129 thoughts on “The International Best Comics Poll–Index and Introduction”

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2. I love this kind of stuff! Good list to start.

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4. Hmm… The list seems pretty America-centric; not that that is a bad thing but it’s good to make it explicit. Any comment as to what the global distribution of the contributors was (I guess most belong to the Anglo-Saxon comics tradition?)

5. We actually had a surprising number of lists from Europe, especially Italy. And there were a good number of lists which focused on manga. But the common denominator ended up being what the common denominator is….

6. Yeah, ’tis sad… I hoped no improvements over the infamous TCJ list and no improvements is what I get until now. This art form deserves to die an horrible death…

7. Well, you might find some of the individual lists more cheering at least….

8. Hey, waitaminit…you don’t like Jaime Hernandez, Domingos? How come? (I don’t think I’ve ever read any of the Locas stories, but it doesn’t seem like you should hate them…?)

9. The differences will become a bit more apparent with the publication of the Top 115. There are a dozen non-English European comics and a baker’s dozen of manga works. Additionally, there’s none of the fan-turned-pseudo-highbrow posturing that treats pop-culture comics before 1971 with affection, and views just about everything in that mode afterward with disdain. The list is also a lot less dominated by the Beat/counterculture attitude that treats “self-expression” as the highest goal, which is an aesthetic that lionizes confessional and other kinds of Surrealist-style material over just about everything else. Our consensus list is better than the TCJ one in just about every respect.

10. We need a list of the best-of best-of lists!

11. Well I’m gonna throw a tantrum if it happens that “The Fantastic Four” trumps Moebius, Schuiten & Peeters, Christin & Bilal, Junji Ito, Hayao Miyazaki, Tardi, Mezzo & Pirus… Kirby may have introduced innovations to the genre, it still is an adolescent artform. You don’t rate children’s songs with the same standards as a symphony – which doesn’t mean children’s songs cannot have an appeal, charm and value of their own…

12. Oh I wanna just add Fabrice Neaud and Jim Woodring to the little list I quickly whipped up above

13. WTF, mister Berlatsky, you haven’t read Locas? Get on it ASAP. One of the items on the list that has a fully deserved position

14. Jaime is a great draftsman, but that’s it (I don’t value draftsmanship for draftsmanship’s sake very high by the way). I never liked _Love and Rockets_.

15. I haven’t read Locas because the little bits I’ve seen haven’t done much for me…and I’m really ambivalent about Gilbert, which of course isn’t fair to Jaime, but there it is. I’m sure I’ll get to it eventually though….

    And we’ll get to the rest of the list soon enough! Your threats of tantrum do not scare me; my kid was colicky for his first few months, and if I could survive that….

16. It’s all about the characters man… The dialogue, atmosphere and psychology :]

17. I hope he’s doing well now!…

18. My son is now 7 1/2, and is really quite easy to deal with, thank you! I don’t even remember those first few months very well, honestly; it’s all a sleepless blur….

19. Noah: Jaime’s work is pretty different than Gilbert’s. You might like it… you might not. I really don’t have a handle on your tastes.

20. “Jaime is a great draftsman, but that’s it (I don’t value draftsmanship for draftsmanship’s sake very high by the way). I never liked _Love and Rockets_” The idea that Jaime is only a great draftsman is a cliche that might have made some sense in 1983 or so when his work was very callow. But over the years Jaime has given us some extraordinary stories like “Flies on the Ceiling” and “Browntown” and “Spring 1982” — these stories are wonderful pieces of writing, filled with complex characters, a dexterous ability to move back and forth in time to maximize the narrative effect, and an acute sense of dialogue. They also deal with a milieu — that of lower-middle class Mexican-Americans — that has been severely underrepresented in the arts, so they open up a new world of experiences. To not appreciate Jaime’s achievement is a major failure of critical judgement.

    I’ll reserve comment on the list as a whole till the entire thing is published.

21. “To not appreciate Jaime’s achievement is a major failure of critical judgement.”

    Or possibly a case of different strokes for different folks?

22. No, I think a good critic can appreciate talent even if the work doesn’t personally speak to them. There are lots of artists, writers and cartoonists whose work might leave me cold in terms of subject matter or their worldview but who I can still respect for their talent. Saul Bellow comes to mind, or Balthus or Wyndham Lewis: I wouldn’t deny their talent, even if there is not much there to stroke my fancy.

23. I’m actually contemplating an essay on this (subjective vs. objective critical appreciation.) I’ll just say for now that I don’t think talent or quality is quite the objective fact you seem to be arguing for, nor that it’s really separable from individual interests in quite that way.

24. ignus, I fully anticipate that NONE of the comic works I nominated will make the final cut. 50% were western-English (I’m American) and 50% weren’t. But I had a good time making my list, although I agonized over it like whoah. And I sent a disclaimer to Robert to that effect, as I suspect many did. Heh.

25. Ignus ought to be somewhat happy with my list: Tardi and Ito both made it, but no Kirby in sight.

    And I agree with Jeet about Jaime (and that there’s something objective about critical appreciation).

