Go, Read: Tony Isabella’s Rejection Of Best American Comics

The longtime mainstream comics writer and editor, early blogger and creators rights advocate Tony Isabella wrote a blog post that's been passed around a bit objecting to the idea of the Best American Comics anthology, basically for holding that title and not encompassing as many of the best works from the more genre-focused groupings of comics that he feels should be included, works that Isabella thinks are better than many of those in the book. If you scroll down a bit to Derf's response in the comments, that's a pretty solid response to the excesses of Isabella's arguments.

I'm recommending the article for a couple of reasons. One is to indicate that this point of view is still very much out there, that the rise of art- and alt-comics over the last several years still does bring with it the occasional pushback of this type. Alt-comics tend not to be dismissed the way they were 20 years ago as a generation grows up that had a wider reading appetite for comics and as those comics find their own commercial footing. "No one reads them and therefore they suck" used to be an important argument in their denigration, believe it or not.

What I usually see these days is a furious fan whose tastes include the latest, best mainstream material and, say, Kate Beaton's comics that feels every proper list selecting best works needs to include works of all types, a comics United Nations of genres and approaches. I don't agree with this approach. I'd like as many lists as possible as idiosyncratically constructed as possible, and lets see which ones are more convincing. From my own perspective as someone who thinks far too much about such things, I think mainstream comic book and independent comic books are consistently better crafted than they ever were, but I still think for the most part that the vast, vast, vast majority of good to great books are landing from the alt-/art- tradition. I'd kill for a primetime Fantastic Four-level superhero comic; I just haven't seen one since I started doing this. It's not specific to that genre in that form, either; I haven't seen a first rank newspaper adventure strip in my lifetime.

I also thought worth mentioning Isabella's viewpoint in contrast with AO Scott and Manohla Dargis having a discussion about 2015 in film, where they feel genre hits like Creed and Mad Max: Fury Road really were right there with any other kind of film in terms of excellent cinema. It gives me hope that we'll notice when our comics of this type are this good. For many people, they already are.
 
posted 9:25 pm PST | Permalink
 

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