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(On with the show!!)

The Big, Stupendous, Two-Fisted, and Utterly Forgettable Savage Critic 2002 Wrap Up!!!

By Brian Hibbs (Brian@comixperience.com)

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends...

Right, so I thought I’d try for once in my life to put together one of the ubiquitous “year end” lists that the kids today seem to be going all crazy for.

This is purely an experiment for me – I’m going to decide whether or not to do this ever again based on the MAIL that YOU send me. No, really – this column gets thousands of hits each week and you never ever send me mail. So, let’s see if we can change that, shall we? Just this one week?

Here’s how I’ve done this: we can call this list “the best of the Savage Critic” – I went through all of the reviews Jeff and I wrote, looking for the books of the Week, Weak, and TP/GN pick, and made a list from that. I’ve cut out a lotta stuff, trying to pare the list(s) down to the “best” 10 or so in each category.

What this means is that tons of very good books didn’t even come anywhere close to making the list – I only grabbed the “best” recommendation from each week, so in weeks were multiple “good” comics came out, some of them might not have “made the cut” – an example might be Peter Bagge’s Megalomaniacal Spider-Man comic. Although I really liked that, and thought it was a great take on Ditko, Spidey, and Randian philosophy... whatever else that came out that week bumped it off the list.

There were also four weeks in ’02 where there wasn’t a Critic – 3/13, 8/28, 9/13, and 11/6. So, if a really good book came out that week, nope it couldn’t make this list.

These lists are presented basically in “whatever” order – just because I number a category “1” through “10” (or whatever) doesn’t mean book #1 is any better or worse than anything else on the list. All it is is the order in which I wrote them down; then wrote and rewrote as I came to my final choices. In most cases, it’s probably “the order they came out in 2002”, frankly.

There may be some other rules that I come up with as I type this up. To quote the man with the hat, “I’m making this up as I go along!”

Let’s start with the “easier” category...

THE “BEST” REPRINT COLLECTIONS OF 2002

1)     Marvel’s Hardcover program: There were at least five entries from this line in the Critic over 2002. And for good reason – Marvel’s hardcovers are both attractive (I really like the oversized format), as well as attractively priced – the most expensive one is, from memory, $30 for a year’s worth of continuity. Some of them have some nice “extras”, though generally not as many as an equivalent DVD might have, despite what Bendis sez. I particularly liked the Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, Daredevil: Yellow, Daredevil V2, New X-Men, and Alias collections. Pretty much all of those belong in your comics collection, and this is the best format for them. (http://marvel.com/) (http://jinxworld.com/) (http://grantmorrison.com/)

2)     Some guy named “Alan Moore”: I think this guy might really have a future in this business, having 4 of my favorite collections this year: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (HC and SC), Top Ten V2 HC, and Promethea V3 HC and V2 SC. Heck, if I count stuff that shipped this week (12/26’s stuff) we can add in Supreme: Story of the Year. (http://dccomics.com/) (http://www.checkerbpg.com/)

3)     Cuckoo: Madison Clell’s stark and uncompromising look inside her own Multiple Personality Disorder is an amazing piece of work. While it is often crude, it’s also terrifying and touching. It’s not easy reading, but it is important. (http://www.cuckoocomic.com/)

4)     Lone Wolf and Cub: Dark Horse really gave comics a gift when they decided to take on this epic project. There were, what, 2400 pages of this masterpiece released in ’02? Jeez, that’s amazing. Here’s a funny little sidebar story: About 5 years ago I was speaking with someone very involved in importing manga to the US (I won’t reveal his name here in an effort to not embarrass him), and I asked him why the hell another publisher hadn’t been found for Lone Wolf after First folded. There was the usual blabbity-blab about nutty contracts and legal problems and whatever, but his MAIN reason was, “...but really, most of what hasn’t been reprinted by First isn’t very good.” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. (http://www.darkhorse.com/)

5)     Hellboy: Conqueror Worm: Mike Mignola is really a frighteningly good artist, and his writing has improved by leaps and bounds as the years have trailed by. Before I read a new Hellboy I sometimes think, “Jeez, I hope it’s not occult Nazis summoning Cthuluistic monsters again!” And then I read it, and go “Mike really shouldn’t do anything other than that ever!” You just can’t beat it. (http://www.hellboy.com/)

