Tag Archives: Best Comics Poll

#5: Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, Art Spiegelman

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In 1986, Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns both appeared in serialized form, and Art Spiegelman released the first volume of Maus. The graphic narrative has had many high points over the years—the graceful aesthetics of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland; the modernist playfulness of George Herriman’s Krazy Kat; the rise of the counterculture in Robert Crumb’s Zap Comix—but 1986 was remarkable.

At the time the American comic book scene was dominated by angsty mutant teenagers and anthropomorphic animals: aardvarks, turtles, hamsters. Miller and Moore’s works reinvented the superhero genre, using it to question rather than reify authority. But as serious, dark, and dystopian as those books are, they didn’t change the landscape of graphic narrative the way Maus did. Spiegelman wrote about the Holocaust. In doing so he demonstrated that comics, which always labor under the onus of being dismissed as children’s fare, can grapple with the weightiest topics. Maus made it possible for the Alison Bechdels, the Joe Saccos, the Marjane Satrapis—current authors who address complex political and social issues—to thrive.

What makes Maus a particularly complex and rewarding political narrative is that it conveys both the horror of the Holocaust and the ways in which that horror ripples down through generations. Part of the vastness of the Holocaust is that it didn’t really stop with the end of World War II. Trauma was transmitted through to the children and grandchildren of survivors. Spiegelman relates his father Vladek’s stories about his life in Nazi-occupied Poland and his survival in Auschwitz and Dachau, but this is as much Art’s story as it is Vladek’s. Spiegelman uses two parallel narratives to capture the multi-generational valence of trauma: in one, Vladek’s story, we get a picture of the fear and misery associated with life in the Jewish ghettos and the Nazi concentration camps; in the other, a meta-narrative about Art interviewing Vladek in order to write Maus, we see how the Holocaust continues to affect their lives.

Each of these parts is important. The historical narrative is a powerful account of the Holocaust. There are many reasons why comics proved a perfect medium to capture Vladek’s experiences. Spiegelman’s stark black-and-white images have the unwavering lens of a documentarian; he uses the graphic medium to render the Nazi’s atrocities visible. We see Jews hanging from the gallows, German soldiers bashing children against walls, concentration camp prisoners forced to light other prisoners on fire. Moreover, the striking visual metaphor of representing Jews as mice and Germans as cats adds intriguing iconic layers to the narrative.

The contemporary narrative works as a framing device, but it would be a mistake to see it only as a delivery system for the “main” narrative. Maus is as much a question of how we continue to live after trauma as how we survive it. When Vladek tells his own story, he is heroic. He is not only a survivor but practically a Hollywood star. “People always told me I looked just like Rudolph Valentino,” Vladek tells Art. Vladek in the narrative present, however, is hard to live with. Many of the same qualities that make Vladek the hero of his own story make him something of an antagonist in Art’s story. Thrifty becomes stingy, determined becomes stubborn, cautious becomes paranoid. Vladek has carried those traits with him long after they are needed for survival. Now, they get in the way of his relationships. In a short prologue to the first book, a young Art falls down and is teased by his friends. When he runs crying to his father, Vladek doesn’t console Art. Instead, he says, “Friends? Your friends? … If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week … then you could see what it is, friends!” He hasn’t managed to move out of the concentration camps. But is Art allowed to hold this against him?

And this is ultimately the brilliance of Maus. Had Spiegelman only told the one narrative, his father’s survivor’s tale, it would have been horrifying but sterile. It would have felt like a history lesson. By allowing his characters to be real people—frail and heroic, petty and generous—the Holocaust narrative comes to life.

Jeffrey Chapman is an Assistant Professor of English at Oakland University.

NOTES

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman received 28.125 votes.

The poll participants who included it in their top ten are: Edmond Baudoin, Corey Blake, Scott O. Brown, Bruce Canwell, Jeffrey Chapman, Hillary Chute, Barry Corbett, Mike Dawson, Joshua Dysart, Larry Feign, Jason Green, Patrick Grzanka, David Heatley, Jeet Heer, Bill Kartalopoulos, T. J. Kirsch, MariNaomi, Jason Michelitch, Eugenio Nittolo, Jim Ottaviani, Joshua Paddison, Marco Pellitteri, Giorgio Salati, Matthew J. Smith, Nick Sousanis, Matteo Stefanelli, Ty Templeton, Kelly Thompson, and Qiana J. Whitted.

Joshua Dysart specifically voted for RAW, which resulted in a 0.125 vote for Maus.

Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale has its origins in a three-page story by Spiegelman from 1972. The story, also titled “Maus,” was initially published in the comic-book anthology Funny Animals, edited by future Crumb and Ghost World film director Terry Zwigoff. The “Maus” short has been reprinted a number of times, most recently in Breakdowns/Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!, a hardcover collection of various Spiegelman comics shorts published by Pantheon Books.

