Year in Review: 2017

This is the second straight year with little to no Bart Allen stories in all the comics, movies and TV shows DC offered. Which is a shame, since 2017 was another huge year for superheroes and sci-fi in general. The Academy Award for Best Picture (and three other awards) went to The Shape of Water. The top-grossing film at $1.3 billion was Star Wars: The Last Jedi. And four superhero films cracked the top 10 highest grossing list.

Marvel produced four stellar features — Logan, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Thor: Ragnarok. Logan was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, but lost to Call Me by Your Name. Guardians was nominated for Best Visual Effects but lost to Blade Runner 2049. DC put out three movies, one good, one goofy and one ... rather terrible — Wonder Woman, The Lego Batman Movie and Justice League. So we had five fantastic movies between the Big Two and only one stinker. That's not so bad. Except for the fact that Justice League was supposed to be the best of the batch. How can you mess up a movie with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg? Well, Zack Snyder, Joss Whedon and DC sure found a way.

Best Story: Teen Titans #15

We only had three Bart-related stories in 2017. In one, we only saw the costume of Impulse. In the second, a future adult Bart appeared only on the last page of the comic. In the third, he actually appeared on both the main cover and the variant, and had a slightly larger role. He still didn't do too much, but it was by far the most we got all year. Adult Bart grabbed hold of adult Tim Drake's hand, lost through space and time, which will enable the Titans of Tomorrow to pay a visit to the current Teen Titans. Will they help the insane Tim kill Jon Kent, or will they join forces with our heroes to stop this man who now calls himself Savior? We'll find out pretty soon.

Best Writer: Joshua Williamson

This was a tough one. Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason are crafting an intriguing story in this Super Sons of Tomorrow crossover, but the adult Bart is just an afterthought (at least so far). Joshua Williamson didn't do much more — all he did was include Impulse's costume in the background. But that was a very significant, prominent Easter egg. It was on the first panel of the comic, the first thing we saw, saying, "Yes! Impulse will eventually come back! We don't know when, we don't know how, but it will happen!" So that brief moment of excitement puts Williamson over the top.

Best Artist: Jorge Jiménez

Surprisingly, Jiménez ties Todd Nauck with his fourth Best Artist award. And, just like last year, he wins without even have drawn an entire issue. But the work he did in Teen Titans #15 was the best artwork we had this year. Francis Manapul's covers were incredible, but he gave the Titans of Tomorrow distractingly bland faces. So Jiménez wins for the fourth time, drawing his third different version of Bart — New 52 Bar Torr, Smallville Bart and now Titans of Tomorrow Bart.

Best Supporting Character: Future Conner

The only Bart we saw actually talking and doing things this year was future Bart, who only interacted with future Conner and future Cassie. Conner gets the slight edge since he's the clear leader of the Titans of Tomorrow, guiding them on this mission to locate future Tim. And that's it for this category.

Best Villain: Savior

Again, I couldn't pull anything from that Flash issue, since it was just Impulse's costume sitting in a glass case. So that leaves us with the Savior, the insane future version of Tim Drake, who is driving the conflict of the Super Sons of Tomorrow storyline. We don't know yet if future Bart is actually working against Tim or just trying to help him, but Savior is clearly the best villain of the year.

Next time, we'll begin 2018 and things will finally get interesting. Still not a whole lot of Bart, but it's getting better. It all starts with the conclusion of the Super Sons of Tomorrow.