The Best American Comics 2010 (The Best American Series) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0547241771 ISBN 13: 9780547241777

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010

Synopsis

The Best American Comics showcases the work of both established and up-and-coming contributors. Editor Neil Gaiman—one of the top writers in modern comics and the award-winning author of novels and children’s books—has culled the best stories from graphic novels, pamphlet comics, newspapers, magazines, mini-comics, and the Internet to create this cutting-edge collection. With entries from luminaries such as Tim Hensley, Michael Kupperman, and Dash Shaw, “it’s hard to flip through this book without finding a lot worth reading (and rereading)” (The Onion, A.V. Club).

About this title

About the Authors

NEIL GAIMAN is the critically acclaimed and best-selling author of the novels American Gods, Anansi Boys , and Neverwhere. Gaiman was the creator/writer of cult DC Comics horror-weird series The Sandman, which won twenty-four Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, including the award for best writer four times, and three Harvey Awards. He is also the author of several children’s books, including The Graveyard Book, winner of the 2009 Newbery Medal, and Coraline, an international bestseller that was turned into an animated film and released in 2009. Among his many awards are the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Bram Stoker Award. 

JESSICA ABEL is the author of the graphic novel La Perdida. MATT MADDEN is a cartoonist best known for his book 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style. Together, Abel and Madden are the authors of Mastering Comics and Drawing Words and Writing Pictures.


MATT MADDEN is a cartoonist and the author of 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style. Together, they are the authors of Drawing Words & Writing Pictures.

Reviews

This yearly anthology is always something to look forward to, with its impressive editors, juicy forewords, and superabundance of comics genius between its two covers. Series editors Jessica Abel and Matt Madden start off with a brief history of the burst in comics' popularity and readership over the past decade; luckily for us, they include an extensive list of "Notable Comics" that didn't make the final cut. Gaiman, in turn, agonizes entertainingly over the accuracy of the title Best American Comics and finally suggests that the volume instead be called A Sampler: Some Really Good Comics, Including Extracts from Longer Stories We Thought Could Stand on Their Own. It's a wealth of fine storytelling: extracts from Lagoon, the gorgeously strange fairy tale by Lili Carré; Carol Tyler's great You'll Never Know; Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe; and Fred Chao's Johnny Hiro. Some stand-alone gems include Todd Brower and Steve MacIsaac's "Ex Communication," in which two bearish men meet for a drink and chat uncomfortably about what they've been up to since their split; Peter Kuper's two-page takedown of the Bush legacy in "Ceci n'est pas un comic"; and Gabrielle Bell's "Mixed Up Files." A thrilling and varied journey from start to finish.
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For this fifth iteration of The Best American Comics, series editors Jessica Abel and Matt Madden made the initial selection, then gave the final say to this year’s guest editor, Neil Gaiman, who banked several lifetimes’ worth of comics cred for his seminal Sandman, among others. Many of the 25 pieces are graphic-novel excerpts, and as Abel and Madden attest in the introduction, “they are all focused on the narrative.” Which isn’t to say that there isn’t some outstanding cartooning going on here, from formalist tinkerers like Chris Ware and David Mazzucchelli to the always-entertaining Gilbert Hernandez (abetted by brother Mario) to a chunk from Robert Crumb’s artistically triumphant Book of Genesis. In addition to such annual usual suspects and newcomers as Josh Neufeld (with an excerpt from his terrific A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge), fan favorite Bryan Lee O’Malley shows up at last, albeit in a curiously flat selection from Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe. As always, the expanded selection list is a great place to find even more top-notch comics. --Ian Chipman

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0547241771
• ISBN 13: 9780547241777
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 329
• Editor: Gaiman Neil