What People Thought Were the Best Comics in 2020

Robert Boyd

Everyone has been producing their lists of the best of the year. I'm not going to try to build a meta-list this year (like I did last year for the best comics of the decade). But I do want to mention two lists that I respect: "SOLRAD’s The Best* Comics of 2020" and the Comics Journal's "The Best Comics Of 2020." I find it alarming how few of these books and comics that I know. It's startling confirmation of how old I am (and a less-painful confirmation than my morning back pains). 

In both lists, the editors have asked their regular writers to give them their best of 2020. So instead of one list, SOLRAD had 16 contributors make lists, and the Comics Journal had 15. SOLRAD asked contributors for their top 5 and the Comics Journal didn't seem to specify how many they wanted from each contributor, so the number varied. And at least one contributor, Francesca Lyn for SOLRAD, took "best of 2020" to mean the best comics she read, regardless of when they were created. I appreciate this because for me, any book that I read for the first time is new to me, even if I read it years after it was created.

I can't comment on comic I didn't read, except to say that these list make me want to go back and search out many books I missed. Below are the books on these lists that I did read.

Yoshiharu Tsuge, The Man Without Talent. (This one was chosen by Michael Aushenker, Robert Clough, Alex Hoffman and Nicholas Burman for SOLRAD and Austin Price and Matt Seneca for the Comics Journal.) I wrote about this book when it came out. A book that moved me in its depiction of depression.

O. Schrauwen and Ruppert & Mulot, Portrait of a Drunk. (Chosen by Jef Harmatz for SOLRAD and Helen Chazan, Joe McCulloch, Brian Nicholson and Matt Seneca for the Comics Journal) This grim story of a terrible alcoholic sailor named Guy set in the 17th or 18th century was a portrait of unrelieved misery, kind of an Under the Volcano in comics form. I like both Schrauwen and the team of Ruppert and Mulot, and they blended their work seamlessly here. A great book.

Werewolf Jones is frequently erect in Crisis Zone

Simon Hanselmann, Crisis Zone. (Chosen by Rob Clough and Alex Hoffman for SOLRAD and Clark Burscough and RJ Casey for the Comics Journal). This demented strip was drawn and posted on Instagram daily by Hanselmann. It was a COVID project. His usual characters star in it--it involves Megg, Mogg and Owl in a series of COVID-isolation adventures, and includes BLM riots and a Netflix reality show starring Werewolf Jones called "Anus King." Whatever extreme limits you can imagine, this comic shattered them. Johnny Ryan may have seemed like the taboo-breaking heir of the undergrounds, but I give that crown to Simon Hanselmann. 

Gabrielle Bell, Inappropriate (Chosen by Francesca Lyn for SOLRAD ). I love Gabrielle Bell's work, and I loved Inappropriate, but it doesn't come close to being my favorite of her works. Any Bell is worth reading, though. Inappropriate consists of short, somewhat surreal stories, which feel similar to where she started early in her cartooning career.

Derf Backderf, Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio (Chosen by my old friend Charles Hatfield for SOLRAD and Rob Kirby for the Comics Journal). Backderf had the bad luck to publish a major work of non-fiction comics in the middle of the pandemic. I did one of my first book reports on it.

Adrian Tomine, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist (Chosen by James Romberger for SOLRAD and Hillary Brown and Rob Kirby for the Comics Journal) I've followed and written about Adrian Tomine since he was a teenager doing minicomics. This book is unique among all the comics here because I'm actually mentioned in the text. Tomine mentions an early review I did, I think for the Comics Journal. It's an autobiographical comic and in common with many of my favorites this year, the protagonist is thoroughly unlikable (a bold move for autobiography!). Tomine is really good when he allows himself to be funny, and this book is very funny.

John Pham, J&K  (Chosen by Nicholas Burman for SOLRAD and Matt Seneca for the Comics Journal). I read this book this year and loved it. It depicts the somewhat surreal adventures of friends J & K and comes with oddball extra goodies--trading cards, a mini-magazine, and weirdest of all, a 5-inch 45 rpm record. It was published in 2019, but I didn't read it until January of this year.

panel from "Giving Thanks in 2020" by Eleanor Davis
 

“Giving Thanks in 2020”, Eleanor Davis (Chosen by Hillary Brown for the Comics Journal). This strip was published online by The New York Times on Thanksgiving. Brown wrote, "It’s not really fair to keep asking Eleanor Davis to turn herself inside out for our pleasure..." I'm not qualified to call Eleanor David the greatest living American cartoonist, but she's my personal favorite at the moment.

 panel by Emily Flake from the Nib

The Nib. (Chosen by Hillary Brown for the Comics Journal). The Nib publishes new political comics nearly everyday, by excellent cartoonists like Matt Bors, Emily Flake, Pia Guerra, Ruben Bolling, Jen Sorensen and many others. I read it almost every day. 

 Jim Woodring, And Now, Sir?Is THIS Your Missing Gonad?  (Chosen by Helen Chazan for the Comics Journal). This is kind of a minor work by Jim Woodring, which like calling an early piano concerto by Mozart a minor work. It is filled with enigmatic "gag" cartoons that stretch the reader's brain. This reader, anyway.

Paul Ragabliati, Paul at Home  (Chosen by Rob Kirby for the Comics Journal). I did a book report on this great book in December.  Like so many of the books on this list, it features an unpleasant protagonist. And like The Loneliness of the Long Distance Cartoonist, it is autobiographical. 

Yoshiharu Tsuge, The Swamp (Chosen by Matt Seneca and  Tom Shapira for the Comics Journal). This is supposed the first of several volumes of Tsuge's work to be published in English. It's some of his early work, and it many of the stories had the feel of earlier, pulpier stories. They often have obvious twists. But there is much to admire here, including the story "Chirpy." It's not as good as The Man Without Talent, though.