After the original “Maus” was published, Spiegelman reconceived the material. In 1981, he published the first chapter of the current Maus in the second issue of RAW, a comics anthology he edited with his wife Françoise Mouly. (Mouly is presently an art director for The New Yorker magazine.) All but the final chapter of Maus was serialized in RAW between 1981 and 1991.

In 1986, Pantheon Books published a book collection of the first six chapters subtitled “My Father Bleeds History.” It was a critical and commercial success. It also received a National Book Critics Circle Award nomination in the category of Biography/Autobiography. Maus was the first comics work to receive recognition from this awards program.

In 1992, Pantheon published a book collection of the remaining chapters of Maus, including the heretofore unpublished final chapter. It was subtitled “Part II: And Here My Troubles Began.” This collection was also a critical and commercial success. Spiegelman again received a National Book Critics Circle Award nomination for Biography/Autobiography. He also won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction.

In 1993, with awards presented for work published in 1992, Spiegelman and the completed Maus received a special Pulitzer Prize. It was the first (and to date only) Pulitzer given to a comics work outside the Editorial Cartooning category.

The book is a mainstay of high-school and college English courses. It can be purchased in either the two paperback collected editions or as a single hardcover that combines the two paperbacks. These editions can be found at virtually any bookstore or online retailer. Prospective customers should note that bookstores frequently stock the book in the Judaica section. One can also find the book in the biography section of virtually any public library.

–Robert Stanley Martin

Best Comics Poll Index

#6: Little Nemo in Slumberland, Winsor McCay

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Winsor McCay spoke the saddest and greatest last words of any cartoonist. (Number two is Osamu Tezuka: “I’m begging you, let me work!”) McCay lived to draw; his greatest fear, he often said, was of losing that ability. On a July evening in 1934, the 65-year-old cartoonist called downstairs to his wife, “It’s gone, Mother! Gone, gone, gone!” He had just suffered a stroke that paralyzed his right side. Shortly afterwards, he suffered a second stroke, from which he never recovered.

His first thought when the stroke paralyzed him, the last thought he was able to articulate, was that he had lost his drawing hand.

Many cartoonists, even many great cartoonists, find drawing a chore. But McCay loved to draw. He lived to draw. He built a side career as an animator so he could draw even more. Each Little Nemo strip overflows with more careful, lovely illustration than most of us could produce in a lifetime. McCay crowded his strips with duplicates, clones, and herds of identical figures; he couldn’t think of any pastime more fun than drawing sixty kangaroos or a hundred children in clown suits. Figures stretch and warp and bend; the panels themselves strain to accommodate the artist’s imagination, tipping over and reforming into weird new shapes.

This strip, of all strips, could never fill less than a full Sunday page. It’s wild and robust but strangely delicate, as if a strong breeze, or Mama calling from the kitchen, could dissipate McCay’s fine-lined, Art Nouveau fairyland.

This is what McCay loved so much, this Fabergé egg of a comic strip. He took pen in hand and sent readers tumbling into a shifting universe of princesses, dragons, elephants, hot-air balloons, ornate palaces, darkest wildernesses, walking beds, dreams that enter the waking world, and waking worlds that turn into dreams. At the end of each page Little Nemo wakes up and cries MAMA! And it’s gone.

Shaenon Garrity is an editor at Viz Media and the creator of the webcomic Narbonic. She writes about comics for comiXology, Otaku USA, and other publications.

NOTES

Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay received 25.5 votes.

The poll participants who included it in their top tens are: Eric Berlatsky, Noah Berlatsky, Jeffrey Chapman, Hillary Chute, Seymour Chwast, Brian Codagnone, Corey Creekmur, Kathleen Dunley, Joshua Dysart, Jackie Estrada, Shaenon Garrity, Geoff Grogan, Danny Hellman, Kenneth Huey, Jones, one of the Jones Boys, Abhay Khosla, Sean Kleefeld, Chris Mautner, Joshua Paddison, Marco Pelliteri, Hans Rickheit, Matt Seneca, Matteo Stefanelli, Joshua Ray Stephens, Matt Thorn, and Mack White.

Hillary Chute specifically voted for the newspaper comic strips of Winsor McCay, which was counted as a 0.5 vote towards Little Nemo in Slumberland’s total.

Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland was a newspaper strip that was first published on October 15, 1905. The original run continued until April 23, 1911. There were two revivals. The first of these ran from April 30 to July 26, 1914. The final run of the strip was published between 1924 and 1927.

