The Best Comics of 2013

The Comic Pusher Best Comics of 2013
by Jeffrey O. Gustafson

2013 was a year without a single marquis work that represents both the critical and commercial consensus in the way that certain monumental works seemed to overshadow previous years. This year had no Building Stories or Asterios Polyp, but that does not mean it wasn't a good year for comics. It was actually pretty great. 

Obviously this was the year of Gilbert Hernandez, but other creators had pretty prolific high-quality outputs as well. Matt Fraction - Comic Pusher's 2008 Creator of the Year - was working in a different stratosphere in 2013, and his Sex Criminals with Chip Zdarsky and Satellite Sam with equally prolific Howard Chaykin would have been enough for him to net the top spot if not for Hernandez. Mainstream superhero comics are always a mess, but Hickman's big-picture Avengers/Infinity work was especially entertaining, and his creator-owned work continued to be cutting edge. Despite no new material from the likes of Chris Ware we did get killer new indie anthologies from Los Bros Hernandez, Adrian Tomine, Michael Deforge, and Seth, and new graphic novels from Darwyn Cooke, Jason, and Fred Chao. The proliferation of high-quality archival reprint material continues to astound, and in yet another year that sees increasing in-roads into the mainstream with digital releases, 2013 saw an unexpected sea-change in how comics can be made and digitally distributed with Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin's Private Eye.

My choices for Best Comics of 2013 reflects the growing importance of web and digital comics (three entries), the Creator Owned Renaissance (over ten), and the availability of quality translated European works (including my still-surprising-to-me choice of Best Graphic Novel).  Without further ado (and about damned time, too) here are the 13 Best Comics of 2013.

Best Graphic Novel of 2013
The Initiates by Etienne Davodeau (NBM)

In 2010, French cartoonist Etienne Davodeau proposed a unique venture to his friend, the notable vintner Richard Leroy - he would spend the year assisting the winemaker in every aspect of production, from trimming in the winter to shipping in the fall, and the cartoonist would open up and introduce him to his world of comics. What transpires is told in the surprisingly wonderful non-fiction docu-comic and the Best Overall Graphic Novel of 2013, The Initiates from Futuropolis and NBM Comics Lit.

Davodeau chronicles Leroy, a dedicated artist of extraordinary commitment, his art wine. Leroy's obsessive devotion to his particular style of production - he has a relationship to the plants and the soil that borders on mystical - and the proven quality of his output year after year has won him a legion of fans across the globe. Embedded in Leroy's production, Davodeau does a remarkable job of translating, both visually, and descriptively, the entire universe of wine making and consuming that Leroy inhabits. Interwoven is the fascinating window into the world of French comic making. Davodeau introduces Leroy to Gibrat & Mathieu & Guibert and many more who appear in-person. When Leroy questions Lewis Trondheim's style, Trondheim shows up in the form of a brilliant one-page cartoon. Davodeau takes Leroy to comic conventions, Leroy sits in at editorial meetings, he reviews submissions, takes in art shows, and more.

In The Initiates, Davodeau has crafted a captivating, comprehensive, absorbing, delightful and incredibly entertaining documentary that certainly deserves to take its place in the growing nonfiction graphic canon. When you finish The Initiates, you get the sense of having spent the day with good friends, good food, good wine, and good conversation, falling under the spell of camaraderie capped off by the euphoria you can only get from a few drinks at the end of a day well spent.

Read my full review of The Intitiates Here. 

Best Comic of 2014 
Time, from xkcd 1190 by Randall Monroe

In March, Randall Munroe, the cartoonist behind the webcomic xkcd, published xkcd #1190, Time. The comic started as a single image that began to change, incrementally every hour. Some panels would feature a small change, others contained dialog and events and changes in scenery indicative of minutes or hours passing. Munroe published a new panel every hour for four months, a comic in 3099 panels, with each panel published every hour for 123 days in what is, all told, the Best Overall Comic of 2013.

The story is as unique and engaging as the format. Munroe, in his signature poetic stick figure style, weaves an elaborate, suspenseful sci-fi mystery, with two unnamed figures exploring an abandoned and troubling landscape. What transpires is akin to First Contact and a race against time to save a people from annihilation. The extreme and varied details of the comic's setting reveal Munroe to be a creator of extraordinary multidisciplinary intelligence, an innovative storyteller whose works show humanity and thirst for discovery. His art, so deceptively simple, continues to be detailed and above all else shockingly expressive for featureless stick figures, the format ambitious. The end result is breathtaking and dramatic.

The title of the piece refers to the unknowable future the characters inhabit, a future where recognizable human society has collapsed. It refers to the experience the travelers share, the time they spend together discovering things about the world and themselves they never could before guess. It refers to the unexpected deadline the travelers fall under to save their people. And it refers to the experience of reading the comic - separate from the unique temporal experience of its initial publication - the way the reader can manipulate the time of experiencing the work, one of modern comics truly monumental achievements.

Experience Time at the Munroe-approved resource geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190. Read my full commentary and analysis of xkcd: Time here.


Best Ongoing Series of 2013 - Creative Team
Saga by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples (Image)

The Comic Pusher Best Ongoing Series of the Year for the second year running, Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples' Saga continues to be an exhilarating, utterly absorbing, completely original sci-fi/fantasy drama. The story of two moon-crossed lovers from different worlds on the run with a price on their head, the narrative slowed down to build the world and expand the cast of key players.

Vaughan's masterful pacing keeps the cliffhangers and shocks coming. Staples' fine illustration a perfect visual voice for the story. Saga uses its unique setting and extraordinary characters to explore fundamental questions about family and love while telling an absolutely riveting, unpredictable, richly layered, often funny, and always humanistic story. There are a lot of good comics leading the creator-owned renaissance at Image, but nothing that creates and fills the niches that Saga does, let along with its continued level of success.

Best Ongoing Series of 2013 - Single Creator
MIND MGMT by Matt Kindt (Dark Horse)

Matt Kindt has been making graphic novels for a while, but his ongoing MIND MGMT has announced Kindt as one of the best overall creators and most distinct voices in mainstream comics. MIND MGMT - a bracingly original work that is also the Best Single-Creator Series of the year - is an enthralling journey into a world of superspies and secret histories, unique powers and the unknown forces of global manipulation. As a storyteller in his creator-owned works, Kindt is deeply invested in the effect spying has on societies and the individuals who wage the never-ending shadow wars that steer the course of history. The unique metaphysical powers and technologies used in spying in MIND MGMT and the winding pathways of interpersonal and intergovernmental treachery share equal focus with stories of human beings giving everything of themselves for an ideal or profit, often caught up in waves of human events beyond their control, sometimes controlling those waves themselves. Kindt masterfully utilizes espionage and everything it entails to explore unique facets of human interaction and global history. The issues released this year saw Kindt take his art and storytelling to completely new levels. The story constantly one-ups itself, in ingenuity, in twists, in character, in sheer style, and weaves a deeply labyrinthine mystery whose secrets unravel like seeds blossoming into massive trees, roots like an iceberg, branches dovetailing into everything you think you know. MIND MGMT is represents some of Kindt's finest work to date.

(See also my review of Kindt's original graphic novel released in 2013 Red Handed: The Fine Art of Strange Crimes here)

Best New Series of 2013
East of West by Jonathan Hickman & Nick Dragotta (Image)

Throughout the expansive, high-concept ongoing East of West, writer/designer Jonathan Hickman and artist Nick Dragotta redefine the science fiction western (if it was ever defined at all). Hickman and Dragotta's high-concept series is, at its core, a treatise on our increasingly fractured society. But more than that it is an astounding work of arresting science fiction and high-tech fantasy, Hickman's inside-out epic love story in an unrecognizable America, Dragotta creating stunning artwork deeply influenced by European and Japanese sensibilities as much as whatever the hell comes from his head to his pen to the page. Hickman and Dragotta create and then hit the mark like few others in comics, East of West the best trippy, sweeping wonder you didn't know you craved.

