Check out the best superhero comics in 2016, including our critics' picks, and the comics you voted the runners up and winner in this category! This is the very best of 2016!
Warm up your body and soul this season with a steaming hot mug of feelings and coffee. Stories like the fabled "coffee shop AUs (alternate universes)," where licensed characters are imagined in low-key, romantic settings, have been derided by some as lacking drama or conflict, and to that I say: thank god. We don't need to fantasize about conflict or drama in all our fiction when we can just greet what's waiting on our front door. Sometimes, the soul just needs kindling. Share the gifts of feeling and warmth with this coffee shop AU gift guide.
In Hannah Blumenreich's Spider-Man fan comics, Peter Parker disentangles Gilmore Girls relationships while helping Aunt May knit, falls asleep on the couch to the tune of I Love Lucy, and gushes about Cowboy Bebop while shielding a woman from street harassment. Blumenreich's Spidey Zine and other Peter Parker fan comics explore a quieter, more introspective take on the iconic character, drawn with the physicality of a realistically young, potato-esque teenager.
ComicsAlliance attended the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo and sat down with Blumenreich to discuss fan work, arachnophobia, and evil Disney lawyers.