The strip is in the public domain. As such, there have been many competing book collections put out by publishers. The best, least expensive introduction (as well as the collection that does the most justice to the original published page sizes) is Dover Publications’ Little Nemo in the Palace of Ice, which retails for $14.95. Click here to view it on Google Books.

–Robert Stanley Martin

Best Comics Poll Index

#7: The Locas Stories, Jaime Hernandez

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For better or worse, American comics has been an art dominated by its characters. Even the most uninterested of Americans if asked about comics would, no doubt, think of characters rather than artists or titles: Garfield, Superman, Spider-Man, etc. The tradition holds an equal stable of character pairs: Batman and Robin, Archie and Veronica, Charlie Brown and Snoopy. If the pair of Maggie Chascarrillo and Hopey Glass, the protagonists of Jaime Hernandez’s Locas, have not entered this popular pantheon, it is perhaps because of their shorter history or, due to their cursing and having actual sex (sometimes with each other), their lack of an “all ages” audience. Or maybe it’s because, unlike my other examples, Maggie and Hopey are dynamic individuals, rather than static icons.

Almost all of the Maggie and Hopey stories have originally appeared in Love and Rockets, the anthology series Hernandez produces with his brother Gilbert. Over a 30-year period, he has done something quite rare with his famous pair: he has built up their lives as a massive, unfolding narrative. Since their introduction in 1981, Maggie and Hopey have aged and their world has grown. Unlike most other comics, these stories exist in time—not just in the passing time of their reality-based world, but in the passing time of the characters themselves. Like Frank King’s Gasoline Alley (and few others), the characters age over the course of the series (although not quite in real time). Rather than maintaining the status quo in endless repetition, Hernandez makes change a defining element of the series’ trajectory.

First seen as a teenage punk, by the time of the most recent stories (last year’s Love and Rockets: New Stories v.3) Maggie, the character given the most attention, has passed her 40th birthday and her life has changed as much, if not more, as it’s stayed the same. In tracing the lives of his characters, Hernandez does not offer a simple chronology of events; his narrative style in many ways echoes the reality of making friends. We learn about Maggie like we learn about our friends: stories come out over time. We are there for some of the big moments but miss some of them, too. Years later we hear a childhood story or some small anecdote that fills in a missing piece, a missing clue to their actions and personality. Part of Locas’ power is this sense of Maggie, in particular, as a friend or acquaintance. We are not privy to all her thoughts and actions. We see her this week, but then lose touch for a few months, or even a few years of blank times and secrets. It is often as telling what Hernandez leaves out as what he puts in.

The stories Hernandez tells are grounded in a contemporary reality (one that, unlike most comics, acknowledges race, sexuality, and class) but are also willing to touch on a host of modes and genres. The early stories are a little too rooted in science fiction-esque adventure, and a recent story delved too long into nostalgic superhero tripe, but for the most part the shifts into the fantastic feel fully integrated with the real emotional drama (and comedy) of his characters, all of whom live and die, love and lose, work and play, and go about their lives in a way that has clearly provided decades of reading pleasure for more than just this fan.

Throughout the series, Maggie struggles with her sense of self-worth, her ever-changing relationships with family and friends, and more recently her aging and the passage of time (I think it no coincidence that recent stories delve back into her childhood and revisit a number of relationships from her past). With the accumulation of time (and pages), Hernandez is increasingly able to wring emotional weight from small moments and allusive reference in a way less expansive works cannot accomplish. The intertwining threads become more prominent with re-readings as brief mentions early in the series become full-grown stories years or decades later. Hernandez has created a sense of history (albeit fictional) in Locas that is unparalleled in any other comic.

A project like Hernandez’s gains effect from the way its physical manifestation exists in a time similar to the narrative. Rather than experiencing the characters’ lives in a single unified chunk that compresses and smooths over the changes of time (like a novel or film), Locas as a series of publications and Hernandez as an artist have both grown along with the narrative content. The youthful adventures of Maggie and Hopey are the youthful drawings and writings of Hernandez and the youthful expressions of the “alternative” comics scene. As Maggie ages, as Hernandez refines his work, so too have the publications grown along with the changing realities of the comics market to be one of the last serialized “alternative” comics from the era Hernandez (and his Love & Rockets co-creator/brother Gilbert) helped found.

All these narrative pleasures would be lost without Hernandez’s clean visuals, a stripped-down amalgamation of influences from the comics of his youth. Examples include the stark contrast and framing of Alex Toth and the stylized cartooning of Harry Lucey, Bob Bolling, and other Archie artists. His style is never ostentatious, and over the years his line has simplified, tones are rarely used, and only two stories have appeared in color. He is not afraid to make use of many of the tropes of comics for both comedic and serious purposes. Of particular note are the breadth of his character designs and the skill he shows in depicting his characters’ aging faces and bodies. His images not only clearly convey the story, they add to its impact.

