The ILC Best of 2004 NOMINATIONS THREAD (Deadline: FEBRUARY 13th, 2005!)

I will be nominating and voting tho.

DC: The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke with Dave Stewart (DC)
She-Hulk by Dan Slott and some other guys (Marvel)
Green Arrow #33 by Scott Beatty , Shawn Martinbrough & Mark McKenna (it's a fun fill-in issue where GA finds that his old Arrowcar is up for auction on DCBay) (DC)
the Flash #214 by Geoff Johns, Howard Porter & Livesay (it's the Identity Crisis tie-in where Wally West learns that Barry Allen had ANOTHER secret, and probably the best single Identity Crisis issue, tie-in or otherwise, edging Wally West closer to his new role as the moral conscience of the DCU) (DC)

MY FAITH IN FRANKIE (Carey)
FABLES (WILLINGHAM)

And save my other two noms for later. In the meantime, someone please nominate Seaguy, We3 (#1 & 2, I guess), and Astonishing X-Men kthxbye.

seaguy
marc bell's worn tuff elbow
james sturm's above and below
doonesbury, the bd stuff esp.

Like the one I hem and haw over is the single volume collection of Bone. For me, reading it in one volume -- cheap enough that I could afford it much more readily than the other volumes purchased individually -- over the course of a week was a hugely different experience than reading the issues over the course of however many years they'd come out. But I don't know if that's universally true, or relevant enough that it should be in the running.

The Ultimate Carnage arc of Ultimate Spider-Man.

And Oeming's Thor, which ILC hasn't talked about much, so nominating it is an easy way for me to say "go check it out."

If Peanuts gets scratched, my other vote would go to the last issue (#5?) of "Forlorn Funnies." Next to John Pham, it's the best Chris Ware swipe ever.

If it works for y'all, it works for me. Which means Peanuts is most definitely up for dibsies.

I'd do two nominees now, & two later, but I want y'all to pick the two I'd nominate now & force me to spelunk for other worthy candidates.

Effing heck, I totally forgot that James Strum thing came out. "Forgot" = "I need to buy it". DAMN YOU BENDIS!

Didn't this come out in 2003? I know the trade was this year.

Anyway, my noms:

Cerebus: The Last Day (yes, I know 3/4 of this was published in 2003, but I'm guessing - judging by sales figures - a significant chunk of people read Cerebus at 'trade only' level)

Mary Jane

Eightball: The Death Ray

Frank Ironwine

(Leee, read the Q&C novel, aren't you on winter break now or something?)

"Imagery in Multimedia Narratives", perhaps?

I need to see if Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules (written by James Sturm) qualifies as 2K4 compliant - it was first released in 2003, but might've been collected this year. If that's the case, it's going on the list!

Dave -- do you mean your #2 is Carnet de Voyage? Esp. compared to that big book he did, it felt a little inconsequential even if it was entertaining.

Kit knows where I'm coming from. Yeah, compared to Blankets, it's "inconsequential" - it's a sketch book, for one! But where Blankets was cloying & precious, Carnet was crude & coarse (in a precious way), which I liked. Also, drawrings of foreign places >= drawrings of America (sez the homebody).

Is Melissa a portfolio, or a book / story type thing? If it's the former, I'm afraid it might not qualify because of the lack of narrative sequence in its graphics. (Unless you folks think otherwise...?)

Jordan, to answer your NXM question waaaaaaaaaay up there, Morrison's run did end this year. I mean last year. I mean you know what I mean.

I might nominate Identity Crisis just to see how many votes it won't get.

• 1602 (Gaiman / Kubert / Isanove)


• Above and Below (Sturm)


• Astonishing X-Men (Whedon / Cassaday)


• Carnet de Voyage (Thompson)


• Cerebus: The Last Day (Sim / Gerhard)


• Complete Peanuts (Shultz)


• Daredevil (Bendis / Maleev)


• DC: The New Frontier (Cooke / Stewart)


• Dogs and Water (Nilssen)


• Doonesbury (Trudeau)


• Eightball: The Death Ray (Clowes)


• Ex Machina (Vaughn / Harris)


• Fables (Willingham / Buckingham & others)


• Frank Ironwine (Ellis / McNeil)