26. There’s a fairly large gap between “objectivity” and “subjectivity”–and there are alternatives to both approaches. That is, even if there is no concrete unassailable criteria for judging art, this does not automatically mean that you’re left with “different strokes for different folks”. Criteria for judging individual works tend to be defined by groups…or “the social”… not by the work itself or the individual onlooker. So, Jeet knows what “kinds” of things are appreciated by the social (or a particular interpretive community, a la Stanley Fish). So…even if he doesn’t particularly like something as an individual, he can say “it is good.”—This is based on a kind of broad social agreement (or a less broad agreement within an interpretive community) about “what kinds of things are good.” Thus, Jeet can disagree with himself (“I don’t really like it, but I know it’s good, anyway). None of this has much to do with objectivity…but it doesn’t have much to do with “what kind of art is good is purely subjective.” Even the belief that artistic judgments are subjective comes from the social (and the notion that there are objective criteria for judging art is probably social as well).

    Still, Jaime Hernandez’s work is pretty awesome.

27. Eric’s comment is one of those that makes me wish we had a “like” button. It’s also possible to care about, even love, a work of art for largely objective reasons, because you have learned to appreciate it based on those group-defined criteria, even if it doesn’t resonate with you in the fully subjective sense. We can form subjective as well as objective attachments to those group-defined criteria, just like we can to creative work itself.

28. For my own list, I tried to just go with “things I like” without trying to claim that there may not be “better” stuff out there. Nevertheless, the influence of the social no doubt came into my list whether I wanted it to or not. Knowing there’s vast quantities of stuff (esp. European and Asian comics) that I’ve never read cuts both ways. I had to just say, basically, “I don’t really know that much, so I can’t pretend to have any kind of objectivity on these matters. I’ll just list 10 comics I like a lot”—on the other hand, the social has dictated to me, to some degree, what I have read….leading to a list which is not purely from me, but from the social body that influenced what I’ve read in the comics millieu. A list of “best comics” has the illusion of having some “objectivity”–since it is not purely a single person’s list, but insofar as social consensus influences what we read and how we read it, such a list is likely to reproduce the social consensus that already exists…not give us some “objective” list of best comics (not that anyone was really making that claim).

29. I’m not interested in a discussion of Jaime’s work at this point. Thank you!

    I must add though that his inclusion isn’t the reason why I feel that, judging from the entries so far, the art form is sliding on the same spot for years and years now. I just happen to think that said spot isn’t exactly great… that’s all…

30. Aren’t “best of” lists almost inherently conservative though? That’s sort of Eric’s point about the influence of the social, especially in the aggregate…I’m not sure this kind of list speaks about the actual work being done in the art form or the potential of the art form so much as it does about the importance of the historical culture and subculture to shaping both interest in comics and that social consensus.

31. I think a list like this, which basically solicited as many responses as it could, cannot help but be conservative…as it relies on “opinions many people already have.” A “best of” list of a smaller group of “progressive/avant garde” practitioners and critics might yield a less conservative list—or we can all just read Domingos’ list as authoritative:-)

32. That’s exactly why I extract conclusions from the list. If better work is being done why do people continue to ignore it? Something is wrong.

    For instance: would a “best of” film list ignore Ingmar Bergman because he was not born in the U.S.A., did no satire, did not work for children?

33. Odds are it wouldn’t ignore Bergman — but it might ignore Brakhage, and would probably ignore, say, Švankmajer, unless as Eric points out, you culled a smaller group of practitioners and critics who are less influenced by the historical culture of film and who cultivate attention to the most ambitious and unusual work.

    It’s just that I don’t think Bergman is a particularly brave or edgy or surprising choice for a best-of list in film, even in the US. Film has a more diverse and less subcultural culture, both now and historically. The idea that film can and should be avant-garde, even the MOST avant-garde medium, has been widely accepted for a long time — it’s a new idea in comics and is far from widespread. Thanks to subtitles, foreign-language films are widely available and have their own, well established and rather fashionable sub-culture within film — that definitely isn’t true for European comics here in the US although I really want that to change!

    We’re not really disagreeing, are we? Just inflecting the same thing differently? Whether or not people pay attention to any given work has more to do with the culture than it does with the work, and there’s a lot of work that doesn’t get attention in comics because it doesn’t fit the subculture. There’s work that doesn’t get CREATED because it doesn’t fit the subculture — in the US this applies to overtly feminist work, for example. There’s so little work in US comics that’s as overtly feminist as Jong or Atwood are in literature, that it’s just not part of the culture here. I’m not sure whether it is in Europe — feminism doesn’t seem as strong a voice in comics period as it is in literature both here and in Europe.)

    I’m not even holding my breath to see how many women cartoonists period (that is, ones not writing about feminist themes) made this list — I am curious, though, to see how many people included a woman cartoonist in their top 10. But their representation will say something to me about the status of women in the (sub)culture; not the ability of women cartoonists or the appropriateness of comics as a medium for exploring feminist themes.

34. The list might also be conservative because the participants were only asked to name 10 comics/series/books/etc. I think that alone will flatten out the possibilities. My list would have been significantly different in flavor if I were listing 20 works. I wanted to include more manga and bd and experimental work, but also, how could I not put in more conventionally “best” works like Peanuts and Krazy Kat. With only 10 spots available…

35. “in the US this applies to overtly feminist work, for example. ”

    Edie Fake! Damn it!

    Also Ariel Schrag and Dame Darcy and (in the past) William Marston.

    There’s other folks too, but yes, it’s marginalized in ways it isn’t in other mediums. It’s not an accident that Edie and Darcy have very strong connections to the fine art world.

36. I am pretty sure I left Peanuts out specifically because it was too conventional. I wrestled with it, though. I didn’t even consider Krazy Kat. Not my thing.

    I’ve got a finger crossed that Lynda Barry will make this list. But I’m breathing while crossing my fingers.

