Byron Preiss & Howard Zimmerman et al, eds., The Year's Best Graphic Novels,
Comics and Manga (St. Martin's Press, 2005)
This new compendium, due in February 2006, attempts to synthesize the best of sequential art and present the "leading works by major publishers." It's an ambitious project, and probably long overdue. The 272 page volume is divided into four sections: Graphic Novels, Comics (individual issues), Manga and The Best of the Rest (including online comics). Oddly, the time frame covered is May 2003-December 2004. Some lag is understandable, but for a 2006 publication to be looking back nearly three years for a current "Best of. . . ." seems a bit excessive, especially with the recent boom in manga licensing.
I have to be frank up front that these days I rarely read items from the first two sections, so I can't really to speak to the quality of the editors' selections -- I'll reserve that detail for the Manga section. I can say, without reservation, though, that the book has far too few pages to do the diverse subject matter justice. Only a handful of titles are excerpted in each section, supplemented by a few pages (all black and white) of cover images from additional titles. At the very least, there should have been additional text to explain the editors' choices, but each section gets only a page or two, tops, which barely constitutes an intro, and provides scant detail. For example, the Graphic Novel section runs from pages eight to 132, but only merits three quarters of a page as intro. While I appreciate that the art and words are allowed to speak for themselves, more information (such as a brief plot summary, a mini-bio of the writer/artist or an explanation of the work's merit) for each excerpt would be rather helpful. What is nice about this release is that the pages are oversized and the printing crisp, allowing for a good view of the artwork, and for easy reading.
The Graphics Novel section, as alluded to earlier, is the longest in this book, and provides the most substance. Editor Heidi McDonald has selected a wide variety of titles, differing in style, content and presentation. Included are excerpts from Superman, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (a selection I'd beg to differ on, given my own review), Artesia, Dave Gibbons' The Originals and Craig Thompson's Blankets, among others.
In the intro to the Comics section, editor Greg McElhatton laments that the single comic issue is becoming an "endangered species," but comments also that this is likely to be where the most daring work is done. In the 70 pages dedicated to this section, he has included excerpts from Batman, Plasticman, Love and Rockets, Age of Bronze, Fables and more. The page choice for Fables is curious, since it's a climatic moment, and somewhat spoileriffic, if you ask me (hopefully this isn't true of other excerpts).
The manga section is unfortunately disappointing, presenting an uneven collection of releases, and several titles that are not manga at all. Given the explosive growth of manga, in both traditional comic stores and general book stores, the few pages devoted to them are perplexing indeed, and entirely unhelpful for someone looking for solid titles to read. This is surprising, given the editor's long-running involvement in the U.S. manga industry.
Several of the top selling -- and arguably top quality (a rare care of commercial success and critical acclaim) -- series are oddly absent from the selection (Rurouni Kenshin and Fruits Basket among them). In their place are English-language original titles that, while clearly manga-influenced, are not manga (Megatokyo, Neotopia), and either should not have been included, or should have been somehow differentiated. At the very least, the section intro should have pointed out how these titles differ from the actual manga listed, as they provide a clear example of the influence of manga on the American comic industry.
The intro does great care to differentiate between manga for boys (shonen) and girls (shojo), yet only one shojo title is even listed, Watase Yuu's Ima Doki. Curious indeed given the industry fuss about female manga readership (so what are all those girls reading? Something in addition to Ima Doki, no doubt). And no differentiation is made at all between Japanese manga and Korean manhwa, although two manhwa are recommended, Nambul and Battle Angel (no, the differences aren't great, but at least an acknowledgement of Korea's creative talent would have been nice).
At the very end of The Year's Best is a hodgepodge chapter of online comics, ashcans and . . . comic anthologies (including Neil Gaiman's Sandman: Endless Nights), which is curious, because I would expect to find that last in the Graphic Novels section. This section is an intriguing one, given the book's purported interest in major publishers, but would be worth fleshing out in future editions (there's considerable artistic talent out there on the Internet), because it's also the most eclectic.
The Year's Best Graphic Novels, Comics and Manga has definite promise. But if it's going to prove as entertaining and invaluable a resource for sequential art fans as The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror series has been for fans of those genres, it needs some definite expansion and improvement, beginning with some actual editorializing from the editors. We, the readers, want to know why these titles merit being singled out. So tell us!
