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Five For Friday #34—Anthologies
posted June 17, 2005
 

Recommend Five Anthologies
1. Zap
2. Weirdo
3. Raw
4. Kramer's Ergot
5. Lapin

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Andrew Mansell

1. McSweeney's
2. Smithsonian Book of Comic Strips
3. The Comic Strip Century (available as a 20.00 re-issue thru B&N!!!!!!)
4. Top Shelf Asks the Big Questions
5. Rosetta 2

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Chris Pitzer

Taboo
Fly in My Eye
Monkeysuits
Bizarros
And.... Wait for it...
The Projects. (Telstar or Superior!)

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Alan David Doane

Kramer's Ergot 5
Zero Zero
The Top Shelf anthologies
Comics Festival!
Origins of Marvel Comics

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Benjamin Bayliss

Michael Chabon Presents: The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist (Dark Horse)
Grendel: Black,White,and Red (Dark Horse)
The Big Book of Losers (DC Comics)
Bizarro Comics (DC Comics)
The Bush Junta (Fantagraphics Books)

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Jeet Heer

1. The Chicago Tribune sunday section, circa 1920-1940. Every week: Frank King, Harold Gray, Chester Gould, Milton Caniff, etc.
2. Mad, under Kurtzman's editorship -- the springroot of modern American satire.
3. Arcade -- the one edited by Spiegelman and Griffith. The cream of the crop of first wave underground comics.
4. Twisted Sisters: A Collection of Bad Girl Art, edited by Diane Noomin. (Also, to a lesser degree, the magazine anthology from Kitchen Sink books of the same name). An intense reminder of how many great women artists have done underground art.
5. Drawn and Quarterly -- under the editing of Chris Oliveros. The best overview of the post Love and Rockets generation. Especially interesting because you can see the evolution of Oliveros's aesthetic, with a greater attention to design and production values each time the anthology is relaunched.

As I said, this is just stuff that hasn't been mentioned. If I had to list the absolute best ever, it would be: Mad, Arcade, Weirdo, Raw, Drawn and Quarterly. Some runner-ups: Snake Eyes (very underrated: a fusion of Raw and Weirdo), Blab, Anarchy Comix (the best political anthology ever).

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Dave Knott

Drawn & Quarterly
Heavy Metal (before the Eastman buyout)
SPX
Raw
Rosetta

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Marc Sobel

Mome
Crisis Magazine
SPX (esp 2001-02)
9/11 Anthologies
Little Lit

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Bart Beaty

The current best in five languages:

1. Ego Comme X (French)
2. Nosotros Somos los Muertos (Spanish)
3. Strapazin (German)
4. Quadrado (Portuguese)
5. Black (Italian)

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Pat Dean

1. Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics
2. Mysteries In Space: The Best of DC Science Fiction from Fireside Books
3. Legal Action Comics #2
4. BOP #1
5. No specific issue, but select Dark Horse Presents issues were very solid.

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Nick Mullins

In no particular order:

• Nosotros Somos Los Muertos
• Lapin
• Kramer's Ergot
• Drawn and Quarterly (especially the initial run and the May 2000 Vol. 3)
• Raw

And because they haven't been mentioned, I liked the Viz anthology, Pulp, and Rosetta 2. And some of the 1970s and 80s Heavy Metals were good.

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