37. I didn’t mean there was NO feminist work! Sorry! But there’s not a lot…and there’s a lot more QUEER feminist work than plain feminist work. (what’s the word for that?) There’s a real shortage of powerful second-wave works, because of the status of comics during the second wave.

    But I recently read someone refuse to be referred to as a “woman cartoonist” – she’s “just a cartoonist”, which to me is cowardly. Women and women’s issues aren’t far enough along period for women to have that attitude. Gender is still pretty saturated with “defaults.”

38. I agree with what Eric B. wrote above, that there is a vast intermediate range between “objective” and “subjective”. Fish’s idea of an “interpretive community” is a good way to think about this, as is the idea of the “intersubjective” advanced by Michael Polanyi and taken up by F.R. Leavis. Or Eric’s own term, “the social” is useful. We don’t read as isolated individuals but rather as embedded members of various reading communities, be they fan subcultures or academia, or simply as “readers” informed by reviews and the opinions of friends.

    The list (so far) is very conservative but that’s natural if you are canvassing a large body of readers. The list of an individual can be quirky but once you involve scores of readers, you’re going to get some sort of conservative communal consensus. But I think any final judgment on the list should wait for the total thing to be released.

39. We’re not disagreeing in any way, Caro. When I say that “something is wrong” I don’t mean that something is wrong with those who voted, I mean that something is wrong with the insularity of the subculture and, consequently, the insularity of the market. I don’t favor the avant-garde, by the way. Some of my choices are probably as conservative as those in THU’s top ten.
    As for Feminist comics, don’t forget the F Word Project: Five Feminist Fables for the Twenty-first Century (for instance: Maureen Burdock’s _Marta & the Missing_). Also: Patricia Seaman’s _New Motor Queen City_.

40. I’m DEFINITELY not holding my breath for Maureen Burdock to make this top ten list! Although that would be cool. Seaman I don’t know so I will check her out…thanks!

    Burdock also ties into Noah’s point — feminist cartoonists tend to have strong connections to the fine art world. Female cartoonists who lack those ties tend to be more reticent to self-define as feminist, let alone to tackle feminist subject matter. That has a lot to do with the differences in those cultures.

    I think the inability to get European comics to a wide American audience is a major factor in insularity. But I don’t know a good solution. My personal solution is to transcribe the comic into an email and send the email to friends who speak the language, but that tends to work best when there’s not a lot of text…

41. Caro: Edmond Baudoin (who voted!) or, better yet, Fabrice Neaud, would be obvious choices to any comics top ten worth its salt, but I bet that Hergé and Morris and Franquin would be chosen instead, so, it’s not just the European problem or the Argentinian problem or the Japanese problem (is a top ten without Yoshiharu Tsuge worth anything? I don’t think so). The major problem, as I see it is the children’s comics problem. No one in the art world or film world would choose a shallow film or a decorative painting for a top ten. In comics such things seem to be mandatory (pardon the exaggeration).

42. The art world is weird because it essentially has no children’s component; it’s all highbrow, basically. But children’s books like Alice in Wonderland and genre work by people like Poe or Philip K. Dick or (ahem) Shakespeare are rated quite highly in the literary world. Films too…googling quickly to the NYT’s best 1000 movies ever made, there’s an awful lot of genre and even kids stuff — Toy Story is on there, The Wizard of Oz (which I think is very highly rated in general), even Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Time’s 100 Best includes ET, It’s a Wonderful LIfe, The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars….

    I think children’s work has been more important for comics than for many other mediums, but work for children isn’t generally excluded from the canon in film or prose as far as I can tell.

43. And Jeet, you know that’s my brother you’re agreeing with there, right?

    The Berlatskys! There is no escaping them!

44. Noah: thanks for reminding me of the dumbing down, but aren’t you confusing 10 with 1000? As for the Shakespeare joke, well, even if I knew it already (you have no idea of how many times I’ve heard it before!) I always laugh…

45. Only 10 with 100 for the Time’s list….

    Okay, here’s AFI’s ranked list. Wizard of Oz at 6. Singin’ in the Rain at 10. And god help me Schindler’s List at 9; obviously not a children’s film, but (and this is the important part) a total and complete piece of shit.

    And Star Wars at 15….

46. Having worked for the AFI, well…I prefer to make no comment on the institution’s relationship to adulthood.

47. You worked at the AFI? When did that happen?

    That list is pretty horrible, I have to say. ET? Dances with Wolves? For pity’s sake….

48. George Stevens, Jr, who founded the AFI, lives in DC, so there’s a branch here…Silverdocs is a joint project of the AFI and the Discovery Channel, but I worked for the AFI part of it, as well as for the local art theater they run. The LA office was pretty heavily involved in most things we did.

    There are some fantastic people working there, but institutionally it could stand some maturation. It’s kind of an unholy mix of commercial art and non-profit business.

    I’m guessing there’s a lot of “people we know” about that list. The “American film community” to the AFI would be people working in the industry in Hollywood or New York, with few critics and probably no academics. That list is made by the same folks who vote for the academy awards.

49. What a joke of a list! It’s the dumbing down at its most potent. It’s sad that this sorry level is the best we can expect in comics.

    So, now the list lacks just one title. I wonder what it is?_Jimmy Corrigan_?

50. I just received in the mail the Italian edition of a book that’s definitely top ten material (or should be, of course, even if I didn’t vote for it): _Un tal Daneri_ by the recently deceased Carlos Trillo and one of the two or three real geniuses who worked in comics: Alberto Breccia.

