As you may know, Matt and I have been the series editors for the Best American Comics (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) for the past six years. That means that, every year, we tried to get our hands on every comic published by a North American cartoonist (which is the USA, Canada, and Mexico), or anyone who makes his or her home here, and then read them all to sort out the best 100 or so comics of the year. (Of course, we couldn’t possibly see everything, but we tried.) These best 100-120, we then handed on to the year’s guest editor, who picks his or her favorite 25-30, which go into that year’s volume. Then, Matt and I got to make our list of everything else we think comics readers should have read that year. It’s called the Notable Comics list, and it comprises virtually all the comics we sent to the guest editor that weren’t picked, as well as a number of others that we think are noteworthy for various reasons, but that we didn’t send to the guest editor.
Over the six volumes we’ve edited, we’ve tried to shine a spotlight on this list. As most guest editors point out in their introductions, the selection process, when it gets down to which stories make the cutoff for the volume and which don’t, can be alarmingly arbitrary. Often, we and the guest editors would love to include 50 stories in the published volume, but there just isn’t room. But when you combine the notable list with the stories that are printed, it might be a little more possible to talk about representing what’s we actually think is best in a given year. Also, when looking for good comics to read, why limit yourself? We’ve always hoped readers will delve a bit into the list to find more great stories once they finish reading BAC.
Below, we’ve reprinted the full list of the Notables from the 2013 volume, which was guest-edited by Jeff Smith. We’ve also added extensive links and images of the covers to intrigue you and to help you track the works down.
You may have noticed the use of past tense in the preceding paragraphs. Matt and I have stepped down as series editors as of the 2013 volume. It was a fabulous run, but time to do something else with our lives! We wish the best of luck to new series editor Bill Kartalopoulos, and hope maybe he’ll want to run his Notables here next year.
A quick note to educators before you dive in: be sure to check out Dr. Katie Monnin‘s extensive lesson plan for BAC13 which she recently posted on the Diamond website.
Derik A.Badman, Untitled (August 2011)
Seymour Chwast, The Canterbury Tales
Darwyn Cooke, Richard Stark’s Parker: The Score
Warren Craghead III, “A Rabbit As King of the Ghosts” Phoebe
Anya Davidson, “Barbarian Bitch” Kramers Ergot 8
Sofia Falkenhem, “Can I Sit Close Like This?” Rabid Rabbit 14
A.G. (Glynnis) Fawkes, “Thinking About Dust” Minimum Paige
Charles Forsman, The End of the Fucking World, parts 1-7
Eliza Frye, “The Lady’s Murder” Regalia
Julia Gfrörer, “Black is the Color” Study Group 12
Myla Goldberg and Jason Little, “Invisible” Bomb
V A Graham and J A Eisenhower, Scaffold
Seamus Heffernan, Freedom No. 1
Gilbert Hernandez, Fatima: The Blood Spinners issues 1-2
Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez, “Open the Moon” Locke & Key one shot
Peter Hoey and Maria Hoey, “Occurence at Pont Neuf” Coin-Op
Luke Howard, All Coons Look Alike to Me: the Life of Ernest Hogan, Father of Ragtime
Leo Hussey and Conor Stechschulte, Untitled (Tliug) Weird
Jeff Jensen and Jonathan Case, Green River Killer
Jeff Lemire, The Underwater Welder
Paul Madonna, “Regret Trilogy” All Over Coffee
Benjamin Marra and Michael Deforge, “Faunamancer Domination” Smoke Signal 10
Jason Martin and Calvin Wong, “Scenes from the Fire” Papercutter #17
Dan Mazur and Jesse Lonergan, Cold Wind
Jesse McManus and Austin English, Spider Monkey
Tom Motley, “Al Jaffee Homage Dept” Tragic Strip
Mari Naomi, “Smoke in Your Eyes: Dragon’s Breath” The Rumpus
Josh Neufeld, “Bahrain: Lines in Ink, Lines in the Sand” Cartoon Movement
Eric Orner, “Avi & Jihad” The Rumpus
Harvey Pekar and Joseph Remnant, Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland
Ramon K. Perez, adapted from a screenplay by Jim Henson and Jerry Juhl Tale of Sand
JT Petty and Hilary Florido, Bloody Chester
John Porcellino, “The Strip Outsider” Ecotone 12
Liz Prince, Joe Quinones, and Maris Wicks, “The Stuff of Fluff” Minimum Paige
Peter Quach, I Am A Racist (And So Can You)
Matt Rota, “Romance” Rabid Rabbit 14
P. Craig Russell, Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde
Joe Sacco and Chris Hedges, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt
Yumi Sakugawa, “Seed Bomb” Slake #4
Wilfred Santiago, “The Story of Roberto Clemente”
Gabby Schultz, “Sick” Gabby’s Playhouse
Robert Sergel, “Control” Minimum Paige
Grant Snider, “The Book of the Future” The New York Times Book Review
Vincent Stall, Things You Carry
Conor Stechschulte, The Amateurs
Jillian Tamaki, Supermutant Magic Academy
Matthew Thurber, “Infomaniacs” PictureBox
Matthew Thurber and Benjamin Marra, “The Transformers of Life” Smoke Signal 10
Jeremy Tinder, “Mothman, Lake Michigan” Elephant Ear
Ben Towle, The Oyster War, Chapter 4
Various, Suspect Device #2
Various, Cartoon Crier
Malachai Ward, Real Life: Ritual issue 1
Andy Warner, The Man Who Built Beirut
Lale Westvind, “Potent Impact” Chromazoid
Elaine M. Will, Look Straight Ahead
Eric Williams, Wow You Are A Hungry Bottom
Comments
6 Comments to Best American Comics: the Notable Comics of 2013
by MariNaomi
On October 8, 2013 at 6:30 pm
Well this makes me very happy. Thank you so much!
by Yumi
On October 11, 2013 at 9:02 pm
Thank you so much, Matt & Jessica! Looking forward to seeing the rest of the anthology when it comes out.
by Gina
On October 11, 2013 at 11:21 pm
Could you provide any information where we could buy some of these? Many of them strike me as stuff you wouldn’t get on an average Wednesday next to Spiderman and Archie.
by Jessica
On October 12, 2013 at 8:59 am
Very true, you probably can’t. That’s the idea behind the links, though. The intention is to link the artists’ names to their websites or blogs or whatever, and the titles of the books to somewhere you can (hopefully) purchase or view them. If you can’t find a way to buy them, contact the authors.
Happy hunting!
by Jessica
On October 12, 2013 at 9:00 am
You’re more than welcome. Thanks for the great reads.
by Pat Shewchuk
On October 25, 2013 at 4:12 pm
Thanks for including us in your list, and thanks for including the website link too!
best,
TCF