6)     Howard the Duck: It is said you can’t go home again, but every once in a while someone shows that just ain’t so. I know I really wasn’t expecting all that much from Steve Gerber’s return to his best known character – that type of social satire was very much a product of it’s time, y’know? – but he really hit the ball out of the park, largely surpassing the 70s run, and being both cogent and cutting. Marvel also released the Essential HTD collection, reprinting the original run, and time really wasn’t that kind to those stories – it may well be in 2020 that I’ll look back at the 2002 incarnation less fondly, too, but for now, I fully recommend it. (http://marvel.com/) (http://www.stevegerber.com/)

7)     Elektra Lives Again: I know, I know, it’s not exactly a “new” reprint – this woulda been in the OGN category in 1990, but you have to give Marvel super-double props for bringing this back out in it’s original format, with all the love and care shown the first time through.  You didn’t like Miller’s DKSA? Well, bubbie, you’ll love this. Don’t bother waiting for a SC – this works best in the HC format. (http://marvel.com/)

8)     The Ultimates V1: It doesn’t just break a lot of rules of superhero comics – it shatters them, and then grinds the little pieces into dust. Mark Waid took me to task for how much I raved about issue #5 (I said something like “Superhero comics are now done – this can’t be topped”; he said something about asses and the tips of noses....), and I still pretty much believe that. This book brings a shift in thinking that’s just as quantum as Miracleman did oh so many years ago. Now, the only real question is “can Millar sustain it?” I have my doubts, but if you want shockingly fresh hero books, then here ya’ go. (http://marvel.com/) (http://www.millarworld.biz/)

9)     DC’s Archive Editions: when they average more than one a month it becomes hard to really see just how cool these big thick collections of comics-you-could-otherwise-never-afford really are. Those $50 price tags don’t really help either. Still, I was excited by several of the release this year: especially Plastic Man V3, Enemy Ace V1 and Shazam V3. Jeff Lester, meanwhile, was really into Wonder Woman V3 – but there’s so much bondage in that one I wonder if his opinion is suspect. (http://dccomics.com/)

10) Chip Kidd’s design of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Dark Knight Strikes Again: One polishes up a classic, the other properly packages a modern piece of satire. Chip’s a great designer – you can always tell it is him, yet his work doesn’t overwhelm the project. (http://dccomics.com/)

THE “BEST” ORIGINAL GRAPHIC NOVELS OF 2002

This is an odd category – until I started making the list I actually didn’t think I’d have enough to actually make a separate OGN section, but then I started adding up columns and went “whoa!”  See, part of the usual problem is that OGNs tend to be very much like comic books – for every hit where you find a creator who can sustain an idea for 80+ pages, where the formatting and price doesn’t work against the project, you get 10 total misfires which makes one swear that the OGN format is a huge waste of time (Shutterbug Follies, anyone?).

So, I was a bit surprised when I actually found 10 OGNs (albeit in 7 listings) that I actually feel I can wholeheartedly recommend. If this trend continues, I’ll be making some changes to the format of the Critic in late ’03 or early ’04...

1)     Castaways:  Pablo Callejo and Rob Vollmar’s novella of a young depression-era boy who runs away from home to become a hobo. Deep and warm, lovingly crafted, and utterly engaging, this is probably the most human book I’ve read this year. It’s got a pretty awful cover, so this is a real case of “don’t judge a book by...” (http://www.onypsus.com/absenceofink/index.htm)

2)     Catwoman: Selina’s Big Score: Darwyn Cooke has such a crisp clean style that it nearly crackles on the page. I know he didn’t come from “nowhere” (he worked on Batman: The Animated Series, if I recall correctly), but it sure seems like it – it’s pretty hard to think of another cartoonist who has soared from zero-to-80 (pages per release?) like he. This is a cracking good caper with real heart and love, and the rare example of a DC original hardcover that is worth every penny of its asking price. (http://dccomics.com/)

