Por Tom Spurgeon
Publicado originalmente en The Comics Reporter dot com
NOTA: Esta vez Spurgeon deliberadamente redactó dos listas seguidas de comentarios varios respecto a ellas. Con el fin de no perder el hilo de este ‘Best of’ y brindar más profundidad al análisis, hemos colocado los comentarios seguidos de cada ítem, además de notas aclaratorias.
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Cartoonist of the Year
Gilbert Hernandez
Future Greatest Living Cartoonist Gilbert Hernandez had a stupendous 2007, contributing to the best alt-comics single issue of the year (Love and Rockets Vol. 2 #20), producing an exquisite Ignatz book (New Tales of Old Palomar #3), launched a quality stand-alone book (Chance in Hell) and began an interesting series (Speak of the Devil).
Book of the Year
“ACME Novelty Datebook Vol. 2”, Chris Ware
Chris Ware had a remarkable year as well, with two terrific books, a guest editing stint on the Best American Comics anthology and a major portfolio release.
Publishing Project of the Year
The New “Love and Rockets” Books
The Love and Rockets Vol. 1 reprints may be my favorite publishing project of the last five years, and there are a lot of fine projects going on—what’s amazing is that I remember my first reaction was “not again.” But the smaller, bargain-priced volumes turned out to be the perfect vehicle for that material, the best comics series of all time.
Most Promising Major Debut
“Percy Gloom”, Cathy Malkasian
I thought about Jon Vermilyea’s Princes of Time [publicada por Koyama Press] in the “Most Promising Major Debut” category—I love it when people I don’t know walk up and hand me awesome work at cons—and thought for a long while about fudging on Malkasian’s debut status and giving it to Tom Neely’s lovely The Blot [publicada por I Will Destroy You].
Most Interesting Step Forward
Sammy the Mouse, Zak Sally
I considered both K. Thor Jensen’s Red Eye, Black Eye and Nick Bertozzi’s The Salon in the “Most Interesting Step Forward” category. Admittedly, I didn’t read a whole lot of mini-comics in 2007, but Reklaw’s was a good one.
Mini-Comic of the Year
Bluefuzz the Hero, Jesse Reklaw
*****
Top Dozen Comics, New (Or In English for the First Time)
“Sammy The Mouse Vol. 1”, Zak Sally.
“Powr Mastrs Vol. 1”, CF.
“Town Boy”, Lat.
My list doesn’t have Exit Wounds [novela gráfica por Rutu Modan, publicada por Drawn and Quaterly] or The Arrival [novela gráfica por Shaun Tan, publicada por Hodder Children’s Books] on it, and it gives a maybe lower than expected position to Town Boy, considered by many to be a better book to last year’s #1 book (Kampung Boy, for which it serves as a sequel).
I thought Exit Wounds was a fine book, but I also thought there were better ones. In fact, I even thought a similar type of effort from the same publisher, Aya, was a more impressive comic. The Arrival was the most striking book to hit shelves this year (although there was some super-pretty work from artists like Andrea Bruno, Nicholas Robel, Jaime Hernandez and Emmanuel Guibert on the stands this year, and Tony Fitzpatrick is currently serializing a series of painted images). Additionally, I’m distrustful of a lot of the criticism that hit Shaun Tan’s book. Still, at the end of the day, there were books I liked better. Town Boy I found to be more visually accomplished but largely bereft of the uniquely terrifying and intimate observations of Lat’s initial autobiographical work. While of a very high quality, it felt more like a very good art house film than its own uniquely observed story.
“Percy Gloom”, Cathy Malkasian.
Percy Gloom was by far this year’s biggest surprise.
“Down Up! You’re In the Army Now”, Joe Sacco.
NOTA: Historia de 16 páginas, publicada en el tomo de Abril de 2007 de Harper’s Magazine.
“Elvis Road”, Xavier Robel & Helge Reumann.
“Brodo di Niente”, Andrea Bruno.
“Times of Botchan Vol. 3”, Jiro Taniguchi.
“Cul De Sac”, Richard Thompson.
Cul De Sac is a miracle comic strip debut, and it’s amazing to me that Thompson had done all this work over the years while most of comics has paid him practically no attention.
NOTA: Thompson publicó esta tira cómica a partir de 2004, finalizando en 2012 tras complicaciones por la enfermedad de Parkinson.
“Maggots”, Brian Chippendale.
Elvis Road and Maggots are about as fun as comics get in terms of looking at them, at least since Rowland Emett [caricaturista inglés, 1906-1990] and [Saul] Steinberg [caricaturista rumano, 1914-1999] passed away.
“How to Be Everywhere”, Warren Craghead.
I can understand why no one read the Craghead book, but I’m not sure why no one seemed to read that Joe Sacco feature in Harper’s.
“ACME Novelty Datebook 2”, Chris Ware.
For that matter, I can’t figure why more people aren’t flipping out over how great ACME Datebook 2 was. The strips Ware published in there were worth the price of admission alone, funny and lacerating, while his stand alone-drawings proved lovely and were easily absorbed as a window into the artist’s life and world.