Best Comic Strip of 2013
A Softer World by Emily Horne & Joey Comeau

The web photocomic A Softer World by Emily Horne & Joey Comeau is a unique and beautiful exploitation of the comics form that manages to transcend what is possible with photo comics. In each three-panel strip we get a perfect melding of Comeau's verbal poetry and Horne's visual poetry, executing works of narrative art that are concise, moving and powerful, often very funny, thought provoking, beautiful, or sad, and always an astonishing combination of images and words. Horne's photography and design is intimate, her panelization and editing emotive and dynamic. Comeau's narratives always translate pure accessible emotion in expansive narratives packed in a short space with a stunning economy of words. Both are poets of extraordinary skill who have forged a visual and narrative partnership of uncanny felicity. Strips in A Softer World often poetically explore themes of loss, sex, love, and depression in short narratives that can involve zombies and relationships and science fiction and divine absurdity, all the while elegantly commenting on the human condition. Even the slightest strips execute a timeless, efficient humor and depth. Throughout this year's best strips from the duo, Horne manages imagery both straightforward and elegiac, Comeau's prose the perfect counterpoint or illustration. Their strips continue to be vibrant and original masterpieces that transcend the comic form, narrative art in its truest sense.

For my essay celebrating A Softer World at Ten Years and 1000 Strips, click here.

Best Webcomic of 2013 
The Private Eye by Brian K. Vaughan & Marcos Martin (Panel Syndicate)

A discussion of Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin's periodical webcomic and publishing experiment The Private Eye must begin with the creators' innovative pricing, distribution and promotion of the project. A 10-issue series published by Martin on his and Vaughan's Panel Syndicate website, The Private Eye can be downloaded DRM-free, pay-what-you-want, in five languages. The series - a bold step away from every usual delivery method available in mainstream comics from two of the medium's premier talents - came out of nowhere and has proven to be a game-changer. All that, and a damn fine comic, too.

Vaughan excels at high-concept ideas, and The Private Eye is no different. In 2076, decades after The Cloud burst revealing the hidden secrets of everyone on Earth, the internet is gone, the press is law, and privacy is guarded by physical disguise. Against this backdrop is a hard-boiled murder mystery, told with humor and suspense. (The timeliness of the issues presented and the unique counterpoints with its release format are just icing.) But then there's the brilliance of the art by Martin with colorist Muntsa Vicente. Martin & Vicente present a slender, densely packed futurescape in widescreen retrofutureshock hypercolor. Martin's first creator-owned work, his art in The Private Eye is also some of his best. Now at the halfway point, Vaughan & Martin have packed a wallop in every chapter, and the series may prove to be a turning point for the medium and the creators involved.

For my essay on the importance of Panel Syndicates internationalization in The Private Eye, click here.

Best Limited Series of 2013
Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake by Natasha Allegri (Boom!)

This year's Best Limited Series and all-ages book was the fabulous Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake written and illustrated by Fionna creator Natasha Allegri. Much like Meredith Gran's superb Marceline and the Scream Queens - 2012's Best Limited Series - the auteur-driven side stories continue to be better than the ongoing Adventure Time book. Which isn't to say that Adventure Time proper is bad, indeed it is quite good. It's clever and fun and zany but it just doesn't click the same way Fionna and Marceline do. Part of the appeal of Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake is that this isn't just some all-ages perfunctory hackwork thing for Allegri: she created these characters for the Adventure Time television show, and they are clearly near and dear to her heart. The gender-swapped universe of Fionna and Cake is far more than just a Rule 63 version of the Adventure Time universe, these are fully fleshed out characters with their own unique perspective on the world of Ooo. Allegri's Fionna is a fierce, independent teenage girl who likes to punch stuff and she's pretty awesome. But wrapped in this gleeful energy and silly misadventure is a series of simple beauty, Allegri's cartooning inspired and full of love and life. Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake is a wonderful comic in every aspect, delightful, whimsical, funny, and elegant.

For more Adventure Time reviews, click here.

Best Non-Fiction Graphic Novel of 2013
March Book 1 by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell (Top Shelf)

Congressman John Lewis has had a unique perspective on American history. He was on the front lines of the non-violent Civil Rights movement in the deep south. He was there at the sit-ins and the student demonstrations, even directly working with Martin Luther King. He and his compatriots received verbal and physical abuse, facing down the very weight of history and the ingrained racist culture of oppression. March is John Lewis's autobiography of his time and experience on the forefront of the Civil Rights movement, co-written by Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell. Far from rote hagiography, Aydin and Powell mold Lewis's revelatory narrative into a compelling and uplifting warts-and-all chronicle, a celebration of the indomitably of the human spirit, an exploration at once deeply personal and broadly sociohistorical. The arc of Lewis's life story extends all the way through Barack Obama's historic inauguration, which acts as the framing device of the book. Wonderfully structured, engaging, and beautifully produced, March is a vital documentary of the Civil Rights era, told by one of the most important figures of that time.

Best One-Shot of 2013
Godland Finale by Joe Casey & Tom Scioli (Image)

I know it's a bit of a cheat to call the Godland Finale a one-shot, but Godland is a series that simply defies, and as much as the Finale was the 37th issue of Joe Casey and Tom Scioli's unparalleled work, it is also a kind of a self-contained graphic novella that masterfully condenses all the epic sci-fi weirdness Casey & Scioli had been producing for nearly a decade. At this point, trying to describe the plot of Godland is like trying to collect a cup of dark matter. Imagine Kirby-Jadorowsky-Moebius cosmology siphoned through a massive temporal LSD trip and you might scratch the surface. Or not. In any event, Godland is one of those singular creative accomplishments from a creative team working at the height of their collaborative powers, a cosmic comic-comic that shatters whatever reductive labels you try to apply and becomes simply The Casey-Scioli Experience. Godland is an explosion of art and uninhibited creativity, the kind you can only get from comics, a grand visual narrative experience and experiment so unlike anything else you've ever read.

Best Single Issue of 2013
Hawkeye 11 by Matt Fraction & David Aja (Marvel)
 
Hawkeye from the team of Matt Fraction, David Aja & Matt Hollingsworth (with stunning assists from a murderer's row of  Javier Pulido, Fransesco Francavilla, and comics' most promising new talent Annie Wu) was once again the best superhero comic of the year. Superhero in air quotes, if you will, because Hawkeye is floating along in its own post-non-post-superhero genre landscape. No costumes, no epic superhero battles, "just" the complicated civilian lives of both Hawkeyes, Clint Barton and Kate Bishop, both lost in their own individual ways, trying to find direction, to find themselves against a backdrop of the far-from-easy Life Superheroic. Clint, always beat up and never quite healing, has an open wound he is filling with violence and alcohol and isolation. Kate, just barely an adult, trying to forge her own identity despite the increasing pressures of adulthood and quasi-superherodom. And all set against the backdrop of the pressures of Life in the Big City, be it Brooklyn or Los Angeles. But especially Brooklyn.

By the time issue 11 came out, Barton's life has come crashing violently down around his civilian identity. An innocent man is dead, and issue 11 deals with that revelation. What follows is a hard-boiled private detective story, complete with a detailed investigation and a femme fatale - except that it is told from the perspective of a side character, the mutt known affectionately as Pizza Dog. Fraction and Aja explore Pizza Dog's world through his senses, brilliantly using the natural pictographic language of comics in wholly inventive ways. Imagine of Chris Ware made a mainstream comic tangentially featuring superheroes, and that is Hawkeye 11. Not just a bold storytelling experiment, the creators utilize the issue to expand their established story and plumb the universal depth of the heart, a reflection on loss, a quest for truth. Aja and colorist Hollingsworth's work here is nothing short of revolutionary and a perfect encapsulation of the formula that makes Hawkeye the remarkable ongoing work that it is.