3)     The various 9/11 “tribute” books: particularly the DC/Dark Horse/Chaos/Image two-volume 9-11: Artists Respond co-productions, and Alternative Comics’ 9-11 Emergency Relief. I’ll also include Marvel’s A Moment of Silence, though then we’re really stretching the definition of “OGN” past usefulness. Anyway, while some of this work seems a little maudlin a year later, none of it fails to be passionate and heartfelt and a remarkable look at what creators were thinking a month or so after the tragedy. The fact that tens of thousands of dollars were raised (and presumably, are still being raised) for charity is just icing on the top. It’s really unprecedented for this range of creators and styles to fit under one cover, and, if nothing else, it’s a good primer of the breadth of creativity our medium is capable of. (http://dccomics.com/), (http://www.darkhorse.com/) (http://www.imagecomics.com/) (http://www.indyworld.com/altcomics/)(http://marvel.com/)

4)     Crab Allen: I’ll admit to being a little biased here because, as far as I know, Comix Experience is the only comic book shop in North America to actually carry this book – it’s self-published out of New Zealand, and it’s creator, L. Frank Weber, sent me sample copies because he liked our website announcement that we’re, y’know, a pure comics shop – none of that fuckin’ Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh shit for us. The work itself can basically be described as Tin Tin with automatic weapons and HK wirework.  Mm, and Snowy is a cigarette-smoking monkey. With a fez. Can’t beat that, right? Cartoony without being big-foot, manga without being annoying, you really do want a copy of this. If you’re not in San Francisco, you can get a copy direct from the artist by writing craballen@hotmail.com or going to (http://www.lfrankweber.com/)

5)     Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This came out about a month ago, and the more I look at the fabulous and chilling adaptation by Jerry Kramsky and Lorenzo Mattotti, the more enamored by it I am. A hallucinogenic nightmare, this is exactly how adaptations should be done. (http://www.nbmpublishing.com) (http://www.mattotti.com/en/index.html)

6)     Murder Mysteries: The other adaptation on my list, this time from P. Craig Russell. PCR does something I honestly hadn’t thought was possible – he actually improves on a Gaiman prose tale by sensitively and subtly changing the story flow. PCR’s adaptation of the Ring of the Nibelung should probably have made the TP list, now that I think about it... (http://www.darkhorse.com/) (http://www.lurid.com/pcr/) (http://neilgaiman.com/index.asp)

7)     JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice: My one “straight” superhero pick in the OGN section, and it’s a real fanboy one. Sue me. But if you’re going to do $25 versions of super-hero comics, here’s the template to follow. Big cosmic action with iconic characters and enough insider stuff to make even the most jaded hero fan smile. I can’t be objective enough to say whether or not a non-hero fan would dig this – but if they have an eight-year old living inside them, it’s a great pick. (http://dccomics.com/)

THE “BEST” PERIODICAL COMICS OF 2002

This is the hardest one for me to write, simply because it probably betrays how lowbrow my tastes really are. Periodicals are like Pop, and mostly what I want in my pop is something catchy that I can dance to. Where in an OGN I’m more interested in something with some (relative) depth, I’m a lot less critical of the periodical – it’s meant to be relatively disposable. So, if that was wishy-washy enough, here’s my list...

1)     Brian Michael Bendis. C’mon! Ultimate Spider-Man, Daredevil, Alias, Powers – this has clearly been Bendis’ year. Most of this also ended up in best reprint above, but even the “worst” thing I’ve read by Bendis this year has been, at least, good. The astonishing part of this quality is just how damn prolific he is. There’s seldom a week that goes by that we don’t get at least one Bendis comic, and some weeks we get 2-3. I keep waiting for the crash, but I don’t think it is going to come – the boy has skill AND stamina. (http://marvel.com/) (http://www.imagecomics.com/) (http://jinxworld.com/)

2)     Dark Knight Strikes Again: See, the mistake you made was thinking it was a sequel to DKR. No. This was as much of a “Sequel” as, oh, I dunno, Supreme was to Watchmen. No, this is going back to your childhood – and Miller’s childhood is apparently Kurtzman. As a parody and satire, this was great, and shame on you for not getting that. (http://dccomics.com/)

3)     The Ultimates: What I said before in the reprint section goes again right here. I dunno if it’s sustainable (kinda doubt it), and I don’t know if we’ll even see six issues a year (meaning the book might end in, say, 2006?), but this is clearly the hero book to beat. (http://marvel.com/) (http://www.millarworld.biz/)

