Comics: Best of 2002

Y

"100 Bullets" continues to rock hard.

Been enjoying the new run of Love & Rockets so far (think #3 & 4 came out this year(?)). Just read Eightball #22. I like.

* The UK Transformers collected editions (The new comics aren't so great, but I hear Simon Furman is writing a UK version of Armada! yay!!)
* James Kochalka Sketchbook Diaries Volume two!
* The Jessica Abel series
* Pinky and Stinky by James Kochalka
* The Fantastic Four anniversary series.

High Roads - midgets and n8zis - what more could you want. Apart from Sad Clown N8zi midgets.

The Usuals: Powers, Black Panther, Lone Wolf & Cub, Promethea, Transmetropolitan

The New: 100%, X-Force/X-Statix, New X-Men, Midnight Mass., Filth, Hellblazer

Hmm. Of my 11, Transmet is already dead, and LW&C, 100%, Midnight Mass and Filth won't be around next year.

Actually, the best bits of the year have been collections: The last Invisibles collection, getting into Lucifer, The Akira reprints. And Lone Wolf & Cub as well.

David B.'s _Epileptic_ is seriously like the best graphic novel I've ever read. Amazing.

My discoveries of the year were two self-published things, Finder (SF series whose only real weakness is too many good ideas to give them all breathing room) and Amy Unbounded (sui generis history/fantasy series).

More mainstreamy: Lucifer (spinoff of Sandman but better-written!), New X-Men, Promethea, Alias, The Ultimates.

I want to like Promethea, and the art is absolutely wonderful, but I think all the super-hero action I've been getting has warped my appreciation for slower, methodical, allegorical-type story-telling.

But, yeah, what most of y'all said, with some newbies - anything written by Brian Michael Bendis (Alias, Powers, Ultimate Spidey, Daredevil - ESPECIALLY Alias), New X-Men, The Ultimates (where's #8?!?), both Amazing Spider-Man & Peter Parker (because Paul Jenkins & Straczynski are getting it RIGHT, which hasn't happened in quite a while), 100 Bullets, Incredible Hulk, Y: The Last Man, The Goon (smallish-press funny/cute throwback to 50s EC stuff), Captain America (more John Cassaday!!!!), Stray Bullets, X-Static, 100%, and the Waid/Wieringo Fantastic Four. Fables has potential. There was also this small graphic-novel thing by Andi Watson (Skeleton Key) that was quite unlike SK, but still very good - can't recall the title, tho.

Of course, I ordered the 1st 3 volumes of Essential FF & Essential Spider-Man from my local comic retailer, and they should arrive around Christmas. Those'll have to go up on the list as well.

I don't read so many these days. Lone Wolf & Club is a continuing immense pleasure, and I'm excited that the finale is coming up, but I'll miss it when it does finish in about a month. The Essential volumes are mostly magnificent material at bargain prices: the FF ones are almost as essential as comics ever get - if the first five collect the whole Kirby run, that will be a pretty peerless set. But the best reprints of the lot, albeit at a slower frequency, are the collections of Krazy Kat Sunday pages that Fantagraphics are doing.

In new monthlies, I'm adoring Grant Morrison's X-Men, and Mark Millar's Ultimates is almost as good. The Filth is patchily excellent too. The Hernandez brothers and Daniel Clowes keep hitting the back of the net too.

would it be reasonable or neccessary for one to begin at the beginning of LW & Cub? or could one just jump in at a midway point?

I know little about this comic except that both my best old pal and my girlfriend (who have wildly divergent tastes) have both been raving about it (seperately) for so long now I want to see what they're on about.

(bias alert: i'm asking because they both insist that I should start at the beginning, and I'm looking for someone impartial/realistic to tell me that I don't need to)

LW&C is one long story, Fritz, so you should start at the beginning. However, there are loads of episodes that are not at all or only slightly connected with the main thrust, so there are volumes among the 28 that complete it that stand alone pretty well - but none of the recent ones, as we have been building up to the finale for a while now. Can't you get one of those friends to lend you the first couple, to give them a try?

I plan to reread the whole lot all the way through shortly, about 8,500 pages of it!

oh yeah, Y is very good. Or The Last Man as I always call it.