For readers unfamiliar with the material, the earliest stories are not the best entry point (as is the case with many long-running series), so I’d recommend The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S., the second volume of Fantagraphics’ most recent series of reprints. This volume includes the early masterpiece “The Death of Speedy,” which gives a better feel for Hernandez’s more mature stories.

Derik Badman is a artist, critic, and web developer. His blog and comics can be found at MadInkBeard, and he regularly writes about comics at The Panelists. He did the tech work and theme customization on the current Hooded Utilitarian site design, and he occasionally contributes to the site as well.

NOTES

The Locas Stories by Jaime Hernandez received 24.5 votes.

The poll participants who included it, in whole or in part, in their top ten are: Jessica Abel, Deb Aoki, Michael Arthur, Derik Badman, Eric Berlatsky, Matthew J. Brady, Sean T. Collins, Corey Creekmur, Mike Dawson, Andrew Farago, Jenny Gonzalez-Blitz, Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, Nicolas Labarre, John MacLeod, Matt Madden, Chris Mautner, Ray Mescallado, Jason Michelitch, Andrea Queirolo, Martin Rebas, Charles Reece, James Romberger, Joshua Rosen, Marcel Ruitjers, Noah van Sciver, Betsey Swardlick, Kelly Thompson, Matthias Wivel, and Douglas Wolk.

Derik Badman, Eric Berlatsky, Sean T. Collins, Jeet Heer, Nicolas Labarre, Martin Rebas, Charles Reece, and Matthias Wivel voted for The Locas Stories.

Jessica Abel and Matt Madden voted for the entirety of Jaime Hernandez’s work.

Charles Hatfield and Ray Mescallado voted for the story “Flies on the Ceiling.”

Chris Mautner cast his vote for “Browntown” and the two-part story “The Love Bunglers.”

James Romberger voted for “Spring 1982.”

Marcel Ruitjers voted for “The Death of Speedy.”

Noah van Sciver voted for The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S collection.

Douglas Wolk voted for the Love and Rockets stories of Jaime Hernandez.

Deb Aoki, Michael Arthur, Matthew J. Brady, Corey Creekmur, Andrew Farago, John MacLeod, Jason Michelitch, Andrea Queirolo, Joshua Rosen, Betsey Swardlick, and Kelly Thompson voted for Love and Rockets, the anthology series Jaime Hernandez produces with his brother Gilbert Hernandez, and where almost all of The Locas Stories originally appeared. These votes were counted as a 0.5 vote each towards The Locas Stories’ total.

Mike Dawson voted for Love and Rockets, but he singled out the stories “Flies on the Ceiling” and “The Death of Speedy,” so his vote was counted entirely for The Locas Stories.

Jenny Gonzalez-Blitz voted for Love and Rockets, but she singled out the story “Flies on the Ceiling,” so her vote also went entirely to The Locas Stories’ total.

The Locas Stories began with the story “Mechan-X” in Love and Rockets #1, self-published by Jaime Hernandez and his brothers (also fellow contributors) Gilbert Hernandez and Mario Hernandez in 1981. Fantagraphics Books reprinted the issue with a new cover in 1982. (Fantagraphics’ flagship publication is The Comics Journal, for which Jaime and/or Gilbert had produced work as contributing artists since at least 1980.) The first Fantagraphics issue also started a Love and Rockets periodical series that has continued in various incarnations to this day. The current version is Love and Rockets: New Stories, which appears annually. The fourth issue is currently scheduled for release in September.

Fantagraphics has actively reprinted material from Love and Rockets in book collections since 1984. To best understand their current publishing plan, please go to this page, titled “How to Read Love and Rockets,” on the company’s website. As Derik Badman indicates in his essay above, the best book with which to start reading The Locas Stories is probably The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S. This contains the stories “The Death of Speedy,” “Spring 1982,” and “Flies on the Ceiling.” It also includes this writer’s favorite, “Tear It Up, Terry Downe.”

–Robert Stanley Martin

Best Comics Poll Index

#8: Pogo, Walt Kelly

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Lenny Bruce will always get credit for having house-invaded the Fifties, but the satirists who threw the bricks through the front window and gadflied the powerful were saloon comics like Mort Sahl, folkies like the Kingston Trio and the Limelighters, that sublimest of television shows, Rocky and Bullwinkle (still state of the art “kids” teevee), and three cartoonists: Jules Feiffer, Herblock, and mainly Walt Kelly. Pogo was Doonesbury before the name. Kelly, who came to panel cartooning with a Disney pedigree (he worked on Pinocchio), understood that the only defense of humanism against the ideologues was irony. He went after Joe McCarthy unprotected and was prophetic in seeing that the problem was Tailgunner Joe. And so? The Gulf of Tonkin, Vietnam, Watergate, Reagan and Irangate, the Savings and Loan fiasco, Iraq I and II, the Clinton Impeachment, the present economic crises, and the Tea Party—where is he when we need him?