4)     Stray Bullets: Dave Lapham’s been having a helluva year. Murder Me Dead was a bit slow and fairly uneven, but his return to Stray Bullets has been heart-stoppingly good. This is why God invented crime comics, and Lapham is the top of the pack! (http://straybullets.com/)

5)     The Amazing Screw-On Head: I raved about Mike Mignola up above in the reprint section (and let me mention that Hellboy: The Third Wish made my list of periodicals, too, but I’ll just jam it in here), but who the hell knew he could do surrealism? This was utterly absurd – but unlike, say, The Filth, which is absurd and ALSO hard to understand, Screw-On Head made total sense to me. I hope he keeps doing these so that some day there can be a reprint TP, and I can continue to sell this until I’m old and/or dead. (http://www.hellboy.com/)

6)     Ian Boothby’s Simpsons. Honest to god the man knows how to write a Simpsons script. Most of the time his scripts are at least as good as the show (a hard task!), and every once in a while he turns in one that’s BETTER. It is a shame that The Simpsons comics are “officially” “by” Matt Groening, because I sure don’t think Boothby is getting the attention he deserves. If I were looking for someone to write “funny” Boothby would be THE first call I would make. ONE IMPORTANT NOTE: look for Boothby’s credit... if it’s not there, be very very careful. Most of the non-Boothby issues are pretty glaringly mediocre. This is NOT a recommendation for Simpsons comics in general! (http://newspringfield.com/bongo/)

7)     100%: Paul Pope, while always a strong cartoonist, often used to strike me as being overly self-indulgent and lacking a lot of control between his mind’s eye and his drawing hand. But every doubt has been erased with 100%, his near-future science fiction meditation. Sure, calling it “a graphic movie” is still achingly pretentious, but this is one of the very few science-fiction comics of 2002 to say ANYthing, let alone anything NEW. (http://dccomics.com/vertigo/index.html) (http://paulpope.com/)

8)     La Perdida: I know you really can’t tell from this list, or, hell, from my reviews in general, but I really do have more sympathy for “alternative” comics than mainstream ones. The problem is that even the most prolific Alt/art guys can barely seem to push out an issue a year, and when they do they often seem short and pointless compared to the rest of the bulk of material coming out – it’s really hard to engage a reader with 22 or so pages which is typically the middle of a 6-8 part story they might finish this decade. I quite liked the one issue of Peepshow and Eightball that came out this year, as I did of Black Hole and Optic Nerve and Palookaville and Hate (It’s me, I know, but Love and Rockets just ain’t my thang), but the only one that REALLY stuck with me, all of these months later, is Jessica Abel’s La Perdida. Maybe because she’s using her art/forum to ask questions, to try and work things out in her own worldview. This was a blazingly shallow “review” of “alternative” comics, of course – Eightball and Hate were both self-contained, of course, this year – and I’d give you the much longer rant about how most “alt” cartoonists are their own worst enemies, but this doesn’t seem the place, does it? Anyway, skip all of the superhero stuff I mentioned and give La Perdida a read. (http://www.fantagraphics.com/) (http://www.artbabe.com/jessicaabel/portfolio.html)

9)     Dork #10: What’s odd is, the above rant aside, I don’t really consider Dork a “alternative” comic at all – certainly SLG’s publishing this MAKES it ‘alt”, by default, but, in a way, I think this is the most mainstream book on this list. Certainly, except for The Simpsons, it’s probably the one you could hand your dad without having to explain anything about it. It’s also genuinely clever and incredibly fucking funny. Funny is hard. Very very hard. Look how seldom I succeed at it! (http://www.slavelabor.com/index2.html)(http://www.houseoffun.com/)

THE WORST COMICS OF 2002

See, I know its just bread and circuses – what you REALLY want is to see me throw some Christians to the lions. Well, fine, I can do that too.

