Favorite Western comics of my 2024
Nancy, pigfaces, NYC indie cartoonists: all lit
Following on from yesterday’s manga list. The ones I recently covered in my 21st century comics post are linked.
1. Emil Ferris: My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Book Two
2. Bill Griffith: Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller: The Man Who Created Nancy
At least starting from the moment he gave Fritzi a niece, Bushmiller led just about the most boring life imaginable. But don’t we all, and Griffith and Sam Beckett give his Republican squareness dignity. Still, more than biography or criticism (there’s a lot of Nancy criticism), this is mostly valuable as a work of collage art in itself. Griffith repurposes Bushmiller’s drawings to give them life beyond a snapper every fourth panel, having Fritzi hang with Krazy Kat (zip) and letting the gang, including even long-forgotten Phil Fumble, lead Ernie to the Valhalla of the Perfect Gag, which ironically turns out to be the opposite of “Sluggo is lit.”
3. Jillian & Mariko Tamaki: Roaming
4. Martin Vaughn-James: Projector and Elephant
Classic 1970s Canadian wtfery, with some similarities to what Terry Gilliam was doing at the time. In Projector, the realism of a carefully rendered glass house is shattered by a horse which subsequently falls off a skyscraper; the descent is metaphorically continued by a bald guy hindered by pigfaces, improbable geometries, traffic, and Futurist poster art. The earlier Elephant, which is more classically Surrealist (there’s a talking toilet called John Johns), shows you where he was coming from.
5. Darrin Bell: The Talk
Being Black in America, 1975–present: some stuff has changed and some stuff hasn’t. Some of the beats are predictable (Obama wins, Trump wins, reactions vary) but the smaller, more personal moments are much deeper. The occasional spots of color are very well chosen. And there are definitely parts I can relate to as a Daily Cal contributor who enraged part of their audience (okay, I did it a bit more deliberately.)
6. Julia Wertz: Impossible People: A Completely Average Recovery Story
It starts in medias res in a Puerto Rican jungle, but it soon conforms to a familiar arc—comic artist is an alcoholic, gets through rehab a quarter of the way through the book—and both the sobriety and the narrative mostly stick. The rest of the work is life-and-dating in New York, pleasantly sitcomy with a knack for timing a tossed-off joke. Lots of fun cameos from NYC scene people (hi Jeffrey Lewis.)
7. Sloane Leong: Prism Stalker: The Weeping Star
I hadn’t read the previous volume,1 but it’s easy to get to speed: wide-eyed cadets join the military of a shadowy empire, who task them with murdering things they maybe shouldn’t be murdering. Not sure how morally deep it is (killing changes you, you know) but in addition to looking macro-level impressive in the Kirby tradition, it’s genuinely freaky in its evocation of very non-human experiences. Plus killing changes you, you know.
8. Kelly Sue DeConnick/Phil Jimenez/Gene Ha/Nicola Scott: Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons
While the other company waits for the day they can turn on the AI Slop Pipe and go home, it’s still possible to do interesting work at DC, given latitude (see also Catwoman: Lonely City on last year’s list.) The first of the three issues, drawn by Jimenez, justifiably won the awards, but DeConnick deserves a lot of credit for shepherding the whole thing to an ending compatible with the status quo (if you think superhero continuity nerds are shrill, wait until you hear Greek mythology continuity nerds) that still allows her characters agency.
EDIT: Oh wait I have. Guess this one made more of an impression!