Best Short Story of 2013
"Translated from the Japanese" by Adrian Tomine, from Optic Nerve 13 (Drawn & Quarterly)

The second story from the latest issue of Adrian Tomine's anthology Optic Nerve is the beautiful, evocative, mysterious, heartbreaking and frankly flawless visual tone poem "Translated from the Japanese." The first page is a letter written in Japanese, and what follows over the next eight story pages is that letter from a mother to her infant son, translated and illustrated by Tomine. Tomine doesn't literally illustrate the letter's contents but shows still-lifes from the visual perspective of the letter's author: a sign at a terminal, baggage on a conveyor, a run-down apartment complex; a cityscape, towers lost in the haze. The letter opens, describing vague details of family discord, an iceberg tip of a mountain of pain hidden beneath the waves. Tomine's descriptions (through the letter's author) are straight forward, yet vivid, powerfully accompanied by his consistently remarkable illustrations. Tomine's ability to build an expansive, detailed life and give us just hints at the depths involved in such a short space showcases a remarkable gift as a storyteller. This is not a translation of a real letter, but Tomine's translation of the terror of parenthood and the indescribably difficult paths family life can take. Tomine inhabits the mother's character, and we, as readers, inhabit her, too. Here, in just a few pages, Tomine gives us a snapshot of a whole human life, one we are intimately connected to. In "Translated," Tomine takes his place with the masters of contemporary literary cartooning.

Read my full review of Optic Nerve 13 here.

Creator of the Year: Gilbert Hernandez

The Creator of the Year is without exception, and indeed without peer, Gilbert Hernandez. Beto released two new OGNs this year: the latest entry in the Palomar/Movie line in Maria M, and his wonderful roman a clef and celebration of childhood, Marble Season. These two works alone would be sufficient to cement his place at the top, but Hernandez is one of the planet's most prolific cartoonists, and 2013 saw a treasure trove of material from the Love and Rockets cartoonist, including hardcovers of his previously serialized Julio's Day and Children of Palomar, a new issue of Love and Rockets with brother Jaime, and two great Fantagraphics books about Love and Rockets including the indispensable Companion. 2013 marks yet a new high-water mark for one of the planet's finest cartoonists and literary voices. Gilbert filled the void of singular marquis comics with no less than five stunning works, collectively casting its own literary shadow for subsequent generations to wonder at. Someday you can tell your grandchildren that you were alive when the Hernandez Brothers were creating comics, and when Gilbert owned 2013.

Read my full reviews of Marble Season here, Julio's Day here, and Love and Rockets New Stories 6 here, as well as my comprehensive Love and Rockets guide here.

Twenty Honorable Mentions for 2013

Adventure Time by Ryan North, Shelli Paroline & Braden Lamb (Boom!), Best of EC Artist Edition (IDW), Chew by John Layman & Rob Guillory (Image), The End of the Fucking World by Charles Forsman (Oily/Fantagraphics), FF by Matt Fraction and Allred, Allred & Allred (Marvel), Fury by Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov (Marvel MAX), Hellboy in Hell by Mike Mignola (Dark Horse), Infinity by Jonathan Hickman et al (Marvel), Johnny Hiro: Skills to Pay the Bills by Fred Chao (St. Martin's Press), Multiple Warheads by Brandon Graham (Image), Nemo: Heart of Ice (League of Extraordinary Gentleman) by Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill (Knockabout/Top Shelf), The Complete RASL by Jeff Smith (Cartoon Books), Resident Alien: Suicide Blonde by Peter Hogan & Steve Parkhouse (Dark Horse), Richard Stark's Parker: Slayground by Darwyn Cooke (IDW), Satellite Sam by Matt Fraction & Howard Chaykin, Sex Criminals by Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky, Trillium by Jeff Lemire (Vertigo), Ultimate Comics Spider-Man by Brian Michael Bendis, Sarah Pichelli & David Marquez (Marvel), Wake Up, Percy Gloom! by Cathy Malkasian (Fantagraphics), and Young Avengers by Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie (Marvel).

For the Full Index of All Reviews, Click Here.

Previous Best Of Lists: 2008, 2009, 2012

As always, follow me on Twitter at @B5Jeff. Like The Comic Pusher on Facebook at  facebook.com/ComicPusher and on Tumblr at ComicPusher.tumblr.com.

The Best Comics of 2012

This article originally appeared on JHU Online in December 2012.

2012 has been a fantastic year for comics across the board, from independent to mainstream to online and beyond. In quality over quantity, this year finally saw the publication of Chris Ware's latest magnum opus, Brian K. Vaughan reminded the world that he's still one of the best scribes alive, and Alan Moore shook his fist and yelled for us to get off his lawn. Not enough can be said about the quality and quantity of the new creator-owned renaissance spear-headed by a dozen fantastic Image comics. IDW shined with their extraordinary production values on all kinds of unique projects, we saw the conclusion of Vertigo's last truly great series, and fiercely original creators like Jason Aaron, Matt Fraction, Jonathan Hickman and Brandon Graham had banner years. The works of folks like Garth Ennis, Meredith Gran, Jeff Smith, Matt Kindt, Gilbert Hernandez, Harvey Pekar, Carla Speed McNeil, Mike Mignola and so many more all reminded me why I love comics and why I've got the best job in the world.

So without further ado, here are the 12-ish best comics of 2012. 

Best Graphic Novel
Building Stories by Chris Ware (Pantheon)
Chris Ware's decade-plus in the making (second) masterwork is an experience and graphic novel unlike any other. A sprawling, fragmented box set of fourteen graphic novels, comic pamphlets, broadsheets and related ephemera from our greatest living cartoonist, Building Stories is a character piece entrenched in the way we remember and the language of comics-as-memory, how we build stories, and how stories build us. Non-linear, the plot, such as it is, has no beginning, middle, or end. The reader is given vignettes from the life of an unnamed central character, and a handful of supporting characters (including a building and a bee). This is something that cannot really be described so much as experienced, and Ware's extraordinary writing, illustrating, coloring, lettering and design make this undoubtedly a must-own for any library.

Best Ongoing Series
Saga by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples (Image)
The year's best-reviewed and certainly most eagerly anticipated new series, there seemed to be no doubt that Brian K. Vaughan's new open-ended ongoing sci-fi parable would be on pretty much every best-of list under the sun. And for good reason, too: Featuring eye-popping art from the year's breakout new superstar, Fiona Staples, Saga is easily accessible to new readers with its story about moon-crossed lovers set against a fiercely unique magical space opera backdrop. Vaughan is very well regarded for believing that comics are "the destination, not the blueprint," and this is certainly a work that revels in comics' budgetless visual and storytelling possibilities. Every issue is a giddy brainfeast: royal robots with television heads, interstellar bounty hunters, and enough family drama to put any tense Thanksgiving dinner to shame... it even has a snail-mail only letter column. There is simply nothing like this and I can't wait for the next however-many years of story to come. For quantity and quality, it's also the best value in the store - the first trade paperback collecting 150+ pages of story in the first six issues is just ten bucks. You've been hearing about this from everyone, now is the time to dive in, your future self will thank you.

