2017 Comics in Review - Part 5

I need to come up with a less clunky way to work the names of the creators on the books into those summarizing paragraphs. Anyway, lists! Most of these were actually pretty tough this year. Of course, in some cases that was due less to lots of high quality candidates, and more because there were almost no candidates.

As always, if I didn't buy it, it isn't in the running. So yeah, it's a limited field, but you don't want me ranking books I've only vaguely heard of.

Favorite Ongoing Series (min. 6 issues purchased this year):

1. Unbeatable Squirrel Girl
2. Unbelievable Gwenpool

Giant Days came up one issue short of qualifying, which is too bad. It would have been a strong contender for #1. Can it maintain that momentum in 2018?! Of the actual qualifiers, Scarlet Spider and Deadpool were both out of the running since they got dropped. Can't very well be my favorite if I was fed up enough to stop buying it, right? The art on Copperhead couldn't keep up with the other four contenders, and Squirrel Girl and Gwenpool were far ahead on the entertainment scale, so the last spot came down to Ms. Marvel or Cave Carson. But then I couldn't decide between them. I like the Oeming/Filardi art team more than Ian Herring and some of the artists he teamed with, but not all of them. Cave Carson lagged in the last three issues, but I wasn't that excited about Ms. Marvel's fight with the computer program, either.

So ultimately, I punted on the whole decision. Whee! As for Numbers 1 and 2, Squirrel Girl won out narrowly because I think it was more consistent. Gwenpool's artists varied quite a bit in skill, so the quality of the art did as well, while Squirrel Girl has the Erica Henderson/Rico Renzi team there gettin' it done each month. I probably prefer Chris Hastings as a writer to Ryan North, but it's more variable. At it's best, I probably enjoy Gwenpool more, but it wasn't at that level enough to edge Squirrel Girl.

Favorite Mini-Series:

1. Empowered: Soldier of Love
2. Avengers: Four

It was a limited field this year. I require the mini-series to have shipped at least half its issues in the year in question. Which ruled out Atomic Robo, Demon, and Deadman. Wynonna Earp and Real Science Adventures each got dropped part way through, which would seem to disqualify them. I have more fondness for the Kooky Quartet than Empowered, and I was probably more invested in the story in Avengers: Four. But all that variability in the art really hurts Avengers. Being able to maintain the consistent look the story wants is kind of important. So Karla Diaz producing quality work for the entirety of the series tips it in Soldier of Love's favor.

Favorite One-Shot:

1. Master of Kung-Fu
2. Justice League of America: The Ray
3. Darkhawk

Master of Kung-Fu was the easy winner. It does provide a set-up for future stories if that opportunity occurs, but it focuses primarily on just telling a story. Even abnormally muddied art from Talijac is solid. The battle for #2 was close. I'm more interested in the potential of what Darkhawk put out there, which is probably irrelevant since I doubt it'll be followed up. I prefer Kev Walker's art. I don't like either of the books' costume redesigns. I think Steve Orlando probably did a better job telling a story, without feeling so exposition-heavy.

Favorite Trade Paperback/Graphic Novel (anything I bought is fair game):

1. Collen Coover and Paul Tobin's Bandette Vol. 3: The House of the Green Mask
2. Steve Gerber, Gene Colan, Val Mayerik, and a bunch of other people's Howard the Duck: The Complete Collection Vol. 2
3. John Allison and Max Sarin's Giant Days Vol. 3
4. Steve Ditko and Denny O'Neil's The Creeper by Steve Ditko

It isn't quite written into this blog's constitution that Bandette wins favorite GN any year I buy a volume, but it's pretty close. Note that doesn't guarantee a win in the future. The blog constitution was made to be broken. It was written 200, er 10 years ago! Times have changed! (Yes the blog is over 10 years old, but I had to destroy the first constitution because there were too many clauses about hitting Chuck Austen with pipe wrenches left over from a previous adm - this gag has gone too long).

I know it seems strange to list O'Neil on a book that's title literally says it was by Steve Ditko, full stop. But O'Neil does get most of the writing or dialogue credits on the earlier stories, which were the ones I liked, so I figured his name deserved to be there. I haven't read through either of the Howard the Duck collections in a few months, but my recollection is that I enjoyed the second volume more than the first. Maybe because it had moved beyond the early stage where Gerber was still getting things into place. I don't give a flip about Man-Thing and his touch that burns your fear. Get some ointment and move on.

Favorite Writers:

1. Christopher Hastings
2. John Allison
3. Ryan North

I opted not to factor in back issues or trade paperbacks this year, for two reasons. One, if I did I felt I needed to do the same for the artists, and that wasn't something I was prepared to do. Two, before I decided that, when I was trying to factor them in, it wasn't clarifying things as much as I wanted. Even among my old stand-bys, the stuff of theirs I bought was not their best.

Anyway, I picked Hastings first because, as I said in Favorite Ongoing, at his best I really like his work. I like his sense of humor, and I like the things he comes up with to put in his stories. And he can write something that works emotionally when he wants to.

Favorite Artists (min. 110 pages):

1. Guruhiru
2. Max Sarin
3. Michael Avon Oeming

So I didn't want to have to factor in the artists for all those trades and such. It was going to be even harder because Steve Ditko's '60s Creeper was pretty awesome, but that trade included his work from the late 1970s, which was not nearly so awesome. So how do I account for that? To hell with it.

Of the artists, the Guruhiru team edged out Sarin because I haven't seen Max Sarin draw a fight scene yet. There were a couple of close calls, but they always get cut off. And I loves me some entertaining fight scenes. Oeming had some fight scenes to draw, and they weren't bad, but I like Sarin's figurework better. His work suits the humor that crops up most of the time in Giant Days.

And that's it. Year in Review posts are done until such time as we have another year to review. Sunday is going to be an Alternate Favorite Character post, if I get off my ass and get it done, and then Monday we'll look at some books that have come out this year.