If you ask me – and by reading this, you essentially are – instituting an annual anthology collecting the best of the year in comics is an idea long overdue. Now it’s a reality with the inaugural YEAR’S BEST GRAPHIC NOVELS, COMICS & MANGA, edited by Byron Preiss and Howard Zimmerman. As Neil Gaiman notes in his introduction, “comics is a medium, not a fad. It’s an art form, not a fashion,” and the 270-some-odd pages that follow serve as proof.
Roughly covering only those works published between May 2003 to December 2004, the book is divided into four distinct sections: the three mentioned in the title, and a fourth, catch-all category that allows the inclusion of for Internet-only comics and even those self-published. Because of this wide range, you’re likely to find something you aren’t yet reading that you should. Marvel and Dark Horse should be ashamed for not participating in something that celebrates the entire industry, with publishers both large and small.
You get a taste of more than 30 titles in all, from well-known monthly favorites like BATMAN and SUPERMAN to independent works that have no superheroes but pack just as much punch (if not more), like Craig Thompson’s wistful BLANKETS. There’s the charming, wordless antics of an owl named OWLY; experimental, Escher-esque pieces from the 14th collection of BLAB!; the stark, espionage procedural QUEEN & COUNTRY: OPERATION STORMFRONT; slice-of-life violent drama of the Hernandez Brothers’ LOVE & ROCKETS; Kyle Baker’s slapstick update of PLASTIC MAN; and the amusing, ninja-slaying exploits of the skateboarder known as STREET ANGEL.
Of everything here, I’d only read three – THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN: VOLUME II, FABLES: MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS and THE SANDMAN: ENDLESS NIGHTS – so the contents were wide open for discovery. For me, the real find was Jason’s YOU CAN’T GET THERE FROM HERE; from the two-page excerpt, all I can determine is that involves fighting dogs, but the blocky, angular art is awesome. About the only thing I couldn’t get into were the pages dealing with manga; it’s just something I’m unable to enjoy at all, no matter the subject.
Certainly the biggest complaint that will be directed YEAR’S BEST’s way is that it presents most of the spotlighted titles as excerpts rather than the entire thing. Obviously, page-count limitations prevent such doings, but think of the book as one of the little pink spoons at Baskin-Robbins. It allows you sample a flavor that’s never touched your palette; if you like what you taste, you buy more. If you don’t, you move on. Odds are, anyone interested in comics will find more to like here than not. –Rod Lott
Buy it at Amazon.
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