The Best American Comics 2009

 
 

The Best American Comics 2009

edited by Charles Burns

Houghton Mifflin

2009

 

 

I started reading the Best American Comics series last year. It started in 2006, so I'm only a few years in at this point. I might try getting into the scifi or 'non-required reading' series at some point, we'll see.

 
I don't necessarily like everything in these anthologies, but it's interesting to see what's going on in American comics outside the superhero stories.

 
My favorite this time was Dan Zettwoch's 'Spirit Duplicator,' where he's reflecting on the comics he drew for his local church bulletin from the late 1960s to the early 2000s. He shows an example from each decade, annotated by his own little talking head, discussing the five different printing technologies he used, and some memories of what the church and his life were like at the time.

 
R Crumb isn't my least favorite, but he's been in every one of these so far, and it feels more like he's being included more for his name than for the quality of his contemporary work.