J. T. Barbarese is an Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University.

Pogo, by Walt Kelly, received 24 votes.

The poll participants who included it in their top ten are: J. T. Barbarese, Robert Beerbohm, Alice Bentley, Kurt Busiek, Brian Codagnone, Dave Coverly, Francis DiMenno, Jackie Estrada, Andrew Farago, Larry Feign, Bob Fingerman, Larry Gonick, Diana Green, Sam Henderson, Kenneth Huey, John MacLeod, Eugenio Nittolo, Rick Norwood, Stephanie Piro, Kenneth Smith, Tom Stiglich, Ty Templeton, Jason Thompson, and Mark Tonra.

Walt Kelly’s Pogo began with the story “Albert Takes the Cake” in Animal Comics, published in 1942. The story introduced Pogo Possum and Albert Alligator. This was the beginning of a regular comic-book feature that continued in Animal Comics and other titles through 1948.

On October 4, 1948, Pogo was launched as a daily newspaper strip in the New York Star, a left-leaning newspaper for which Kelly worked as art director and provided editorial cartoons. This initial run continued until the newspaper stopped publishing on January 28, 1949. On May 16, 1949, the strip was relaunched under the auspices of the Post-Hall Syndicate.

During this time the comic-book feature continued in its own title, Pogo Possum, which began in 1949 and continued until 1954. With its end, Pogo became a newspaper-only comic. It continued for the next three decades.

In 1972, Walt Kelly became seriously ill. During this time, the strip was largely restricted to reprints. After he died on October 18, 1973, the strip was continued by his widow Selby Daley Kelly and others until its cancellation on July 20, 1975.

There have been dozens of Pogo collections and other books published over the years. None are in print at this time. The best one-volume introduction is probably Selby Daley Kelly and Steve A. Thompson’s Pogo Files for Pogophiles, published in 1992. It can be found in many public libraries.

–Robert Stanley Martin

Best Comics Poll Index

#9: MAD #1-28, Harvey Kurtzman & Will Elder, Wallace Wood, Jack Davis, et al.

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It’s a funny thing, but as with many of the great cartoonists, Harvey Kurtzman’s work is far better known than the artist who created it. His most famous creation, MAD, long ago transcended the medium that spawned it, becoming a fixture of American culture and among the most influential sources of comedic humor in the late twentieth century. Fittingly, MAD was both a way for Kurtzman to exercise his talents . . . and to make a buck. Frustrated that others in the EC Comics stable were earning more than he, Kurtzman approached his publisher, William Gaines, who offered the cartoonist the opportunity to come up with another comic book title. Kurtzman tapped into his own satiric streak and used this new forum first to send up the medium in which he worked, and then, in short order, the rest of American culture.

MAD mocked comic books, television programs, films, advertising, and everything else that populated the common consciousness. It was eventually upsized from a comic book to a magazine format, and all-too-soon, Kurtzman was out as editor after a business dispute with Gaines. Nearly six decades later, MAD is still in production and still carries the tone set by Kurtzman’s initial parodies. Kurtzman would go on to try his hand at additional humor magazines, but none came close to enjoying MAD’s success.

Kurtzman’s talents weren’t just limited to humor. He single-handedly redefined what war comics could be with his other two EC titles, Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat. Painstaking research brought to the comics page historically accurate accounts of conflicts ranging from gladiatorial bouts to aerial dogfights. However, the stories did not glorify the battles. Rather, Kurtzman’s realistic portrayals of the harsh realities of conflict offered sobering commentary on war’s folly.

Since I began to teach a course on comics several years ago, I’ve consistently included a selection of Kurtzman’s work among the “must read” assignments. Indeed, I feel I would be remiss to teach a course about the medium and not address the lasting contributions of this largely unsung but enormously influential cartoonist. Last year, I added to my required readings list a well-crafted book of biography and analysis, The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics. by Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle. I recommend it for anyone who wants to learn more about Kurtzman and his contribution to American comics history.

Matthew J. Smith, Ph.D., is a professor of Communication at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, where he teaches courses in “Graphic Storytelling,” “The Graphic Novels of Alan Moore,” and “The Field Study at Comic-Con” (www.powerofcomics.com/fieldstudy). Along with Randy Duncan, he is co-author of The Power of Comics: History, Form and Culture (Continuum, 2009) and co-editor on the forthcoming Critical Approaches to Comics (Routledge, 2011).

