Favorites of the 2010s

1/31/2020

Well, it seems to be a time for reckoning. Best-of-the-decade lists by comics critics and fans have popped up all over these past couple of months. I'll repeat what has already become a truism: that for comics in North America, the 2010s were a decade of real change and outward expansion. For a number of overlapping reasons, I think—including the explosive growth of original graphic novels for children and young adults, the vitality of webcomics, the overdue recognition of marginalized readers and creators, the continuing ripples of the early-century manga boom, the visibility of comics adaptations in the wider culture, and the further flowering of small-press art comics and comics by interdisciplinary artists—the comics field has blown wide open, in a very encouraging way. It's dizzying for this longtime observer, but delightful too. The future has become hard to predict, and that's good. (See this piece by Rob Salkowitz on comics industry trends of the past decade.)

The best-of-decade lists I've found most interesting and useful are:

The 100 Best Comics of the Decade, at The Beat, 11 Dec. 2019 (a crowdsourced effort by twenty-four different thinkers, big, smart, and diverse).
The Best Comics of the Decade, by Robert Boyd, at his blog The Great God Pan Is Dead, 1 Jan. 2020.
The various best-of lists published at the new comics criticism site SOLRAD, Jan. 6-10, including those by Rob Clough, Alex Hoffman, Daniel Elkins, Ryan Carey, and most especially Kim Jooha, who turns the genre of the best-of list into a polemic and a prophecy. All of the SOLRAD lists are distinctive and smart as hell, but Jooha drops some especially provocative arguments and models a scarcely-bounded sense of what comics can be. Her piece implies a bold new vision of comic art; it's a tremendous piece of art criticism disguised as a listicle.

All of the above are worth bookmarking in perpetuity; I'll be using them as guides for a long time. My own list, consisting of fifty beloved comics from the past decade, is below. I tried designating a Top Ten here, but cripes that’s hard—so, fifty. Sorry!

Reflections: Best-of lists are a troublesome genre. They tend to be driven this way and that by competing if not contradictory agendas, including social, aesthetic, and industrial ones. There's a tendency to spotlight books for their influence on comics publishing, their sheer popularity, and the representational milestones they represent as well as sheer artistic quality. That's unavoidable, and also not bad; it's good to see comics highlighted for those reasons. For example, no accounting of the past decade in comics would be complete without recognition of Raina Telgemeier, who has been rightly dubbed the US comics industry person of these past ten years. My own list here is of course quirky, a mashup of popular and critical successes as well as left-of-field personal choices. Many (more than a dozen) are books I've taught, since my teaching constantly intertwines with my private comics-reading. Some are books that I expect will have great influence, going forward. I should admit that only about a quarter of them hit KinderComics’ sweet spot, that is, comics aimed at children or young adults. I like reading all sorts of comics, and I like putting young readers' comics in that larger context.

One caveat, regarding the narrowness of my choices. Though I read translated manga fairly often, and increasingly I'm reading and teaching webcomics, those fields are either unrepresented or badly under-represented here. I used to think that I knew translated manga well, but that was many years ago; I am somewhat out of touch, and struggling to get back up to speed (thanks to my daughter Nami for helping with that). The sheer volume of manga to choose from has been daunting! As for webcomics, I've long resisted reading for pleasure onscreen for more than a few minutes at a time, but I've been working to change that. This past year I've learned a lot about webcomics, thanks to my teaching, but I must admit I don't yet feel expert in that area. All this is to say that my bullseye continues to be long-form comics storytelling in print, with a bias toward work originally published in English. Art-comics readers may detect my resistance to comix brut, primitivism, and deskilled comics (though see what Kim Jooha has to say about that); I suppose I tend to favor accessible storying delivered with high levels of obvious craft. But come back in a year and see what I have to say about all this! :)

The books below are alphabetized by title. Clicking on a book's image will take you to its publisher's site. I wish I could do a write-up on each one of these excellent comics, but alas the new semester has started, and I have to leapfrog into other business. Happy reading! We are indeed living in a golden age of independent, artistically aspiring, aesthetically diverse comics, and that gives me joy.

Favorites of the 2010s

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