally magnetizing the Baxter Building and attaching it to a rocket ship. Of course, he double crosses Namor and the FF. But Namor gets the upper hand and gets the FF back to Earth, leaving Doom on an asteroid careening out into space. But do you think that stopped him?

Professor James Moriarty, the “Napoleon of Crime” and the arch-nemesis of Sherlock Holmes, is one of the most iconic villains in fiction. And that’s always been a little odd. As any die-hard Sherlockian could tell you, if you go strictly by "the Canon" — the four Sherlock Holmes novels and 56 short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — Moriarty is not all that important. Referenced in the novel The Valley of Fear and a few later short stories, Moriarty only really appears in 'The Adventure of the Final Problem', where he does what he was created to do: kill off Holmes so Doyle wouldn’t have to write him anymore. Obviously, this didn’t last. Moriarty really only gained his mythic status and place as Holmes’ rival through later adaptations in radio, film, TV and of course comics. For their part, outside of direct Canon adaptions, comics have tended to portray Moriarty as an antihero.

There is probably no superhero comic better known for the lettering of its sound effects than Walter Simonson's 1983-1987 run on Marvel's Thor. John Workman's lettering on that seminal, still-beloved run was so integral that it's difficult to imagine those comics without it. Workman's big, bold DOOMs, THOOMs and KRAKATHOOMs hit readers' eyes and imaginations like graphic hammer blows. Simonson's art alone could tell powerful, affecting stories, but Workman's lettering really made those Thor comics sing... and scream and thunder and crash and splinter. How fitting then that the most recent Thor comic, featuring a brand new star character wielding Mjolnir to protect Midgard, should also have such a highly distinct sound effect style, and yet have those sound effects stand out in a completely different way than those of the Simonson/Workman Thor comics of yore.

I took six AP classes over the course of my high school career. I was president of the Readers’ Club. I won awards for poetry and public speaking. But because I was not uniformly incredible at everything I attempted, and because I did not go to what my school considered an impressive college, I was regarded as a “problem student.” This was not atypical. Academic competition defined those four years, for me and for all 3,000 of my classmates. Yet for all the world’s media devoted to Teens Having Feelings, I rarely see this experience reflected. Jocks, nerds, burnouts, hotties — whatever. We’re all very familiar with tales of cafeteria warfare and bravery in the face of cystic acne. But where are the movies devoted to GPA mania? Clubs created for the sole purpose of claiming presidency on one’s transcript? The pitying looks a mere 4 on an AP exam elicits, rather than the vaunted 5? Nowhere, really, unless something Glee-ish decides to do a Very Special Episode on Adderall abuse. Until Alex de Campi, Carla Speed McNeil, and Jenn Manley Lee’s No Mercy.

Being mixed race is an endless, exhausting lesson in liminality. There are days you’re unshakably confident in who you are and your place in the world, followed by days you are wrecked by the ambiguity of your existence. Genetic caprice digs gulfs of experience between cousins, siblings, even twins. “Authenticity” is a bullseye you never quite seem to hit. And when immigration enters into it — well. You can be certain of disappointing everyone back in the old country just as often as you disappoint the community that surrounds you. Perhaps the worst part of it is the silence. Maybe you have a few friends to discuss this with. Maybe your siblings get it. Maybe you’ve found one treasured piece of media that speaks to the shade of grey in which you live. But in total, there isn’t much that portrays this experience — and even less of it accessible to a wider audience. Enter Steven Universe.

As endemic as violence is to mainstream comics, it's rare when you see a representation of it that inspires an appropriate level of shock. That's to be expected in superhero comics, where the gap between art and reality is wider, but even in books that maintain a closer relationship with the truth there are only a few books that portray violence in an un-stylized, un-sensationalized manner that still conveys how jarring it really is. There are some great examples, from Scalped to the work of Johnny Craig (still a little sensationalized, but he gets a pass) to almost everything Garth Ennis has ever written. Even among that company, what David Lapham does in Stray Bullets is unique.

Comics covers are strange beasts. While comics themselves are sequential art --- pictures arranged in just the right order to tell a story or convey an emotion --- covers freeze that process into a single static image. But Mike Del Mundo's work at Marvel shows that they can be much more than pretty pictures. You don't need me to tell you that Del Mundo's covers are gorgeous. He's an incredible draftsman with an even stronger sense of design. Covers let him push the latter talent to the fore, dancing through various styles, from stark two-color minimalism to detailed paintings, via pastiches of Escher and Art Deco posters, all depending on what suits this issue best.

Hunter x Hunter is about people classified as “Hunters” that specialize in finding and hunting things. Sometimes these things are rare jewels, and sometimes they’re human corpses. Over almost 20 years, author Yoshihiro Togashi has been making the best fight comic on the stands --- and here's what makes him so great.

There are many things you can point to in superhero comics as examples of sexism and gender essentialism. Today we will ignore those. Today, we come not to bury comics and their handling of gender issues, but to praise them. Today we salute those brave men who stare down a world of gender-coded clothing choices and say, "No. Not on my watch. Not around my waist." We speak, of course, of the male miniskirt.