Best Comics of 2011: no. 13: The Lions of Valletta

It's risky to criticize the work of friends. Years ago, Katherine Collins reviewed my first comic. While she praised the writing, she called the art "alarmingly bad." After losing my ego, I took her criticisms to heart and improved my art.
Luckily, I have no such criticism for the thoughtful, playful, strong yet sensitive work of Ursula Murray Husted.
I've been following her work for several years, and had the pleasure of working with her for a couple summer sessions. Even if I'd never made her acquaintance, the joy and bravery in her work would shine through.
Making its debut at MIX 2011, The Lions of Valletta is a preview edition of Part I of Ursula's longer work, the adventures of a Maltese cat (that is, a cat whose home is on Malta).

As with Sailor Twain, the simple line is based in confidence and the  art is in service to the story.
The dialogue of the cats rings true and dominates. For the last 40 pages of the book, all the dialogue is between cats.
As it should be. We love cats.
Without spoilers, the plot concerns a young cat who is determined to find the Good Lady, the human with whom life will be full of food, comfort and love. As the cat's acquaintance notes, aren't we all?
Ursula uses the simple story as a framework to explore visual devices including pages based on tapestries and paintings, to wind through the streets. There's a sense of the real to this that shines.

This work is smart, involving and succeeds in being optimistic without being cloying. Ursula is toying with the idea of doing the work in color. While I like her bright yet controlled palette, I think the B & W is quite effective in this work. Here's an example from this volume, recently colored, from Ursula's blog.

Whatever her decision, I'm sure it will be the correct one. This is the fourth book I've read of Ursula's (fifth if you count her Kickstarter project, well worth checking out as well), and her work has yet to disappoint in any respect.
If you do follow up and pick up The Lions of Valletta,  do yourself a favor and read the smart, witty Notes section in the last four pages of the book. They include such gems as "the academic in me wants to write a bit about cats and nihilism here, but what's the use?"

Best Comics of 2011 No. 14: Sailor Twain

I was seriously underemployed until June 2011, and so had no budget for comics at all.
In order to keep reading them, I turned to two primary sources: the Public Library and the Internet.
In so doing, I was able to fill in some gaps in my  mainstream comics reading and discover some online strips that had escaped my notice.
The best of the latter is Sailor Twain, or the Mermaid on the Hudson, linked at screen left.

Needless to say, this is the first work on the Best of 2011 list.

This strip has been posted thrice weekly since January 2010.  That's ambitious, to say the least.
Its creator, Mark Seigel, is currently on Chapter III of Part 3 of this long, earnest, hearfelt story.
There are four chapters remaining, including the Coda.
The story is much as the title implies, with romance, intrigue, acerbic wit and magic. A great deal of magic.
And the simplicity of the line and character design bely the effectiveness of the art, rendered in a very lush and full grayscale.

The deceptively primitive line, coupled with its emotional impact, bring the best work of Marc Hempel to mind.
I've said very little about the plot, because it's a quick read and I want you to experience it for yourself. And the discussions on the blog recall the letters pages in The Desert Peach, always informative and enthralling.
Like Chris Baldwin's BRUNO, I'll be sad to see this end. But at the same time, there's a joy in seeing a long-form work come to fruition in the venue of the World Wide Webiverse, or whatever this is.

Tomorrow: Number 13.

Best Comics of 2011: the Runners- up

Beginning my annual series of posts of the best of the previous year. Most folks do these all at once, but I like to take my time and spend a bit more time on each.
We'll begin with the works that almost made it, and the reasons why.
First, Daytripper.

This book remains a fascination, and I wish I'd see something new from the creators. In fairness, I've not checked in with them for a while, but you'd think a work this acclaimed would generate more followup press for the creative team.
This didn't make the cut this year for two reasons.
1. I already put it in last year's Best of... and wanted to leave space for other work equally deserving of recognition.
2. It's not really a 2011 book. The series was completed in December 2010, a fact conveniently omitted by the graphic novel purists who don't pay attention to a work until it's collected. That snobbery really gets under my nose!
Next up: a very different book.
Here's One Soul by Ray Fawkes.
This book is a compelling exploration of the standard 3 x 3 panel grid, used to tell interlocking stories with captions throughout.
The book tells the stories of multiple characters from birth. It slides from one to another, through caption only, occasionally veering away from the 3 x 3 configuration by joining the panel areas into larger panels, but never abandoning the grid.
Here's a sample tier.

This is not included for one simple reason. I'm not done reading it yet!
The same excuse applies to the next runner-up, Return to Perdition.

I've enjoyed the Perdition series a great deal over the years. I own a page from the Garcia-Lopez volume, On the Road to Perdition, and thought the film of the original book was one of the better film adaptations of a comic, despite its altering of the ending. I got to visit my pal Terry Beatty while he was working on this, and was delighted to see it at Minneapolis FallCon this year, just before its commercial release. I'm reading the library copy of this right now, but if he makes it to Spring Con, I'll try to pick one up from Terry then. I'll be done reading this soon, but right now.... no.
See Terry's blog link on the side of this page for more info on him!
The final runner-up is a good book that just had one problem too many for me, Lady Mechanika.
WARNING OF SPOILERS BELOW!

There are a lot of things I like about this book. It's tightly written, elaborately drawn and very well colored. The concept is solid- a powerful woman whose life is a mystery, even to her, both hunter and hunted.
I love the steampunk overtones. The slightly soiled elegance of the whole quasi-Victorian faux antique tech never really wears thin for me.
So with all that going for it, why didn't it make the cut?
Well, it's sort of like the old Dark Horse book GHOST. It dances right on the edge of being sexist.
I'm not talking about the cleavage cut-out in the costume, though that always struck me as highly impractical for battle. Nor am I talking about her ample, ahem, tracts of land. After all, some women are so endowed, though they are (you should excuse the phrase) disproportionately represented in comics in general.
No, I'm talking about her.
There's an axiom that describes the different catalysts in the heroic paths of men and women.
A man becomes a hero by having something taken from him: property, ability (think Daredevil or Dr. Strange), or a loved one (think Batman, Superman, the Phantom, etc.).
A woman becomes a hero after something is done TO her directly. Think about Red Sonja (rape), Batgirl/Oracle (disabling by shooting coupled with implied sexual assault), or Shrinking Violet, who lost a leg in the Giffen Legion run.
To be sure, there are exceptions, but when a female hero's story begins with multiple body part dismemberment, I have a hard time seeing beyond that. Funny how relatively few stories there are that begin with this happening to a man. In fact, aside from Miller's classic RONIN, I can't think of any!
This is still a worthwhile book, in spite of its big thematic flaw, and I'll stick with it for a while to see if it overcomes said flaw. But I'm sorry, it's just not up to Best of the Year material with that in it. Creator Joe Benitez deserves continued attention for the level of work he's doing. I'd like to see his characterizations reach the high level of the other elements of his work.
Tomorrow: the Best of 2011 list begins in earnest.