Maybe it’s because we’ve been in the trenches for so long, or maybe it’s because comic books have infiltrated popular culture to the point of banality, but much of the stigma once associated with being an adult who likes their stories in short, fully-illustrated bursts seems to have dissipated. Most people are now familiar with Spiderman, Batman, Iron Man and X-Men, whether they’re on the silver screen, Xbox 360s, or in the graphic novels section of Barnes and Noble. It’s just not that outlandish anymore, and in a way, that frees writers and artists to grow more confident in their work. The quality of output in 2009 is from a medium where that confidence and maturity is finally paying off dividends, especially when they’re not hitched to some event about some dark black necrosha.
Scalped (Ongoing Series, Vertigo)
For most people, “crime drama” can bring to mind a never ending stream of acronyms and bland, cardboard characters. C.S.I.s tend to merge with N.C.I.S‘ and the latest spin-off of the Law and Order series, Law and Order: Civilian Parking Division or whatever they are calling it. While network television has really taken the concept of the “cop show” and run with it, no one is really doing it right. You have to turn to the world of comic books if you want gritty men with badges clashing with the lowest scum the underworld can throw at them. Jason Aaron and R. M. Guéra’s Scalped packs more crime, drama, filth and soul in a single issue than all television crime dramas can deliver in an entire season. The setting, the fictional Prairie Rose Indian Reservation in modern-day South Dakota. Your hero, Dashiel Bad Horse, an undercover FBI agent described as a “borderline psychopath” tasked with infiltrating organized crime on the reservation. It’s easily one of the best reads in any genre. Don’t miss this gem. —Ryan Jovian
Deadpool (Ongoing Series, Marvel)
What can be said about a comic book character who has multiple voices in his head and constantly breaks the fourth wall, making references to video games and pop culture? Nothing, except for the fact that Deadpool is a special sort of crazy that makes you want to hug him and rub his bald, scarred head one day, and kick him in the groin the next. Maybe that’s just me. Comics that make you laugh out loud are always deserving of a thumbs up or two, and if I could I would give Deadpool all the thumbs in the world. —Sam Pagan
John Constantine: Hellblazer (Ongoing Series, Vertigo)
John Constantine: Hellblazer, the gold standard for long-running Vertigo series, has really outdone itslef in 2009. Already a who’s who of comicdom’s shining stars (created by Alan Moore in Swamp Thing, penned at various times by Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, Mike Carey and numerous others), Peter Milligan injected Hellblazer with fresh blood to a patient that didn’t look like it needed it. Milligan’s memorable run centers on – what else? broken hearts and bastardom, arguably the core of the character… and the series. —Robert Starvation
Punisher: Frank Castle (Ongoing Series, Marvel)
When taking to relax my mind I often reach for a good book or pause to read an interesting article concerning political, social, or economic issues of the day. However, I have to say that my guilty pleasure is a good Punisher comic; more specifically Punisher: Frank Castle (formerly Punisher MAX). I stumbled upon this gem of a series on the interwebs in late 2008 and I have been a big fan ever since, reading issues whenever I can get my hands on them. The Punisher: Frank Castle is not the same Saturday morning cartoon Punisher which those of us are familiar with from the 80’s and 90’s. There is no Spiderman, no Wolverine or Incredible Hulk, or any Superheros to taint this storyline with childish nonsense. This Punisher is pure and unfiltered; in a state of excellence. The series is set up in five or six issue arcs where the Punisher finds himself in situations that call for extreme bloodshed and that vigilante goodness that only he can dish out. More importantly, however, is the realism and grit with which each story is written. Garth Ennis wrote the first 60 issues with a rotating team of artists which gives the artwork variety.
