Top 2009 Comics

I quit buying monthly comics two years ago.  I just couldn't keep up with it in both time and money.  But I still try to grab everything I can in trade paperback or graphic novel form from the two library systems I have access to.  In fact, I read 156 TPs in 2009 (up from 120 in '08 and 96 in '07), so I tore into them pretty well.

Unfortunately, there were few that are going to make "the list".  I love superhero comics, but all the Superman's, Secret Invasions, New Avengers, etc didn't blow my mind enough this year.


Here's what did:

Midnight Nation by J. Michael Straczynski and Gary Frank took a bit for me to get into, but I loved the climax and aftermath to this story about a man who lost his soul and is trapped between the living and the dead worlds, and he must journey across the country to retrieve it.  This is a complete, 12-issue, story all bound together in a single paperback.


Fables by Bill Willingham and a plethora of artists.  I blew through the entire collected paperbacks in a matter of about a month.  In 12 books (82 issues) and a special (1001 Nights of Snowfall), I've experienced something one usually doesn't in continuing comic book series: change.  These characters have a story, and Willingham and company tell it.  And the interesting thing is: it keeps going.  Just when you think the story may be winding down, it veers into another direction.  Loads of fun-- and has great art.

As for what it's about: Characters from fairy tales are real. They've been run out of their kingdoms and worlds and ended up in modern-day New York City.  Snow White, Mowgli, The Big Bad Wolf, Little Boy Blue, Old King Cole, Prince Charming, and dozens more try to get by without their riches and their homes-- and try to keep their secret from the regular humans (the "Mundies").  And enough time has passed that they are tired of hiding from their enemies and are working to take the fight to The Adversary, the dictator who conquered their homes.

I'll say again: great book.


The Walking Dead Volume 8 (Issues 43-48): "Made to Suffer".  The worst thing about getting my comics via the library is the wait that sometimes happens between titles becoming available.  It was a long three years since I read Volume 7 before the library got Vol 8.  But the wait was worth it.  Insane things happened.

The story follows the survivors of a zombie infestation.  Bleh in lost instances-- but creator/writer Robert Kirkman (along with artist Tony Moore) really has opened up the possibilities of such a story.  In most zombie movies, the humans fight off the zombies for a night or two and then the military saves them  by the closing credits.  Not in this book.  There is no end.  A small (and ever-changing due to a high mortality rate) group of people try to live as normal a life as they can while keeping the zombies at bay.

"Made to Suffer" is a huge climax to the previous stories.  There was lots of wrap-up (in a shit-hitting-the-fan way) and the status quo gets changed again.

Lots of fun-- and a great primer for the TV series on AMC that will, hopefully, air sometime later this year.


Finally, I have to give a shout out to Green Lantern.  I went back and read all the TPs since Hal Jordan's return in Rebirth and got as far as the "Rage of the Red Lanterns" (Issue #38) book.  Geoff Johns has made this book exciting again, and it's amazing how many things he's introduced that never had been thought of before-- but somehow fit into previous stories.  This is superhero comics at their best.


So, there you go.  Apologies to the artists involved with these works.  It's really tough to easily find the artists' names in the web searches I did to check issue numbers and name spelling, but I would like to say that while a writer usually directs the plots and puts the words on the paper, the artists are very critical to the greatness of these books (bad art is Hell on great writing), so their contributions should not be shortchanged like I have done here.