2018 Year In Review - Part 5

I said in the opening paragraph of last year's version of this post I needed to find a way to work the creators' names into those posts in a way that was less clunky. I did not manage that, mostly because I did not remember that I had thought that was a thing I should do. Oh well.

Some of the categories this year have almost no candidates. Some of them have several, but not many good ones. As always, it's limited to the things I bought. Seems like that should go without saying, but just in case.

Favorite Ongoing Series (min. 6 issues bought):

1. Giant Days
2. Ms. Marvel
3. Unbeatable Squirrel Girl

Because I dropped Deadpool after 5 issues, and because both Stellar and Coda seem to be mini-series, there were only 4 books in this category. Yikes. Domino is the odd woman out here. Giant Days was the most consistently enjoyable book, and had 4-5 jokes or lines that would make me stop and laugh every issue. The battle for second was close, but I gave it Ms. Marvel because I enjoyed the stories more this year than in 2017 (when there was the sentient computer virus and the return of Civil War II fallout). Plus, it helped that Nico Leon stuck as the book's artist all year, and I prefer his art to Derek Charm's, who drew Squirrel Girl most of the year.

Favorite Mini-Series:

1. Coda
2. Mata Hari
3. Stellar

There were actually quite a few candidates for this category, about 9 in all. Unfortunately, several of them were not any good, or were a letdown. Demon: Hell is Earth felt pointless, Infinity Countdown: Darkhawk and Multiple Man were both mistakes. Atomic Robo and the Spectre of Tomorrow took a hit because of its muddy coloring dragging down the art. Empowered and Sistah Spooky felt a bit drawn out, or thin in places. I ultimately took Stellar for third ahead of Spider-Girls, narrowly, but really, there's a huge gap between Coda and everything else.

Favorite One-Shot:

1. Giant Days - Where Women Glow and Men Plunder
2. Street Angel - After School Fight
3. Domino Annual

There were only three options to begin with, might as well include them all. It was pretty close between them, as none of them were what I'd call truly exceptional books I'll cherish for the rest of my days. But the Annual suffers for being a bunch of loosely connected smaller stories of variable quality. The other two are one distinct story, which gives them more time to flesh out, and that works to their advantage. I'm more fond of Giant Days than Street Angel, so there you go.

Favorite Trade Paperback/Graphic Novel (anything purchased this year is eligible):

1. Kiyohiko Azuma's Yotsuba! vol. 14
2. John Allison, Max Sarin, Liz Fleming, Whitney Cogar, and Jim Campbell's Giant Days vol. 6
3. Tony Cliff's Delilah Dirk and the Pillars of Hercules

I bought 27 trades, graphic novels, or manga volumes this year, and 13 of them where from either Planetary, Starman, or Giant Days. Which probably works against them, because when you have multiple parts of a larger work, picking out just one is a little harder than when there's just one volume of something to consider. If a Starman volume had made the list, it'd probably vol. 7, A Starry Knight, the first half of Jack's space adventure. Planetary, probably volume 4, the last 10 issues or so. But there always seem to be issues where Ellis goes into a tone that hits me the wrong way and puts me off. Which is why I'm pretty cautious picking up his stuff. I don't need his cynicism on top of my own.

Favorite Writer:

1. John Allison
2. Ann Nocenti
3. G. Willow Wilson

Well, Giant Days-related stuff won Ongoing, One-Shot, and placed on TPB/GN, so who do you think is going to win? I enjoy his sense of humor, and I've ended up caring about the fates of three fictional British girls at university more than I would have thought possible. That has to count for something. Ann Nocenti has to be on here most any time I buy something she wrote. I always find her stuff interesting, even if I can't pull apart what she's driving at. I at least feel the need to make the effort, which is more than I can say with some other writers.

Favorite Artist (min. 110 pages):

1. Carla Speed McNeil
2. Max Sarin
3. Matias Bergara
4. Nico Leon

I didn't want to leave Leon off, which is why this list goes four deep. Bergara might be getting extra points for how well the vivid colors on Coda help his art pop, but he does at least part of that color work himself (along with Michael Doig), so he would therefore deserve at least partial credit for that. Even though I love Sarin's work with expressions and body language, I had to give the edge to McNeil because she showed more creativity in panel layouts and got to draw some action sequences, and they all looked good. That might just be a matter of the books I saw their work - Sarin doesn't get to draw extended fight scenes, and Allison's writing style seems to lend itself to straightforward layouts and lots of talking - but I don't know that for sure. I can only go off what I see, and I do remember that my issues with Finder had nothing to with McNeil's art (and almost entirely to do with not being able to stand Jaeger as the main character).

That does it for the Year In Review until 2020. Sunday is a Sunday Splash Page, and then Monday we're back to regular comic reviews and books and such.