Best Concluded Series (tie) 
Scalped by Jason Aaron & RM Guera (DC/Vertigo)
Punisher by Jason Aaron & Steve Dillon (Marvel MAX)
The best character drama being produced by anyone in any medium, in it's untidy heartbreaking conclusion Scalped has cemented itself in the pantheon of truly the finest comics ever produced. Comics' functional equivalent of television's The Wire, Jason Aaron and RM Guera's unparallelled undercover crime-noir masterpiece never ceased to thrill with astonishing plot-twists and beautiful, gritty art. Far from being sad about the series' conclusion, I'm thrilled by the prospect both of reading the complete story from scratch yet again and the opportunity to put this amazing work in new readers' hands. Start this now and you will get absorbed into a dark, breath-taking ride unlike any you have ever taken.

Also of special note is the conclusion of Jason Aaron & Steve Dillon's completely stunning Punisher MAX. The Punisher MAX run by Garth Ennis (now returning to form in Fury MAX) is simply the best Marvel comic of the previous decade - and the work of Aaron & Dillon lives up to it. Shocking, gripping, game-changing, Aaron & Dillon's Punisher MAX is a frankly brilliant chronicle of the end of Frank Castle's life while seamlessly interweaving realistic versions of standard Marvel Universe villains. This is Jason Aaron's best Marvel work in a career (and year) chock full of fantastic mainstream superhero writing, and simply the best work of Steve Dillon's storied career.

Best Limited Series
Adventure Time Presents Marceline and the Scream Queens by Meredith Gran (Boom!)
Starring the tragic/immortal Marceline The Vampire Queen as the frontwoman behind the rock outfit the Scream Queens, and Princess Bubblegum as their tour manager, the reader is easily disarmed by these characters from Pendleton Ward's extraordinary Cartoon Network television series Adventure Time. Expecting a paint-by-numbers story of a band on tour and the conflicts that inevitably arise, we get nothing short of a flawless character-based story exploring the pressures of stardom and the universality of the internal and external turmoil of self-doubt. From the start, amid the nuanced character work and the straightforward and uncomplicated analogies, Meredith Gran turns in a virtuosic artistic performance that treats the reader to astonishingly rendered set-pieces of unbridled rock inspiration, both the experience of performing and listening to rock music. A quadruple threat that is also the year's Best Surprise, Best Licensed Comic, and Best All-Ages Book, this mini-series is fun, funny, thoughtful, and simply, absolutely flawless.

Best New Ongoing Series that's not Saga
The Manhattan Projects by Jonathan Hickman & Nick Pitarra  (Image)
Jonathan Hickman has had one hell of a year over at Marvel between the conclusion of his epic Fantastic Four run and the beginning of his Avengers saga. But the best stuff from one of the best writers and designers in comics is still in the creator-owned realm, and of his three creator-owned series this year, The Manhattan Project takes the cake and explodes it. Utterly nuts in every positive possible way imaginable, The Manhattan Projects is an alternate history telling of the United States' secret black ops science program. It's wall-to-wall mad science with an evil multi-Oppenheimer, drunk Einstein, A.I. FDR, Russians, Nazis and aliens. I was initially cool on Pitarra's cartoony-Quitely style art, but as the series found its footing I couldn't imagine a better suited artist for the series nearly indescribable insanity. Volume One is out so give this a try if you haven't yet. And as with Saga, Image has put out a swell one-dollar reprint of the first issue.

Best Superhero Series
Hawkeye by Matt Fraction and David Aja with Javier Pulido (Marvel)
Only incidentally a superhero book, Fraction and Aja's Hawkeye is a hurricane of fresh air in a sometimes moribund genre. Hawkeye is about a guy, a costumeless, powerless Clint Barton, and what he does on his day off in Brooklyn, and the folks who live in his apartment building, and a girl who stole is name, and a bunch of gangsters, and his dog, and arrows, and, like, stuff. David Aja's art is stylish and just plain perfect, also inspiring the best stuff of his career from Javier Pulido on the alternating arcs. Every issue makes me want to jump up and down and thank comics and Marvel and New York City for all existing. The first trade comes out in March, but you can easily dive in with any issue - Hawkeye features largely self-contained one-ish-shot stories, a rare treat (and lost art) in mainstream comics.

Best Anthology
Dark Horse Presents 
It is the conceit of every anthology that it will contain material that can be hit-or-miss. That just comes down to variety and the vagaries of personal taste, and sometimes you get mostly miss (like this year's dreadful Kramer's Ergot). But Dark Horse's venerable anthology managed to hit more than it missed, with definite standouts that on their own would belong on this best-of list: David Chelsea intreagued me with The Girl With The Keyhole Eyes and Carla Speed McNeil blew me away with Finder: The Third World - indeed, everyone should get McNeil's astounding Finder Library tomes from Dark Horse, massive collections of her extraordinary science fiction work. Dark Horse Presents had so many great short-stories, serials and introductory salvos for longer series from so many great creators - Kelly Sue DeConnick, Phil Noto, Geoff Darrow, Richard Corben, Michael Avon Oeming, Steve Rude, Francesco Francavilla, Dean Motter, Harlan Ellison and so many more. At eight bucks a month for 80-100 pages of creator-owned goodness with some licensed goodness thrown in is one hell of a bang for your comic buying buck.

Best Non-Fiction Work
Cleveland by Harvey Pekar with Joseph Remnant (Top Shelf)
For non-fiction works in 2012 there were major disappointments: Guy Delisle's dull Jerusalem and Alison Bechdel's frankly insufferable Are You My Mother failed to meet expectations of their previous works. Who else but the inimitable Harvey Pekar to save the day. One of his final works is also one of his best. A bittersweet love letter to a town falling on hard times and a capstone to the autobiographies of one of comics most important creators, Harvey Pekar's Cleveland is a short but important work about the history, soul, and character of one of America's struggling former metropolises, and one man's unique journey through the history and the city he loves. Featuring fine art by Joseph Remnant, it is a vital social document and a masterful piece of graphic history.

Best Occasionally Published Series (tie)
Pope Hats by Ethan Rilly (AdHouse)
Casanova by Matt Fraction & Fabio Moon & Gabriel Ba (Marvel/Icon)
Sometimes comics take a bloody long time to come out, or feature long delays between arcs, but when you get to them the quality far outweighs whatever delay you have to put up with. First, seeing one issue maybe once a year or so, is Ethan Rilly's utterly wonderful Pope Hats, a straightforward story of a law clerk in a not-so-straightforward law firm and her freewheeling actress roommate. Rilly's art is clean and fresh, his story oddly riveting. I look forward to each new chapter as much as the similar but far more complex Ganges from Kevin Huizenga.

Second, 2011 finally saw the triumphant return of Fraction, Moon & Ba's interdimensional superspy epic Casanova, first in full color reprints, then an astonishing, dark new mini Avaritia. Casanova is still consistently Matt Fraction's best work, deeply personal, dense, sexy, trippy. We should be seeing the fourth volume in 2013... or not, who knows. Just get the first three and reread those a few times, you'll find something new each time.

Creator of the Year
Brandon Graham
For Multiple Warheads: Alphabet to Infinity, King City, and Prophet (Image)
Brandon Graham is working at Kirby-levels of sheer creativity, perfectly encapsulated in his new Multiple Warheads. A truly unique art style and hypercreative sci-fi storytelling, a perfect synthesis of clever art and language, it often feels like the page can barely contain what his brain is giving the universe. It's comics like this for which comics exist. And this is just a drop in the creative ocean that is Brandon Graham. 2012 saw the release of his stupendous Tokyopop to Image mega-series King City in a gorgeous twenty dollar package. In twelve issues of black and white awesome, in a narrative slightly more cohesive than Multiple Warheads, Graham shows how much fun you can have reading - and I imagine, for him, writing and illustrating - COMICS. And then there's Prophet, created by Graham with Simon Roy, Farel Dalrymple & Giannis Milogiannis, based on, of all things, a Rob Liefeld property. Thankfully having nothing to do with Liefeld in style or story, Prophet is innovative, stylish (in its own sense) science fiction that is a lesson (along with books like Hawkeye) to publishers that simply allowing creators to take the reins and run unrestricted is the formula for quality and originality missing in so many properties. Less editorial, more creatorial. 2012 is the year of Brandon Graham and creators like him, who, thankfully for comics, are starting to come out of the woodwork.

