Comics I loved in 2006:

• Grant Morrison’s All Star Superman: Volume 1 (All Star) mashed postmodern playfulness with 60’s Weisinger-era camp and Kirby’s early 70’s wild inventiveness to make for a wonderfully strange and fun comic
• Speaking of fun, there was no greater comic-book fun than Marvel’s X-Statix Presents: Dead Girl TPB
• DC’s relaunch of Jonah Hex, as in this collection Jonah Hex: Face Full of Violence, combines strong visual storytelling with a newly deepened psychological portrayal of the laconic gunman
• Horror novelist Denise Mina has scripted a return to form for Hellblazer
• I was sad to see Lucifer come to an end
• I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Marvel’s Civil War titles, especially Iron Man under the scripting of the Knauf brothers (whose work on HBO’s Carnivale I did not enjoy).
• Reginald Hudlin’s take on Black Panther reminds us every month that the character is not an urban Daredevil (as he was so often portrayed in the late 60’s and 70’s), but the king of a technologically superior African kingdom. When one roots for the Panther, one is not necessarily rooting for democracies such as our own.
• Finally, if the cover says “Ed Brubaker,” just buy it. Brubaker is writing three titles I rarely cared about (Captain America, Daredevil, and Uncanny X-Men), has made the first two absolutely gripping and is getting there with the third. His Captain America is caught in the shadowy byways of a spy agency war he doesn’t fully understand, while his Daredevil has been exposed and sent to a prison where every con schemes to kill him.

There were many other great comics this year. I’ve been reading comics for almost 40 years, and I don’t think they’ve ever been better.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 23rd, 2006 at 11:19 am and is filed under On reading, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.