The themes involved in The Punisher: Frank Castle are far from the run-of-the-mill vigilante antics which characterized his other appearances. The comics take us into the black world of professional espionage and terrorism, inhabited by white slavers, corrupt Generals, rogue CIA agents and war criminals. The story takes from the real world bloodshed and wars of the past 40 years and uses them to paint a masterful backdrop for an engaging and deliciously violent story. It’s as far from comic book fantasy as one can get. If you are in the mood for a good read, or a guilty pleasure, be sure to check out The Punisher: Frank Castle. It gets the KK4 seal of approval. —KK4
Umbrella Academy (Ongoing Series, Dark Horse)
I recently got shit from my esteemed colleague Ryan Jovian for including Umbrella Academy on this list. Ryan, like so many who are familiar with Gerard Way and a little band named My Chemical Romance, presumed the worst when he saw Way’s name attached to the project. I concede a degree of wariness when I picked up their first trade, Apocalypse Suite, but my doubt was quickly rebuffed and I became a fan of Way the writer, if not the singer. Not only is he not a dilettante (he once interned for DC Comics), Gerard Way shows a penchant for the odd and incredible not seen this side of Grant Morrison. His collaborator, Brazilian artist Gabriel Ba, has a loose style that’s suited for whatever Way throws at him. The second arc, Dallas, makes the first seem downright placid, as the loose-knit family of freaks boomerang through time, fight in Vietnam and play a pivotal role in events which take place on November 22, 1963. And that description doesn’t even begin to get into the weird heart of it. There are homicidal maniacs wearing animal heads who have a jonesing for girl scout cookies, nuclear explosions and PUPPIES! Who doesn’t love puppies? —Robert Starvation
Gravel (Ongoing Series, Avatar)
I did wrong. I judged this book by its cover and at first I thought it looked silly and cheesy. But I was urged to just sit down and give it a try, that the covers didn’t really reflect much on the story itself. So I did. And… I really enjoyed Gravel. Warren Ellis has sure been keeping himself busy, but he seems to keep so organized that you wouldn’t be able to tell. There are no awkward moments or confusing storylines in Gravel. Everything melds together issue after issue, locking into place and gaining your intrigue even more. The fuck-you attitude of the title character, William Gravel, puts a clear but jaded perspective on the world he’s entangled with, full of magic and sorcery and good old-fashioned backstabbing.
The story is fast paced in the first half as he deals with cold revenge, but after a while it slows and we’re all able to take a step back and look at the next hurdles in store for him. Mike Wolfer’s art is very detailed and the way he can light up a sky using nothing but light from a fire and the cigarette in Gravel’s mouth is really amazing. —Sam Pagan
The Goon (Ongoing Series, Dark Horse)
Eric Powell’s beautifully drawn The Goon is one hilarious book. Telling the tale of a mob enforcer in a world populated with comical characters as well as zombies, robots, hags and skunk apes, The Goon shows a surprising depth of emotion beneath it’s funny exterior. This year The Goon even teamed up with Brenden Small’s Dethklok of the Adult Swim cartoon Metalocalypse for even more comedy and mayhem, and saw the tenth anniversary of the book. This Eisner Award-winning comic is just the thing to get you chuckling. —Ryan Jovian
The Sword (Ongoing Series, Image)
If there’s one thing reading The Sword has taught me, it’s that revenge isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. If you kill one immortal god who can control an element for murdering your family with an all-powerful sword, the remaining gods aren’t going to take too kindly to your brand of justice. Legs may be lopped off. Your jaw may be shorn from your face. Both may consequently be regrown. In their consistently stellar marriage of storytelling and art, the Luna Brothers have few peers. There’s no one else doing what they’re doing, and they’re doing it so well, no one else should even bother to try. —Robert Starvation
Groom Lake (Limited Series, IDW)
Chris Ryall and Ben Templesmith teamed up for Groom Lake, a sci-fi comic that departs from what you’d usually expect with aliens. Forget higher beings and all that, aliens are just short grey autistic children who can smoke and drink as much as they want without getting ill, and have an unhealthy preoccupation with human coitus. Going deeper into experiments on humans and abductions, Ryall’s writing gives us plenty of inappropriate laugh-out-loud moments while Templesmith’s art does well to deal out the gritty and dark undertones of government conspiracies. If you like being offended, put this one up on your reading list. —Sam Pagan
