The Best American Comics 2010 (The Best American Series) - Hardcover

NEIL GAIMAN is the critically acclaimed and best-selling author of the novels American Gods, Anansi Boys , and Neverwhere. Gaiman was the creator/writer of cult DC Comics horror-weird series The Sandman, which won twenty-four Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, including the award for best writer four times, and three Harvey Awards. He is also the author of several children’s books, including The Graveyard Book, winner of the 2009 Newbery Medal, and Coraline, an international bestseller that was turned into an animated film and released in 2009. Among his many awards are the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Bram Stoker Award. 

This yearly anthology is always something to look forward to, with its impressive editors, juicy forewords, and superabundance of comics genius between its two covers. Series editors Jessica Abel and Matt Madden start off with a brief history of the burst in comics' popularity and readership over the past decade; luckily for us, they include an extensive list of "Notable Comics" that didn't make the final cut. Gaiman, in turn, agonizes entertainingly over the accuracy of the title Best American Comics and finally suggests that the volume instead be called A Sampler: Some Really Good Comics, Including Extracts from Longer Stories We Thought Could Stand on Their Own. It's a wealth of fine storytelling: extracts from Lagoon, the gorgeously strange fairy tale by Lili Carré; Carol Tyler's great You'll Never Know; Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe; and Fred Chao's Johnny Hiro. Some stand-alone gems include Todd Brower and Steve MacIsaac's "Ex Communication," in which two bearish men meet for a drink and chat uncomfortably about what they've been up to since their split; Peter Kuper's two-page takedown of the Bush legacy in "Ceci n'est pas un comic"; and Gabrielle Bell's "Mixed Up Files." A thrilling and varied journey from start to finish.
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