As 2011 comes to a close, I can say with a bit of relief that the amount of quality content being published within the world of comics continues to increase steadily. The interest in recent years in high-end, lavish, oversized archival editions and spiffy comic related art books signifies that people are not just reading comics for their obvious entertainment value, but also seeing the medium more and more as the valid literary and artistic arena it’s been since day one. As such I’ve assembled a list of 2011’s best that includes titles from across the increasingly eclectic (yet all welcoming) world that are the comics of today.
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Welcome back for the second and final installment of my look at some of the best of last year’s releases. Let’s not mince words and get right to it, shall we?
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A year ago this week, I was having a tough time of compiling a scaled down “Best of the Year” list due to the unexpected flurry of note-worthy material released during 2009. Now I find the task even harder considering the avalanche of great releases that saw print in 2010. A chief reason for this is the recent explosion of exceptional archival comic strip collections, lavish artist career overviews, and beautifully produced art books by publishers like Fantagraphics, IDW, and Flesk Publications. Add to this numerous comic book mini-series, one-shots, and monthly titles more than worthy of note and you have a year that would command any sequential art enthusiast’s attention. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the great material that hit the shelves in 2010!
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Without question Tim Lane is one of the most insightful, reflective, and sharpest artistic talents in the alternative comics scene today. In Lane’s book, Abandoned Cars, the term “graphic novel” feels much more apt and appropriate than any other release in the comics world within the last several years. This exceptional work, first released in 2008 by Fantagraphics and now available in a softcover edition with 2 different covers to choose from, has more in common with prose authors of a grand, yet lonely, American literary tradition than anything else on the comic store shelves.
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In last week’s installment of Sequential Sunday we took a look at the work of the great Al Williamson who passed away on June 12. As an addendum to that article I’d like to give some suggestions to those who’d like to explore the work of this comic art master via some of the books currently in print as well as those that are soon to be released.
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This will not be the first time I’ve written about (and sung the praises of) Michael Kupperman’s brilliantly surreal comic Tales Designed To Thrizzle from Fantagraphics. Well, now there is occasion to sing to the absurdist comedy heavens on high once again due to the recent release of Thrizzle #6! And as an added bonus, for (almost) the first time it comes “now with too much color!” Speaking of the aforementioned color usage (previously only utilized in the Thrizzle collected edition) the monochromatic color spectrum of this issue does much to amp up Kupperman’s retro comic leanings. The limited color palette recalls the ten-cent adventures of the Sheena, Queen of the Jungle adventure comics of the 1950’s.
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It’s Mother’s Day (Hi Mom!) and as such I thought I’d profile the gold standard for motherhood (in popularity anyway) from the world of top-tier alternative comics, Ms. Lisa Leavenworth Bradley. Lisa is the key female character of Peter Bagge’s hilarious, hits-way-to-close-to-home Hate comics. The original, Generation X defining Hate series ended in 1998 with issue 30. Still, the adventures of Lisa and her hubby Buddy (a formerly grunged-out Seattle slacker turned responsible father to their son Harold) continue in the pages of the Hate Annuals, including the recently released 8th issue.
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The content of alternative comics anthologies in the last ten years seems to be veering away from their (potentially offensive) underground roots. Instead, these collections seem to be reaching more towards the art gallery-centric world of the Pop Surrealism movement. For example, Blab! once regularly spotlighted cartoonists like Kaz, Daniel Clowes and Richard Sala. But now it reserves the most space for top names in the alternative art world like Gary Baseman, Mark Ryden and Camille Rose Garcia. All of these creators are equally amazing, but without the often humor driven, obscenely funny stories of someone like Glenn Head, an alternative comic anthology just isn’t as much, well, fun.
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Shitty jobs: almost all of us have had to put up with them at one point in our lives. Much more often than not working for an awful boss and/or company becomes a test of one’s endurance, where you ask yourself on a daily basis, “How much of a beating can my pride withstand before I just can’t take it anymore?” If this is the kind of situation you find yourself presently in, it may be of some comfort to know that you are not alone in your frustration and you’ll certainly realize this in reading Carol Tyler’s excellent and highly insightful book The Job Thing from Fantagraphics.
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Now that 2010 is in full swing I’d like to wish all of our Comic Impact readers all the best in the new year and charge right back into my Best of 2009 list. Up, up and away we go….
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I initially thought the task of compiling a list of the best in comics and related art books released in 2009 would be relatively easy. Boy was I wrong. We saw a wealth of amazing output from the indie press, mainstream publishers and collected works of illustrative artists of the past and present.2009 has been a fantastic year overall for sequential art, the best of the last several, with my only real problem being finding the time (and money) to take them all in. So without further ado here is Part I in my two-part series for the Best Comics and Comic-Related Releases of 2009…
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