Happy New Year, Newsarama readership! You know what this means, it’s obligatory “Best of” list time!
Well, I haven’t read every single comic that was published this past year, but I read quite a few. So if Joe Daly’s The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book, Jamie Hernandez’s Locas II or David Small’s Stitches isn’t here, don’t fret – I fully intend to get to them. (In fact, I already own two of those three, so look for thoughts in 2010 when I get sufficiently caught up with my reading.)
Nevertheless, I present Mike Lorah’s books of 2009 that I strongly urge everyone to check out:
1. Asterios Polyp, by David Mazzuchelli. Pantheon. (original review here – scroll down a little bit)
“Technically, Asterios Polyp is an absolute tour de force, with a lesson in cartooning to learn on every page, but Mazzucchelli isn’t just showing his virtuosity as an artist and designer. By crafting a series of distinct and internally strong characters, Mazzucchelli enables Asterios Polyp to explore the human condition via his interactions with one of the most memorable casts to grace the comics page.”
2. The Photographer: Into war-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders, by Emmanuel Guibert & Didier Lefèvre. First Second. (full review)
“Writing a script from Lefèvre’s journal, mixing the cold reality of photos and the impressionistic vision of his own artwork, Guibert captures the indelible humanity experienced by his friend in Afghanistan. The book succeeds on many levels: a document of a people’s struggle to survive, a love letter to the important work being done by MSF, and as a reinvention of the graphic rules of the comic book form.”
3. Usagi Yojimbo vol. 23: Bridge of Tears, by Stan Sakai. Dark Horse. (full review)
“Bridge of Tears indeed. Readers should not read this book in public, because people are going to wonder about you when they see you sobbing over your rabbit samurai comic book. … Giving a peek into each character allows the tension to mount, leading to a finale that’s among the best in comics’ history. Smart, heart-breaking, explosive, and deadly, Bridge of Tears‘ finale is the perfect ending to a momentous build-up.” – see also, Usagi Yojimbo: Yōkai (review here)
4. The Big Kahn, by Neil Kleid & Nicolas Cinquegrani. NBM. (full review)
“Kleid’s done some good comics work in the past, but The Big Kahn is his new gold standard. … In the end, it all adds up to something that resembles a great American novel, a saga of a family coming apart and coming together, getting beyond a lie that shatters their faith in truths. Each character’s flaws are exposed, yet Kleid prevents the narrative from bogging down in depression or sadness. Rage, confusion and love are all mixed in, swirling around to create an impressively realized family dynamic. ”
5. George Sprott, 1894-1975, by Seth. Drawn & Quarterly. (full review)
“One of the most interesting aspects of Seth’s technique is how he calls into question how well any of us know one another. Certain facts about the life of George Sprott remain unimpeachable, yet Seth shows us through his own admissions of limitations as a narrator and via the many “interviews” with Sprott’s colleagues and family that all of Sprott’s many foibles and adventures were all perceived differently by every person in his life.”
6. A Drifting Life, by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Drawn & Quarterly. (full review)
“The core of A Drifting Life is really the parallel development of Tatsumi as a manga artist and the growth of the manga industry itself. From the time he started submitting to manga magazines while still a teen until the book’s ending in 1960, when Tatsumi is established in Tokyo, struggling to balance his workload and determined to dedicate himself to developing Gekiga, his own brand of manga for adults, his life is completely and totally intertwined with the artform he so profoundly loves.”
7. The Color trilogy: The Color of Earth, The Color of Water, The Color of Heaven, by Kim Dong Hwa. First Second. (full review)
“It’s boldly sexual, yet steadfastly determined to be allusive and suggestive, a dichotomy that sometimes limits Hwa’s ability to drive home the physical nature of sexuality. Yet he’s consistently able to get to the emotional core of each moment.”
And of course, I’m a huge fan of archival comics projects. Here are a few of the best of the past year:
1. Prince Valiant vol. 1: 1937-1938, by Hal Foster. Fantagraphics. (full review)
“The art is consistently stunning, stuffed with beautifully detailed landscapes, horses, flocks of sheep, and Val’s beloved, wind-blown fens. Foster’s very, very good at creating a sense of movement, and the tiny details like how clothes lay on a body and how horse’s move and fall only add to the convincing nature of the narrative. … Hal Foster is – rightly – regarded as one of the masters of the medium, and Prince Valiant is his masterwork. The strips in Prince Valiant vol. 1: 1937-1938 are merely the first installment of a massive, groundbreaking, and thoroughly exciting adventure saga that was better than nearly anything during its time, and remains better than nearly anything on the shelves today.”
2. Al Williamson’s Flash Gordon: A Lifelong Vision of the Heroic, by Al Williamson, with Mark Schultz, Archie Goodwin, Larry Ivie & Bruce Jones. Flesk Publications. (full review)
“You take one of the great characters of romantic adventure fiction, arguably the greatest illustrator in the history of comics, and a company devoted to high-quality comic art books and frankly, it’s really a can’t-miss concept. Al Williamson has always been blessed with the ability to find a palpable, living reality in any scene. Add his talents to his adoration of the Flash Gordon character, as the Buster Crabbe serials and Alex Raymond strips went a long toward steering Williamson’s artistic ambitions toward the comics field, and you can be sure that Williamson brought his A-game to every opportunity he had to draw Flash’s adventures.”
3. Nexus Archives vol. 8-9, by Mike Baron, Steve Rude, Paul Smith, Neil “Spyder” Hansen & Adam Hughes. Dark Horse. (vol. 9 full review)
“Baron and Rude create a universe far more complex and nuanced than that of any other superhero comic, stuffed to the gills with immigration concerns, energy shortfalls, religious zealotry (and they were writing these stories twenty-five years ago!), massively complex moral quandaries, enticingly realized alien culture, political parody as good as any you’ll find in the papers, and yes, awesome and bombastic action sequences.”
4. Luba, by Gilbert Hernandez. Fantagraphics. (full review)
“Luba was created serially and is, as a result, prone to bizarre digressions. In many ways, it is these side-tracks that give Hernandez’s work its power, however. Our lives don’t follow clean storylines, and nor do his characters’. … Luba’s stand-out character, and seemingly the character primed to take the central role if Hernandez continues to follow the family line, is Petra’s daughter Venus. Precocious, intelligent and utterly unwilling to let anybody’s bull slide, Venus provides perspective on the family’s many dysfunctions. Her youthfully innocent observations regarding Luba’s inability to accept her daughters’ homosexuality, or regarding her mother’s desperate clinging to youth and inability to forgive, provide consistent context throughout Luba”
5. Complete Terry and the Pirates vol. 6: 1945-1946, by Milton Caniff. IDW. (vol. 5 review)
“By the end of 1946, Caniff will have left Terry, and the strip, reportedly, never truly recovers from the loss. Fortunately, we have IDW’s gorgeous and fastidious reprint editions to preserve these astonishing and wonderful strips for future generations. I can’t imagine how readers waited two full years to see these stories unfold; they’re so utterly compelling that I raced through months at a time without breaking.”
And I guess I should give an honorable mention to Popeye vol. 4: Plunder Island, by EC Segar (Fantagraphics). I haven’t had time to read it yet, but the first three volumes all made my list in previous years. Here are thoughts on vol. 3: Let’s You and Him Fight.
January 6th, 2010 at 1:54 am
as it stands we might have to settle for Maynard
February 14th, 2011 at 12:24 pm
You are probably right. Your idea is good an i think that would be useful for everybody. I’ll look more deeply into.