NOTES

Harvey Kurtzman’s tenure on MAD received 23.5 votes.

The poll participants who included it in their top ten are: J. T. Barbarese, Terry Beatty, Alex Buchet, Francis DiMenno, Jackie Estrada, Andrew Farago, Larry Feign, Shaenon K. Garrity, Richard Gehr, Larry Gonick, Steve Greenberg, Danny Hellman, Sam Henderson, Carol Lay, Jay Lynch, Scott Marshall, Pat Moriarity, John L. Roberson, Johnny Ryan, Kevin Scalzo, Shannon Blake Skelton, Matthew J. Smith, Ryan Standfest, Ty Templeton, Mike Vosburg, and Karl Wills.

Steve Greenberg voted for the material illustrated by Jack Davis.

J. T. Barbarese, Richard Gehr, Larry Gonick, Kevin Scalzo, and Karl Wills voted for the material illustrated by Will Elder.

John L. Roberson voted for the material illustrated by Will Elder or Wallace Wood.

Larry Feign and Ty Templeton voted for the story “Superduperman,” by Harvey Kurtzman and Wallace Wood.

Carol Lay voted for the EC Comics edited by Harvey Kurtzman, which resulted in a 0.5 vote for Kurtzman’s MAD.

Danny Hellman and Pat Moriarity both voted for illustrator Wallace Wood’s work for EC Comics, which resulted in a 0.333 vote each for MAD under Kurtzman.

Johnny Ryan voted for MAD by “UGoI” [the Usual Gang of Idiots]. This covers MAD’s entire run, resulting in a 0.333 vote for Kurtzman’s tenure.

Harvey Kurtzman’s work on MAD as writer, layout artist, editor, and art director encompasses the first 28 issues of the publication. Issue #1 is cover-dated October-November 1952, and #28’s date is July 1956. (The first 23 issues were in the comic-book pamphlet format; #24-28 were published as full-size magazines.) Apart from an out-of-print four-volume hardcover reprinting in 1985, and a magazine-format reprint in the late 1990s (both of only the first 23 issues), Kurtzman’s work on the title has never been collected in one place. However, the material has been widely reprinted in MAD book collections alongside efforts postdating Kurtzman’s tenure. Many MAD books contain at least some Kurtzman material. The easiest way to see if a reprinted MAD story is from Kurtzman’s time is to look at the story byline. If Kurtzman’s name is there, you are looking at work that contributed to this ranking in the poll.

The most widely available book featuring material from Kurtzman’s MAD is The Smithsonian Book of Comic Book Comics, which can be found in many public libraries. The anthology includes “Superduperman,” Kurtzman and Wallace Wood’s famous parody of Superman, and “Howdy Dooit,” Kurtzman and Will Elder’s lampoon of the Howdy Doody TV show and commercial children’s television programming.

–Robert Stanley Martin

Best Comics Poll Index

#10: The Fantastic Four, by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, with Joe Sinnott, et al.

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On the cover of the third issue of The Fantastic Four, published in early 1962, Marvel proclaimed it “The Greatest Comic Magazine in the World!!” That’s a bold statement, but, as Dizzy Dean once told reporters, “It ain’t bragging if you can back it up.”

Stan Lee wasn’t bragging. By the end of the first issue, cover dated November 1961, we’d been introduced to Mr. Fantastic, The Invisible Girl, The Thing, and The Human Torch, a semi-dysfunctional superhero family for the Atomic Age. And the Mole Man and Monster Island were along for that initial adventure, too. Within a year, Lee and Kirby had laid the foundation for an entire universe. By the end of their fifth year, they’d created dozens of characters who are still at the heart of the Marvel Universe five decades later. No superhero comic before or since has approached the level of innovation these two managed on a monthly basis. Of course, you might argue that Jack Kirby’s Fourth World at DC or Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s Spider-Man came pretty close. But heck, those are still Lee and Kirby projects, so they still come out on top.

Lee and Kirby’s The Fantastic Four had adventure. It had humor. It had romance. Pathos. Wit. Charm. And frequently all within the same story. The Fantastic Four #51, “This Man, This Monster,” is probably the single greatest Marvel comic of all time. Which follows one of the great three-part stories of all-time, “The Galactus Trilogy.” Which really benefits from reading the Inhumans story that leads into it. And it would be a shame not to keep reading forward with the two-parter that introduces The Black Panther. And for gosh sakes, that’s only a stone’s throw from the ultimate Silver Surfer vs. Doctor Doom battle. There’s a good 20-issue run of nothing but high points once Joe Sinnott starts inking, too, although there’s a fun, anything goes atmosphere to the first issues, right out of the gate.

You know, they weren’t fooling around when they called this “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine,” after all.

