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Monday, December 27, 2004
Had an atomic bore in 2004
That’s right folks; it’s time for my look at the year 2004. What I liked and what I felt was important. Nothing special.
Best Graphic Novel
The winner here should be Locas but I actually haven’t read all of it yet. I have read a lot of what is in it and that includes my favorite comic of all time, The Death of Speedy. For that reason it should be the winner here on BB. It’s not like that’s the only good part and the rest is crap, right? I remember reading in Comic Art Dan Clowes saying that Hernandez, like Alex Toth and a few others, is wired so that everything they draw comes out perfectly. Not only is everything he draws wonderful but the characterization of Maggie, Hopey and the rest are as good as you’re going to read in comic books. Character driven stories with beautiful artwork? Yes, I think that will do.
As for Best Graphic Novel that I have read the whole way through, that honor goes to James Kochalka’s American Elf. Kochalka presents five years of his life for us and we are all better for it. He deals with the big stuff in his wonderful way. The stuff like getting more famous, Sept. 11 and having a child. But it’s the way he draws about the small things like playing with his cat or hanging out with his wife that makes the book work. It's a large volume of the best stuff from a great cartoonist I can only hope has as long and great a career as Hernandez.
Best Comic Series
In the world of superhero comics we had New Frontier, where Darwyn Cooke presents the most thoroughly beautiful version of the Silver Age DC world. It’s a book that gets the whimsy and wonder of what a book populated with brightly colored super powered men and women should be, without being afraid of giving these heroes a political bent.
Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart packed more into three issues of Seaguy than most people can give us in 30 issues. I read that over again recently and was just astounded with how many mysterious and intelligent ideas are running around in that book.
Street Angel by Jim Rugg and Brain Marcua set the blog world off and rightly so. I’ve only read issue three and four, though, so I can’t really get into the whole thing. Their commitment to have every issue different from the last pleases me a lot and makes me see why they deserve all the praise they get. My bookshelf awaits the first trade.
All those books are fantastic, though, but I think the award here has to go to with the second volume of Love and Rockets, along with its spin-offs. While NF is someone relatively new to comics giving us a landmark series, Seaguy is Grant Morrison embarking on a new leg of his career and Street Angle does adventure comics with more imagination and skill than most, L&R is two cartoonists doing what they’ve been doing since I was born and without any sign of wear. They’ve only progressed as artists, getting better and better as each issue comes out. Beto’s is at the same time wrapping up his Luba saga getting into the wonderfully weird world of magic realism with comics that are one part Silver Age DC and one part Jim Woodring (and that’s just the tip of the iceberg!). Jaime continues Maggie and Hopey’s misadventures better than he ever has. The ending to the Maggie serial beats out any new book on the stands trying to be “horror.” His storytelling abilities crystallize more and I expect we might see something from him soon that will go down as his best work ever.
Best Single Issue
The 23rd issue of Eightball deserves mention here, as well. Clowes is making some of the best comics around, no doubt, but count me in the camp that thinks that Clowes is past his prime. I love the funny stuff like “I Hate You Deeply” and when he was drawing characters that were gloriously grotesque like that potato-girl in Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron. I must say, though, “The Death Ray” still had a lot going for it. It was a great showcase for Clowes to explore the dehumanization of his characters, especially the main character who seems about as dry as a DVD commentary track with Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy. While I felt the previous issue of Eightball was a better example of Clowes’ current style where the all the characters look like depressed extras out of a Harvey comic (that’s not a slight) and “Black Nylon” is a better example of Clowes doing superheroes, “The Death Ray” is still one of the best single issues that came out this year because Clowes remains one of the masters of the medium.
Punisher: The End might just seem like one more useless spin-off of many that Marvel has drowned us with. When opened up and devour it is instead found to be one of the most vicious books any major publishers has given us in years. Garth Ennis and Richard Corben place their Frank Castle in a post-nuclear Earth that the book explicitly explain is brought to us by the Bush administration's war mad hubris. The Punisher escapes the jail he has spent the past several years in to inflict the type of mayhem he is known for on the masters of war and industry that have safely escaped the fate of so many others in this 21st century Armageddon. In this The Punisher becomes something more than just the epitome of simple vigilantism, he becomes a character not unlike Spain Rodriguez's Trashman or some kind of chilling combination between Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver and Jello Biafra. The two panel sequence of the P.T. Barnum-like bureaucrat offering The Punisher a deal and the fate Punisher deals out for him just might be the greatest two panels I read all year. Corben portrays Castle's physical decay in a deliciously gruesome manner, one that beautifully contrasts the crystal clear determination inside the man. This is the kind of book that viscerally excited the teenage boy I once was and the socially conscience, angry-by-default young man I am today.
