Best American Comics 2009: Another great contribution to the series but not as much that grabbed me as in years past. Will anything ever top "Turtle, Keep it Steady!" from 2008? Lots of standard figures in there: Clowes, Crumb, Spiegelman, Ware. A set of interesting comics as meditations on art are sprinkled throughout the pages. If the series runs long enough, one will probably be able to read
Berlin and
Shortcomings in their entirety without every buying those two texts on their own.
Ball Peen Hammer: Adam Rapp and George O'Connor's tale of an disease-ridden apocalyptica where people earn sway with power figures by killing live or bagging already-dead children is a swing and a miss for me, but unfortunately not for anyone under 15 who appears in this book. The text seems too condensed, too rushed, like there are scenes missing that really ought to be in there. Rarely do I say that a comics story might have been best represented via traditional print text ( I sort of see it as blasphemy, frankly), but I get the feeling this would work better as a YA novel or film script than it does as a graphic novel.
The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb: I'm only..... Well, shit, the book doesn't have page numbers, but I'm less than halfway through and am enjoying it thoroughly so far.
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