Andrew Farago is the curator of the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, California.

NOTES

The Fantastic Four by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby received 22.333 votes.

The poll participants who included it in their top ten are: Terry Beatty, Kim Deitch, Randy Duncan, Andrew Farago, Craig Fischer, Richard Gehr, Larry Gonick, Geoff Grogan, Greg Hatcher, Danny Hellman, Sean Kleefeld, Larry Marder, Ben Marra, Scott Marshall, Gary Spencer Millidge, Tim O’Neil, Michael Pemberton, Martin Rebas, Hans Rickheit, Kevin Scalzo, Val Semeiks, Scott Shaw!, and Matthew J. Smith.

Craig Fischer specifically voted for The Fantastic Four story “…And One Shall Save Him!”.

Kim Deitch specifically voted for the Marvel Universe stories drawn by Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Bill Everett. This resulted in a 0.333 vote for Lee & Kirby’s The Fantastic Four.

Stan Lee & Jack Kirby’s run on The Fantastic Four was originally featured in issues #1-102 of the newsstand comics magazine. The cover dates are from November 1961 to September 1970. The most convenient place to read the stories today is the first five volumes of Marvel’s Essential Fantastic Four trade paperback series. Almost all of the stories Andrew Farago refers to above appear in volumes 3 and 4.

–Robert Stanley Martin

Best Comics Poll Index

The International Best Comics Poll–Index and Introduction

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Welcome to The Hooded Utilitarian’s International Best Comics Poll!

In May and June, we asked comics personnel of all stripes—creators, editors, journalists, academics, retailers—this question:

What are the ten comics works you consider your favorites, the best, or the most significant?

We received 211 replies from all over the world. Participants voted for newspaper strips, comic-book series and stories, graphic novels, manga, political cartoons, caricatures, magazine cartoons, and even a few things that one might not immediately think of as comics or print cartooning.

Below is a list of the top ten vote-getters. Click the title for an essay of appreciation about the work, which is accompanied by its publication history and a full account of the votes for it.

1. Peanuts, Charles M. Schulz
2. Krazy Kat, George Herriman
3. Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson
4. Watchmen, Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
5. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, Art Spiegelman
6. Little Nemo in Slumberland, Winsor McCay
7. The Locas Stories, Jaime Hernandez
8. Pogo, Walt Kelly
9. MAD #1-28, Harvey Kurtzman & Will Elder, Wallace Wood, Jack Davis, et al.
10.The Fantastic Four, Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, with Joe Sinnott, et al.

Click here for the list of The Top 115 vote-getters, ranked by number of votes with a notation of how many votes each listed work received.

Below is a list of the posts featuring the submitted lists of the poll participants. The lists are organized alphabetically by the participants’ last names.

A-Bo (Jessica Abel to Alex Boney)
Br-C (Matthew J. Brady to Tom Crippen)
D-E (Katherine Dacey to Al Ewing)
F-G (Duncan Falconer to Paul Gulacy)
H-K (Flint Hasbudak to Sean Kleefeld)
L-Mc (Terry LaBan to Sheena McNeil)
Me-Po (Ray Mescallado to John Porcellino)
Q-Se (Andrea Quierolo to Matt Seneca)
Sh-Sw (Joe Sharpnack to Jeff Swenson)
T-Y (Matt Tauber to Yidi Yu)

We are also presenting essays that discuss the results and issues related to them. The essays so far include discussions of the poll and the comics canon, the poll and women cartoonists, the poll and non-English European comics, the poll and manga, and the poll and the extended field of comics, and favorites vs. best. We’re certain other essays related to the poll will eventually be published as well. The essays to date (click the title and author to go to the post):

“The HU Lady List,” Shaenon Garrity

“Favorites vs. Best,” Noah Berlatsky

“Embalmed Ones, Fabulous Ones, Those That Tremble If They Were Mad,” Craig Fischer

“Manga and the Best Comics Poll,” by Kate Dacey

“Comics’ Expanded Field and Other Pet Peeves,” by Domingos Isabelinho

“Some Closing Thoughts on the Poll,” by Robert Stanley Martin

Finally, acknowledgements. My deepest gratitude to:

For contributing essays on the poll results: Derik Badman, J. T. Barbarese, Jeffrey Chapman, Katherine Dacey, Andrew Farago, Craig Fischer, Shaenon Garrity, Jeet Heer, Domingos Isabelinho, Matthew J. Smith, and Tucker Stone.

All the innumerable people who helped promote the poll, both publicly and privately.

To Noah Berlatsky, for agreeing to publish the poll, his essay on the top vote getter, and his constant efforts in support of the project.

To Ng Suat Tong, for his help in providing images for the list posts.

To Qiana J. Whitted, for her generosity in a moment of editorial need.

