Holiday Shipping
It looks like comics won’t arrive until Wednesday morning. There will be a slight delay. Books should be out by 10:30am on Wednesday morning.
The Cuppies: Best of 2011
Ronnie is helping me, though, we agree on a lot of these. He is up first:
Ronnie’s Top 5 of 2011
5. Animal Man. This title came out of the reboot in Sept and quickly became one of my favorite books at DC. The art by Travel Foreman is some of the creepiest/weirdest in the biz, yet draws the humans with perfect personality defining characteristics. This series, plus Sweet Tooth and Essex County makes Jeff Lemire one of my favorite writers. King of the cliffhanger. I haven’t read the Grant Morrison stories yet, but I’m told this is a worthy successor.
4. Dark Horse Presents. Every one of these issues has had at least two or three new stories worth the cover price. Add in new Beasts of Burden, Criminal Macabre and Hellboy (en Mexico!), plus knowing next year we get Brian Wood’s new series The Massive, that $8 begins to look like a bargain. Dark Horse just keeps doing it right.
3. Holy Terror. Written by Iowa native and Cup customer Jason Caskey, along with art by Iowan Phil Hester, this 3 issue supernatural luchadore story is a big fun ride. The first two issues were originally published by Image a number of years back, but were republished along with a brand new third issue this year. Look at the preview at the shop, then buy the issues. You will be supporting local creators and getting an awesome tale. Look for the trade in 2012. This has nothing to do with Frank Miller’s new reactionary agoraphobic xenophobe propaganda of the same name.
2. Scalped. We are reaching the end of quite possibly the best series in modern comics. This is Jason Aaron’s and RM Guera’s epic crime story set on a thinly fictionalized Lakota reservation. It features some of the most intense character development I have ever read, along with brutal plots that wont give in. As for Guera, his murky art has more storytelling in one page than most best sellers have in a 5 issue arc. It’s a tragedy that this book sells so poorly. I’ll take the blame for that, I apparently didn’t push it on you guys enough. But luckily, it’s being allowed to finish as intended by the creators. This series is number 1 on pretty much any list, however this year with the big upset…
1. Scott Snyder. Three Batman series, two American Vampire series, Swamp Thing and Severed – the best horror comic this year. This kid is kicking butt on everything he does. Unknown until American Vampire two years ago, he has now gotten to write the last, and one of the very best, stories for Detective Comics’ first volume, then relaunch Batman and Swamp Thing, two of the three best series to come out of the DC reboot. American Vampire is the only good vampire story in popular media (we’ll see how The Strain shapes up). I hope he doesn’t burn himself out though, he has set the bar very high.
Top 5 Old Standbys -
DMZ, BPRD (colored by Dave Stewart), Sweet Tooth, Tank Girl and Chew. All mighty fine series worthy of your attention.
Surprise of The Year
Black Panther I picked this up for the incredible Francesco Francavilla art, and ended up being pulled into the story. I’m not a Marvel reader (or much of a superhero reader for that matter), but here I am loving this.
Reprint Collection of the year
Chimichanga This absurd series by Eric Powell (The Goon) was quite possibly a perfect comic when published as single b&w issues last year. A hilarious story about circus freaks, evil pharmaceutical companies and a crazy monster filled with Powell’s knack for perfect dialogue and fully fleshed characters. The hard cover collection upped the ante with Dave Stewart coloring, two extra stories and a cheap price. I bought my 5 year old daughter a copy too, its perfect for any age, but not a kiddie story… and it is also colored by Dave Stewart.
Honorary Mention
Joe The Barbarian HC Grant Morrison at some of his most coherent best with art by the awesome Sean Murphy – it too is colored by Dave Stewart.
Now my turn:
Honorary Mentions
This is everything else that didn’t make the list and top award at the bottom of the page.
The New Discovery of the year is the Norwegian creator Jason. He did two graphic novels over the past year and I have slowly found another half dozen plus to devour. His style, art wise, is simple, but his stories he tells with it are some of the best I’ve ever read and range from comedy, to romance, to suspense. If you ever need something new or different, you need to give this guy a try.
Best New Superhero Book is easy and I’ve said it a hundred times already, Daredevil is freak’n great. I was already convinced of this, but was so blown away by the most recent issue (seven) – where Daredevil fights no villains, but saves a bus full of blind kids from freezing to death in the woods – I had to mention it again. If you are not reading this title, for shame. Please drop any one of the other much worse superhero titles you have on your list and get this, you will NOT be disappointed.
Best Horror Comic is also easily given and, somewhat surprisingly, it is the same as last year; Baltimore. The second volume didn’t disappoint in the slightest and, in my opinion, only turned the overall fright factor up. Much gorier than the first, and including much more in the occult department, this series is set to become one of the great horror series of all time. – also colored by Dave Stewart.
Now four overall honorable mentions:
Two Generals – by Scott Chantler This is the true story of two Canadian officers and friends and their time during World War two. One of the best examples of war comics I’ve seen in years. The art, a very simplistic style, has amazing detail without over doing it. The story centers around the battle of Caen, but is more about the day to day of the soldier in the early period of the war in Europe. An absolutely fantastic war comic about a subject, the Canadian armed forces, you don’t hear much about (it is important to note the huge sacrifice the nation of Canada made to the overall war effort.) If you are into war comics, I highly recommend this graphic novel.
Casanova, the insane and trippy mature reader book by Ed Brubacker and Fabio Moon/Gabriel Ba. The story is part James Bond super spy, part 60’s acid trip, part sci fi crazy, but I assure you the book is 100% great. If you enjoyed Umbrella Academy and Day Tripper, you’ll dig on this.