51. Domingos: Are they specific Breccia works you would recommend. Ones that are hopefully available in French (since there doesn’t seem to be any in English)?

52. ————————–
    Domingos Isabelinho says:

    Yeah, ’tis sad… I hoped no improvements over the infamous TCJ list and no improvements is what I get until now. This art form deserves to die an horrible death…
    —————————-

    Talk about your unintentionally-revealing Freudian Slips! I imagine that should have read, “I expected no improvements over the infamous TCJ list”; but, like an anti-porn crusader can’t get enough examples to show his righteous disgust, what a disappointment it would’ve been if the list had wholly met your approval…

    ——————————
    Jaime is a great draftsman, but that’s it (I don’t value draftsmanship for draftsmanship’s sake very high by the way). I never liked _Love and Rockets_.
    ——————————

    In all fairness, that’s a pretty defensible attitude; both Jaime’s and Gilberto’s narratives in that title — even when focused on the folks in Hoppers and Palomar — are sprawling; lack the unity and concentrated force of a work like “Watchmen”… (Not that you’d like the latter, of course. The thought process would be “Superhero costumes + genre tropes = adolescent power fantasies.”)

    ——————————
    Jeet Heer says:

    …I think a good critic can appreciate talent even if the work doesn’t personally speak to them…
    ——————————-

    Absolutely! That should be a “separates the men from the boys” test for critics. (What’s the P.C. version of that, “separates the adult persons from the younger persons”?)

    ——————————–
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    The art world is weird because it essentially has no children’s component; it’s all highbrow, basically…
    ———————————-

    Hadn’t thought of that! I’d guess the way art — meaning painting and sculpture here, I take it — is “consumed,” via quiet contemplation, would appeal less to kids than something with a narrative?

    I tried Google’ing “museums for children,” to see if there were exceptions; “The 10 Best Children’s Museums” at http://www.parents.com/fun/vacation/us-destinations/the-10-best-childrens-museums/ shows all crammed full of gadgets, dinosaur skeletons, and activities; with few objects purely for aesthetic appreciation, and those toy-like: dolls, exotic puppets…

    Focusing the search to “art museums for children” helped! Among the finds…

    ———————————-
    “National Gallery of Arts Kids… helps children develop interpretive and analytical skills through interactive discussions of paintings and sculpture in the National Gallery of Art
    ———————————-
    The site ( http://www.nga.gov/kids/ ) is filled with activities, but this old fogy actually thinks they can serve to heighten appreciation:

    ———————————-
    FACES & PLACES encourages children of all ages to create portraits and landscape paintings in the style of American naive artists. By combining visual elements borrowed from more than 100 works in the National Gallery’s permanent collection, this two-part interactive activity offers an overview of American folk art of the 18th and 19th centuries…

    “Dutch Dollhouse — Mix and match colorful characters, create decorative objects, and explore the kitchen, living quarters, artist’s studio, and courtyard of this interactive 17th-century Dutch House.
    ———————————-

    “Top Ten (eleven, in fact) Online Art Museums for Kids”: http://www.kidsart.com/tt0101.html . Some of the links are defunct; still, there are finds such as those for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which in one site page ( http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/justforfun.asp ) features:

    ———————————-
    How Van Gogh Made His Mark
    This interactive exploration of four landscape drawings introduces young visitors to the creative genius of Van Gogh the draftsman.

    Romare Bearden: Let’s Walk The Block
    See Harlem street life through the eyes and imagination of Romare Bearden. This exploration of his famous collage, The Block, includes a guided tour, music by the Branford Marsalis Quartet, and activities designed for kids, parents, and teachers.

    Look for the Symbol in the Sculpture
    Sculptures are easy to figure out when you know where to click. Enter to learn more.
    ———————————-
    …and much more!

    ———————————–
    Domingos Isabelinho says:

    I just received in the mail the Italian edition of a book that’s definitely top ten material (or should be, of course, even if I didn’t vote for it): _Un tal Daneri_ by the recently deceased Carlos Trillo and one of the two or three real geniuses who worked in comics: Alberto Breccia…
    ———————————–

    I’m sure that it would deserve a spot; the work that earns your admiration is pretty much uniformly excellent. As for its lack of representation on “Best of” lists, I heartily agree with this reason put forth:

    ———————————–
    Caro says:

    …I think the inability to get European comics to a wide American audience is a major factor in insularity…
    ————————————

53. “Hadn’t thought of that! I’d guess the way art — meaning painting and sculpture here, I take it — is “consumed,” via quiet contemplation, would appeal less to kids than something with a narrative?”

    I think it’s more historical and cultural than formal. Kids love art (children’s books, comics, illustrations, etc.) The portion of art for kids is just separated off from fine art for various cultural reasons.

54. I’m not sure that kids need a separate museum of art aimed at them, since in my experience even very young kids can get something out of a visit to a regular museum. They might not appreciate the art as much as an adult would but they can respond to some of it.

    About the list so far, it does seem fairly conventional. All the titles listed so far were also on the TCJ top 100 list (Jaime’s books were under different names because the Locas stories weren’t then published under a single title). I suppose it is news that Watchmen is so high in this list (it was #91 in the old TCJ list). But I think the old list was more accurate in that Watchmen, while undeniably a popular book with a large historical impact, is deeply flawed work.

