John Allison

While 2016 was a tough year in many regards, it produced some amazing comics, including a lot of great comics aimed at teen readers. 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 comics for teens in 2016, including our critics' picks, listed in alphabetical order, and the comics you voted the runner up and winner in this category! This is the very best of 2016!

John Allison's teen detective/coming-of-age series Bad Machinery balances supernatural mysteries with the ever shifting landscape of teenage friendships, and is a hit both online as webcomic and in print as collections. Next year, Oni Press a reprinting the first Bad Machinery story "The Case of the Teen Spirit" in a new pocket edition, and ComicsAlliance caught up with Allison about mysteries, slang and very British stories.

Odds are that you've heard some pretty good things about a whole host of recent comics from Boom Studios, but for whatever reason you might not have got around to checking them out just yet. Well the publisher just made it a whole lot easier to sample the best of its wares with a line-wide sale on Comixology offering 50% off all Boom titles until Monday.

The weekend is here! Take a look back at what’s happened in the past seven days. New comics, new stories, new podcasts, new art being made — it’s all part of the ComicsAlliance Weekender!

The new blockbuster Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film is in cinemas now, and surprisingly it patches the flaws from its predecessor and ramps up the ridiculousness in a way that makes it an enjoyable family superhero film for the summer. The Turtles have been mainstays of film, TV and video games for decades, but their origins go way back to the black and white independent comics boom of the '80s. If you’re a fan of Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles, odds are you’re already keeping up with IDW’s excellent ground-up re-imagining of the franchise, but if you want more in that vein, we’ve selected five of the best independent, creator-owned, or alternative licensed comics that live up to the spirit of Turtle Power!

I've heard tales of Northampton, and because of those tales I have never visited. No, I'm sure it's fine; a picturesque town in the heart of England. It's probably not at all the dangerous and vengeful place it's hinted to be in this prevew of Giant Days #6 by John Allison and Lissa Treiman, which sees university friends Esther and Daisy on the search for the third of their cohort, Susan, in the unfamiliar territory of her home town.

Created by Robert Kanigher and Sheldon Moldoff, Poison Ivy first graced the comic page back in the historic year of 1966, when The Sound of Music won Best Picture and England somehow won the World Cup. Her first appearance was in Detective Comics #181, and since then the character has remained a constant thorn in the Dark Knight's side.

Giant Days #4 comes out this week, and it looks to be another hilarious issue of the entertaining series about college friends. One of the gang turns 18, and that means it's time for a party... but with less drinking than you would think, given that they live in England. Plus, hilarity over zine bootlegs! Writer/creator John Allison and artist Lissa Treiman look like they've really hit their stride together. Check out ComicsAlliance's exclusive preview!

John Allison and Lissa Treiman's Giant Days is a lot of things: fun, entertaining, silly, cute... but it also offers some interesting commentary on the world of the internet in issue 3. The gang at the center of Giant Days (Esther, Daisy, and Susan) encounter some crappy times with the internet that are all too reminiscent of real women's dealings with internet creeps. The story is handled with just enough humor and sincerity to make it thoughtful without being preachy. Spoilers ahead!

Over the course of seventeen real years and three webcomics set in the same locale, John Allison has taken his breakout character Shelley Winters through various incarnations. She’s a hot, saucy dame made up by some strange man on the internet, but is she really as naughty as all that? Join us as we track a lusty life in webcomics; the life of Shelley Winters.