Godzilla needs to be mentioned. The Powell and Hester arc followed by the next five issues after Phil left were pretty damn good giant monster comics. This book is – or at least was – an example of how good a writer Eric Powell is. Think for a second how hard it would be to write a giant monsters attacking each other book. Get pretty dull after issue three, so, Powell needed to create human characters and use the monsters as background while attacking the excesses and downright stupidity of our society. I’ll get to more of Powell’s greatness in a bit.
I mention this next one because little made me laugh as hard as Shame Itself, the self mocking Marvel funny book about Fear Itself and comic in general. Under ordered, I was unsure who would want this. Thing is everyone who reads big crossovers should have read this as a sort-of palate cleanser. The two page spread detailing how Marvel figures out and decides the flow of the next big crossover they do is worth the cost alone. It is nice to see that Marvel has a sense of humor about some of the silly stuff they publish.
There are probably a dozen more comics and graphic novels I could list, the Green River Killer, Petrograd or the run up to and eventual Death of Hellboy or the Hellboy Hard Cover, House of the Living Dead are a few more, but I’ll be here forever if I do, so… moving on.
Best Overall Comic Book of the Year
The best publication, the best new comic, the best of the best is Dark Horse Presents. Not just because of the wealth of quality in each issue, but because of the value as well. The book is an anthology of several different stories in each issue and now published on a monthly basis. Over the last year we have seen everything from Criminal McCabe to Usagi Yojimbo to a Neal Adams story to Hellboy to Beasts of Burden to a Richard Corben story… you get my point that it is a vast variety of styles, both art and writing, character and genre.
It is easily the best value for your money too. For only $7.99 you get 80 pages of comics. Think about it for a minute… $2.99 for 20? $3.99 for 22? Even $3.99 for 32 or $3.99 for 40 WITH adds? No, none of these add up to what you get with Dark Horse Presents AND it is published on the best paper, with the best coloring and best talent in the world. IT IS THE BEST BOOK BEING PUBLISHED… and the stories inside are great too, but I’ll get to just one of those in a bit.
Top Five Stories or Series of the Year
5. Betty Saves the Day, in The Roceteer #2, by Darwin Cooke – with color by Dave Stewart (do you finally get why I said this guy is one of the artists of the year?) This book overall was my runner up to best comic of the year, but this story was the best of all the stories in the four issue anthology series, which is really saying something, because there were a lot of great stories in this book. I highly recommend just getting the collection if you were not on the ball and bought the series when it came out. Here are just some of the other creators in the book: Mike Allred, Kurt Busiek, John Cassaday, Dave Gibbons, Gene Ha, Tony Harris, Michael Kaluta, Joe Lansdale, Ryan Sook, Bruce Timm, Mark Waid and many more.
4. Criminal – Last of the Innocents The latest of Ed Brubaker and Sean Murphy’s acclaimed crime series sees what ever happened to a group of kids that might or might not have been Archie and his pals. The entire run of mini-series has been great, but there was something about this one I liked even more then minis in the past. It might have had something to do with Murphy’s great art in the flashback scenes that looked so old school and contrasted with his dark sketchy style in the rest of the series. Just fantastic atmosphere and again making for a very memorable read.
3. Atomic Robo – written by Brain Clevinger and art by Scott Wegener “What issue, what collection,” you might ask? All of them!! I just discovered this fantastic Science based action adventure book this year and it is easily one of my favorite series of all time. If you read Hellboy, you will immediately love this book and it is Hellboy that the book is most often compared to. Yes, it is like Hellboy, if you drop all the occult stuff and replace them with science stories. The plot of the book is the continuing adventures of a robot man, who was created by Nickola Tesla. It is that simple, but the stories just resonate. My best friend has read the series twice since I pushed the first volume on him – because he liked Hellboy. I can’t say much more than that… it is that good.
2. All New Batman Brave and the Bold #11 – Written by Sholly Fisch and drawn by Rick Burchett
This is what I wish all the New DC books were like. Simple, designed to tell a single issue story and without the need or desire to try and be more than what they are… entertainment. The entire run of Batman B and B was designed to be just throwaway kid’s books, but somewhere, someone lost the memo. What was created is a throwback to the comics we read as kids.
In issue 11, an earthquake is devastating Gotham City and within a single page we know this and have found the cause. We don’t need a fifteen issue set up in a crossover between all the Bat-books to tell us this. We need one page. We also don’t need another fifteen issues to get to how we are going to solve it. Nope, just another single page. What is that solution, well Time Travel of course and Batman knows just who can get this done, how it works and what to do when he gets to the time period he needs to get to. This issue eventually becomes the first team-up of Batman and Jonah Hex and eventually a fight between the two heroes and Batman’s greatest villain… and there is a giant steam powered killer robot too.
I should hate this book. Why you ask, because it shows the failure of every and all superhero books. When you read something so simple and get such joy from it you begin to understand the core of what is wrong with the re-start at DC’s core. Mr. Johns and Mr. Lee and the rest of DC’s fools should have taken a course in comic creating from those doing the “throw away” kids book.
And The Best Comic Book Story I Read Last Year:
Isolation, in Dark Horse Presents #5 – By Eric Powell – with coloring by Dave Stewart There was a lot of good comics published last year, but this is the best of them all.
It tells the story of an earth robot with artificial intelligence being sent to a newly found planet in a distant star system, a planet humanity hopes will be suitable for colonization. The robot is given three things on his trip, Religion, Porn and a weapon to use when he gets there. Along the way he understands what it is like to be human and the failings that religion, sex and drugs bring. It is a great, fantastic story and perhaps the very best thing Eric Powell has ever done. It also shows the power of our medium to tell a simple, yet very complex, layered story in only… eight pages!!