20 Honorable Mentions for 2012, in alphabetical order: Batman by Scott Snyder & Greg Capullo, Chew by John Layman & Rob Guillory, Fantastic Four/FF written by Jonathan Hickman, Fatale by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips, Fury MAX by Garth Ennis & Goran Parlov, G0dland by Joe Casey & Tom Scioli, Goliath by Tom Gauld, Hellboy by Mike Mignola, The Hive by Charles Burns, The Invincible Iron Man by Matt Fraction & Salvador Larroca, Journey Into Mystery written by Kieron Gillen, Love & Rockets New Stories by Los Bros Hernandez, MIND MGMT by Matt Kindt, RASL by Jeff Smith, Richard Stark's Parker: The Score by Darwyn Cooke, The Twelve by J. Michael Straczynski & Chris Weston, the Ultimate Spider-Man comics of Brian Michael Bendis and Sarah Pichelli and David Marquez, Unwritten by Mike Carey & Peter Gross, X-Factor written by Peter David, xkcd by Randall Monroe.

c) 2012, 2013 Jeffrey O. Gustafson 

The Best Comics of 2009

This article originally appeared on JHU Online in December 2009.
   
When all is said and done, when this era of comics history is being looked at by the cultural historians of the future, 2009 will be seen as one of the most significant in our history. There have been many seemingly sudden seismic shifts throughout comic history, and the period around 2009 will be remembered for the corporatization and full financial exploitation of the comics medium and the transition from the paper comic book to the digital one. Disney bought Marvel, Warner's shook up DC, the con wars began, prices went up while the global economy took a nosedive, all as a generation of new readers come to think of comics as pixels on a screen rather than bound pieces of cultural ephemera that also happen to tell stories. What a weird, scary, exhilarating time to be a comic fan!

But what about the stories, the whole rhyme and reason for all of this? I think it is too early to categorize the entire year under any particular umbrella, but many folks are quick to point out the rather dark creative direction of the Big Two. The DCU has fallen under the Blackest Night of emotion-manipulating pseudo-zombies while at Marvel the 616 has fallen under the Dark Reign of the Green Goblin and the Ultimate universe went through a rather senseless armageddon. Dark Reign and Blackest Night have both been entertaining in places, with a payoff in sight for Marvel fans with a guarantee of a new, lighter, more self-contained Heroic Age. But there are no larger parallels, no grander meanings to be derived from the direction of mainstream superhero comics, which are frankly not representative of anything - not the current cultural or financial landscape, not the state of the industry; the darkness put forth by Marvel and DC has nothing to do with reality in which we live, sadly. It is just another storytelling mechanism, a plot device to move whatever larger universe-wide agenda forward. If anything, the continuing rise of the crime comic may hold more fascinating, deeper, long-term parallels with the state of the world than anything the cape and tight set has put forth this year. The worlds of DC and Marvel are not the totality of comics, of course... Right now, what can be said for sure when the ink dries on this chapter on the important works of this point in time in comics history, is that this is the year Asterios Polyp was published. Everything else will sit in its formidable shadow.

And the American comic industry really hasn't all been creative doom and gloom, despite what Alan Moore wants to tell you. For my best-of list, in the same year that we had dark, challenging works as Scalped, Incognito, and Final Crisis, we also had fun, light, and above all pretty damn good comics in the all-ages wonder of the Marvel Oz books, to the sheer goofy fun in Incredible Hercules and Johnny Hiro.

All that said, we'll start with the best ongoing and best graphic novel of the year, then my full list of the fifteen or so best comics of 2009.

The Best Ongoing Series of 2009 - Scalped by Jason Aaron and R. M. Guerra

There are few things that I look forward to as much as writer Jason Aaron's Scalped. Everything I said last year about this ongoing character driven masterpiece from Vertigo holds true. By a mile, this is consistently the best ongoing comic being published by anyone. This is more than just the tragedy of a man who has completely lost himself in a maze of drugs and of the sins of the past bubbling up and overwhelming him, it is the tragedy of an entire people trying to survive in one piece while mired in third world conditions, an inescapable gang war, an ocean of drugs, alcohol, and corruption. The near-universal desperation never overwhelms, the art is gritty yet not stylistically so (in essence, it is not dark for darkness sake). This is the rare comic that exposes a state-of-being for a group of people without being preachy, and disappointingly rare for so many stories of any media, it is a work that begins and ends with the characters and their actions... this is no plot inhabited by paper cutouts. If you like crime comics, spy books, westerns, quality realistic fiction that is just off the beaten path, or just plain good comics, then this is a comic you should be reading.

The Best Graphic Novel of 2009 - Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli

Is it cliche to call this the best graphic novel of 2009? A decade in the making, David Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp from Pantheon is the one of the singular achievements of the comics medium, a symphony of design, a story that says more in its astonishing use of color and inventive lettering than some novels are capable of saying in 600 pages. A light character study about an artist and a relationship in decline as much as it is about the very nature of art itself, there has never been a more perfect melding of art and words and design, a comic that cannot exist as anything but a comic. I find myself at a loss for words at trying to describe the wogboggling perfection of this novel, its depth and level of formal reinvention, the dozens of levels that it works on. Chris Ware's Acme Novelty #19 is still the finest single comic ever produced, but I'd be hard pressed not to call this a close second, at least aesthetically.

As momentous a work as this is, so much has been written about it, and deservedly so. Go ahead, look online, read the reviews, there is no praise high enough for this work. Or you could take the advice of Scott McCloud and stop reading the reviews, and read the comic... that if you buy one graphic novel this year, this should be it.

The best comics of 2009...

1 - tie) Asterios Polyp and Scalped (see above).

2) The Invincible Iron Man by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca from Marvel is the best ongoing superhero comic of 2009. The year opened with "World's Most Wanted," Tony Stark on the run, not just from Norman Osborn's forces, but from his own past, both the people he has effected and his past sins. To keep Osborn form accessing his secrets and technology, Stark incrementally destroyed his own greatest weapon, his true superpower, his own mind. How unique is it that the methodical destruction of a superhero is at that hero's own hands? Certainly Osborn's intentions act as the catalyst, but it is Stark and Stark alone who is responsible for his own destruction. True heroism lies in sacrifice and not fancy powers or advanced technology, and here Tony Stark's colors really shine. Also shining is the supporting cast, reluctantly yet dutifully aiding Stark in his quest for self-destruction. As we close out the year, Marvel's trinity has reunited to do what they can to save what is left of the former Iron Man, Tony Stark trapped in a prison of his own mind. "World's Most Wanted," despite its length, was a tightly plotted, emotional and thrilling work, and the current ark, "Stark Disassembled" is shaping up to be just as good (with, incidentally, the best covers of the year). And how can I not comment on the superb art of Salvador Larroca (with Frank D'Armata), which is not just consistently better than most superhero comics, but just as notable in an age of accepted delays, on time as well.