• Green Arrow #33 (Beatty / Martinbrough / McKenna)


• Love Fights (Watson)


• Mary Jane (McKeever / Miyazawa / Lee)


• McSweeney's #13 (various folks)


• My Faith in Frankie (Carey / Liew)


• Queen & Country (Rucka / Rolston & Norton & others)


• Seaguy (Morrison / Stewart)


• She-Hulk (Slott / Bobilo & Pelletier)


• The Flash #214 (Johns / Porter / Livesay)


• The Pulse (Bendis / Bagley & Anderson)


• Thor: Ragnarok (Oeming & Berman / DiVito)


• Ultimate Spider Man: Ultimate Carnage (Bendis / Bagley)


• We3 (Morrison / Quitely)


• Worn Tuff Elbow (Bell)


• X-Statix (Milligan / Allred / Bone)


• Melissa (Thompson)

Links to info on these things forthcoming. Lemme know if I made any mistakes.

In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman
Cavalcade of Boys #6 by Tim Fish

Also, a good place to find out what came out in 2004 in alt/ug/art comics land is here: TCJ -Best of 2004.

Wishing I had used one of my nominations on Kramer's Ergot #5 right now. :(

The Destructovore (Ewing/Traquino) which you can find in the most recent issue of a comic called SOLAR WIND.

Runaways (Vaughan/Somebody) - whichever issues came out this year.

I'll withold other noms until I remember what I read this year.

I'd like to instead nominate (I'm resisting the Essentials, as they are material that has mostly been fairly available anyway):
Phoenix by Osamu Tezuka
whatever Krazy Kat volumes came out in 2004
Samurai Executioner by Koike & Kojima
We3

I guess I'll pick up Martin's slack and nominate Daredevil and Astonishing X-Men with my other two nominations.

IN: Adam Strange
OUT: Mary Jane

Anybody want to pick that up as a nomination?

I be nominating:

Fantastic Four, by Mark Waid and various
In The Shadow Of No Towers by Art Spiegelman
Savage Dragon by Eril Larsen
Whatever Astro City one-shots came out, written by Kurt Busiek

Mind, I'm reserving my number one vote for DC: The New Frontier, but that's already been nominated.

David

Yeah, I opened up a bit of a Pandora's Box w/ this, but I'll stand by my initial decision (which is to go w/ the reasoning Tep offered:

I think the best reason to nominate/vote for a reprint/collection is if there's a strong possibility that 2004 is the first time many readers had been exposed to it. Let's say Watchmen, improbably, hadn't been collected until now -- or the pre-Golden Age Miracleman/Marvelman comics had finally been collected here. Those would make sense in a way that "the 17th printing of The Dark Knight Returns" wouldn't.

Locas seems to be in the same boat as the Bone book, and if the Bone is up for dibs, then so is Locas. Also, Andrew, this is just the nomination stage - if you don't think this is worth a vote because of eligibility issues, then don't vote for it.

Also, what say you folks to fudging things a bit so stories that began last year but didn't finish until this year (cf. We3, GM's JLA:C arc) are considered in their entirety if the lion's share of the story (more than 50% of it) has been nominated AND it's concluding prior to the nomination deadline?

Will your fudge be retro-active, or even applied to the future? IE will We3 be nominable for 2004 and 2005? Or would it make more sense for it just to be "those issue of (series) that came out in the relevant year"?

So, in conclusion, fudge is retro-active, and may contain almonds.

What about.... (I am just picking holes here) a series which publishes four issues out of nine this year, but next year it gets shortened to six?

Or what I suspect will be a quite pertinent question next year: what about Seven Soldiers of Destiny? (obviously the answer to this is "ask next year")

It was all worth it for the Pol Manning joke though.

- Wonder Woman (Rucka / Johnson)
- the issue of Berlin that came out last year (if it did - must factcheck) (Lutes)

- The Perry Bible Fellowship (Nicholas Gurewitch)
- IDENTITY CRISIS OH NO (Meltzer / Morales / Bair)

"A single story - a collection - a storyline or run on an ongoing series - a newspaper strip - an anthology title or story in one - a series in its entirety - you decide, Effendi!"

(Sorry about this, BTW.)