I Kill Giants (Graphic Novel, Image)
There were no preexisting expectations for Joe Kelly’s I Kill Giants, something he and artist J.M. Ken Niimura exploited to the fullest. Giants draws you into the life of fifth-grader Barbara Thorson, a small, nerdy girl who insists she does what the book’s title claims. Without getting too specific (this is one of those stories you don’t want spoiled), by the end the reader feels like they’ve been punched in the gut – or maybe the heart. There has been no more affecting story in comics in recent memory. —Robert Starvation
North 40 (Ongoing Series, Wildstorm)
North 40 is a comic that does something a little unique to other comics: mixing rednecks with elder gods. Not a comic to give the wrong impression, it starts off with instant action and jumps into the meat of things, unleashing horrors onto this quaint little town with its one sheriff and community diner. The realistic ways the characters handle their new situation is both hilarious and terrifying, and the artwork is crisp and clean. Lots of bright colours to really show you what’s going on and to get across how doomed they really are. It’s a nice sleeper comic that many may not have noticed emerging through the waves of Marvel events, brought to you by Aaron Williams and artist Fiona Staples. —Sam Pagan
The Unwritten (Ongoing Series, Vertigo)
Tommy Taylor’s father wrote a series of boy wizard novels with his son as the protagonist before mysteriously vanishing. Now, as an adult, Tommy has been scraping by making appearances at conventions. That all changes when he’s kidnapped by the vampiric villain from one of his father stories… Oh, no. Another story about storytelling. Didn’t Neil Gaimain do the same thing in the 1990s with that series of his, S… Sa… Sandbox? The name will come to me in a moment. But Mike Carey is often mentioned in the same breath as Neil Gaiman for his expansion of the greater Sandman universe in a little comic called Lucifer, and adapted Gaiman’s Neverwhere into comic format, so if anyone should be “pulling a Gaiman”, it should be Carey. The storytelling in The Unwritten is strong, Mike Grell’s art is easy on the eyes, the twists are twisty, and the enjoyment quotient is high. Everything else is just background noise. —Robert Starvation
No Hero (Limited Series, Avatar)
Fuck. Wow. Even for Warren Ellis, No Hero is extreme. It also just so happens to be fucking amazing. Part two of his trilogy of superhero stories for Avatar (preceded by Black Summer, followed by Super God), No Hero posits a world in which an organization run by individuals altered to have superhuman abilities have shaped world events since the 1960s, and the reaction the world might realistically have as a result. Juan Jose Ryp’s art is hyper-detailed, and, frankly, not for the faint of heart, the creative team seeming to revel in every goring, dismemberment, and creative use of a torn-out spinal column.—Robert Starvation
Batman and Robin (Ongoing Series, DC)
Let’s face it – Frank Miller’s Goddamn All-Star Batman and Robin wasn’t the continuity-free thrill ride All-Star Superman was. Even Morrison’s own run on the main Batman title, excluding a tangle with ninja man bats and a three issue team-up with J.H. Williams III, could often be a confusing mess that had motives ulterior to telling a good story. With hindsight, we can see what Batman R.I.P. was clearing the way for: Batman and Robin, sans All-Star, in continuity, and the most fun anyone’s had reading Batman in recent memory. Whenever Morrison brings on Frank Quitely for mind-blowing art duties, magic happens. In the first, and so far best, arc, the new Batman Dick Grayson and his petulant brat of a sidekick Damian Wayne fight against a bevy of eastern European circus freaks. You know, the usual.—Robert Starvation
Phonogram: The Singles Club (Limited Series, Image)
I first heard about Phonogram at SDCC 2006. I was wearing a nice DIY Jarvis Cocker shirt when I bumped into Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, the writer and the artist for the comic that ultimately fed and fueled the passion for Britpop inside me. Issue after issue was dripping with reference to music I loved, a bit obscure for most American kids my age but not to those who knew the era. I felt like it was made just for me. I was skeptical when I got the first issue of the second series, The Singles Club, but by the time we got to the third with Emily’s confrontation with her old self, I felt ashamed to ever had doubted Kieron. The best part is the closing letters from Kieron explaining his music choices and the passion behind it. I find myself a little sad after I finish each issue. I suggest this to any anglophile that loves a bad attitude and an elitist music snob persona. —xtine