3) The vanguard of the crime comic revolution is being led by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips - there simply isn't a better creative combination working in comics today, and the one-two punch of Criminal and Incognito from Icon definitely represents a high-water mark for noir comics in 2009 (sorry 100 Bullets - while superb, it became more about the conspiracy than the crime aspect, though its everyone-looses ending lived up to its wonderfully noir core). When Brubaker and Phillips work together, there is some kind of voodoo at work, Brubaker writing some of his best, down and dirty stuff, and Phillips doing the best work of his career. An expectedly superb Criminal chapter closes out '09, with the pulpy, vile, exhilarating super-villain comic noir Incognito filling out the rest. In Incognito, Zack Overkill is a super-powered villain of the highest order stuck in the crushingly mundane existence of a file clerk while in witness protection. His powers suppressed by government drugs, he is seemingly still a villain at heart, and living in his head-space as he is forced to live a normal mundane life is a thrill. Outside forces bear down to try to control him, and all hell breaks loose in this subtle, deliciously absurd pulp super-villain comic populated by a wonderful supporting cast. Also seeing release in 2009 were Brubaker and Phillips' complex and twisting first super-spy noir masterwork, Sleeper from Wildstorm (which I had the sheer pleasure of reading for the first time this year), and the absolutely gorgeous Criminal hardcover (soon to be back in print) collecting the first three volumes. If you see a comic with Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' names on it, buy it, you won't be disappointed.

4) There is nobody better at writing war comics than Garth Ennis, and his ongoing Battlefields anthologies from Dynamite certainly add to his growing legacy as the best there is. In addition to his usual striving for the utmost historical and technical accuracy, Battlefields has the additional appeal of spotlighting the forgotten aspects of World War II, the Night Witches and Dear Billy minis focusing on the role of Women in the war. Ennis' war comics tend to do any of a handful of things: showing individuals simply trying to do their jobs in the face of great adversity, the effect of war on a person, and/or, usually most fascinating, the people who need war, waging their own private one-person crusades. Battlefields: Dear Billy, by Ennis and Peter Snejbjerg, starts out as a tale of romance between a shot-down pilot, Billy, and a nurse, Carrie, and is told as a letter from Carrie to Billy. But there is more going on: war effects everyone it touches, and Carrie is no exception, carrying far deeper wounds than the men she is trying to heal. Ennis has a penchant for zigging where you think the story would zag while still respecting character and logic above all else (his amazing take on Dan Dare, for instance), and Dear Billy takes some surprising, heart-breaking turns. This isn't a Hollywood romance, and what romance forged in the shadow of the horrors of war could be? This isn't about good vs. evil, nor is it a preachy exploration of the muddled shades of gray that so often cloud the battlefield. Dear Billy, is a multi-layered exploration of revenge and the way the quest for vengeance can poison life as much as War itself, set against the backdrop of one victim's experiences in the China-Burma-India theatre of World War II. In 66 pages or so, this is one of Garth Ennis's finest works and this, with an ouvre as impressive and consistently good as his, is no small feat.

5) L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young from Marvel: what an uplifting delight are Marvel's Oz books! As an all-ages comic, the storytelling is uncomplicated, the paragon of simplicity, distilled to the core elements yet told with a respect, knowledge and love for the source material that only someone like Eric Shanower could pull off. The art by Skottie Young is some of the best in mainstream comics this year, stylish and beautiful, with superb colors by Jean-Francois Beaulieu, every panel is a new wonder to behold. I have no affection for the original Oz books or their myriad of adaptations and have not been exposed to them all that much, so maybe that lack of knowledge benefits my reading experience. Nevertheless, it still seams to me that Shanower and Young pull off the feat of making an adaptation that stands alone by sheer force of artistic quality, truly transcending the original. These books are an utter joy to read! This is the rare comic that can be shared and appreciated by adults and children alike, and if Marvel does their jobs properly, these books will hold their own as the definitive retelling of the Oz cycle for decades to come.

6) A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi from Drawn & Quarterly. Last spring, I had the unexpected thrill of reading Tatsumi's fascinating, revelatory 800+ page opus on the rise of manga in post-war Japan one day followed by meeting the master the next. This graphic memoir is a must read for anyone wanting to learn about the history of comics in Japan, post-war Japanese culture, or a look at the creative process from one of the masters.

7 - tie) The Incredible Hercules by Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, et al, from Marvel. This book is one of the most intricately plotted, most fun superhero books on the stands. Folding in intricacies of greek myth, quantum mechanics, asides that do everything from brilliantly extrapolating the mechanisms of the afterlife to the best sound effects in comics (SUKKA-PUNCH!), rip-roaring action set pieces and complex yet accessible stories, this is the smartest comic on the stands while never loosing its goofiness. All those who rail against the grim and gritty clearly haven't read this little gem nor the equally inspired Agents of Atlas (good guys pretending to be bad guys, there's a gorilla man, a 50's killer robot, a time displaced g-man, a siren, and an alien in a flying saucer!) now running as a back-up in Herc. If you want some extremely well produced yet light-hearted superhero fare, look no further than The Incredible Herecules.

And speaking of good old fashioned fun, how can I not include one of my personal favorites, The Guardians of the Galaxy by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, et al, from Marvel? I'm a sucker for space operas, and both Guardians and Nova delivered the goods in the Kree-Inhumans War of Kings. But it was The Guardians that had the best run, suffering the most death as a result of the interstellar war while never losing the book's near-trademark sense of humor. This was a space-action-adventure book with great art and repeated, shocking twists. No character was safe from death as the war waged on, and, like Nova, all the plot threads that had been dangling for years around the edges came together beautifully within the larger cosmic picture of the Marvel Universe. Good, clean, cosmic fun. (And I guess I'll give a shout out here to Green Lantern. Though I don't read many (any?) DCU books, I do enjoy the Green Lantern stuff, which has been a lot of fun throughout the Blackest Night event. But I find event fatigue starting to set in, and the main Blackest Night mini becomes more and more irrelevant to me as it the focus increasingly falls on various DCU characters outside of the Lantern books that I just don't know, nor care about. Nevertheless, Geoff Johns has hooked me as a Green Lantern fan for years to come, and this year he produced, with Doug Mahnke in Green Lantern #43, one of the creepiest origin stories produced by anyone in a long while.)

8) Johnny Hiro by Fred Chao, from AdHouse. A love letter to love, New York City, wacky celebrity cameos, kung-fu, monster attacks and cover-ups, and misadventures in restaurant work, amongst so much more, Johnny Hiro is a wonderful little book about the things a city will throw at you and what it takes to hold it together.

9) Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke from IDW. Further evidence of the noir renaissance lies in this taut little adaptation of one of the all-time greats by one of the all-time greats, Darwyn Cooke. Cooke's art, much like Guy Davis, Jean Paul Leon and Jimmy Cheung, really hits a spot for me that I can never quite identify, and find myself attracted to. It is not damning to say Cooke has a "cartoony" style, yet it is a style that gets in your face and dares you to call it cartoony. He may have launched his career with the bright 50s pop of the New Frontier, but it's his Parker work that has truly launched him into a new frontier of dark, restrained, emotional work. This and his recent Jonah Hex work have really upped his game, and I am looking forward to the next installment of this great little slice of gritty noir.

10) Mike Mignola's BPRD by John Arcudi and Guy Davis, with Fabio Moon, Gabriel Ba, et al, from Dark Horse. Mike Mignola's Hellboy-verse is one of the best cohesive fictional universes in comics today, with a deep history, fascinating cast of characters, and a large yet not unwieldy epic story. As noted above, I really have a thing for Guy Davis' art and BPRD is the perfect platform for his work. While he took most of 2009 off, Moon and Ba (where fore art thou Casanova?) stepped in with inspired work in the surprising 1947. The BPRD and Hellboy books are deliciously moody and beautifully weird, and I am really looking forward to the conclusion of the Frog War coming in 2010.

