Friday, January 10, 2020

One More List

Robert Boyd

This list comes from Kim Jooha, who was the associate publisher of 2dcloud and is a writer about comics. 2dcloud is one of the most adventurous publishers of comics today, which gives you an idea of where Jooha is coming from. (She's the kind of person who uses the adjective "Deleuzian.") She expresses an ambivalence about lists, quoting from Elena Gorfinkel's manifesto "Against Lists":
Lists aggregate the already known and consolidate power… 
Lists pretend to make a claim about the present and the past, but are anti-historical, obsessed with their own moment, with the narrow horizon and tyranny of contemporaneity. They consolidate and reaffirm the hidebound tastes of the already heard... 
Lists will always disappoint… 
Torch your list. If you must count, write as many words about any film not on your list. Read as many words about a woman filmmaker or filmmaker from the global south. Or convert those words and characters into units of time, watching a film never on your list…
What makes her list different than the ones I analyzed in my last post (and my own list that was included therein) is that she lists artists rather than works. Here are the artists she put on her "Best Comics of the Decade" list:

Lale Westvind. (Who was also on the Comic Books Are Burning in Hell list.)
Jillian Tamaki (highly ranked on many best-of lists)
Patrick Kyle (who I don't think featured on anyone's list that I have seen)
Ilan Manouach (ditto)
Francesc Ruiz (whose work is somewhat conceptual)
Mushbuh (not on anyone's list)
Char Esme (ditto)
Ben Mendelewicz (ditto)
Gina Wynbrandt (ditto, but her work has been widely discussed outside of "best comics" lists)
Aidan Koch (She didn't make any of this year's lists that I noticed, but she made my personal 2015 list.)
Margot Ferrick (as far as I can tell, she is not on any other lists)
Aurélie William Levaux (Her works are not what I'd call comics, but I welcome an expansive definition)
Rantan (A Korean artist whose work has not been published in English as far as I know)
Tillie Walden (as far as I can tell, she is not on any other lists)
Some of the reprint projects of Sunday Press Books (kind of a cheat, since all these comics are nearly 100 years old).
Reprints of women cartoonist. Also kind of a cheat, but surely there should be a "best of the decade" list for archival and translation projects of comics that are older than 10-years-old.
Super-Structure. A Franco-Belgian anthology.

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