Review: THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2019

The Best American Comics 2019

The Best American Comics 2019, series editor Bill Kartalopoulos, editor Jillian Tamaki, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 400 pages, $25.00.

All in all, the goal of the annual Best American Comics is to represent the overriding impact of significant and notable comics during the last year and say something about comics that is fresh and new. Well, among the most fresh and new, is the work of 81-year-old Jerry Moriarty. In this new edition, you’ll find this example, an excerpt from Whatsa Paintoonist? published by Fantagraphics Books. We see the artist chatting as he goes about his day in his studio. The featured pages depict a wonderfully eccentric and talkative artist with his creations having come to life.

WHATSA PAINTOONIST? (excerpt)

Painting with acrylic and drawing with a Papermate pen, Moriarty epitomizes what is takes to cut through barriers and pretense and get on with creating art. You take a look at his paintings about sexual awakening and you see direct and incisive work. After graduating from Pratt, he went on to teach at the School of Visual Arts for fifty years. In 1984, his first comic, Jack Survives, was published by RAW. Put it all together and Moriarty’s artistic activity is genuine and authentic. Moriarty definitely fits into my criteria for what belongs in a collection of the best comics: work of quality; work that advances the comics medium; and work that speaks to the current state of comics. I have always maintained that the ideal cartoonist is the auteur cartoonist, a sole creator who treats comics as the art medium that it is. If such a person is so fortunate as to be able to build a career solely upon their comics and graphic novels, that’s great. But, all too often, you just do what you need to do because you’re compelled to create the work, in the same way that a genuine poet creates poetry. That is what Jerry Moriarty has done.

WHATSA PAINTOONIST? (excerpt)

The goal of Best American Comics is to feature the wide spectrum of the best work of the previous year. And while seeking out the best can become quite subjective, the goal is to overcome that. Honestly, if it’s not overcome, then you end up with more of a promotional book  of commercial artists or an overly self-indulgent exploration of experimental work. Neither extreme is welcome to carry a whole book. There are other venues for that. Of course, one needs to try to cover as much as possible. Best American Comics has a pretty good system in place where the series editor gathers up work throughout the year and hands it off to that year’s guest editor. In the end, you get a collection that includes industry leaders and quite a few intriguing discoveries. I think it’s fair to say that this is an imperfect process but one can keep striving to do better. The good news is that each year brings a collection with wonderful new work to discover or rediscover like the work of Jerry Moriarty, who has been in the business for well over fifty years. Nice to see that he made it into Best American Comics this year!

WHATSA PAINTOONIST? (excerpt)

The Best American Comics 2109 is a 400-page hardcover and is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.