The Best American Series 2009
By Tao Mori
December 24, 2010 - 21:35
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 978-0-618-98965-2
$22.00
Editor Charles Burns
Series Editors: Jessica Abel and Matt Madden
The Best American Series 2009
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 from 2009. 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.
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I have done these two series in the wrong order as I read the 2010 version prior to reading the 2009 version, which may have biased my view in that the series gets better as time wears on. There were some authors in this version who were also in the 2010 version such as Chris Ware and Gabrielle Bell. Much like in the 2010 version the stories in the book were just parts of a larger version (except for Kevin Huizenga’s piece, which was the whole thing), and this made understanding what was being read more difficult in context. There were of course more simpler cartoons that did not require a backstory, but those that did were difficult to follow such as Fuzz & Pluck in Splitsville and Black Death. One of my favourite creative writing teachers said that an author should be obscure clearly, and these instances were obscure obscurely, making it difficult to understand the story in context, and creating more difficultly in empathizing with the characters. With the excerpts of these comics, I feel as the reader, that I am supposed to have already read these comics so that I am aware of the context and the emotional attachment to the characters, but then shouldn’t this series be about promoting the comics that are printed within its pages so that as the reader we get excited by them and try and hunt them down in the real world. Sadly I don’t feel that impression upon reading this book, but there was one comic that I rather enjoyed and looked up.
My favourite comic in this series, is Maakies by Tony Millionaire. Though after looking up the series on the internet, which can be found at www.maakies.com I found out that the ones that were in the book were rather tame compared to the ones on his website. So this book has given us a skewed view of what Maakies truly are. The first comic for instance is about this woman who looked along the sides of roads looking for babies that might have been abandoned in paper bags. She finds such a paper bag, but inside is a half coyote, half human. This story is cute and funny, though not along the same lines as Drinky Crow, who is the actual main character in this story line.
I thought Drinky Crow and Uncle Gabby were far more innocent than they were online. I really enjoyed the stories in this book of the Maakies comics and they are by far my favourite of all the Maakies comics. Millionaire also designs his comics in a way that there’s a tiny little panel story on the bottom of each of his comics, and they are just silly quips, but entertaining to read. Nonetheless I still would recommend anyone with a twisted sense of humour (which includes me on some occasions) to check out Millionaire’s website as his comics are all available there, so you can easily check this one right now without having to pick up this series. The drawing is also very well done, now I’m not sure if this is just a web comic, if it is then he puts a lot of quality work in his drawings than you would expect to see in a web comic. His characters look very charming and are easy to admire, and his attention to detail is great. Also you can play spot the tugboat in most of comics, as there’s usually one hiding somewhere. I give Maakies a 9/10.
My next favourite may not come as a surprise as I enjoyed Chris Ware’s work in the 2010 version and in the 2009 version I enjoyed his work again. His piece in the 2009 version was shorter than the one in the 2010 version, but it is a complete story, or at least I perceived it to be. I did find some initial confusion with the story as I wasn’t sure of the timeline and the first time we see the main character I thought it was a woman, this was because the face was always to the side or obscured so we couldn’t get a good look at him. The name Jordan is also gender neutral. Though it may have been the emotional display that the main character displayed that made me think this. We then see how his life changes from what he dreamed he would be (I suspect rockstar) to a family man. He really ends up living the American Dream and I wonder why Chris Ware decided to write a story like this. Jordon, the main character gets a stable job working for his dad, gets married, has a kid, and he’s happy.
I am a bit suspicious at the idea that the American Dream is ideal for everyone if we just let ourselves be taken up by it, but perhaps this is a simplistic examination of Chris Ware’s work. It is more likely that the American Dream is just one of the many examples that are out there for what will make a person feel satisfied with their life. This I think is what Chris Ware is talking about with his quote at the end “We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey” which exemplifies this much clearer. Perhaps its easier for people to relate to the idea of the American Dream as ideal, but keep in mind that isn’t for everyone, especially for people who don’t live in North America. The art style that Ware uses is very detailed, as he makes the most use of the page, drawing smaller panels sideways so that we turn the book in order to read it. This can be hard on your eyes though. There are moments where I wish there was an arrow to indicate what the next panel was since sometimes it isn’t always left to right then down, but sometimes down then left to right. This did create some confusion in parts. I give Chris Ware’s work a 8.5/10.