Hellboy (Ongoing Series, Dark Horse)
Mike Mignolia has truly found his voice in Hellboy. While the comic has plenty of action and its share of laughs, the tone is much quieter than the two blockbuster movies would suggest. Hellboy trudges on towards his inevitable destiny, alone against an endless army of myths, legends and demons armed with nothing more than his Right Hand of Doom and his quick wit. 2009 saw the conclusion of Hellboy: The Wild Hunt, where betrayal and intrigue reveal more about the origins of Hellboy and his relationship to the Osiris Club. —Ryan Jovian
Batwoman in Detective Comics (Ongoing Series, DC)
J.H. Williams puts the “art” in sequential art. Greg Rukka’s prose is shining, and his willingness to write about an emotionally compelling, non-heteronormative hero commendable. Every time I pick up an issue of Batwoman in Detective Comics, I wonder who will impress me more. As a comic book fan, that’s a great place to be, and one where I hope to stay for some time to come. —Robert Starvation
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century: 1910 (Limited Series, Top Shelf)
Top Shelf must be thanking the fates for the day they crossed paths with a certain well-known magickian/scribe disenfranchised with the big names in the comics publishing industry. Alan Moore has always marched to the beat of his own drum, but in the past decade, it’s more like he’s marching to the beat of a phantasmagorical percussion god he summoned during one of his arcane rituals. Filling in some of the blanks of The Black Dossier, Century: 1910 is the first of three 70-page chapters that takes the League through the twentieth century into the future, in Moore’s usual epic, pulpy, hyperliterate style, paired with Kevin O’Neill’s stylized art. In this volume: Chaos, moonchildren, Jack the Ripper and the Threepenny Opera. —Robert Starvation
B.P.R.D. (Ongoing, Dark Horse)
B.P.R.D., or Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, is a spin off of Hellboy, based around a team of supernatural defenders, with a much different tone than it’s sister book. Think H.P. Lovecraft meets G.I. Joe. The events in B.P.R.D. run parallel to and sometime overlap those in Hellboy but tell a completely different tale. 2009 saw the conclusion to the War on Frogs story arc. Chronicling the team’s attempts to thwart an invasion of frog-like horrors first seen in Hellboy: Seed of Descruction, War on Frogs is full of action and surprises, including one of the best Hellboy characters of all time, Lobster Johnson. —Ryan Jovian
Luke Cage Noir (Limited Series, Marvel)
The Marvel Noir line, which strips superheros of their more fantastical elements and places them in Depression-era New York, is a pulp lovers dream, and Luke Cage Noir is the dreamiest. The man with rock-hard skin returns to Harlem after a stint in the big house, and finds things aren’t quite as they seem. Writers Mike Benson and Adam Glass and artist Shawn Martinbrough take what could just be an empty gimick and imbue Luke Cage Noir with life and a sense of history, touching on segregation, organized crime and kicking ass. What? People kicked ass in the past. —Robert Starvation
Chew (Ongoing Series, Image)
Conceptually, Chew is the most original comic of the year. A man who can trace the history of something by eating it? It sounds ridiculous, but it works. It’s writer John Laymen and artist Rob Guillory’s willingness to play with conventions and see where the story takes them that pushes Chew past its gimmick and onto the top of the stack whenever it comes out. —Robert Starvation
Wednesday Comics (Limited Series, DC)
Wednesday Comics had all the makings of a great passion project: Well known and/or creative contributors, a unique format, and a roster of strips that highlight some of the best DC properties, from the ominpresent Batman to the relatively obscure Komandi. But to see that potential realized – to unfold the newsprint every week and enjoy yourself more than anyone over the age of 12 has any right to – was an unforgettable experience. In addition to Batman (by Brian Azarello and Eduardo Risso) and Komandi (Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook), other standouts included Karl Kerschl and Brenden Fletcher’s The Flash, Neil Gaiman and Michael Allred’s Metamorpho, Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner’s Supergirl, and Paul Pope and José Villarrubia’s Strange Adventures. Wednesday Comics was 12 weeks of summertime fun that won’t soon be forgotten. —Robert Starvation
