The 2023 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Award for Best Limited Comic Series

There's no doubt that 2023 was an excellent year for entertainment, with all of our favorite forms of media delivering stone-cold classics throughout the year. That's no easy feat in the wake of a pandemic and amidst ongoing strikes and negotiations, but the results speak for themselves. Movie theaters delivered titanic blockbusters; television series and wrestling promotions summoned shocking twists; video games let us experience new ways of thinking. And comics, our website's namesake, were no exception.

Across the realm of comics publishing, there were plenty of highlights to be found amongst new manga, revived superhero series, and plenty of original graphic novels. However, there's a special middle ground between ongoing series and standalone volumes that creates unique opportunities to tell complete stories often woven into familiar concepts (or crossovers). We refer to these as limited comics series for their distinct definition as serialized productions. 2023 produced a collection of outstanding limited series that are bound to thrill readers for years to come, but we could only deem one this year's very best.

And the winner for the 2022 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Award for Best Limited Comic Series is…

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Usagi Yojimbo: WhereWhen!

There are few cartoonists who are still producing comics regularly after 40 years in comics, and even fewer who are producing career-best work, but Stan Sakai is a truly exceptional cartoonist. In addition to the ongoing adventures of Usagi Yojimbo and other related miniseries, Sakai crafted a new crossover between his own creation, the rabbit samurai Usagi, and another iconic comics debut from the 1980s, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It's far from the first time the two series have crossed over, as Usagi and the Turtles first met in 1986. But WhereWhen proved that both Usagi and the Turtles are comics icons for a good reason, as they and Sakai delivered one of the best tales in their collective bodies of work.

WhereWhen follows the Turtles back in time, as they chase a mad scientist to feudal Japan. There they reencounter an older Usagi, and their stories run in parallel as they seek to return Dr. WhereWhen to the present. It's not the complexity of the plot that sets WhereWhen apart, though. It's the elegance with which Sakai makes the story meaningful to all of its characters, and the distillation of these classic characters and tropes into exquisite action sequences and comedic delivery.

Drawing new characters and concepts into the consistently outstanding historical setting of Usagi Yojimbo makes WhereWhen a unique joy, even for readers already delighted by monthly installments of Usagi's own ongoing adventures. The two ensembles of heroes are drawn together, and Sakai manages to succinctly provide each of them with their own arcs and beats with storytelling as deft and unadorned as his linework, which ensures every character is instantly understood when they enter a panel. It's easy to gawk at Sakai's layouts and character work for hours, but only after finishing an adventure with a relentless pace and abundance of fun twists.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Usagi Yojimbo: WhereWhen is a testament to the wondrous simplicity of cartooning. A perfect deployment of lines in a neatly configured grid draws readers across the entire page and into the emotions and excitement of an impossible adventure. Through emotional turns and suspenseful heights, it draws readers into a timeless masterpiece of samurai rabbits and teenage mutant ninja turtles.

The nominees for the 2023 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Award for Best Limited Series are:

• Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise
• Green Arrow
• Miracleman by Gaiman & Buckingham: The Silver Age
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Usagi Yojimbo: WhereWhen -- WINNER
• Void Rivals