Well, as the end of the year finally approaches, we can officially relax, kick up our feet, and—if we have the right kind of personality—get irritated at what makes up other people's lists of what 2008's best comics, movies, books, sandwiches, music & so on are. After all, that's what keeps us free—the ability to marry abject rage with the anonymity the internet allows in the service of saying "Pundit A is totally wrong about
Ms. Marvel, which is the worst comic book since Pompei exploded in a ball of fire" or something along those extended and confusing metaphorical lines.
Contemptuous condemnation of comics lists—whether it's one from some Joe Nobody who runs the official Michael McKean fansite or the list churned out of the cost-cutting "make an intern do it" floor of the New York Times—well, that's why the Greatest Generation ended the Great Depression and killed Nazis, so that their spawn could loll around in a pool of self-made refuse, living in an Ivory Tower and saying "You'll never understand Mary Jane Watson the way I understand Mary Jane Watson" while eating a king-size bag of Cheetohs and slurping down a gallon milk jug filled with Mountain Dew and sugar.
It's freedom.
You can taste it.
All that being said, This Ship, Which Didn't Get To Sink In 2008, But Will Certainly Have To Repair Some Of The Lower Decks Despite 2009 Looking Like An Iceberg Made Of Layoffs and Disappointment, will not start up on its official Best Comics of 2008 until next week. But because comiXology and this column love you in a way that your mother never will, because we'll forgive you for that time you looked around furtively and said "Hey man, you got any copies of that issue where the Transformers fought Wolverine? I know I'm 35. Just put it in the bag and keep your mouth shut"—because of that love, here's some comics that won't make it onto the list and the reasons why.
Now, you might be one of those types that think that you should always focus on the positive, because focusing on the negative makes you sad, or mad, certainly not glad. That's wonderful that you're like that. I bet your mom is really proud of you, and if you came out like that despite your mom being a despondent drunk who didn't care enough to raise you, I'm even more proud of you. I bet that was
real hard. You should write an autobiographical comic about it. (Make yourself a fuzzy animal! SLG will publish it, as long as you include cursing.) Let's move on from you though, okay? Time to talk about things that don't count.
The Comics That Won't Make It: What It Is,
Abandoned Cars,
Sublife,
Tamara Drewe,
Alan's War, and
Kramers Ergot 7
The Problem: Actually, I'm sure these are all pretty great, but I either have them and haven't gotten a chance to read them yet, or I'm waiting on them to be delivered so that I won't have time to read them, or I just keep going to the store and not making a list and forgetting that they exist.
On the strengths of all of those strip collections of Lynda Barry and the previous volumes of
Kramers, I'd bet even money these are actually totally fantastic and worth your comics dollar. At the same time, the comics consumer base being what it is, I find it rather hard to believe that the possible purchasers of any of these books don't already know of their existence and haven't bought them already, unless, you know. They're poor. Ugh, poor people. Let's not speak of them again.
The Comics That Didn't Make It: Ronin,
Sandman,
Heavy Liquid,
Gotham Central,
Justice League International and anything else you could or should have bought when it actually came out, which wasn't in 2008.
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The Problem: Well, that's pretty obvious, isn't it? None of these comics came out this year. Filling out a list with comics that were easily available—and that's a personal definition, stemming from "can I get this at the primary comic shop I go to regularly, the one that doesn't carry 90% of what's referred to as "independent" comics and won't get you hardcovers unless you order in advance"—in previous years isn't just lazy, it's an insult to the year in comics overall.
It's one thing to pick reprint collections like
Popeye,
Dick Tracy or
Little Orphan Annie—those aren't works that could've been purchased at the retail level until 2008—and it's completely another when a work is merely repackaged and repurposed for a different marketplace. That's not to denigrate the quality of these comics—hey, maybe an argument is out there that
Sandman is a better comic then all of the ones that came out this year, I'm sure somebody has one—but it is to say that
Sandman isn't one of the best of 2008, and it can't be, because it has nothing to do with 2008 whatsoever.