11 - tie) George Sprott by Seth from Drawn & Quarterly and 3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man by Matt Kindt from Dark Horse. George Sprott is easily Seth's best whole work. Like many of his graphic novels, it meanders, strolls through the past, in this case in the forgotten corners of a quirky local Canadian TV show that has been off the air for decades and looking at the titular character. Part of the book is sifting through the remains of a man's life, trying to piece together a larger picture from scattered, forgotten fragments, and part of the book is a fever dream of a man's last moments in life, all packaged in a wonderfully oversized hardcover from D&Q. 3-Story is Matt Kindt's most emotional work to date, and certainly his best artistic effort in full color. The story of a man who did not stop growing, the lives he effected, and the mystery behind his loss, 3 Story, similar to George Sprott, is trying to piece together the reality of a man's past life, and the story of how he grew away from his family and humanity, all packaged in a wonderfully compact hardcover from Dark Horse.

12) Echo by Terry Moore. Echo is a beautiful, subtle science fiction story of a woman on the run from corporate forces, and the cosmic forces infecting her body, the way business can use Science for ill, and so much more. This is a story featuring powerful female characters, a great deal of trippy science, and one of the most accurate and sympathetic portrayals of mental illness seen anywhere in comics. Great stuff.

13) Ex Machina by Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris, from Wildstorm. Surprises abound! As Ex Machina draws to a close, (in addition to the always great NYC political stuff) the true nature of the story and revelations about Mitchell Hundred's past and his powers have cemented this book as one of the great sci-fi/superhero books of the decade, with the final issues all but guaranteeing the book's placement high on next year's list. I wish I could tell you specifics about what has changed, but that would spoil a great deal. Rest assured, this is a completely different book than we thought it was, and that is a very good thing.

14) Final Crisis by Grant Morrison, et al, from DC. Ah, Final Crisis. I guess I had the advantage of reading the whole thing at once in the gorgeously packaged hardcover edition rather than spread out over four-too-many months. I still have no idea who half the characters were, but once the stakes became clear, it really gelled into one hell of a superhero comic. Final Crisis is part acid trip, part multi-dimensional super-hero epic, part dark, part eternally hopeful, I've never read anything quite like it. The book is decidedly not perfect, but in the end it was better than Secret Invasion from Marvel that, while fun, was too long and only served to set up further stories where Final Crisis had a beginning, middle, and end. I think I'll give the eventual Multiversity a try even though I'm pretty darn sure I won't have a bloody clue what's happening.

15) The Brave & The Bold by J. Michael Straczynski and Jesus Diaz from DC. This was a late addition to the list, fueled in part by my lack of familiarity with the characters being used and extreme familiarity with the works of J. Michael Straczynski, as I've seen some of the themes brought forth in the comic by JMS elsewhere. But the sheer quality of the characterizations coupled with themes usually unexplored in superhero comics won The Brave & The Bold a spot on the extended list. Also important to note is JMS's use of the done-in-one... What he elevated to a high art form in his Thor run he uses to great effect here, telling volumes in 22 pages through emotion and characterization, and Jesus Diaz lives up to the daunting task at hand. Great stuff that has fallen under a lot of readers' radar, and worth trying out.

Honorable mentions, in no order: The Wintermen, Thor, Godland, The Unwritten, The Amazing Spider-Man in places, 100 Bullets, X-Factor, Ganges, and The Boys.

Finally, a caveat about my personal biases: I'm a Marvel guy (clearly), I appreciate formal reinvention though I read far too few mini-comics, and I don't read nearly enough manga either. I read a lot of books each week, both new stuff and old stuff I'm discovering for the first time, but I don't read everything I reckon I should. And I can't really speak from the retailing perspective - I'm just a grunt in the trenches - nor do I have any more authority than any other lone voice in the wilderness crying out for you to please read this book or that book. What I can speak to is my own personal taste, so feel free to take a look at my best-of list from last year to get an idea of what I like. I LOVE COMICS, and had to leave off quite a bit that I thoroughly enjoyed. Like all best-of lists, don't look at this as the definitive be-all end-all of good comics for 2009, but as a starting-off point for anyone looking to read some good books they may have overlooked.

c) 2009, 2013 Jeffrey O. Gustafson 

The Best Comics of 2008

This article originally appeared on JHU Online in December 2008.

1. (tie) Scalped

Marvel writer Jason Aaron has had a good 2008 – he was voted “Writer of the Year” by Wizard, and to me, only Matt Fraction has had a better year. In "Get Mystique," Aaron and Ron Garney took Wolverine to the limit (and have been given their own new Wolverine ongoing starting in May), his Secret Invasion/Black Panther tie-in was one of the true highlights of Marvel's tent-pole event, and he has breathed remarkable new life into Ghost Rider. But the highlight of Aaron's recent creative output is also the best comic book series being released today, his and artist R. M. Guera's creator-owned series Scalped from Vertigo. This year saw the book go from spy/cop intrigue & mystery, and the gloriously manic observation of one crazy day, to the loss of not just family, but of self, to bad choices, redemption for some, and loss for others. This is a story about badly broken people trying to forge a life in a badly broken world, of a society shattered by drugs and alcohol, of pain and scars that will not heal. Scalped is a spy book without cliche, a crime book on par with 100 Bullets and Criminal, a lyrical, funny, heartbreaking, brutal, neo-western comic-noir about family, race, drugs, money, history and power told from a perspective almost not seen anywhere else in fiction - and it is the best ongoing series on the stands right now.

1. (tie) Acme Novelty Library

Chris Ware is, hands down, the best cartoonist working today. His nigh-annual Acme Novelty Library is consistently the highlight of any calendar year, and November’s #19, essentially a character study in domestic madness told in the depths of space and in the blacker depths of Earth-bound reality, did not disappoint. The only criticism of Ware’s work is that his decades-spanning character epics take a very long time to tell – but with results like this, with works as frankly astonishing, sincerely breath taking as this, it is well worth the wait. This year, Ware returned to Rusty Brown, presenting a chapter focusing on Rusty’s father, Woody, as he looks back on where it all went wrong, where his life derailed and trapped him in a prison of familial misery. The book actually opens with a graphic interpretation of an old science fiction story written by Woody in his youth. The story within the story, a horror-science fiction pastiche both perfectly evocative of the pulps of the time while simultaneously transcending them, is one of madness told by an unreliable narrator. Alone, “The Seeing Eye Dogs of Mars” is one of the best science fiction stories released this year, Ware’s words poetry, his pictures high art. But there are layers within layers at work – the story we just read was read through Woody’s eyes, his own perspective as unreliable and colored as the narrator, and coupled with the emotional second half of the book focusing on Woody’s own relationships and his own fractured reality, both halves are put into a startling new light of pain and loss. Alone, either half of this book would put the book at the top of my list… considered as part of the extraordinary larger whole that we have seen so far in the Rusty Brown epic, and there is no competition: Acme Novelty Library #19 is the best single book released this year, and one of the most remarkable works ever released in the comics medium.

2. All-Star Superman

I don’t like Superman, never have, but Grant Morrison, with Frank Quietly on art, certainly have crafted a masterpiece. So much has been written about this run in so many places, that there is almost no need to justify its placement on this list. In totality, DC’s All Star Superman is a timeless story with great art and perfect writing, everything a superhero comic should be, indeed, could be. And for my money, the true highlight of the series outside of the ending was issue number 10, the single finest superhero comic ever made. Superman is dying, dead really, and he rushes to save the day, again and again, no matter the sacrifice. He cures the sick, gives hope to the lost, gives purpose to those affected by his greatest failure, accepts defeat to his greatest foe, confronts his mortality, decodes his DNA, and creates the universe. Of all the criticisms that are levied against superhero comics in general, it is transcendent works like this that redeem the genre in every way.

