I can’t possibly convey the depth of you how happy I am to finish this book! And not because it was good. Not a single, teensy bit good.
The Best American Comics 2011
Edited by Alison Bechdel
Mariner Books
October 2011
Each year a guest editor helps select the best comics from the previous year, September through August. This year’s guest editor definitely put her stamp on the choices. Alison Bechdel is the long time, award winning creator of Dykes to Watch Out For, which is about what you would expect with a title like that, that ran from 1983 to 2008. If last year’s version betrayed Neil Gaiman’s liberal bias and love of odd comics, this year’s showed Bechdel’s gay and lesbian bias to a new level. There are over 300 pages of comics in this volume and it seemed that I couldn’t read two in a row without a gay character.
It isn’t the homosexual bias alone that ruined this book for me. Many of the comics just weren’t that good. This is supposed to showcase America’s “best” comics of the year. Yet from the time frame it covers, September 2009 to August 2010, only a single Eisner winner is present (Joe Sacco’s Nov. 3, 1956 from Footnotes in Gaza, which is a worthy addition). Even if books like this tend to go indie over big name publishers there should still be a few big names at least. Instead, there is a bunch of mediocre to poor choices to represent America’s “best.”
At a certain point in reading this book my attitude changed from bored to disgusted. That moment was Browntown by Jaime Hernandez from Love and Rockets: New Stories. Specifically, it was when some older young boys lured an unsuspecting child out to a field and talked him into taking off his pants. A page later we find that the ring leader was utilizing his cult of personality to give him access to young boys to force himself sexually upon. Graphically. I’m not sure why this section of the story was selected. It is homosexual, pedophilia rape, which I can’t imagine that Bechdel supports but then why is it here? There isn’t enough of the story to explain the seduction and repeated rape of the small boy and editors get to choose the pages they want in the book so Bechdel must have desired these specific pages in the book. A choice that may have irreparably tarnished my opinion of this book and publisher (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt even though the imprint is Mariner).
It isn’t just that one inclusion though. Another story by Gabby Schultz, New Year’s Eve, 2004 from Monsters, portrays a man giving in to his sexual urges even though he knows he will give his drunk and drugged partner herpies. It may be that Monsters is a morality tale and the man is shown to be a monster. However, the pages included don’t allow for that growth and once again the choice of pages is made by the editor Bechdel.
Was there anything good here? Sure. I enjoyed the clip from Brendan Leach’s Pterodactyl Hunters (in the Gilded City); I’m always a fan of alternative histories or fantasy in the current or similar world. Anatomy of a Pratfall from Coin-Op by Peter and Maria Hoey was well done. And Great Gatsby from Hark! A Vagrant! By Kate Beaton was entertaining. Pet Cat by Joey Alison Sayers is a well done commentary on commercialism.
Overall this book is less representative of America’s “best” comics but actually more representative of Alison Bechdel’s sociological views. It is heavy on drug use, foul language, and homosexuality (including pedophilia rape) and light on actual good and well done comics. Not a book I recommend. And in fact, a series that I may not recommend again.
