Anne Elizabeth Moore Series Editor
Houghton Mifflin. 320pp. $22.
Reviewed by Joshua Mandelbaum
1.13.07

Series editor Anne Elizabeth Moore, in her foreword to The Best American Comics 2006, says, “Cartooning has always been popularly characterized, somewhat dismissively (although not entirely inaccurately), as the irresponsible urge to create silly little drawings.” She then illustrates how since the 1970s cartooning has been about so much more and how comic artists have had an uphill battle for respectability, which serves to highlight why this edition, the first of its kind in the Best American series, is such a landmark. Guest editor Harvey Pekar portrays a bleak economic reality that literary comics facing, shrinking comic book outlets and distribution problems. Pekar, however, does a decent job of explaining the strength he saw in the work he selected. Ultimately, Best American Comics 2006 showcases a broad range of work in terms of both storytelling and artistic style.

Although Moore and Pekar have chosen a number of big names from the comic community such as Jaime Hernandez, Chris Ware, Joe Sacco, and R. Crumb—who all deliver pieces worthy of their reputations—the collection is dominated by emerging and mid-career artists, as well as a few veterans of the’70s alternative comic scene such as Kim Dietch and Gilbert Shelton.

The best comic stories, whether superhero or literary are the ones that could never have worked in any other form. Best American Comics 2006 is full of such stories ranging from the traditional narrative to surreal fantasy, from personal memoir to quirky tableau. The art runs the gamut as well, from the rough line drawings in Ester Pearl Watson’s “Busted” to the crisp lines and sharp black and white contrast in Alex Robinson’s “Thrity-Three” to the meticulous detail in Joe Sacco’s “Complacency Kills” and R. Crumb’s “Walkin the Streets.” Readers new to comics may find that the art alone will compel them to read or not read certain stories. For instance, I have always found Lynda Barry’s crowded panels and simplistic looking characters elicit a reaction similar to nausea that I cannot explain. Despite the constant critical acclaim her work receives, I was not able to even read her piece in the anthology.

The best work in BAC combines strong storytelling with art that complements the narrative. The simple lines and hand drawn panels of John Porcellino’s “Chemical Plant/Another World,” allow Porcellino to have his narrator and his mosquito truck swallowed by the complex workings of large chemical plant. Panels are removed in Ander Nilsen’s “The Gift,” about a young American traveler, a wounded American helicopter pilot, and an armed teenager in a foreign land. The open structure and the sparseness of the dialogue emphasize the physical and emotional isolation the characters are experiencing. Other highlights include cover artist Lilli Carré’s “Adventures of Paul Bunyan & His Ox, Babe,” a simply drawn re-imagining of the folk hero as a sensitive working man, lost in the world due to his large size; Rebecca Dart’s surreal, wordless fantasy, “Rabbithead,” in which the narration splits into several different threads and then converges around it’s central character and story; and David Heatley’s “Portrait of My Dad,” in which the artist creates several small narrations to paint a rather large and moving picture of his father and their relationship.

The edition also contains some excellent short pieces such as Chris Ware’s “History of Comics,” Olivia Schanzer’s “Solidarity Forever,” and Hob’s “The Supervisor.” Whether intentional or not, these micro stories serve as welcome interludes between the longer stories, while illustrating the breadth of storytelling that a comic artist can accomplish on just one page.

The weakest pieces in the anthology are also the most politically moralizing. Lloyd Dangle’s “A Street Level View of the Republican National Convention,” fails to surprise the reader, casting the protestors as heroes and the police and Republicans as villains. While it would be nice to think the story is that easy, it is never the case, and pretending the opposite is the stuff of bad literature. Dangle’s story is particularly simplistic in its message when compared to Joe Sacco’s journalistic account of American soldiers in “Complacency Kills.” Sacco’s piece brings humanity to both sides of the Iraq conflict, leaving the reader with more to think about than how bad Republicans are or how awful the war is. Similarly, Seth Tobocman, Terisa Turner, and Leigh Brownhill’s beautifully illustrated “Nakedness and Power” falls flat by turning their initially compelling nonfiction piece about the role of women in brining about political change in Kenya and Nigeria into a invective against the Bush administration. The narrative looses it focus and end up relying too heavily on the reader agreeing with its politics.

Overall, The Best American Comics 2006 is filled with well-structured, stunning work. It would have been interesting to have some of the stronger mainstream superhero pieces included and a few readers might be upset by the exclusion. However, Pekar makes a good point in his introduction that it is “absurd” that the comics in the sci-fi and fantasy genre should be the dominant comics, while the genre does not dominate in any other medium. What he and Moore have put together on this inaugural edition of BAC is a fantastic guidepost for all the work eclipsed by the shadow of superheroes.

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