55. Flawed?? FLAWED??!!

56. Call me narcissistic, but might my name be corrected from “Creekbum” (!!) in the list of contributors?? (I’m waiting for the full list to appear before offering any more substantial comments …)

57. Well, what I feared has begun to come to pass. We have a grand parade of mostly the usual really well-known works developing.
    Mind, I agree that these are all great works, and if I had acted less impulsively, a couple more of them might have made my list.
    But any time you use amorphous criteria like “best”, you end up with a flavorful yet familiar stew.
    I suggest that another survey take place, with more considered categories. This might include categories like “most neglected work,” “best unconventional comic”, or “best use of black and white”. These are just possibilities. The idea would be to create a list of worthwhile works that goes beyond the usual suspects. Let’s face it, anyone who doesn’t know MAUS and Watchmen hasn’t been at it long or hasn’t bee paying attention, and there are other works equally deserving of merit. Are Starman and Squadron Supreme less meritorious than Watchmen as examinations of the superhero narrative? Are the positions on WWII taken by To the Heart of the Storm, Yossel and Barefoot Gen as profound as that of MAUS?
    These are the sort of questions I’d like to see addressed in the context of these polls, and rarely do.

58. He he: let you and him fight!

    Mike: that “hoped” instead of “expected” slip is indeed revealing. Once upon a time I found a little romantic charm in being alone against the world (ah, the recklessness of youth!).

    Derik: here you are: http://tinyurl.com/3gnu6dq

    The page has books in French and Italian (Che is in German, other original publications are in Spanish). The French ones are: Mort Cinder (written by Oesterheld, no less!; if this is book one I wonder where book 2 is?), Les mythes de Cthulhu (I highly recommend this book and I don’t like fantasy!), L’etérnaute 1969 (again with Oesterheld; this book had to be finished in a hurry because its political message was too left wing for the shallow mag in which it was meant to be serialized), Rappport sur les aveugles (I must buy this one!), Le Coeur révélateur et autres histoires extraordinaires (…is an absolute masterpiece!).

59. Diane, you need to do your own poll!

    I think the lists of individual contributor choices might address some of your concerns. They’re pretty fascinating, and quite diverse, and many people commented at some length on their choices. The 115 list (which we will have several essay about) also is more far ranging.

    Jeet, failing to appreciate the merits of Watchmen is a major critical weakness.

    Nah, I’m just teasing you. I love Watchmen, and think it deserves its place (it was on my list), but it’s nice to see you and Domingos agree on something.

    Corey…really sorry about that. I’ll go fix it now.

60. >>Flawed?? FLAWED??!!>>>

    Problems with Watchmen–the super short version-

    1. Incomprehensible solution to a labyrinthine plot that, at first blush, seems to be completely controlled and brilliantly-executed, but whose “solution” doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny

    2. Hypocritical use of exciting violence and violent tropes to tell a story of the effects of fascism and violence (how effective is a message of anti-fascism if that message is not perceived by huge chunks of its target audience? please see: Snyder, Zach)

    Very disappointed in the top ten so far–I think a lot of what we’re seeing here is the same phenomenon as movie preview audience response cards–asking someone to tell you to rate something, considering some imagined audience, can cause a kind of flattening to the middle. Likewise, asking for “the best” causes us to reach for “the best” as it has stood before.

    It always seemed to me that Watchmen’s chief virtue was being BETTER than other super hero books, thinking through real consequences of a very fantasy-tied concept. In other words, it benefits from comparison, not necessarily standing on its own. My two cents, anyway.

    Still holding out some hope for the full list.

61. In case you don’t know it: # 1 Krazy Kat, # 2 Peanuts. # 3 is Jimmy Corrigan, I guess…

    Sean: “It always seemed to me that Watchmen’s chief virtue was being BETTER than other super hero books, thinking through real consequences of a very fantasy-tied concept. In other words, it benefits from comparison, not necessarily standing on its own.”

    Agreed. Plus: it has some nice formal devices.

    Derik: Mort Cinder Vol. 2 is in another page (I didn’t notice that there are 4 pages about Breccia on Amazon.fr, sorry!).

62. >>it has some nice formal devices.>> Agreed!

63. Well, to be fair to Robert, he didn’t just ask for “best”. He asked for best, most significant, or favorite.

    Some of the items on my list are favorites, some are best, and some I added because they were significant.

    YMMV of course.

64. Thanks, Domingos, maybe I’ll try the Lovecraft or Mort Cinder books next time I order from Amazon.fr.

65. Domingos: can you send a link to your list of classics? I remember seeing it on your site but can’t find it now. It’s a good list, very quirky and personal (as things should be). But I don’t remember seeing any items on it that were notably superior to the comics you are dismissing now (Krazy Kat, Jimmy Corrigan, etc.). Although I of course agree with you on Watchmen.

    @Noah. “Jeet, failing to appreciate the merits of Watchmen is a major critical weakness.” Actually, Watchmen is a good example of my argument that you can appreciate the artistry of a book without necessarily liking it. I have no fondness at all for Watchmen but I recognize that Moore and Gibbon put in an enormous amount of artistic intelligence into it and that it’s had a huge impact. So it belongs on this list, although my personal preference would be for it to be lower (ideally much lower) on the list. But I understand why it’s on the top 10.

