Yes, I am planning a trip to Portland next week

-Does anyone know if Dark Horse's brick and mortar store (Things From Another World) offers discounts on their own material? I need to catch up on some Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service.

-On a similar note, any restaurants in Portland anyone would recommend? Like something near the big Powell's location? A good Indian restaurant would be especially nice.

-I don't want to read too much into it, but since Marc-Oliver Frisch pointed it out, I did think it was kind of strange to see Dan DiDio mention his 2009 budget in this Newsarama interview. (Which is apparently a new biweekly feature at Newsarama? Amazing what you miss when you don't read the Newsarama main site unless somebody specifically links to one of their articles, as was the case in this instance.) DiDio's talking about cover prices here--sounds like $3.99 is bound to be the going rate by the middle of next year--but it's not the sort of language I'm used to seeing in these hype and gripe sessions. Granted, I haven't read one of these things in a while.

I'm not so sure I'd go as far as Marc-Oliver and link budgetary concerns to the frankly baffling decision to have Tony Daniel write what appears to be a pivotal Batman story arc. But there's definitely an unsettling mix of regret and shilling in this interview. And it doesn't do anything to dispel the notion that DC is totally reliant on Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison right now. I would still think that it's in DC's best interest to try to poach one of Marvel's top tier writers--Brubaker, Bendis (probably not very likely), Loeb, or Millar being the top bang-for-your-buck types. I guess Warren Ellis could make a big splash as well, but I'm under the impression that his willingness to write for Marvel's intellectual properties isn't a courtesy he'd extend to DC. Something about a personal fondness for Quesada, maybe? Anyway, of this group one would think Loeb or Millar would be the best bet, except (a) I don't know the status of their contracts, and (b) I'm not so sure Mark Millar's future is in work-for-hire. At one time I would have guessed he would put aside other interestes to write Superman, but I really do think that he thinks he has a shot at writing a Superman screenplay instead.

EDIT: Or Jesus, what about Straczynski? Marc-Oliver keeps pointing out how weird it is to assign freaking Brave and the Bold to your highest profile new freelancer in years. Maybe he's too busy to write anything else?

-Haven't done predictions for a UFC card in a while. Not so much out of indifference as forgetfulness. But I'm remembering right now, so let's give it a shot:

Randy Couture vs. Brock Lesnar
A good matchup from a variety of angles: youth vs. experience, athleticism vs. technique, past vs. future, etc. And by "past vs. future," I mostly mean that Couture helped put the "mixed" in "mixed martial arts" by purusing a strategy that blended his strengths into a coherent game plan: use greco-roman base to pin opponent against cage, then use dirty boxing to win on points.*

Couture has deviated from this plan when it made sense, most recently in his monumental upset of Tim Sylvia last year. In that fight, Couture used his superior ground skills to keep Sylvia on his back, grinding his way to a comfortable win on the judge's score cards. That's not going to work on Saturday, because there's no way that Couture can keep the much larger and stronger Lesnar on his back. In fact, it's going to be Lesnar who will seek to put the fight on the ground, where he can work his way to a decision or a stoppage via ground-and-pound. Couture surely has the better BJJ, but it's probably not enough to negate Lesnar's advantages on the ground.

So: if the fight is primarily contested on the ground, it's Lesnar's win. If they're mostly pushed up against the cage all night, that's probably Couture's win. BUT, what if the fight is mostly standing at a distance? What then? Lesnar surely has more firepower, but Couture surely has the better technique. I'm going to pick Lesnar because I think the weight/strength advantage is too great for Couture to overcome, but I would never bet money against Couture. Actually, I never bet money at all because I'm a chicken.

*BTW, I was thinking about this the other night: Lesnar went into professional wrestling out of college because there was no money in MMA at the time. One would be inclined to say he did himself a disservice, since he thus lost his prime years to botched shooting star presses and all the other wackiness that comes with the WWF/E. OTOH, if he had started in MMA in 2000, he surely would have relied on his excellent wrestling to the exclusion of improving his skills in BJJ, boxing, muay thai, etc. That would have worked for a couple of years, but he probably would have been exposed against a Fedor Emilianenko, Josh Barnett, or Antonio Nogueira (he still may yet be exposed against Nogueira!) in fairly short order. So maybe it's better that he got into MMA in 2006, when it was imperative that he train all the other crucial disciplines as well.

Kenny Florian vs. Joe Stevenson
The only other fight of note on the card. I don't think Florian's fought a mauler like Stevenson since he took on Sean Sherk a few years ago. Florian lost that fight, but he's really improved his game since then. I think Stevenson is an excellent fighter, but he's not as good as Sherk. I like Florian here. Should be a good fight.

Amir Sadollah vs. Nick Catone
CANCELED! So it's going to be a while longer before we get to see the TUF 8 champion (and surely one of the few dudes from that show you'd want to spend more than 30 seconds talking to) for a while.

Gabriel Gonzaga vs. Josh Hendricks
Don't know much about Hendricks (except that he's not Johny Hendricks, a much more interesting 170 lb. prospect with impeccable wrestling credentials). But it's hard to pick a guy who's lost to Travis Wiuff AND Sam Hoger, even if those fights were several years ago. Gotta go with Gonzaga, but it would be nice to find out that Hendricks has massively improved in recent years and is actually a legit HW contender.

