Earlier this year, Tom Spurgeon began his "
best of the decade" project at his website, The Comics Reporter. In the past few weeks, a website called Berkeley Place began posting
their own version of the same, and depending on when you read this, the AV Club
may have posted theirs as well. While Tom's is still mid-creation, currently operating as an unranked list broken up into categories that includes multiple reader recommendations, it seems most likely that the end result will operate as the most definitive one, the "list to beat", if you'll pardon the competitive language.
That's not to dismiss what Berkeley and the AV Club have to offer, but it's always worthwhile to remember that Spurgeon operates from a rare place, that of the "professional" reader--he's one of the few that makes a living off comics without actually writing, drawing or publishing them, and he's more well read than most. When he calls something "the best", you know it's not the only thing he bought in the past month, you can trust that he didn't say that based off whatever most excited him in the last few weeks, and you can rely on him not to be swayed by an aggressive marketing campaign. (Which, unsurprisingly, many terrible comics now have.)
Non-Comics Reporter-based lists have something to offer in that they're more specifically user-created, and while most current installments are rife with choices that I disagree with, there's an obvious passion and honesty to the delivery of those choices--and to be frank, I'm usually more interested in passion and honesty than I am in whether or not a list consists of "correct" choices, since "correct" invariably boils down to "do I agree with it."
After Tom posted his initial call-for-response article, I thought for a bit about whether or not a project like that would be something I'm interested in doing, and whether anybody would be interested in reading it. It didn't take long (seconds, really) to realize that the answer was a solid "no"--I've neither the time nor inclination to plow through the various comics I've missed or "meant to read" over the last ten years, and I can't imagine that anyone but the terminally insane would find any value in it. Honestly, it's only been in the last few years that I've made an active project out of "keeping up", meaning that I spent the better part of the last ten years only reading comics that I was already drinking the Kool-Aid for, only trying out new creators that came bearing the rare trusted recommendations, and only forcing myself to experiment with the strange in intermittent comics-shopping fiestas while out of town.
Not only would any best-of-the-decade list I make be inherently dull, it would point to what I consider my own failings as a reader--my willingness to ignore the faults of a writer I'm an obsessive fan of, my unwillingness to give certain genres a fair chance, and, ultimately, my disinterest in viewing most comics as works of art independent of the various forms of stupidity involved in their creation. End-of-year lists are fun, because they're immediately tied into recent work, they're easy to write (which is why every publication features them about every form of entertainment), and they consistently irritate the sort of people that I cannot stand. A decade list? That sounds like work, and work is something that most comics rarely require or deserve.
But even thinking about Tom's list has kept the subject fresh on my mind. It's got me asking myself all kinds of questions, and some of them...honestly? They might be fun to pursue. I want to know, without sarcasm, whether or not there's been a Batman story from the last ten years that I like as much as I like Year One. I want to sit down with ten years of Daredevil and pick out my favorite story. I want to find out if there's any decent genre comics that have engaged with the multiple wars that my country has spent the majority of the last decade participating in. While limiting the scope of the "what's the best of the decade" question to various categories inherently makes the end product less useful to the sort of consumer who views these lists as "shopping requirements", those people are...well, stupid. Making things more difficult for stupid people was the second reason the Internet was invented, right after that whole "the department of defense needs better ways to kill people" thing.
So yeah. That's where we're going, for the next month. There will be a video show next week, and then it's Time To Get Positive About The Past. After all, you can't see me, which means I can't rely on you to give my navel the ADA's recommended amount of staring. These cakes don't bake themselves, buttercup.
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