66. >>Well, to be fair to Robert, he didn’t just ask for “best”. He asked for best, most significant, or favorite.>>

    Oh course, you’re right, and that’s what I took the opportunity to do with my list. I cheated, actually, and pretty much listed books that are my “favorites” in the sense that they point to other possible directions for comics to head. In other words, un-mined territory. Of course, as a consequence it also makes me look like a schizophrenic critic with no agenda or fixed criteria (or, you know, no critic at all, which is also fine by me.) Have to say it was awful tempting to include some things that have a little more critical cachet. The social impulse is strong indeed…

67. Jaime is a great draftsman, but that’s it (I don’t value draftsmanship for draftsmanship’s sake very high by the way). I never liked _Love and Rockets_.>..

    Mike:
    There is SO much more going on in most cartoonists’ work than only draftsmanship—and you ignore Jaime’s stories, making me wonder if you have actually read any of them.

68. Noah, not taking you and yours to task specifically. there’s some great information, and fascinating discussions, arising from this poll and I’m proud to be part of it. And at least one of my contenders, Pogo, has already made the cut!
    Generalizing is a trend in polling I’ve been railing against for decades (in general, that is). As for doing my own…hmmm….I wonder what that would look like… going to let it bubble for a month or so and then figure out what to do about it. That’s my usual approach to these things.

69. Oh sorry Mike, that was Domingos. I was reading the many responses backwards and you always seem to post the entirety of your google searches, ha ha, so I lost track.

70. Oh, and Domingos, I think you’ll find your guesses overly optimistic. I anticipate further howls of rage from your direction on the morrow….

71. I like Domingos’ guessing game. I agree that Peanuts and Krazy Kat will make the top 3, but I’m holding out hope that Jimmy Corrigan doesn’t. Maybe Crumb will sneak in there? That might be even worse in Domingos’ mind (why I’m trying to guess D’s attitudes is beyond me).

    To answer Diana— Yes, Squadron Supreme and Starman are appreciably worse interrogations of superheroes

72. This doesn’t seem like the right place to say this, but I don’t know that there will be a better one, so here goes nothing:

    Robert, Noah–Thank you for assembling this poll and putting it out here for everyone to see. I’ve been a reader of the Sight & Sound polls since I was teenager and as an avid, happy student of the alternate cultural history that kind of broad-ranging criticism can provide, it’s always been a disappointment that comics didn’t have something similar to offer. The Journal and those Smithsonian books have been great, but there’s something fascinating (and arrogant, and audacious) about those Sight & Sound lists, and I honestly wouldn’t have believed that today’s internet culture could’ve produced something like this.

    I can tell from these comments already that this list is going to produce a lot of backlash and told-you-so and this-is-fucked and what-an-idiot essays. Some of those essays will be great pieces of writing. One or two of them will probably be insightful as hell. Cats like Jeet, Domingos–hell, Noah, you too–are going to say things about each other in the comments that will piss the other one off and alienate everyone reading it. That’s all well and good. I can’t imagine that a huge swath of people will be totally happy with the list–that’s just not the way the comics internet works–but that makes me even more grateful, and impressed, that the whole thing was pulled off in the first place. I’ve got no problem going right back to only reading the critics that I like tomorrow. But every ten years or so, I think it would be a pretty wonderful thing to get together with a bunch of people who seem to genuinely despise one another so we can all argue whether we think George Herriman should be considered the better, the best, or the bestest of all time.

    Thank you for providing the starting point for that journey. It seems incredibly unlikely anyone else was going to.

73. “I can tell from these comments already that this list is going to produce a lot of backlash and told-you-so and this-is-fucked and what-an-idiot essays.” Let me state for the record that the list, so far, is very good. It’s quite a conservative list in that the top ten will have a lot of overlaps with the top ten of the old TCJ list but that’s all to the good since it shows that there is a genuine consensus about what the masterpieces of the field are, a consensus that can be seen in two disparate lists over a decade apart. And as I said while Watchmen is much higher on this list than I’d like, I understand why people consider it a major work in the field and voted for it. This is a case where my personal tastes are at odds with what is clearly a consensus view across comics, and I’m happy to defer to that consensus.

    Having said all that,once the final list is released I reserve the right to publish a what-an-idiot essay.

74. Jeet: here’s my list (Jimmy Corrigan is in there; a detail from a KK drawing is my blog’s header): http://tinyurl.com/3qex92v

    My problem with this list (hence: with the comics milieu’s insular subculture) is more profound than a “this one should be included, that one should be excluded” kind of thing: I defend a totally different aesthetic (in other words: a totally different philosophy). It’s so different in fact that any discussion is futile.

75. Domingos Isabelinho:

    Thank you for your list! I’ll go through it and see if I can broaden my perspective. Although when you recommended Breccia above, I decided to read the first stories from “Les mythes de Cthulhu”, and I can’t say I liked it very much.

    The positive: Decent, if old-fashioned horror stories. Art by someone with obvious drawing skills, that seems to do what it sets out to do.

    Here’s a page from it: http://www.rebas.se/temp/Breccia_Cthulhu.jpg

    My main beef with it is that it hardly even feels like a comic to me. To me, “Les mythes de Cthulhu” is a collection of illustrated short stories rather than a comic. It feels similar to the wordy EC Comics storytelling that Krigstein fought against, believing that you could tell the same stories better visually.

    And while obviously professional, the art itself doesn’t do much for me. The style varies a bit between chapters, but generally, I get a kind of 70’s photo-traced comics vibe, but with an added scratchiness and blotchiness that for me obscures the story rather than enhances it. I’d understand it as a stylistic choice if Breccia would, say, leave Lovecraft’s otherworldly monsters half-hidden, but he occasionally draws silly children’s book-style monsters while hiding furniture behind blotches, making it hard to see what’s what.