1)     The Superman books: No, honestly. Did you know that a Superman title has shown up on no less than FIVE of my “pick of the Weak's out of the 48 we’re tracking here? That’s over 10%, man. That’s not just bad, that’s FUCKING EMBARRASSING. That’s “someone should be fired” level bad. That’s why-are-you-ruining-THE-icon?!? Bad. It is clear to me that none of the current Superman creative team have the slightest idea how to tell a Superman story any longer, and they’re certainly not getting the editorial direction they need to fix it. This is DC’s biggest anchor around their neck, and it’s gotten to the point where I really don’t think Supes can be saved without “rebooting” him again. The accretion of stupidity, quasi-defined powers, lame supporting characters, and untenable storylines is nothing short of stupefying. Superman is the most abused character in comics currently, and sales at Comix Experience have dropped to single digits. We sell more copies of Young Justice than we do of the Super-books, man... hell, more copies of Spectre or Power Company or Titans, or just about anything. You know there’s something wrong when we sell 3x+ of Hawkman or Aquaman or Green Arrow (the second tier to be sure) than we do of Superman. Shame on you DC, shame! (http://dccomics.com/)

2)     Ron Zimmerman. You’ve got to assume he has some embarrassing dirty pictures of Joe Q or Jemas, or maybe of the two of them together, because he’s not written even 10 comic books in 2002, and FOUR of them took “pick of the Weak”. That’s an absurdly low average. We started with the abysmally awful Punisher #8 where Zimmerman betrayed just about every character in the MU, and then passed it off with the lamest “....and it was all a dream” ever seen in comics. Then we moved into Spider-Man: Sweet Charity which might have worked as an eight page back-up in What The-?!, but was instead padded out to 40-something pages; and we wrap up the year with the howlingly unfunny, unfocused hand-job of Spider-Man: Get Kraven. I’d call Zimmerman the “Anti-Bendis”, but, frankly, that’s insulting to Bendis. Zimmerman just doesn’t “get” how to write comics... he doesn’t have the economy of pacing needed, he doesn’t understand how timing works panel to panel and page to page. I’ll stipulate that he may well be a fine writer in other media (in fact didn’t he write Action? I loved that show!), and a genuinely wonderful human being that can interface smoothly with editors and whatnot... but he’s a bad comic book writer. When I’m reading this back, I keep adding more qualifiers because, good fucking lord this sounds like a nasty ass attack on the man personally... but it isn’t... just on his work to date. (http://marvel.com/)

3)     Marville. Oh, my good Christ, what was Jemas thinking? Satire is supposed to be, y’know, funny. This was not. Weren’t even close. The weird thing is Jemas has shown that he CAN be funny (that fake message board thing with “Lal Pevitz” was a howler), and he’s even shown that he can plot a story (His was the best entry in A Moment of Silence), so what happened here? Marville #1 is a strong contender for the worst comic of 2002 because every time Bill needed a scalpel, he reached for the hammer, and every time he needed a hammer, he dropped it on his foot. (http://marvel.com/)

4)     Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose and 3 Little Kittens: it is really hard to say which is worse – Tarot with it’s traced-out-of-Hustler layouts or 3 Little Kittens where the antagonist’s motivation is that she is jealous of the heroines breast size (!). “Its such a fine line between clever...” “...and stupid?” Smell the glove! (http://jimbalentstudios.com/studio.htm)

5)     Just Imagine Stan Lee (having six martinis for lunch then phoning in the resulting back-of-the-cocktail-napkin scrawl as) Creating the DC Universe. The old man sure kicked that Moral Majority bitch’s ass on Crossfire, though, didn’t he? I love Stan. Stan is The Man. However, he shouldn’t be allowed to write comics anymore. ‘nuff said? (http://dccomics.com/)

6)     Lab Rats. Even John Byrne didn’t care, man. And Lo, did Byrne’s “Faithful 50,000” become the “Faithful 5000”. (http://dccomics.com/)

7)     The Call of Duty. Imaginary conversation: “Oooh, I know! Let’s show how much we respect emergency workers by creating a series about them!” “Alright, you can do that, but I think it should be set in the Marvel universe!” “Sure, and then they can fight zombies and have a time travel adventure, and maybe they can form a super-hero team if we play our cards right!” Easily, EASILY this year’s worst execution of any concept. Which sucks, because I think, at least at the time this came out, the general public REALLY would have responded to the core concept if it had been done “straight”. (http://marvel.com/)

8)     The Savage Critic. Fucking hack.

Don’t forget to write Brian (brian@comixexperience.com) and tell him what you thought of this year-ender column.... Do it now damn you, NOW!!!!