I bought an issue of High Roads, and thought it was a bit rub.

has anyone read the new Daniel Clowes yet?

robster, is that new Love&Rockets "New" or reissued?

I haven't read anything but reissues all year, mostly Julie Doucette's Dirty Plotte and some Optic Nerve.

There are new Love & Rockets comics coming out! Brand new material.

I don't know what the new Daniel Clowes might be.

One off Viz comic strip "The Droop Group"

My discovery of the year is Comix, a brand new glossy Portuguese magazine that talks about comics in a way which might be giving them the respect they deserve, or might be a bunch of pretentious babbling which totally misses the point, I haven't decided yet. At any rate, I'm hooked: peep this article on Alan Moore (clumsily translated from Portuguese by yours truly; it's a rush translation job, so don't bother to point out how awkward it reads.)

(Opening paragraphs impossible to translate; mostly to do with the fact that, in the Portuguese language, the word "script" also more or less means "to make a case for" and "to rationalize")

Thus, a scriptwriter has to be a sort of Greek athelete, who throws discuses as well as weights. Greek, because it was the Greek tradition that formulated the rules of comedy and tragedy, poetry and theater. He has to throw weights because to write a script/make a case for (not sure which one he means here- probably both), one has to refute the thesis that there is only one reality. He has to throw weights because the lines that weave the development can sometimes get stuck in one's throat. At other times, he has to throw a discus because fiction is a good way to cut through space and time. At other times, he has to throw a discus because drawn fiction can take us far, take us far away from ourselves and the circumstances surrounding us.

In the yet-to-be-written history of comics, the role of the scriptwriter is yet-to-be-defined. The rarity of expositions honouring an artist is not without reason, after all, nor is the fact that, amongst writing teams, the legendary artist has a tendency to forget his other half.

Apart from the fact that comics operate in an industry which sacrifices everything in the name of product, what reasons could there be for the fact that so few creators are celebrated above and beyond their creations? Goscinny, Christin, Pekar, Gaiman and Moore are writers that have created universes beyond the drawings that gave them a provisory face. It is well known that images exhude the fascination necessary to attract all looks towards a little theater that, in an organic drama, hides some things just to reveal others. But that is not enough to explain the limbo of obscurity to which these weights and discus throwers are regularly hurled, for sporting purposes (dwarf-tossing.) This domestic sociology, too, is yet to be made. Also yet to be researched is the archeology of how exactly the desire for images has been wakened in the head of the artist, as Benoit Peeters said it, a man who, apart from being a thinker, is also an architect of drama and intrigue. He, too, is the man who argued that writing teams are haunted by the slightly renessaince like ghost of the complete artist, and that they can go from this schizophrenia to a highly productive relationship. Neither of them could acheive the alchemy of a drawn story in any other way, since the arts of writing and drawing are so different. The scriptwriter can enlist the aid of everything to fight facts. Even facts themselves. And this is the lesson that Moore has given us, light as a discus, solid like a weight (and leaving us to spin it around before throwing it to the longest distance that we can muster...) Moore has found a Columbus' egg, a crystal clear principle: reality is complex. So complex , in fact, that we can turn it into the heart of a language as escapist (to use a term very dear to my friend Domingos Isabelinho) as comics and other mass products. The English scriptwriter was amongst the first to bring to this world of super heroes, swamp monsters and suicidal anarchists the theme of time. And so he has dealt with feminism, environmentalism, the end of the century, all of these themes within the industry and in a language that seems, at fist sight, conservative.

Soon, he understood that he could, in a great parsdox, control the importance of the artist.

Or, to put it in better words, he soon found out how to choose the right person to put into images what he has already drawn in the written word. More than a writing style, Alan Moore has an universe. According to him, fiction is only filling universes with people. Mood, characters and, of course, time. These are the atoms of creation according to Moore. And this is why, despite the revolution that was Watchmen, Moore is a classic writer. He makes use of solid architecture. No matter how many times the building of the plot spins around, nothing is dropped. There are recurrent images that glue togheter the narrative. There are details which he deals with like no other creator would. He creates time and information while pleading a case with the reader.