    For me, Junji Ito’s doll-faced characters, or even Jim Woodring’s Frank, in all its cartooniness, evoke more Lovecraft-like horror and wonder than Breccia’s Lovecraft stories.

    I’d be interested to hear what you liked about it. Maybe there are qualities I just don’t get. I suppose my strong preference for having comics be told mainly through images is the main thing that ruins it for me. (Taking a quick look at Breccia’s other works, it seems like I might like them better. Mort Cinder has been on my reading list for a while.)

76. So Junji Ito is number 1? Alright! Nah, I predict Peanuts. Meh.

77. Some twitter predictions here.

78. If only Ito had done a series of holiday cartoons …

79. We are seeing a major bias towards works created by someone for most or all of their creative life. Assuming #1 is what we all know it will be, 6 of the top 10 will be newspaper comics (or Locas) that consumed virtually all of their creators’ time. So naturally those “works” will seem grander than single books or stories. If we had been allowed to vote for Daniel Clowes’s entire corpus, rather than single stories (we were even discouraged from voting for anthologies like Eightball in favor of Ghost World, etc), or the entire output of R. Crumb, I bet this list would look quite different.

80. I’m happy enough to have Crumb and Clowes out of the top ten, thanks. (Unless they make #1.) When you see the final 115, though, you can check and see if all votes for all the works of Crumb/Clowes/whoever would have put them in the money.

    I think the Far Side’s art is pretty great, actually. Very idiosyncratic, and perfect for what it does. I’d have been pleased to see it make the top ten, though it wasn’t on my list.

81. “To me, “Les mythes de Cthulhu” is a collection of illustrated short stories rather than a comic…you could tell the same stories better visually.”

    I’m so very eager to hear what Domingos says about this that I’m just pulling it out to remind him. :)

82. Noah, I look forward to reading your piece on Peanuts.

83. Spoiler alert!

84. Humph. We’ll see how good a prognosticator Matthias is on the morrow, I guess.

85. RSM kind of gave it away when he said that you would be doing the #1 essay.

86. I missed that! Well, anyway, my lips are sealed.

87. Caro: “[Martin:]“To me, “Les mythes de Cthulhu” is a collection of illustrated short stories rather than a comic…you could tell the same stories better visually.”

    I’m so very eager to hear what Domingos says about this that I’m just pulling it out to remind him. :)”

    I’m going to write a post about it. It will be posted next Sunday. Thanks for your interest, Caro!…

    Martin:

    I couldn’t care less for Lovecraft’s Cthulhu, but I have a lot of respect for the work of Breccia, especially during the seventies. Sorry if I don’t elaborate any further (Suat wants me to write about Breccia for quite some time and maybe I will, but not before November or December even). The only thing that interests me in Breccia’s Cthulhu (my only problem with Breccia is that we didn’t share the same taste in literature) is the problem of the Kantian sublime… You said that he didn’t solve it well… I disagree: it’s exactly the blotchiness you talk about that does it.

88. Well, to be fair to Robert, he didn’t just ask for “best”. He asked for best, most significant, or favorite.

    I really do hope this is something that will be emphasized as the individual lists are presented. I will say for the record that I would have refused to participate if I’d been required to come up with a list of “best” comics. I only caved because Noah insisted they could just be favorites.

89. I think at least half the people say it’s a favorites list in their comments, so I think you’ll be covered, Melinda.

90. Sorry if that sounded super-defensive, by the way. It’s just that I have… “issues,” I guess you could say.

91. No worries, Melinda! I think the issue of favorites vs. best is pretty interesting, so it’s definitely worth raising.

    Jeet, it is a best comics list, not a best comics creators list…so it makes sense that maybe grander efforts were chosen while artists who focused on more smaller pieces might be underrepresented. It’s worth noting, though, that McCay, for example, did have substantial work outside Little Nemo….

    I think there are several strong biases in the list; towards American comics and towards male creators are definitely two of the biggies that I found somewhat disappointing (though we’re going to be talking a bit about some of those lacunae in the essays on the 115 next week.) It’s kind of insane that there’s no manga in the top ten considering that country’s comics tradition, for example.

92. Sentimental, slick or cute mainstream appeal rules the day here.
    I don’t begrudge Peanuts, Herriman or Nemo. I didn’t count them or Barks myself because I prefer adventure-based styles.
    Calvin and Hobbes is fun but I don’t think so, Pogo is dated and visually static. Maus is more remarkable for its structure than its art. The FF is not Kirby’s best by a long shot, nor Mad Kurtzman’s, IMO, and the writers doing the appreciations skew to what they consider to be the writing to the detriment of their consideration of the art in a visual medium in the inadequate descriptions (or no descriptions) of the artist collaborators of Mad and Watchmen.

93. Then, maybe I’m just bummed because only one of my choices made it into the top, Jaime Hernandez. But otherwise it seems like a list that could have been seen in Time magazine, endorsed by the dominant partriarchy.

94. James–

    What about my paragraph on Gibbons did you not feel was up to snuff?

95. Maybe this is a can of worms: I think Watchmen could’ve been just as great with some other artists, but not without Moore. Few ever mention the other artist in Watchmen, Joe Orlando, as being intrinsic or important to the book. And, as much as I love Eddie Campbell’s art in From Hell, it too could’ve been carried off with equal success by another. Obviously, the feel would’ve been different, and this doesn’t apply to all comics, but the writer is really the central creator with these books.