3. Thor

Thor by J. Michael Straczynski and Olivier Coipel is the best book Marvel has put out this year. We don’t see Thor hopping around and doing a lot of super-heroing, but what we do see is a consistently enthralling, pitch perfect tale of intrigue and betrayal and of gods and mortals. Thor has managed to recreate Asgard on Earth, he’s confronted Tony Stark for his sins, and worked out issues with his father. But just as strong as the Odinson is the best supporting cast in comics, the Asgardians in their floating fortress and the nearby townsfolk on Earth. The machinations of Loki are stunning in her deceitfulness and logic, the interactions between the gods and the men and women of Braxton, Oklahoma are both hilarious and filled with drama and wonder. This is a book built in quiet moments, of whispers in the dark, and of awe in the eyes of men as gods walk amongst them. Coipel, doing his finest work here, aided by Mark Morales on inks and the incomparable Laura Martin on colors, are crafting some of the best work in superhero comics today, translating these quiet moments perfectly. And increasingly rare in comics, this series is less about defined story arcs than about presenting individual, nearly self-contained stories that play a part of a larger whole, and these individual stories are remarkable on their own. For example, in Thor #11, as Balder deals with conflicts at home, Thor says goodbye to an old friend and sends the world a message. A simple story vitally important to the larger whole, yet completely stand-alone, and also one of the best single comics released this year.

But JMS’s Thor is not the only place the character has shined. Appropriately, he is less superhero than god, but when he does act, it changes the world, playing a pivotal role in Brian Michael Bendis’s Secret Invasion. But the other real highlight of the year for the character is, of course, the work that Matt Fraction has done with the character, not just the great Secret Invasion crossover and this month’s love letter to Walt Simonson’s run, but his trilogy of books focusing on Thor’s journey from God to Man and back again. His “Ages of Thunder”/”Reign of Blood”/”Man of War” trilogy, telling epic tales from millennia ago in Asgard’s storied past, alone is really one of the best main-stream fantasy/adventure stories told this year, and provides a perfect counterpart to Straczynski’s work on the character.

4. Matt Fraction

OK, Marvel writer Matt Fraction isn’t a book, clearly, but bear with me while I cheat a bit here… See, either a quarter of the list will be Matt Fraction books or I’d be forced to drop some obvious picks for sake of balance. Matt Fraction has had one hell of a year, and I’m grouping his works here. 2008 started with the end of The Order, his fun Initiative-based book with Barry Kitson, and the end of his and the great Ed Brubaker’s character redefining run on Iron Fist, a great mix of mystic transdimensional martial arts action. Casanova, with Fabio Moon from Image, wrapped up its second arc, a sleek, sexy time-hopping gender-smashing delirious head-trip of a science fiction spy thriller that alone is one of the best books of the year. Fraction (again with Brubaker) shook up the Uncanny X-Men and relocated them to San Fransisco in the wake of Messiah CompleX, telling some fun, energetic X-stories while setting the foundation for that corner of the Marvel Universe for years to come. And with Salvador Larocca, he took hold of the most controversial character in the Marvel Universe, Iron Man, crafting a smart and fun thriller that is both the basis of Marvel’s future movie strategy and the foundation of the resistance in the post-Secret Invasion Marvel Universe landscape. And of course, we cannot forget Thor (see above).

5. Y: The Last Man

Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s post apocalyptic masterpiece from Vertigo came to an end this year with the best ending of any self-contained comic book series ever released. January’s Y: The Last Man # 60 was not about action and answers but about character and tone, a work of stunning beauty, the final chapter of the end of the world and the first chapter of the beginning of the new world. There’s never been anything else quite like Y, and the ending could not have been better. Re-reading the issue for this piece, I still find myself at a loss for words… if you haven’t read Y: The Last Man, than read it for the journey, read it for the ending, read it for everything that it is, the road of a boy as he becomes a man, and the women in his life. There are the rare books that fulfill the promise of the medium and this is one of them.

6. Criminal
Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillip’s creator-owned comic-noir from Marvel in recent issues stepped back from the central story that played out in one form or another throughout the series’ run, focusing on a former criminal who gets sucked back in against his will. There are secrets buried in the past, bad cops and good criminals, sex, lies, and cartoons. In a renaissance for crime stories in the comic medium that has given us 100 Bullets, Scalped, and more, Criminal is so much more than a throwback to film-noir and dime-novels, it is a graphically inventive, edgy, dark work about bad, bad men, and bad, bad women living in a world of sin.

7. Omega: The Unknown
A few years ago, Marvel published the utterly remarkable Unstable Molecules, by indy cartoonist James Sturm. I like it when the big two take these kind of risks, and it payed off for Marvel again with Omega: The Unknown, written by author Jonathan Lethem and Karl Rusnak with art by Faryl Dalrymple and Paul Hornschemeir. An indy book for the superhero crowd and a superhero book for the indy crowd, this strange (in a good way), quiet little series about alienation and discovering one’s humanity is not your standard superhero comic, of course, though there are supervillains, alien robot nanoviruses, and battles with unknown forces. This is a moody, wonderful little delight.

8. The Walking Dead
If there is one guarantee about Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard’s consistently superb The Walking Dead from Image is that there are no guarantees… characters you love may die at any moment, the status quo of whatever existence these characters may try to eke out may be changed without warning. This is not a cheap trick by Kirkman, but a reflection of the reality these characters live in. Zombies surround them, and the remnants of humanity can rarely be trusted. This book is about trying to survive against increasingly overwhelming odds, trying to maintain humanity in a world of necessary barbarism, struggling with sanity in unceasing madness, and this year the pain and loss and suffering was dialed to eleven. I guess another guarantee about this book is how consistently riveting and surprising it is, month in and month out.

9. Mythos: Captain America
Paul Jenkins and Paolo Rivera’s retelling of various characters’ origins in the Mythos series of one-shots have been concise, true to the originals with a unique perspective and beautiful fully painted art. In Mythos: Captain America, the final and finest piece in the series, Jenkins and Rivera crafted an elegant, heartbreaking tale of sacrifice for country and brother. What makes a hero? Who do they fight for? Why do the fight? A reflection on sacrifice and part unintended elegy, it is a reminder of how important Captain America is in this fictional universe, and more importantly a reminder of how vital and treasured our fighting men and women are in this one.

10. Cosmic Marvel
When making a list like this, I find myself torn between focusing on items that represent the finest comics has to offer and stuff I like that are definitely great, but not necessarily greatest. Well, to hell with it, this is a guilty pleasure through and through and I don’t care – there is nothing wrong with having some cake with your steak and potatoes.

I am a sucker for space-bound sci-fi stuff, and at Marvel, writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning have been making wonderfully fun superhero/space opera tales. Starting with the great conclusion of Annihilation: Conquest in January, and book-ended with the beginning of War of Kings, the cosmic side Marvel Universe has never been more exciting. Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy are some of the most fun and exciting titles out now, featuring some of the most interesting characters and places in comics. Throw in the growing aftermath to Brubaker’s Shi’ar Empire epic, the ever intriguing Inhumans going into space, and of course Secret Invasion, and you have a perfect storm of exhilarating and entertaining sci-fi.

Honorable Mentions
In no order, Incredible Hercules, Fables, 100 Bullets, Punisher (by Ennis), Astonishing X-Men (by Whedon and Cassaday), Godland, New Avengers / Mighty Avengers, Ex Machina, The Twelve, Echo, Patsy Walker: Hellcat, Magneto: Testament, Ganges, Captain America, RASL, DMZ, Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps, and Tiny Titans. There are also a score of great graphic novels and trade paperbacks (that shall remain nameless for space concerns) that I read for the first time this year but were published in prior years.

c) 2008, 2013 Jeffrey O. Gustafson