Best comeidan of 2016

2016 is over, long live 2016. With it died every good celebrity and Nancy Reagan. Gawker is gone and Green Room had a shitty third act. Global temperatures are rising, ice sheets are melting, water tastes just a shade more metallic than it used to. What slivers of light remain are those few beamed from satellite to iPhone, through fiber optic cables and network airwaves, bathing us all in the sweet glow of warm, buttery pop culture. If there was nothing else good about this year, at least there was good comedy, and plenty of it—in just about every form imaginable, from virtual reality to regular reality. Here, in the interests of nostalgia and ad revenue, are the 25 comedians who most entertained us this year, whether it be through stand-up, sketch or plain old acting. Obviously not everybody who made us laugh could make this list, so we looked not just for quality but also volume, and focused on those whose work was available for a large audience and not just whoever had the best live show we saw this year. Caveats aside, let’s relive (and relaugh!) the immediate past.



25. Joe Pera
A recipient of the illustrious Andy Kaufman Award and staple of the NYC stand-up scene, Joe Pera made his cable and network debuts this year. First there was his dreamy meditation of an Adult Swim special, Joe Pera Talks You To Sleep; then, his tremendous tight five on Late Night with Seth Meyers offered a flavor of character humor unlike anything else on that show. Next week Adult Swim will air his newest special, Joe Pera Helps You Find the Perfect Christmas Tree. What a time to be alive.

          24. John Early
   The physical manifestation of every meme about millennials, John Early lent his ever-charming support to s  ome of 2016’s most interesting comedies. His episode of The Characters
was one of the funniest of that bumpy anthology, if for this sketch alone, and his turn as the self-absorbed Elliott provides a source of unending joy in TBS’s Search Party. We’re especially looking forward to his return as the drama nerd Logan in Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later sometime next year.




 


23. Michael Ian Black
Michael Ian Black had as busy a year as anyone on this last—he released a special, published a children’s book, starred in The Jim Gaffigan Show, and appeared in a tidy handful of films, tweeted back at a million trolls—but we’d give him this slot solely on the merits of his endlessly delightful turn as the butler Peepers in Another Period, one of the third- to fifth-funniest shows on TV.


 


     
22. Patton Oswalt
Twitter is a double-edged sword, and few people prove it as much as Patton Oswalt. His torrents of tweets can include some legitimately disagreeable business, but when he’s on he’s one of the funniest social and political critics on the internet. If he was just a social media invective machine he wouldn’t have made this list, though. He released another fine stand-up special, Talking for Clapping earlier this year, was a highlight of Funny or Die’s Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal: The Movie as Merv Griffin, and made another 100 or so memorable appearances on such shows as Archer, Lady Dynamite and Bajillion Dollar Propertie$.

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