The thing I find most constantly surprising about the BEST AMERICAN COMICS series by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is the attention to quality. Not just quality in regard to the comix selected. After all, that’s really something they cover in the title, isn’t it? What I’m always surprised by is the attention to quality in presenting that work.
If your interest in comix goes beyond the spandex genre and into how diverse comix are as a storytelling medium, then these books should definitely be in your collection. In its fourth year now, the editions have served as a sampler of what’s happening in American comix as selected by some of the top names in the industry; Harvey Pekar, Chris Ware, Lynda Barry and, this year, Charles Burns. Each of these guest editors have had a long and important involvement with the development of comix as an artform, but Burns is a personal favorite of mine so I’ve been looking forward to this edition in particular for nearly a year.