The Best American Comics 2008 (The Best American Series ®) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0618989765 ISBN 13: 9780618989768

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008

Synopsis

This newest edition to the Best American Series--"A genuine salute to comics" (Houston Chronicle)--returns with a set of both established and up-and-coming contributors. Editor Lynda Barry and and brand new series editors Jessica Abel and Matt Madden--acclaimed cartoonists in their own right-- have sought out the best stories culled from graphic novels, pamphlet comics, newspapers, magazines, mini-comics, and the Web to create this cutting-edge collection "perfect for newbies as well as fans"--The San Diego Union Tribune. This newest volume features luminaries like Chris Ware, Seth, and Alison Bechdel alongside Paul Pope's "Batman" and beloved daily cartoonists like Matt Groening.

Lynda Barry is a writer and cartoonist whose comic strip, “Ernie Pook’s Comeek” celebrates its 30th year in print in 2007. She is a recipient of the Washington State Governor's Award for her novel, The Good Times are Killing Me, which she adapted into a long-running off-broadway play. The New York Times called her second novel, Cruddy, “A work of terrible beauty”. She received the 2003 William Eisner award for Best Graphic Album and an American Library Association Alex award for her book, One! Hundred! Demons!. She lives and works in southern Wisconsin.

Jessica Abel is the author of the graphic novel La Perdida, as well as two collections of stories and drawings from her comic zine Artbabe. Matt Madden is a cartoonist and author of 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style. Their textbook about making comics, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, is forthcoming.

About this title

About the Authors

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

Starred Review. The focus of this collection is not on any particular genre or style, but on stylistic and storytelling variety. There are slice-of-life stories, historical drama, humor, political satire, absurdist fables, serious autobiography and lighthearted ramblings. The art styles range from the tight, realistic precision of Jason Lute's Berlin to the raw style of John Mejia's vignettes of life as a public school art teacher. With each story the reader is drawn into a different world or presented with another perspective of the same world. Yet despite the variety of the stories, they join as a display of the power of comics as a means of storytelling that can concisely present some aspect of human nature so the reader can digest it, contemplate it and, perhaps, understand it, as Barry, this edition's editor, suggests in her introduction. The variety conveys the continued growth of comics as a means of storytelling, growth brought about by a plethora of promising new creators and continued great work by established creators such as Jaime Hernandez, Matt Groening and Chris Ware. The book offers a strong sampling of the diversity available today and hints at more innovation and progression to come. (Oct.)
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For the third Best American Comics, series editors Jessica Abel and Matt Madden made the initial selection, which alt-comics diva Lynda Barry, who contributes a sharp comics-format introduction, pared down to the final 26 choices. As might be expected from the editors’ backgrounds, mainstream comics are snubbed in favor of graphic-novel excerpts, self-published mini-comics, Web comics, and, befitting Barry’s start there, weekly strips from alternative newspapers, such as Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For, Derf’s The City, and Kaz’s Underworld. Contributors include a number of inescapable usual suspects, who invariably turn up in such anthologies—in this case, Chris Ware, Jaime Hernandez, and Seth—but also a gratifying number of newcomers, most notably Gene Yang and Cathy Malkasian, represented by passages from American Born Chinese (2006) and Percy Gloom (2007), respectively, as well as underappreciated veterans like Rick Geary and Jason Lutes. The overall quality—not a single entry is without merit—testifies to the incontestable strength of the comics medium, and the impressive work of the talented tyros included bodes well for its continued health. --Gordon Flagg

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0618989765
• ISBN 13: 9780618989768
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352
• Editor: Barry Lynda, Abel Jessica, Madden Matt