Honorable mentions: Lucky in Love, Dark Rain, Wilson, The Bulletproof Coffin, The Unwritten (also vol. 2), Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour.
Not new in 2010 and therefore not eligible, but back in print for the first time in 10 years and worth buying: Cages.
#6: Brian Wood, DMZ Volume 8, Hearts and Minds
After years in the war zone that was once Manhattan, journalist Matty Roth’s bad decisions finally catch up to him in this volume. He makes one wrong step too many and loses his soul. Along with Northlanders Volume 4, The Plague Widow, this book cements Brian Wood as one of the best writing any kind of comic today. Also good from Brian Wood this year: the reissue of Local.
#5: Brian Michael Bendis, Scarlet
Brian Michael Bendis has given us the origin story of a revolutionary and promised us a revolution. We’re only a few issues in, but so far he hasn’t pulled back from that extreme commitment. I hope he never does.(I also wrote about issue #2.)
#4: David B. and Pierre Mac Orlan, The Littlest Pirate King
This late entry from Fantagraphics elbowed its way on here after I’d published the initial list. A children’s tale with a deeply messed up, traumatic ending and beautiful art.
#3: Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library #20: Lint
I hadn’t loved what Chris Ware had been doing over the last couple of volumes of Acme Novelty Library. Frankly, not many of his fans did. Read the self-deprecating product descriptions on his Drawn and Quarterly page sometime (“flat,” “slow,” “always dreary”). With Lint, though, he’s done something not only affecting but politically relevant by taking us inside the mind of a man something like George W. Bush.
#2: Joe Sacco, Footnotes in Gaza
Joe Sacco wove together descriptions of present-day Gaza with accounts of two smallish war crimes from fifty years ago to create arguably the most important comic of 2010. Ten years after the Holocaust, young Jews act out a version of the same dark drama.
#1: Joe Kelly and JM Ken Niimura, I Kill Giants
Childhood escapes from troubled home lives into fantasy are hardly unexplored territory, but Joe Kelly and JM Ken Niimura executed this one perfectly. I called it the Bridge to Terabithia of comics and I meant it. (Also very good by Kelly this year: Four Eyes.)
