The Best American Comics

First off, this is a beautifully designed book. The paper stock is heavy and bright. The dust-jacket and endpapers are themselves pieces of graphic art. Several of the included works are printed in full color. This deluxe treatment screams "comics are serious art." And, for the most part, the quality of the stories bears out that premise. An outpost of the "Best American" brand, it's a survey of contemporary comic writing, with a handful of novelistic, introspective pieces; stand-by representatives of the alt-weekly aesthetic; and a couple truly out there pieces that I had a hard time grokking. The collection includes a few stars (Alison Bechdel, I'm looking at you), only a couple duds, and the rest are fine -- I'm grading on a curve, but the average feels pretty high. No representatives of old-fashioned genre comics, though, and Brian Wood's "DMZ" is glaringly absent. I presume anything published by the corporate gorillas at DC and Marvel were off-limits for reprint rights reasons, if not also editorial ones. Editor Chris Ware reprises his role from McSweeney's #13, confirming that highly-designed serio-irony is Dave Eggers' world. We just read in it.

When you buy a book with a title like The Best American Comics 2007, you're obviously going to go into it with a certain preconceived notion of the book's quality. In fact, you might even set your expectations for the stories contained within its pages so high that you set yourself up to be let down. I feel that this scenario might have indeed been the case with a few of the critics whose personal biases led them to pan the book, but in my estimation it does not disappoint. Some have quibbled with this book for something as simple as its title, claiming it is somewhat of a misnomer. That the contents of the book are quite excellent is not a matter of debate, but these stories being designated "the best" has gotten under some people's skin when in their mind other, more outstanding works were left out. I admit there were one or two selections that left me scratching my head as to why they were given a place in this collection. For my tastes, the more esoteric works like those of C.F. or Paper Rad left me feeling cold; they seemed to be sketchily drawn and nonsensical simply for the sake of being "out there," that the emperor had no clothes. But that choice of word, "taste," was very apt, for by its very nature, an anthology such as this one cannot please everyone. It cannot include every great story of the past year (which is why the publishers include a list in the back of the book of 100 Distinguished Comics not included in the anthology), and not every story is going to be one you will personally enjoy. But that simple fact does not mean that the things you don't like don't deserve to be included. Surely such a compilation as this one is designed to create controversy, to spark debate about what the best of the best should be, and I have no doubt that a desire to invite discussion was factored into the decision to place certain stories on this list. In the end, I think any one of us would be hard-pressed to find better comics released in the past year that fit all the criteria for inclusion, such as length, geographical location of the creators, or the time period in which it was published. The logistics of creating a "best of" anthology also factor into another criticism: an overabundance of stories in the vein of autobiography. Admittedly, as a fan of that genre, the prevalence of that type of story did not affect me, and I still felt it had enough variety, with stories of real life being told with humor, as philosophical exercises, or with a historical bent. But I also wondered if that genre-specificity might not just be reflecting a trend in the industry at present. If that's the case, you cannot fault a yearly anthology for echoing the year in which it was released. Additionally, the perceived genre bias of this book might be an issue of publication rights. Autobiographical stories tend to be creator-owned, and thus the people that created the stories gladly submit their work for inclusion in such an anthology as this one and are

Two things caught my attention scanning through the Best American Comics of 2007. The first was that it was edited by the multitalented Chris Ware and the second was a story by Gilbert Hernandez about a gigantically breasted woman. The later will get my attention every time. I found the 2006 Best Comics to be a big disappointment and I considered the possibility that perhaps one year just wasn't enough time to come up with 300+ pages of alternative comics. However, I put my faith in Mr. Ware (who also edited the fantastic `McSweeney's Issue 13') and bought the 2007 book with hopes of major improvements. The cool thing about these anthologies is that it's like eating at a buffet. You can sample all sorts of different items and if you don't like something move onto the next. If you really enjoy a particular artist you might just pick up other things they've produced. The overall quality in the 2007 edition is higher than last year but I have to confess that nothing in this book jumped out at me and I only discovered a couple of artists I might look into further. In the opening section Chris Ware mentions one of the criticisms of these kinds of comics, that the artists tend to engage in a lot of naval gazing. Well, recognizing the problem doesn't make it go away and there is an unfortunate amount of depressing self introspection about how sad and lonely the artists lives are. I also have to say that this collection features some of the most primitive art I've yet to see in any of these anthologies with some looking like they were scratched out during lunch period at junior high. What this collection didn't have was any stories that I was wishing would just end which sets it apart from the 2006 collection. I would like to give special mentions to Jonathan Bennett and Kevin Huizenga who I felt had the best art in the book. David Heatley's short pieces may be the most memorable as he puts ink to actual dreams he's had. I'll give the award for most interesting story to Kim Deitch for `No Midgets in Midgetville'. I would put this collection somewhere in the middle of alternative comic anthologies. It's not as good as `An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories' but much better than BAC 2006.

A solid collection that is organized very well. The anthology has works ranging from the autobiographical (which in his introduction, Chris Ware notes is a staple of these kinds of collections) to the fantastic to the esoteric. Each piece is graphically beautiful in its own way, sort of like different dialects of the same language. Introspection and inner dialogues are the chief modes of communication in these stories, which if you think about it is pretty logical for the comics medium. Favorites of mine include: C. Tyler's sad reflections on raising her daughter in the eighties when she says "your time was completely mine", Anders Nilsen's minimalist forest fantasy in which birds comment to each other on the actions of a human wanderer, Gilbert Hernandez's sordid tale of sexy people, Ben Katchor's telling of the metaphysical prowess of shoehorns, Ron Rege Jr.'s love rectangle as only he can tell it, and C.F.'s insane story of a boy who morphs into beams of color after being pursued. While each of the works is impressive some of the artists are guilty of being too repetitive, of not leaving their comfort zones. There's also something thematically distinct in each of the stories that make them "American" comics. I mean, there's a war going on and there's not a single comic addressing that fact. Tales of human suffering, tragedy and sacrifice are instead tales of personal shortcomings, quiet reflections on the human condition, or nostalgia for times past. Which is fine (art doesn't have to address war or any of that), just noteworthy to me for some reason. Personally, I would like to see more storytelling risks and more fiction rather than biographical uniformity. This goes for comics in general, not only the ones presented here

This book is really terrific and includes many more than the quality artists mentioned here, including the incredible Tim Hensley. His work alone is worth the price of this fine compendium. (The anthology of this evasive giant's work is long overdue!) Some of the material in this book is a bit aberrant and will turn your insides out and pull you through the looking glass and into Jupiter's eye, but don't take my word for it. Wait, actually, DO take my word for it. Carry on.