Fun with comix: '08
"Every day I smoke two hundred cigarettes and one hundred cigars and drink a bottle of whisky and three bottles of wine with dinner. And dinner is meat." - General Dirk Anger, Director of H.A.T.E.
“It’s never as bad as it seems. You’re much stronger than you think you are. Trust me.” - Superman
Best overall: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
What was better - the arc where Buffy had salty, wet-dream-inducing lesbian sex with Satsu the Vampire Slayer before going army à army with yakuza bad guys on a roof in downtown Tokyo while giant Dawn matched roars with giant Gojira robo-Dawn... or the spinning Fray reboot arc where in the midst of cruising the deathly wastes of her own legacy and handing Dark Madwoman Willow her final smackdown, Buffy made apology to the entire English language? There's no escaping the numbers on this one. Every issue of Buffy that dropped in 2008 hit.
Best ongoing: Ultimate Spider-Man
Given a fresh face by Stuart Immonen's you're-the-only-male-I-currently-want-to-have-sex-with artwork, Brian Michael Bendis's reliably enjoyable tales of Spider-adolescence became one of the few titles I legitimately treasure month to month. The iconic Spidey-stories might have been told in the first hundred issues, but with them behind us, this year's work got to be more character-driven, narratively elliptical, and deceptively badass. Resurrect Gwen? Kill Harry? And confront, in the first two pages of the annual, why our recklessly-in-love, horny-as-jackrabbit 15-year-old heroes haven't yet had sex? Ultimate Spider-Man looks simple, because it is. To stay simple and still be this good, though, is nothing short of amazing.
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In which our super man, knowing he is days from solar-irradiated death, undergoes his final labours... which, because he is Superman, he does even faster and kinder and better than ever before. A surprisingly canny meditation on mortality and legacy, on the evolution of the icon, and on our own inner strength, wrapped up in a clockwork narrative structure that only Grant Morrison could make sensible.
Other shit what was great: Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon, New Avengers, Powers, The Boys, Brian Azzarello's Joker
Fallen from grace: Astonishing X-Men by anyone else, X-titles generally, Immortal Iron Fist, Hellboy, Angel: After the Fall, Runaways, Mighty Avengers, and the rolling non-event EVENT! called Secret Invasion
I was late to the party: Scott Pilgrim, Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E., and Y: The Last Man, the first comic book that actually made me cry.
Comments
Buffy has definitely kicked ass this past year. The tv show remains one of my favorite shows, yet season 8 comic has managed to become one of my favorite seasons to date (although I would still rate season 5 higher).
As someone late to the Y: The Last Man Party, have you read any of Fables? It was in top form this year, wrapping up it’s major storyline, however, unlike Y: The Last Man it's still going.
The other recommendation I'll make from my best of 2008 list is Warren Ellis' FreakAngels. The first trade has just come out, but there are physical issues as it’s a free weekly webcomic (http://www.freakangels.com/?p=23).
Also the Hellboy spin-off BRDP has been absolutely incredible this year. Really epic stuff paying off story threads started with the first Hellboy series. I never expected a title like BRDP to get this good. Plus the story arc "1946", was just pure fun and what I was hoping an Indy 4 but didn't get. You have, Nazi's baddies, Russians, a child demon, vampires, a Hitler supernatural world-domination plot, bionic gorillas, a head-in-a-jar villain, this story had everything but the kitchen sink when it comes to Mike Mignola stories.
Posted by: Matthew Fabb | January 3, 2009 11:13 PM
I have read Fables and really, really don't get it. Someone recommends Fables to me about once every two months. It just goes completely over my head. :(
I haven't read BPRD this year, either, because I just seem to be on the outs with that world. Some of the Hellboy stories haven't been half-bad but they don't grab me the way they used to. So, I'm giving it a rest.
Posted by: tederick | January 4, 2009 8:29 AM