As always, I wrap up with the post ranking all the books and creative teams against each other. As always, I'm only considering things I actually bought and read in 2021. Why would I try to rank something I hadn't even seen?
Favorite Ongoing Series (min. 6 issues):
1. Black Cat
2. Runaways
3. Moon Knight
I mean, there were only three books I bought more than six issues of last year, total, so it was a pretty narrow category. Hopefully I find a few more ongoings worth following this year. Anyway, even if I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the previous volume, Black Cat was still the easy winner. Runaways just had such a sedate pace that I got frustrated with it, and I don't like the look of Moon Knight nearly as much as the other two.
Favorite Mini-Series (at least 50% shipped in 2021):
1. Midnight Western Theatre
2. White Lily
3. Kaiju Score
I really enjoyed the mixture of monster-of-the-week with Westerns, and the interactions between Alexander and Ortensia. Like I mentioned yesterday, White Lily felt too jam-packed at the end, to the point it blunted some of the impact, but the story was well-told and I like some of the artistic approaches for the air combat scenes. With Kaiju Score, I enjoyed the whole concept behind it, and Patrick's writing is slick enough I don't mind that Marco got really lucky, because he worked hard for this score, and he deserved a little good fortune.
Everfrost would have had a chance, but there's things about the story and the characters that still don't make a ton of sense. Locust is only half-done. None of the other options were good enough to be in the running.
Favorite One-Shot:
1. Giant-Size Black Cat
2. Sweet Downfall
3. Black Cat Annual 2021
As far as the Black Cat nominees, I had to give the nod to the capstone to MacKay's run with the character. Even if Sweet Downfall was closer to a sampler than a real one-shot, it was interesting, and I liked it a lot more than Cardoselli's other work. Whether that would impression would hold over the entire story is another matter, but the other options were generally underwhelming.
Favorite Trade Paperback/Graphic Novel (anything I bought in 2021):
1. Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover's Bandette volume 4: The Six Finger Secret
2. Ann Nocenti and David Aja's The Seeds
3. Magdalene Visaggio and Eva Cabrera's Kim and Kim volume 1: This Glamorous, High-Flying Rock Star Life
I think Bandette is more or less required by the Blog Constitution to win any year it actually ships. I'm always down for Ann Nocenti's writing, and Aja does good work, assuming you don't die waiting for it. Kim and Kim was weird and the plot was all over the place at times, to the extent I'm not sure the characters even know what's happening, but it was funny and cool. It narrowly edged out Hero Hourly and probably Grrl Scouts - Work Sucks, since I think Mahfood had found his footing artistically better by that point than one the first volume.
Favorite Manga (see above):
1. Kiyohiko Azuma's Yotsuba&! volume 15
2. Mitsuru Aachi's Cross Game volume 3
3. Jin's Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General volume 6
As with Bandette, I think Yotsuba&! winning any year it ships is in the Blog Constitution. I do wonder how far Kiyohiko intends to go, because it feels like it's building towards something. Maybe just Yotsuba's first day of school, I don't know. Volume 3 of Cross Game was the end of the line for imminently hateable Coach Daimon, and the awkward romance stuff wasn't getting too ridiculous yet. And volume 6 of Precarious . . . was a nice, mostly tentacle sex joke free return to form after a disappointing previous volume. Other than those three, I probably would have put one of the three volumes of Eniale and Dewiela in, but I'm not sure which one.
Favorite Writer:
1. Jed MacKay
2. Louis Southard
3. Ann Nocenti
Nocenti's a little bit of a cheat, maybe, because it's based off my buying that collection of The Seeds, which I think was actually released in 2020. But hell, I didn't specify this was only based on new single issues. Anyway, MacKay had all the Black Cat and Moon Knight stuff working for him, and Southard wrote Midnight Western Theatre. Next writer up probably would have been James Patrick for Kaiju Score and Hero Hourly.
Favorite Artist (min. 110 pages):
1. David Hahn
2. C.F. Villa
2. Andres Genolet
Villa beat out Genolet for the second spot because while they're both good and body language and expressive faces, Villa has the edge on action sequences. Not that Runaways has a ton of those. Hahn won out because his linework is clean, easy to follow. He can do violence when he needs to. He can do comedic reaction stuff when he needs to.
For artists with less than 110 pages, Javier Rodriguez and Sami Kivela would be at the top of the list for sure.
OK, that's it. Now we can move on without ever thinking of 2021 again. On to 2022!
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