20 Things That Didn't Suck About Comics in 2007
1. Black Metal
by Rick Spears and Chuck BB [Oni Press]
Sam and Shawn detect hidden messages within the grooves of black metal titans Frost Axe. They fight demons. A giant sword is involved. Perhaps needless to say, it’s the year’s most metal comic.
2. Battle Royale: The Ultimate Edition, Vol.1
by Koushun Takami and Masayuki Taguchi with Keith Giffen [TokyoPop]
A deluxe repackaging of the legendary manga. You think the movie was nuts? Jesus H. God. So insanely violent, sexually whacked and generally despairing it makes your average Cannibal Corpse album feel like Hannah Montana.
3. The solidification of Keith Giffen as one of the mainstream’s most indispensable dudes
The dude is everywhere. His sequel to the Marvel space opera Annihilation rules. He helped run 52, DC’s excellent weekly crossover (DC’s sequel, Countdown, is currently biting it and he isn’t as involved) and that’s just what I can remember. I can’t think of a mainstream creator with a career from the ’70s to ’07 who is as relevant now as he was then.
4. Powr Mastrs
by C.F.
Maggots
by Brian Chippendale [PictureBox]
Two of the most vibrant entries in the ongoing post-Fort Thunder aesthetic sweepstakes. Maggots collects old surrealism, Powr Mastrs is a new, neo-primitive epic.
5. Scalped
by Jason Aaron and R.M. Guerra [DC/Vertigo]
Perhaps the most unfairly slept-on book on the stands. Whup-ass noir set on the most corrupt Indian reservation imaginable. Gorgeous, evocative art from Guerra illuminates the darkness.
6. World War Hulk
by Greg Pak and various [Marvel]
Dude, it’s called WORLD WAR HULK, for Kirby’s sake. Hulk returned to Earth from exile, mad as hell at the heroes who shot him into space. He smashes. Everything.
7. The Brave and the Boldby Mark Waid and George Perez
Blue Beetleby John Rogers and various [DC]
Superhero comics the way the founding fathers intended—action-packed, funny, universe-spanning high adventure.
8. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
by Joss Whedon [Dark Horse]
Penned by Buffy creator Whedon, it’s “season eight.” You know what to do.
9. This Golden Age of comic book and comic strip reprints continues unabated
Jack Kirby’s New Gods get a gorgeous full-color reprint; Terry and the Pirates, perhaps the best adventure strip of all time; Some German guy does an insanely lovely Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend hardback; Ginormous Gasoline Alley Sunday strips… embarrassment of riches is about right.
10. Tekkon Kinkreet
by Taiy Matsumoto [Viz]
Oddball alternative manga that blends manga’s high-octane pacing with the fish-eye detail of the European comics masters. Cyberpunk building hopping in the tradition of street-level sci-fi. Starring kids!
11. Mome [Fantagraphics]
Still the best alternative comics anthology on the stands.
12. I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets: The Comics of Fletcher Hanks, [Fantagraphics]
edited by Paul Karasik
Dream-logic fantasy adventure comics from decades past, drawn by a man who seemed to know just enough about anatomy to make his characters strange and his stories even stranger. The year’s weirdest reissue, by far.
13. Darwyn Cooke, Canadian badass
His run on The Spirit for DC is one of the great re-imaginings, and his recent interview in The Comics Journal shows him to be a two-fisted defender of the superhero faith and a full-formed adult, which ain’t easy.
14. Mean
by Steve “Ribs” Weissman [Fantagraphics]
The earliest work by a not-quite-children’s cartoonist whose giant-headed little kiddies will one day rank with Little Lulu and maybe even those gods in Peanuts. Go Lil’ Bloody!
15. Chance in Hell [Fantagraphics]
Speak of the Devil [Dark Horse]
by Gilbert Hernandez
Still at the top of his game as a draftsman and writer. His stories are impossible to imagine in any other medium; there is no higher compliment.
16. Wisdom
by Paul Cornell and Trev Hairsine [Marvel]
I pimped Cornell’s totally nuts dinosaur sci-fi yarn XTNCT in these pages back in June. Here, he gets his mitts on a minor Marvel character created by fellow limey Warren Ellis and teamed him with Skull version of John Lennon, a Tinkerbell riff and “Captain Midlands.” Perfect.
17. Hellboy and various spin-offs [Dark Horse]
Mike Mignola’s Nazi-fighting demon and his array of B-listers (B.R.P.D.! Lobster Johnson!) find the missing link between pulp adventure, Lovecraftian horror, classic monster comics and, well, Nazi-fighting. The best fantasy comics creation of the past 20 years.
18. Alice in Sunderland
by Bryan Talbot [Dark Horse]
Coffee table-sized, college-style tour de force on landscape, Alice Liddell, history, Lewis Carroll, England, artistic vision, theatre.
19. Pretty much anything by Gail Simone
Her run on Bird of Prey made it a must-read, Atom is a blast and she’s moving to Wonder Woman in ’08, a writer/character match for the ages.
20. The Professor’s Daughter
by Joann Sfar and Emmanuel Guibert [First Second]
Touching, funny and beautifully realized tale of doomed love in the Victorian Era. Impeccable.
—Joe Gross