If it's book design award time, maybe it can be in the running—it did, after all, emerge in a big hardcover, which is how you get book design awards—but if it's "New pieces of art that innovated or refined the form in a fresh and exciting way," then it doesn't get a shot. I've always been passionately obsessive about my own personal idea of what a "best of year" list includes, and I don't expect anybody else to agree with it 100%, but the idea that something like
Ronin or
Sandman, comics that have pretty much been in print since their initial decade-old publication, deserves a spot that might belong to something like
Ganges #2 or
All Star Superman #12?
That's an insult to the people who actually sat down to come up with something new this year, and an undeserved pat on the back to those who continue to find new ways to mine old stories by repurposing them for different markets. It's like saying that the best movie of the year was one from 2003 on the basis of it receiving the Special Edition treatment. Look at this way—while you can give a best movie award to something like Yi Yi, an Edward Yang movie that few had been able to see due to the lack of a proper translation, you certainly couldn't give one to Michael Mann when they release a special edition of Heat.
Comics aren't as clear cut as something like film and music, where the release dates are more globally inline with one another—any decent comics list has to acknowledge the spot American manga publications deserve, despite the fact that nearly all of those titles initially appeared in previous years—but the idea that a comic that has never spent any serious time out of print, has been widely available for multiple years and, in most cases, already received a fair share of exposure and acclaim—is completely absurd.
Oh, let's give this an official name, shall we? How about this:
HERE'S A POKE IN THE EYE, YOU LOUSY SO AND SO
The Worst Super-Hero Comic I Read This Year:
Now, it's tempting to make that old art-snob joke where you say "all of them" or "it's so hard to choose just one" but guess what? There were some damn fine super-hero comics this year—some weren't surprising, considering the talent involved, but some are total left-field explosions, books that I never saw coming, and I don't even have faith in the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The other thing—the "it's so hard to choose just one"—well, that isn't true either.
There's only been one comic that took me to that next level of loathing, that place where I forgot about every art misstep that had irked me, every unresolved plot twist that was left dangling like so many high school tennis teams—there was one comic that I quite honestly hope everyone in the world gets a chance to see, because it was pure magic. That comic was
Batman & The Outsiders # 11, and if you haven't seen it, please. See it.
What'll bother you most? Will it be the panel where they forgot to draw Superman's eyeballs, sockets and brows despite him being the only character in the frame? Will it be the multiple vanishing points in a simple bird's eye drawing of a man sitting in a chair, a panel that effectively makes it so that his limbs are perpendicular to the floor while his frosty beverage that is resting on the same floor indicate that the floor has some sort of bizarre pitch to it that would physically place the floor at some kind of 45 degree angle?
Will it be the speed lines that start and stop in all sorts of random places, forming a bizarre cat's cradle of movement that wants to imply that various characters are not just moving forward in space, but are actually distending their limbs the way that old Dhalsim used to right before he'd punch somebody?
Or will it just be the story? I mean, if it's just the story, that's fine too. It's a terrible, generic story with badly imagined dialog that takes place under the banner of being a major crossover issue to the Batman RIP event. But honestly, there've been worse stories this year in super-hero comics—I can't think of one reason any sane human being would enjoy watching Captain Marvel fly around crying for 22 pages in a bad Secret Invasion cross over—but at least those comics didn't come backed up with the kind of obvious art mistakes that
Batman & The Outsiders provided so handily.
This wasn't one of the best comics of the year. But for the opportunity it provided to just live in the fantasy world of the unhappy camper, in some ways, it sort of ended up being my favorite. After all, nothing—not accomplishment, love, revenge or success—feels as good as the vindication of self-involved cultural superiority.
Well, maybe freedom. They can't take that away from me.
Tucker Stone's writing may be found in print in Comic Foundry and online at The Factual Opinion, where he frequently reviews new releases.
This Ship Is Totally Sinking is © Tucker Stone, 2008
