The Best American Comic Series has been published every year for the last five years, and they have been compilation of different comic books that the editors thought were particularly good. Usually people who work in the comic book industry are the editors for the Best American Comic Series so these are people who are familiar with the material. This particular Series as the back of the book describes includes stories from graphic novels, pamphlet comics, newspapers, magazines, mini-comics, and web comics. Also none of the comics that are presented in this book are published by the main stream comic book publishers like DC Comics or Marvel Comics.
This book unfortunately is only a sample of many of the great stories that are out there. Many times I found myself enthralled by a story, only to have it end, which frustrated me to no end. As I could not see the end of the story and often I could not find out where it was from. Each story has the title of the series and the author, but unfortunately that is all the information that is available, nothing about where to find the comic, which would have been nice. Since there is such a wide variety in terms of content, there are many stories that grabbed my attention, but there were also some that did not work for me at all. I will go over a few of my favourite and some of the ones that I did not enjoy so much.
My favourite story in this book by far is Deep Space on page 84 and 85 done by John Pham. Only two pages long, but absolutely hilarious. This story is about two male pilots on this small grey ship out in space and they have gotten themselves lost. There are these short panel stories that describe the living situation that these two men are in, and the humour in it is very subtle. The captain is removed from this world on the ship, and does not fully understand the desperate situation that these two men are in, nor does he understand the friendship of his fellow crew member, the Commander. The Captain for instance does not wear any pants while on the ship, and the Commander refers to this as an “awkward state of undress.” The art is simple, but also very detailed. There is a lot of effort in the cut drawing of the ship, which has all these fantastic little details such as the couches, chairs, ladders, stick figure people. I am a fan of tiny things, so my appreciation to the effort that John Pham has put into this is absolutely wonderful. Also these two pages are just crammed with so much, there are five and a half different stories in two pages, so drawing small, worked in his favour. I would give it an 9/10 mostly as I wish there was more of the comic, but also there was a difficulty in determining where to start reading first. The first panel is on the right side of the left page, which made it a bit confusing determining if I was to start there or start on the panel below, which is the cut drawing of the ship. I may also be biased towards science fiction stories, apologies, but the alien is funny.
A story that caught me by surprise was the excerpt from Acme Novelty Library volume 19 by Chris Ware on pages 127-148. This story caught me by surprise as the first page of the comic, starts very slow, as it begins with this old man looking at this old book of his, that has this picture in it. The old man has this flashback to when he had his first relationship with a woman as a young man. We learn pretty fast that this relationship is not typical, and the poor man has fallen hopelessly in love. We then follow his way of thinking and how he becomes obsessed with this woman from the office. The author does a great job of capturing the character’s frustration, as you will feel it with him as you read. You wonder what exactly is going on, and why the main character does not approach the woman to ask her why she treats him the way she does. She has this sexual connection to him, whereas he has this emotional connection to her. This sexual connection does not make any sense either, as the man does not seem to enjoy the sex, he talks about it at first as though he’s disgusted by it, and later on it looks like he’s in pain when it’s happening. Though these logical problems confused me, I did find myself empathizing with our main character as he goes on to describe how he’s never loved anyone or had anyone understand him, and somehow he thinks that she does. The story ends with him going to her apartment after she does not show up, and he finds a co-worker leaving her apartment building. When he goes to see her she says that she does not want to see him again and gives him money. Is he a prostitute? What? This is where the comic ends, and I know there has to be more to this story, which kills me because this is where they ended it.
I will say a few things about the artwork. What Chris Ware did with this comic was to turn the pages sidewise, so you had to read your book sidewise. You had to flip the page up to get to the next one, instead of flipping the page to the left. The panels were of varying sizes, there would be large panels and small itty bitty ones. This allowed for a lot more action to be drawn, which I thought was very creative. The drawing here was simple, where few facial features were drawn, but simplicity worked here. It captured the simplistic nature of our main character. On page 147 the main character breaks his glasses and some of the panels we see through his eyes though half of the panel is fuzzy because he cannot see as his glasses were broken. This was not something that needed to be there, but it definitely tells us, the reader, that we have been seeing his life through his eyes, and that there’s more to this story that we do not know about. I give this one an 8/10.
Another comical gem in this book was The Bank by Derf on pages 149-170. Or at least I think it’s called The Bank, as the cover page says The Bank, but that’s also the club. This story talks about life as a metal lover in the part of the United States that appreciates light rock and country music. The artwork is very comically done, where character’s faces are exaggerated and stretched. The extreme behaviour of the characters is quite comical, recording farts and stabbing people in the head with forks, what could be funnier? More of a in your face kind of humour, but if delivers well, without being too much over the top. Well Journey fans stealing the drugs from the band members of the Clash was rather funny too. What’s really cool about this comic too, is that the main character is kind of a dork, but he’s so popular with everyone, and as a dork, I find that very appealing. Other than sheer entertainment, I’m not sure what to take out of this comic. I do enjoy the main character and his adventure, but I feel like there’s something missing. I rate this one as 7/10.
The artwork in most of the comic looked to be hand drawn and fairly simple. More often the art looked like it was from the newspaper, than if it was done by computer. Saying this makes it sound like the drawing was not as good as it could have been, but this is not the case. The drawings are fantastic, many of the authors went to great effort to make distinct characters. James Kochalka’s work for instance does not look as detailed as some of the authors, but then he does a daily cartoon, which is available on the internet. All of the artwork was in black and white, with varying shades of grey. Colour would have been interesting to see in this work, but it was not necessary. Nothing was lost in the work, by being in black and white, as often the stories focused on the characters and less on the environment. It is difficult to make a wide sweeping statement in terms of art due to the variety of artists, all I can do is tell you what I really enjoyed.
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