My third favourite in the series is Ted Stearn’s piece Fuzz & Pluck in Splitsville, which as I stated earlier is only a small part of a much larger series and story. It is, however, drawn in a very adorable style, with a cuddly bear in the opening panels, who is stranded out in the middle of a river out on a boat. It’s hard not to feel sympathetic for the poor stuffed bear. Or at least he looks like he’s stuffed. We then learn of his chicken comrade Pluck, who has been cloned and is being forced to fight the clone, though the clone has feathers and he does not. I suspect there must be a reason for this, but it’s not one that I was able to learn. There’s also humans in this story, along with the animals and even a cut in half lemon, or at least I think he’s a lemon. The human standing next to him is holding a jug with ice cubes, and his name is Sour Puss, so lemon makes senses with these little details. The concept of a walking talking lemon along with talking animals and humans, is perhaps pushing it a little far in terms of fantasy, but hey it’s a comic book, you can do what you want. This takes the Wind and the Willows to a whole new level. Sour Puss sounds like he’s running some kind of organization, but he has poor control over his subordinates, I don’t know if that’s significant, but it was something that caught my attention. Again with this story we have no idea why Pluck has been cloned, what significance it has to the story line and why Sour Puss wants to have a Pluck clone and the original Pluck too. Isn’t one Pluck enough? The subordinates seem to think multiple Plucks would replace them. How could a chicken be better than an alligator, who is one of the subordinates? Seriously?
With more confusion we learn that the rabbit, Punch is involved with getting Pluck captured and cloned, but why I don’t know. It sounds like Punch didn’t like Pluck, but now does, it’s confusing. Pluck escapes by swimming away, with Sour Puss and Punch trying to get him, but thankfully it’s Fuzz the bear that rescues him, and the story ends there. I like the idea of talking animals, which is probably one of the reasons why I picked this as my third favourite. I like the drawings for this, they aren’t over done to make the story look like it’s for little kids, but they have very charming features. Though the animals have been anthropomorphized so that they all stand upright, no matter what they are, including the alligator and pig. This is a difficult decision to make in a series with talking animals, but it is far easier to empathize with animals that are more human like than not. I gave this series a 8/10.
There are many others to talk about in this series, just like the 2010 version that it is impossible to cover them all. Some of them with very bizarre story content such as the woman who carries around her head. Glenn Ganges in Pulverize by Kevin Huizenga was also a story that I enjoyed and it was one that started and finished. I actually spotted the comic while I was travelling on Vancouver Island at a small comic book store in Comox, which I was surprised to see, the world is filled with weird coincidences like that. Another interesting story concept was Dal Tokyo, which based its story on Mars populated with people from Texas and Japan. It’s a great concept, but I thought it was set in some kind of post apocalyptic world at first due to the desolate terrain, though the back of the book was quick to correct me. The drawings for it were not as detailed as I would have liked, as the character’s faces were themselves difficult to identify, though I think their were only two characters. Some of Art Spiegelman’s work was also in this book, Spiegelman was famous of course for Maus, which was a comic that was very intense, but very good. The excerpt in this book was called Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@$&!, but I found it confusing in what it was trying to get across to the reader. It did have it’s amusing moments in this story that he’s trying to write about a character who cheats on his wife, but he keeps changing it to get crazier and crazier until the characters on the moon having an affair when they’re found out and ejected into space. My favourite part.
I made this comment with the last series as well, but I really would have liked these series to advertise where the material that’s published is from so that readers who enjoy those comics can go and find it. It does this to some extent, where the authors put in the back of the book some information about their comic strip and themselves, but these sections do not always explain where more of the comics can be found. To me these books are great for demonstrating what’s available to readers in the comic world that isn’t mainstream. There’s countless comics about superheroes and villains, many of which I like, but the more obscure stuff is what is covered in this series. These tend to be the comics that get less attention, well I’m assuming this, I don’t know this, but since I’ve never heard of many of these comics until I read the series, I felt that was a safe assumption to make. Whether they’re the best or not is arguable though the decision of what gets to be put into the book is usually made by a few people, whose tastes may vary to the reader. I cannot assume that the ideal reader for these series is myself, but I can’t help but feel that their target audience is someone who is more sophisticated than I.
Rating: 8/10
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