Kim Deitch, Reincarnation Stories (Chosen by Frank Young for the Comics Journal). I loved it, but I love everything by Kim Deitch. A minor Deitch book, but still utterly pleasurable.

Ruben Bolling, Super Fun-Pak Comix Reader (Chosen by Frank Young for the Comics Journal). I loved this collection and did a video about it in November. 

And that's it--everything that was listed on SOLRAD's and the Comics Journal's best of 2020 lists that I had read. The one omission from both lists that surprised me was Grip by Lale Westvind. This book was published in 2020 and certainly qualified. I reported on it here.

Recently Read Comics

It's been a while since I did one of these. Here are a few graphic novels that I have read lately.


Tiger Tea by George Herriman
Krazy Kat wasn't strictly a "continuity strip"; i.e. , there wasn't an ongoing story that went on from day to day. The "Tiger Tea" sequence was one long exception to this rule. Krazy decides to help Mr. Meeyowl, the catnip dealer, after his business collapses. She goes on a mission to retrieve an extra-strong variety of catnip called Tiger Tea, that turns her, when she drinks it, from this sweet passive being into an aggressive, pugnacious, powerful figure. And, as they say, hijinks ensue. This is a really classic sequence. I first read it when it was reprinted in an issue of RAW. The new book suffers from being overdesigned, but well worth getting. A great introduction to this classic strip.


Other Lives by Peter Bagge
This new graphic novel by Peter Bagge really deserves a longer review than the few lines I am going to give it here. As far as I know, this is Bagge's first graphic novel that didn't appear serialized in comics first. But really, I think we can reasonably say that Bagge has been writing graphic novels for a long time. Hate was, in effect, two long graphic novels about one character, Buddy Bradley. His earlier narratives were by format and, I think, by authorial inclination very episodic. What kind of thrills me about Other Lives is how unepisodic it is. Everything happens fairly quickly, and the plot threads are so intertwined that it couldn't be split into chapters particularly easily. But the best thing about Other Lives is how deftly Bagge deals with a theme that is both extremely topical and ancient, that of constructed identity.


The Walking Dead, written by Robert Kirkman and drawn by Tony Moore
I thought I'd try this out since it has gotten a ton of good press, and now is going to be a TV series. I won't say it sucked, but I don't understand why people think it's so great. It seems similar, but not superior, to other "zombie" stories; The Walking Dead is, at best, a competently done pastiche. (Maybe subsequent volumes get better.)


Cartoon Workshop/Pig Tails by Paper Rad
I'll get my "hipster" union card revoked for saying this, but I thought this was boring and pretty bad. Visually, it did nothing for me. I've seen Paper Rad videos that were awesome, and Ben Jones' solo art is really cool. But this little color comic was a chore to read and not that great to look at.


The Playwright, written by Daren White and drawn by Eddie Campbell
Campbell doesn't usually collaborate with other writers, but this was a good pairing. Instead of an ordinary comic, there is a barebones written narrative that tracks Campbell's watercolors. It is a comic in the sense that both the drawings and text need each other, but it reads differently than what you might be used to. The narrative is full of nameless characters, identified by their profession. The main character is the Playwright. He comes across as completely self-absorbed and isolated, lacking any empathy. Yet his plays are highly successful. Over the course of the book, though, the Playwright opens up a bit. We start to see deeper into him. The Playwright reminded me, in some ways, of certain stories by English writers like Malcolm Bradbury, David Lodge and William Boyd, but it's hard to put my finger on how.


Red Snow by Susumu Katsumata
Publisher Drawn and Quarterly has embarked on a mission to publish important early manga in the U.S., particularly those classified as "gekiga" or dramatic manga. One can see the influence of Yoshiharu Tsuge here. The drawing is really good. But the stories didn't grab me as much as those by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Still, they were pretty good and a refreshing alternative to most manga published in the U.S.


The Search for Smilin' Ed by Kim Deitch
So much of Kim Deitch's work hinges on demons (Waldo, the cat with a "1" on his belly is a minor sort) and aliens. But they also are intertwined with his real life, the real lives of various obscure showbiz figures, and the history of American popular culture. Do they fit together? Until reading this volume, I would have said no. But this story is one where Deitch tries to tie the various unruly strands of his many stories together. In a way, I almost prefer that these overlapping, nesting, and sometimes contradictory stories never really congeal, but The Search for Smilin' Ed is, like all of Deitch's work, a compelling and highly personal piece of work.


Beasts of Burden, written by Evan Dorkin and drawn by Jill Thompson
The idea of several dogs (and one cat) getting together to solve supernatural crimes is, well, pretty out there. It's not a concept that can sustain a lot of use. This book starts strong and gets harder to accept the further along you go. That said, there is a lot appealing here. Jill Thompson's art is fantastic and perfectly suited for this. The book is a pleasure to look at. My problem is, even though I was able to suspend my disbelief at first, it got harder and harder as it went along. But another problem is that the supernatural threats seemed very human. What might have worked better is if there were a world which only dogs could perceive that we humans were oblivious. And in fact, this is the case--a dog's sensorium is drastically different from a human's. That should have been played up more. The very first story in the book does this to an extent.


Catland Empire by Keith Jones
Great art, but the story seems just silly.


Black Blizzard by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
Only of historical interest. Tatsumi was one of the early "gekiga" artists, and this is one of the early gekiga stories. It dates from 1956, and the story is nothing special--a crime melodrama with a transparent "twist". But I guess stuff like this hadn't been seen in manga before. Apparently it broke ground. The art looks really rushed, and it was. The entire graphic novel (127 pages) was drawn in 20 days--no assistants. But as astonishing as that accomplishment is, it would be more meaningful if the book was any good.

More recently read comics are reviewed here.