Review: THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2018

THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2018

The Best American Comics 2018, with series editor Bill Kartalopoulos, and editor Phoebe Gloeckner, is another impressive collection of comics that are offered to the reader as among the best of the last year. Think of it as a comics art festival all in one book. Don’t expect much in the way of mainstream comics: no big publishers, let alone superheroes. What you will find a great deal of is a treasure trove of activity on the fringes.

While comics can be created in a myriad of ways, some patterns hold true. The most distinctive common trait is that work in the alt-comics scene is usually the work of one original voice that knows the work best and is compelled to shout it from the mountain tops with little or not additional assistance. Here are some examples for this year’s BAC anthology:

Kevin Hooyman

Kevin Hooyman fits more into the heroic mold of the hermit cartoonist. There are any number of glorious examples of this type of commitment. It leads to some of the most idiosyncratic, and compelling, work around. People can take sides and claim this is the only kind of comics that really matter. The truth is that including Hooyman’s work in this alt-comics anthology helps to set the tone and continue to build on what is possible in this medium.

Richie Pope

Richie Pope is an excellent example of an indie-pro hybrid. It happens and more often that you might think: a rebel/eccentric who, when he is assigned a client, will naturally keep to deadlines and go to meetings. Consider Pope’s work to have that extra professional snap and polish.

Lale Westvind

Lale Westvind is another hybrid. This time: cartoonist-animator. This is always an intriguing combination of skill sets. Westvind can bring to bear her rigorous animation background in the service of art comics–giving it that added lift.

Tara Booth

Tara Booth is another example of a cartoonist identifying as an outsider and challenging the reader, whether mainstream or not. That said, she’s also a masterful artist with a deceptively simple style.

Max Clotfelter

Max Clotfelter is high on the list of cartoonists who aim to provoke. He is a guerilla artist who defies the general reader’s expectations. It’s an ethos rooted in punk and DIY: the more raw and simple the better. A more raw approach is something cartoonists like Art Spiegelman advocated and yet, as underground cartoonists progressed in what became actual art careers, refinement was never far behind raw. So, the balancing between the raw and the cooked will go on.

Geof Darrow

Geof Darrow is another independent cartoonist who is also at home with big publishers like Dark Horse Comics from which Darrow’s piece in the book originally appeared. Darrow is a shining example that technical skill and masterful creation within the traditional structures of comics is something to celebrate and not distance one’s self from in favor of seeking out the most experimental of creators.

Bill Kartalopoulos has much to be proud of in all his efforts to support and to better understand the ever-shifting world of contemporary comics as an art form. He makes choices as to what may end up in the book. Then an esteemed guest editor makes the final calls. After that, well, it’s up to the selected creators to take it from there. Some may find themselves relatively rising and some may find themselves relatively coming up short. And others may just slip out the back door and never be heard from again.

The Best American Comics 2018 is a 416-page hardcover, in b&W & color, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Visit HMH right here.