ReviewsThe Best Sci-Fi Comics of the Modern Era: A Sourced Guide

The essential modern sci-fi comics shelf is six series strong: Saga (Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, launched 2012 at Image), Monstress (Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda, 2015, Image), Paper Girls (Vaughan and Cliff Chiang, 2015, Image), Descender (Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen, 2015, Image), East of West (Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta, 2013, Image), and The Wicked + The Divine (Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, 2014, Image). Per Image's catalog, Saga's launch issue in 2012 became one of the best-selling creator-owned debuts of the decade, and all six of these series are available in complete or multi-volume collected editions as of the publisher's 2025 listings.

This is a sourced guide: launch years, creative teams and completion status come from publisher catalogs and trade coverage. It publishes recommendations, not collectible-market advice.

Which sci-fi comic should you start with in 2026?

Saga, volume one. It is the modern era's commercial and critical center of gravity — a space-opera about two soldiers from opposing sides of an endless war raising a child, and per Image's solicitations it has sold millions of units across its single-volume deluxe editions. The first trade paperback is a self-contained opening act; you will know within one volume whether the series is yours. After a multi-year hiatus, the series resumed with new arcs in the 2020s, and its collected volumes remain in continuous print.

What's the best fantasy-leaning pick?

Monstress. Liu and Takeda's series has the strongest awards record on this list: per Image Comics' own announcements, Monstress and its team earned multiple Eisner and Hugo-category recognitions across its run, a rare feat for an ongoing serialized comic. Set in an art-deco matriarchal empire ravaged by arcane war, it follows a survivor with a monstrous connection she barely controls. Takeda's painted art is the argument for the oversized deluxe editions over the standard trades, if your budget allows.

Which one is the shortest commitment?

Paper Girls — complete in 30 issues, collected across six standard trade volumes or two larger compendium-style editions. Four newspaper-delivery girls in 1988 collide with a time war; it is the tightest plotted of Vaughan's modern works and, unlike Saga, it is finished, which makes it the ideal entry point for readers who refuse to start open-ended series. The Wicked + The Divine is similarly finite: 42 issues, complete, collected in hardcovers — gods reincarnated as pop stars for two years, then gone.

What if you want big-idea worldbuilding?

East of West: a science-fiction western apocalypse across a reimagined America, plotted with Hickman's signature dense architecture — meaning it rewards collected reading over single issues, because it was designed for the trade. It ran to completion. Descender is the softer pick: a robot-child story set after a machine-led catastrophe, drawn by Nguyen in watercolor, complete in its own run and continued in the sequel series Ascender, which is also finished. Descender's complete-plus-sequel structure makes it the most satisfying full-arc binge on the list.

Are the deluxe editions worth upgrading to?

For Saga and Monstress, yes — both have oversized hardcover editions that per the publisher's solicitations collect roughly three trade volumes' worth of material each, and Takeda's painted pages in particular gain from the larger trim. For Paper Girls and Wicked + Divine, the standard hardcovers or compendium editions serve the art fine. A practical rule attributed to how these editions are built: the more painterly the art, the stronger the case for oversized.

Spoilers below this line.

Premise-level only: Saga opens with a birth and a war closing in; Paper Girls' mystery resolves across a complete time-loop structure; East of West's four horsemen plot advances toward its planned terminus, which the creative team stated was mapped from the start. Everything above this line stays safe to read before buying.

What unifies the modern era?

The Image Comics creator-owned model. Every series on this list is owned by its creators, published outside the corporate superhero universes — a structural shift that dates to the company's 1992 founding and accelerated through the 2010s as the primary home for ambitious ongoing genre comics. The Library of Congress's comics collections document the longer historical arc of the medium that these series extend. The practical consequence for you: fewer crossover events, complete creative-team runs, and collected editions designed to be read start to finish — which is exactly how this shelf is built.