Matt's Fave Comics 2008: The Rest, Part One
Matt's Fave Comics 2008: The Rest, Part One
Jan 13I had great ambitions of writing about like ten or twelve different comics over the course of a couple weeks, and I’m looking at my little “best of” list, and I’m thinking, shit, lemme just get this out of my system. Writing about comics is generally something I WANT to do well more than I actually DO well, so let me pretend to be Jog for a few hours and you can either indulge me in my fantasy, or ignore me and move on.
So, yeah–some GREAT comics in 08, party people! Here’s my previous two entries, and here’s part one of the rest…
Batman by Grant Morrison
A lot of what I’m going to write about here will be focused on basically mainstream sequential comics, as opposed to graphic novels or collections–I’m the kind of pedant who gets all clammy when asked to develop a list like “Best Trade Paperbacks or Graphic Novels of 2008.” Do I count stuff published in 2008, or stuff I read in 2008? What if the trade was published in 2008, but the issues came out in 2007, or in the seventies or something? Why does my head hurt so bad and so suddenly?
Morrison’s run on Batman has been that rarest of pleasures in this day and age–smart, compulsive reading featuring a marquee mainstream character in a flagship title. That it happens to feature my own personal all-time favorite man in tights doesn’t hurt. I’ve been a Bat-fan since I was a wee dweeb at a Catholic school in Chicago’s south suburbs, and man, this is good Batman, reinterpreting the character in ways both subtle and overt while retaining the essential qualities that make him great.
We can debate back and forth all day on the specifics, especially on the quality of Morrison’s ending for the RIP storyline, but there’s no question that all along, the journey was amazing. Every issue was an instant must-read, and near the end, I started to beg, borrow, and steal the issues on the day of release, even though I had a copy coming to me via mail order–I just had to know what was coming next. To me, that’s one thing comics offers that no other medium really can, other than maybe TV, and even then, you get summer breaks and reruns. There ain’t no reruns in comics, boy. Well, except for fill-in issues.
Fables
Another compulsive read in 2008. Regardless of his politics, which I just recently learned I find pretty distasteful (he’s sorta right about superheroes, but Rush Limbaugh? Seriously?!), Bill Willingham is a great writer; I think his work on Fables is a bit less literary and more sudsy than say Sandman or Preacher, which is why it will make an awesome TV show. At the same time, his plotting and characterizations reveal an attention to detail that’s so rewarding to regular reading. Like many fans, I absolutely love that he basically “ended” the book’s ongoing story in the 75th issue…and that in spite of that ending, there will be an issue 76 and beyond. Very curious to see where this one goes; Willingham’s got a real gift for taking characters away just as we grow to love them, and yet replacing them with new characters you soon grow to love too, or supporting characters suddenly brought to the forefront.
Criminal
2008 was a very criminal year for me. I didn’t spend any of it skulking in a beat-up old car with a camera waiting for some rich dude to cheat on his sultry wife so I could photograph it, nor was I hired at any point to perform a brutal hit on a mob boss who controls the heroin trade in Queens. (I would gladly do either of these things, by the way, for reals. Call me.)
I got into noir and crime fiction in a big way in 2008, and that’s thanks solely to Criminal. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ masterfully sparse crime tales inspired me to start reading the Hard Case Crime books; over the holidays, I picked up about 1100 small-type pages of classic crime noir from the twenties, thirties, and forties. I’m in big, and it’s all because Brubaker and Phillips are so incredible at what they do. I happen to like the crime story, so maybe I’m biased, but it seems as though Criminal can’t really be praised enough–this is brutal stuff, unlike anything else that’s being done in comics today. Not only do Brubaker and Phillips seamlessly adapt the tropes of crime fiction to the comics form, they do so while retaining their own singular voice together as creators. It’s just so great, on so many levels, that I almost can’t be friends with anyone who isn’t reading it. Almost.
Helen Killer
There’s a fascinating in-between space that indie publishers have started filling admirably in the past few years–independent work by small outfits that still can be described as “genre” and has the ability to appeal to an audience largely reliant on men in tights. Helen Killer is a great example of such a book; it’s basically Frank Miller’s Daredevil starring Helen Keller. That’s high concept if ever I heard it, and it made for a really fun read, one that was never beholden to larger corporate interests or to the complications of a shared universe. It’s always a blast to see young hungry creators cut loose on a terrific idea, and that’s what Helen Killer delivered in spades. Can’t wait to see what’s next.