He sculpts characters. He defines their quirks and forms, he places them in the exact right time and setting. One needs only to look at the detailed comments in the collected edition of From Hell. Moore always rehearses. Without sacrificing clarity, he tries out different ways of telling stories, he plays with time. When put togheter, his script is a block, a hypnotising sculpture. He learned how to do this (like any good writer) by looking at facts. For reality, besides tough and complex, can also be hypnotic. It fascinates the reader and takes him by the hand, from start to finish, without forgetting his fears or his intelligence. One only needs to read From Hell, a major narrative of evil, a sneaky thing that, without much drama, infiltrates itself into our lives. It might very well knock on anyone's door.

And make itself comfortable. After the various themes of time, or maybe despite them, or maybe because of them, Moore has arrived at death. Well, actually, he has always dealt with that theme of themes.

Thing is, this thing is sitting on the newstand next to the latest issues of Spider Man and Disney comics, and I'm pretty sure that it's going over everyone's heads (myself included, for the most part.) I fear this 'un won't be around too long.

The only new comic I have read this year is the issue of 2000AD my brother's story appeared in. So, that.

there's a new Eightball out? (the only comics I've read lately are Chip Kidd's Peanuts retrospective and some old Love and Rockets)

or by new Daniel Clowes do you mean the 20th Century Eightball compi?

I sort of take against the new Love & Rockets because I'd started getting the collections of the old one, and I was missing the second or so, but I wan't bothered because I have all the time in the world, it's not like there are new ones coming out.

2000AD ran my letter-to-the-editor this year, in which I babbled incoherently about how Judge Dredd is a fantastic retelling of the judges period of judaic history...
My favourite comic is still "Hey, Mister!".

Ah, Dave confirms my assumption that 2000AD is now a comic of historical fiction now, not SF.

"or by new Daniel Clowes do you mean the 20th Century Eightball compi?"

no, David Boring? i think thats what its called..

200AD: Ah-ha! Good point. Similarly, I was very disappointed that Space: 1999 wasn't a huge retro-hit back in 99. It was a *tiny* bit, but I was expecting the retrosploitation machine to go into overdrive, and that didn't happen. (Everything I know about interior design I learnt from watching Space: 1999 as a kid. (The extent of my interior design theory is: "rack mount equipment looks cool".))

Scott Morse - "Volcanic Revolver"
He's an incredible artist, and a master at dialogue and accents to boot.

Jeff Smith - "Bone: Treasure Hunters"
Probably the most consistent Bone collection since "The Great Cow Race." The first joke is wonderful, but what really makes TH splendid is that Smith's finally found his footing as a storyteller of an epic. Past collections, the story was alternately unwieldy or repetitive. His art is also back on track, especially after the disappointing "Ghost Circles."

Greg Rucka - "Queen & Country: Broken Ground"
Tautly plotted spy thrilla. It was only 4 issues, but the dialogue is so packed that the trade felt twice as big. Also, Rucka's probably the best Yank to pull off Brit-slang evah.

Hiraoki Samura - "Blade of the Immortal: Secrets"
Sort of like Bone, BotI went through a dry spell of overly talky stuff that strayed too far away from Samura's strength: action. From what I've gathered, manga action sequences are very intricate (obviously more than Western stuff), but Samura literally choreographs them, and he's getting back on track in "Secrets." Yay blood and guts!

David Boring came out a few years ago, but I think it just now got into paperback. I like it, but I think the 20th Cen Eightball book is a better buy for your money. And it has "Why I Hate Christians," which never fails to make me laugh. "Okay, this little old lady who never hurt a fly --- DO YOU HATE HER?" "Sigh..."

Forgot to mention "Hellboy: Third Wish." HB with a nail in his head macking on mermaids!

There is a new Eightball comic out - 30-odd stories set in and around the same events in a small town. It's my single issue of the year. Best comic remained the Ultimates with X-Force/X-Statix close second...

Has anyone tried 'Vertigo Pop London'? More of a 2003 series but hot contender so far for the bestest.

(Best single story was mine. For existing.)

Oooh ohh oooh also Dark Horse's "Happy Endings," several excellent short stories, many tearjerking.

I'll second Al's recommendation of Vertigo Pop London. I picked up the first two issues yesterday. The first one is really sad, and I loved it. The second is sort of wall-to-wall plot, while still leaving the story exactly where it found it.

When did part 2 come out?

Just this week.