As great as the last two books were it was some a small book by a cartoonist I have never read before that became my favorite. When you hear a lot about an artist you wonder if he or she can live up to the hype. When I read Kevin Huizenga’s Or Else #1 it was a relief that all the success he found in the world of mini-comics has transferred itself nicely to this, his first book from Drawn & Quartely. The Glenn Ganges stories display a remarkable talent for pace, dialogue and characterization but it was reading “Chan Woo Kim” that knocked me out. The transcription of adoption papers along side beautiful illustrations of mountains and waterfalls is an idea that few would think of in the first place and even fewer could make work. In Huizenga’s hands it’s one of the most beautiful stories told all year.
Best Blogging
I excuse myself of course, not that I deserve to win anyway.
Ken Lowery proves with some year end posts and a great blogger rundown that it’s quality, not quantity that matters. I don’t think anyone else comes up with better topics for discussion than him.
There are many great grumps in the blogosphere but Tim O’Neill is by far my favorite. His reviews and essays are full of intelligence and wit. I love reading blogs where I know I’m going to disagree with something, as long as that disagreeable item is still well-thought out enriching to read all the same.
While those two and many others were coming up with great stuff n 2004 I have to say my favorite this year was a debut for 2004. Tom Spurgeon combines the best of link-blogging, reviews and comment and is a worthwhile trip every morning. It really does feel like the closet thing to Journalista we have going right now. The design of the site is pretty snazzy, too.
Most Interesting News Story
I’m a proud member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, but the recent additions to their board of directors do give me some worry. No doubt there are some positive things to come out of having two of the most powerful people in comics on their board, Steve Geppi and Paul Levitz. It’s just that the CBLDF has a glorious history of defending comics that Levitz would probably have pulped if DC published them. If Geppi is the kind to suppress Yummy Fur from being distributed, what chances do the Michael Diana’s of the world have? The CBLDF is a great organization and, more importantly, it’s the only type we have that is dedicated to fight for comics. We can’t let them become too conservative as time wears on. If they give up the fight, who else is there? (I know there’s the ACLU, another group I’m proud to be a member of, but they’ve got more on their plate than just comics)
My New Year’s Resolution
Looking over my posts from this year I find myself complaining about the output of Marvel and DC but still devoting most of my time to their stuff. The simple answer is comfort, their stuff is easily available and it’s what I know best. It’s time for me to get the Hell out of my comfort zones. I plan to slowly but surely drop all “floppies” the Big Two put out, with the exception of anything Grant Morrison writes, to instead spend more time and money on graphic novels and trade paperbacks, which I consider to be a superior way to read comics. That means more comix, “new mainstream” and manga. I already have my favorites from those areas but it’s time to really get into them. The worst thing I can do let my critical thinking skills get rusty because any fear of the unknown.
Let’s just hope I accomplish this, unlike my last New Year’s Resolution “seduce Scarlett Johansson.” Seriously, it would be awesome if my like was like that in Entourage, just with more comics and vintage Velvet Underground records.
P.S. There’s still a ton of stuff that came out that I like but couldn’t fit in a place to mention them. So here they are: Rubber Necker, She-Hulk, Same Difference and Other Stories (I should write more about it but I thought it came out in 2003), the first two issues of We3, all of The Filth, It’s a Bird… (that deserves a longer look at), the fact that The Comics Journal reprinted Alex Toth comics and Goodman Goes Playboy in the same issue and then George Leonard Carlon’s stuff in the next, the stuff in McSweeney’s #13 that I hadn’t read before, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips kicking all types of ass on Sleeper, anything that came from Tony Millionaire but especially When We Were Very Maakies and Hard Time, of which I’m one of about five-and-a-half people reading that book.
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