ED. NOTE: Over the weekend, of course, Comic Riffs shared our personal picks for Top 10 Graphic Novels of 2013 — a category largely limited to new works of comics narrative. Thing is, the year has brought an embarrassment of riches, including retrospectives (such as Art Spiegelman’s “Co-MIX”) and wordless panoramas (Joe Sacco’s “The Great War” ). And that “embarrassment” extends to superheroic stories — from archers to gunslingers to an unchained slave.

Here, then, is our separate list to honor the category of capes and cowls and quivers: Our Top 10 Superhero Comics of 2013.

— M.C.

Matt Fraction and David Aja prove that you don’t need superpowers to be the top Avenger. (Marvel Comics - .)

Hawkeye

(Hardcover, Vol. 1)

(Writer: Matt Fraction; artists: David Aja, Javier Pulido, Francesco Francavilla, Alan Davis, Jesse Hamm. Collects: Hawkeye #1-11 and Young Avengers Presents #6. Marvel; $35.)

If you took a roll call of the current Avengers roster and tried to determine who would have the best solo comic book, you'd probably lean toward the team members who have individual movies to go with their comics (Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Iron Man). So imagine the surprise when the top Avenger solo book of 2013 turned out to be Hawkeye, the Avenger's non-superpowered, non-armored archer.

To make Hawkeye's choice as Avenger numero uno even more surprising is the title's approach — basically, a look at Hawkeye when he's not an Avenger. Who knew so few unquivered arrows, so many pots of coffee — plus being mistaken for Iron Fist — would take Clint Barton to the top this year?

The combination of Fraction's crackling writing and Aja’s wonderful art will have you wondering whether Jeremy Renner will go blond and get his own Hawkeye movie from Marvel Studios.

Hey, we can dream..

WHEN YOU MEET royalty, you later tend to remember it all so clearly, as crisp as yesterday. And so it was with meeting “the king.”

The room was chocka­block with cartooning stars and legends, but the house had one clear head that wore the crown. It was the National Cartoonists Society’s 1998 Reubens in Pasadena, I was one of the young turks that had just been signed to the New York syndicate — and just one table over, holding court, was the company’s reigning great: Charles Schulz.

We were introduced by our common editor. We shook hands. And he paid me an undeserved compliment.

Then he proceeded to be mildly deprecating about how some viewed his own work.

We’re talking “Peanuts,” for Pete’s sake. A national treasure. A cultural institution. And a creation that surely continues to influence, in some way, the majority of cartoonists working today.

Not so many months later, that same comics editor, Amy Lago, would tell me about “Sparky” Schulz’s cancer.

Sparky died Feb. 12, 2000. His final “Peanuts” strip appeared around the world — as if by design or something divine — the very next day.

Today, Schulz — born in 1922 in Minneapolis — would have been 91.

A new “Peanuts” movie is in the works. The Emmy-winning “Peanuts” specials continue to draw strong ratings come the holidays. And his redefinition of the modern comic strip resonates still in his characters that are more than iconic.

They are truth.

Here are cartoons I drew in tribute to Schulz several months after he died:

.

. (MICHAEL CAVNA / “Warped” - .)

ED. NOTE: Thar be spoilers. You just know there are. If you read on, hey: It’s on you.

— M.C.

IF WE NEEDED a clue, well, show creator Seth MacFarlane gave it to us, right there in the episode title:

“Life of Brian.”

Even a subpar writer like Brian Griffin himself — “Family Guy’s” anthropomorphic, wisecracking white Lab voiced by MacFarlane himself — could have scripted this cause of death (though not perhaps his surprisingly poignant death scene).

One petitioning fan rages — and rants — against the dying of a television light. (FOX via AP - ,) But now, Brian cannot, for he is no more. Setting aside any Monty Python-esque title allusions, Brian Griffin, age 8 — or “midlife” in dog years — has cracked wise for the last time.

After 14 years, the Coltrane-loving MENSA member has left us too soon.

On Sunday night, Brian was struck by a careering silver car, and breathed his last later on the doctor’s table. (Note to “Family Guy” geeks: Yes, this does indeed depart from the series’s earlier time-travel vacation, in which Stewie learns Brian died of theobromine [chocolate] poisoning.)

In deciding to kill a major character, MacFarlane and his car hit their mark.

One day later, an Alabama man — rankled by the Death of Brian — hit his.

THE CARTOON AUCTION paddled along in Washington, but it was Minnesota that especially grabbed the spotlight last week at the National Press Club.

Steve Sack, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune editorial cartoonist who won the Pulitzer this year, was the honorary chairman who greeted guests at Thursday’s Cartoons & Cocktails charity auction.

And Al Franken, the Democratic senator from Minnesota, donated a cartoon (uncommon for a sitting politician): a caricature of former president Nixon. The winning bid for the Franklin original was $550.

Sack — who took the stage to join the night’s emcee, locally based cartoonist Steve Artley — also created the acrylic painting that graced the night’s program: a close-up of Obama.

Sen. Al Franken donated his caricature of President Nixon to the Cartoons & Cocktails 2013 charity event. (by Sen. Al Franken / Courtesy of Cartoons & Cocktails 2013. - .)

TODAY, Google hears a Who.

With Doctor Who’s new feature-length special just hours away, a massive new tribute Doodle — the “Whodle” — appears on the search giant’s U.S. home page thanks to a fan.

As the British phenomenon marks its 50th-birthday milestone Saturday, the golden celebration is global: “The Day of the Doctor” BBC special will be simulcast in at least 75 countries at 2:50 p.m. ET today, in addition to its limited theatrical release.