96. “Alan Moore, the book’s scriptwriter and acknowledged mastermind…”, and “Illustrator Dave Gibbons does a magnificent job of realizing his collaborator’s vision. Moore may be the mind behind Watchmen, but Gibbons is its extraordinarily deft hands.”

    The thought that Gibbons put into realizing Moore’s vision in perfectly on model characterizations who act convincingly within likewise perfectly articulated three dimensional environments is described as the work of “deft hands.” Imagine, if you will, if Moore had drawn Watchmen himself, and wonder if it would be on this list.

97. I think there are few if any artists careful and exacting enough to have done what Gibbons did on Watchmen. In fact I prefer Gibbon’s work with Moore to the writer’s collaborations with other artists, although also Kevin Nowlan contributes greatly to the Jack B. Quick stories. Similarly, I prefer Gaiman’s work when it is adapted by P. Craig Russell…it is because Gibbons, Nowlan and Russell are all cartoonists, rather than illustrators.

98. I think Moore’s own artistic background often serves him very well with his collaborators; he tends to work with interesting people and play to their strengths…as opposed to say someone like Grant Morrison, who has much more trouble…. I think Moore’s collaborations with Totleben and Bissette were pretty great.

    Moore’s detailed scripts are legendary, and he’s obviously a very strong artistic presence…but he also seems committed to giving his artists equal credit, so it’s clear he sees it as a collaborative venture.

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100. Watchmen still resonates, it would seem, for good or ill.

101. <<>>

     Yes, and it means something that both Moore and Kurtzman are more explicit than most comics writers, yet both respect the storytelling contributions of their visual collaborators more than their less explicit fellow writers, as well as text-oriented pundits.

102. Charles Reece:
     Maybe this is a can of worms: I think Watchmen could’ve been just as great with some other artists, but not without Moore. Few ever mention the other artist in Watchmen, Joe Orlando, as being intrinsic or important to the book. And, as much as I love Eddie Campbell’s art in From Hell, it too could’ve been carried off with equal success by another. Obviously, the feel would’ve been different, and this doesn’t apply to all comics, but the writer is really the central creator with these books.

     Hand me the can opener: The first obvious comment is that (Gibbons)they did the work and someone else did not, so that we have no quantifiable way of judging the replaceabilty and dispensibilty of artists. The comment is text-centric and absurd. Imagine the work done by the servicable Dick Ayres, or Barry Winsdsor Smith another capable artist? Perhaps give Dame Darcy a shot.
     The Watchman comic is the product of more than one person’s creativity. Even if the writer has drawing ability, he is not in the end the one who supplies the nuiances to the text.
     In fact, why not just do away with the artist and just write the outlines and we’ll imagine the blanks. Use lots of imaginative language and we’ll just call it a novel?

103. I’m no so sure it’s text-centric — at least, in a general way, but it’s Moore’s text in this instance. There were a lot important collaborators to make Dr. Strangelove what we can now see, but surely the “most equal” among them was Kubrick. Terry Southern’s great, and really funny, but that’s the best film he was ever associated with. Lee & Ditko’s Spider-Man is worth remembering largely due to the latter’s art, not the former’s goofy writing. Maybe it’s absurd, but in my counterfactual world, I wouldn’t mind seeing Ditko collaborating with Southern instead of who got in this one. But I’m not saying that Watchmen (or From Hell) would’ve been any better with different artists. I just think it plausible that they would’ve been just as good, because of what’s most important to the book. Is Watchmen more like the rest of Moore’s work or Gibbons’?

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107. Hey Domingos, you still writing that post about illustrated short stories v. comics or did I miss it? :D

108. Hi Caro:

     I missed my deadline by more than a week! Sorry again, Robert! But it will be posted soon, I think. It’s not exactly about that (or, it’s not only about that), but I don’t want to say anything about it… It’s not a big secret or a big deal or anything, but anyway…

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112. ———————-
     Noah Berlatsky says:

     I think the lists of individual contributor choices might address some of your concerns. They’re pretty fascinating, and quite diverse, and many people commented at some length on their choices….
     ———————–

     I’m seeing — now that the individual lists are starting to be displayed — that a few have comments attached.

     My question is, were you supposed to have made the comments when you sent your choices in? I got the impression you’d be asked to comment later…

     ———————-
     James says:

     …Oh sorry Mike, that was Domingos. I was reading the many responses backwards and you always seem to post the entirety of your google searches, ha ha, so I lost track.
     ———————–

     Yeah, I’m an “info glutton,” and think at least some others might feel likewise…

     ————————
     …and it means something that both Moore and Kurtzman are more explicit than most comics writers, yet both respect the storytelling contributions of their visual collaborators more than their less explicit fellow writers, as well as text-oriented pundits.
     ————————

     In Eddie Campbell’s thankfully resuscitated blog, he writes, “I didn’t know Alan drew thumbnails for all the From Hell chapters, believe it or not. Here are a couple of details from the spreadsheet for chapter 8…followed by the finished versions of the pages. Remember, I never saw these thumbnalis; they were just Alan’s way of keeping track of all the movements.”

     See the July 26-27 entries at http://eddiecampbell.blogspot.com/ . Another writer would’ve given the artist those thumbnails to more-or-less follow; I’m taking an educated guess that Moore felt it would’ve inhibited the artist, inclined them to follow the approach in the sketches…

113. Many people sent comments along with their lists.

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