And finally, the list submitters themselves, without whom this would not have been possible. They are:

Jessica Abel, Deb Aoki, Michael Arthur, Nate Atkinson, Derik Badman, J.T. Barbarese, Edmond Baudoin, Jonathan Baylis, Melinda Beasi, Terry Beatty, Robert Beerbohm, Piet Beerends, Alice Bentley, Eric Berlatsky, Noah Berlatsky, Sean Bieri, Corey Blake, Bobsy Mindless, Kristin Bomba, Alex Boney, Matthew J. Brady, Caroline Bren, Casey Brienza, Scott O. Brown, Alex Buchet, Kurt Busiek, Sean Campbell, Bruce Canwell, Greg Carter, Scott Chantler, Jeffrey Chapman, Hillary Chute, Seymour Chwast, Michael Clarke, Robert Clough, Brian Codagnone, Sean T. Collins, Barry Corbett, Roberto Corona, Jamie Cosley, Dave Coverly, Warren Craghead, Corey Creekmur, Tom Crippen, Katherine Dacey, Marco D’Angelo, Alexander Danner, Mike Dawson, Kim Deitch, Martin de la Iglesia, Camilla d’Errico, Francis DiMenno, Alan David Doane, Randy Duburke, Randy Duncan, Kathleen Dunley, Paul Dwyer, Joshua Dysart, Joe Eisma, Austin English, Jackie Estrada, Al Ewing, Duncan Falconer, Andrew Farago, Matt Feazell, Larry Feign, Bob Fingerman, Craig Fischer, Anja Flower, Erica Friedman, Shaenon Garrity, Richard Gehr, Larry Gonick, Jenny Gonzalez-Blitz, Diana Green, Jason Green, Steve Greenberg, Geoff Grogan, Patrick Grzanka, Paul Gulacy, Flint Hasbudak, Greg Hatcher, Charles Hatfield, David M. Heatley, Jeet Heer, Danny Hellman, Sam Henderson, Alex Hoffman, Ben Horak, Kenneth Huey, Jelle Hugaerts, Mike Hunter, Illogical Volume, Domingos Isabelinho, Cole Johnson, Jones, one of the Jones boys, Bill Kartalopoulos, Megan Kelso, Abhay Khosla, Molly Kiely, Kinukitty, T.J. Kirsch, Sean Kleefeld, Terry LaBan, Nicolas Labarre, Blaise Larmee, Carol Lay, Jeff Lemire, Sonny Liew, Alec Longstreth, Jay Lynch, John MacLeod, Matt Madden, Larry Marder, MariNaomi, Vom Marlowe, Ben Marra, Scott Marshall, Robert Stanley Martin, Chris Mautner, Joe McCulloch (Jog Mack), Sheena McNeil, Ray Mescallado, Jason Michelitch, Eden Miller, Gary Spencer Millidge, Evan Minto, Wolfen Moondaughter, Pat Moriarity, Pedro Moura, Todd Munson, Rachel Nabors, Mark Newgarden, Eugenio Nittolo, Rick Norwood, José-Luis Olivares, Tim O’Neil, Jim Ottaviani, Jason Overby, Joshua Paddison, Nick Patten, Marco Pellitteri, Michael Pemberton, Kai Pfeiffer, Stephanie Piro, John Porcellino, Andrea Queirolo, Casey Rae-Hunter, Ted Rall, Martin Rebas, Charles Reece, Hans Rickheit, Oliver Ristau, Chris Roberson, John L. Roberson, Sean Michael Robinson, James Romberger, Joshua Rosen, Marcel Ruitjers, Johnny Ryan, Giorgio Salati, M. Sauter, Kevin Scalzo, Val Semeiks, Matt Seneca, Joe Sharpnack, Scott Shaw!, Mahendra Singh, Ed Sizemore, Shannon Blake Skelton, Caroline Small, Kenneth Smith, Matthew J. Smith, Michelle Smith, Shannon Smith, Nick Sousanis, Ryan Standfest, Rob Steen, Matteo Stefanelli, Joshua Ray Stephens, Mick Stevens, Tom Stiglich, Tucker Stone, Betsey Swardlick, Jeff Swenson, Matthew Tauber, Ty Templeton, Jason Thompson, Kelly Thompson, Matt Thorn, Tom Tirabosco, Mark Tonra, Noel Tuazon, Carol Tyler, Marguerite Van Cook, Stefan J.H. van Dinther, Noah van Sciver, Sara Varon, Mike Vosburg, David Welsh, Mack White, Qiana J. Whitted, Karl Wills, Sean Witzke, Matthias Wivel, Douglas Wolk, Jason Yadao, Chris York, Rafe York, Yidi Yu.