Nate Quarry vs. Demian Maia
I guess I spoke too soon--I'm sort of interested in this fight. Not a big Quarry fan--he seems like a good guy, but I think the ceiling of his potential is Ultimate Fight Night-level gatekeeper. But since everyone in the crowd has also decided he's a good guy, we still see him on PPVs. I don't see how he beats Maia, unless his takedown defense is better than I imagined. Maia hasn't shown much standing, so Quarry could (and should) beat him there. But I'm assuming Maia can manage to get this to the ground. If not, he's not the potential MW contender UFC is dying for.

Dustin Hazelett vs. Tamdan McCrory
Oh wait, this is a pretty good fight too. And it's going to be on TV, since the Sadollah fight was canceled. Thanks, Amir! Hazelett is one of the fastest-rising talents in the welterweight division, and a personal favorite. McCrory is a good prospect, but probably not ready to beat the BJJ wiz Hazelett yet.

Jorge Gurgel vs. Aaron Riley
Aaron Riley still fights? Jose Gurgel still fights? Guys, this isn't an Ohio show--why is Gurgel on here? Don't care, no pick.

Jeremy Stephens vs. Rafael dos Anjos
Dos Anjos is on a nice win streak. Stephens is a guy who can beat someone like Cole Miller, but can't beat someone like Spencer Fisher. In these cases I try to make an optimistic pick, going for the fighter with the biggest upside. I think that's dos Anjos in this case.

Alvin Robinson vs. Mark Bocek
I like Alvin Robinson, and Bocek still hasn't done much in UFC.

Matt Brown vs. Ryan Thomas
Don't care, no pick

I guess it's not too early if you've got connections

So as I'm going back through the stuff I've missed in the last couple of weeks, I see that Amazon and Publishers Weekly have both published their best-of lists for 2008. Lots of stuff on both lists I haven't read yet, but on first glance the PW list looks more attuned to my tastes. I'm now thinking the best perk about writing for a respected publication/website is the opportunity to read things like KE7 before unconnected people like me. Or did it show up at APE? Haven't worked my way through to the APE reports yet. (And yeah, I broke my plans to attend. Sorry, but you know how things are right now.)

Anyway, let me remind everyone once again to send me links to your best of 2008 list(s) so I can start adding and calculating the 2008 meta list. Umbrella Academy is #1 right now, I guess--if this is not to your liking, then make sure to make a list!

A few thoughts

1. If Final Crisis #4 were a Pretty Things song, it would be "What's the Use." Finally got to read it tonight (DCBS shipment arrived Election Day), and I really kind of struggled just to get through it. Read like a run of the mill crossover, with just enough gratuitous cameos by b- and c-list characters to wear down my enthusiasm to where it's mostly hypothetical now. I should like this comic; I liked the first three issues, I like Grant Morrison, and I generally like JG Jones. But Jones and Morrison both seem kind of uninspired here. Especially Jones, who (dead giant dalmatian scene aside) seemed like just another artist this issue. And there was at least one confusing sequence which reminded me of the debate over Morrison's storytelling deficiencies from earlier this year. The Turpin-into-Darkseid stuff was good, but that's about all there is for non-Flash fetishists. I could understand the comic veering into train wreck territory, but it's hard to forgive it for becoming a typical bullshit event book. Since I've already paid for the next couple of issues, I have good reason to hope that this is just a plate setting issue and not Civil War-style entropy.

2. I guess it's possible that Final Crisis just seems shoddy compared to the other stuff I've been reading in the last couple of days: Popeye, Black Jack, Or Else #5. Not a fair comparison, to be sure. Segar and Tezuka aren't merely all-time greats; they're the sorts of cartoonists who make other all-time greats look weak by comparison. And Huizenga, while certainly not as accomplished as Segar or Tezuka, is probably one of the five best cartoonists active today. So no, not a fair comparison. But I've got so much unread stuff of comparable quality laying around that it's hard to make myself read the last couple of issues of Uncanny X-Men.* Don't know if this means that I'm ready to abandon superhero comics or what. But when you've got new stuff by Yuichi Yokoyama and Lewis Trondheim in the to-read stack, it's a little hard to muster up enthusiasm for the latest issue of Captain America.

*Needless to say, Greg Land's art doesn't much help.

3. I also passed on watching an episode of Justice League Unlimited I'd never seen before the other day. I liked that series even back when I wasn't reading comics a few years ago. Maybe I really do need a vacation from the cape and tights stuff. It's not like I expect Captain America to measure up to Trondheim, but I'm not even enjoying superhero comics on their own terms like I used to.

(FWIW, I think I ended up watching one of those ultra-meta NFL films things, like where Steve Sabol waxes nostalgic about the follies compilations of yore and makes fun of the sweaters he wore in the 80s. Can't get enough of the meta!)

4. I mostly played Saints Row 2 with music saved to our XBox 360 hard drive (see here for partial playlist), so I only rarely heard the music from the radio stations. But when I did.... I occasionally feel guilty for not keeping up with contemporary music, and I realize that it's no more fair to judge it by listening to middle-of-the-road emo than it would be to judge early 90s indie rock by listening to something like Collective Soul or Candlebox. But holy shit, is there ever some terrible music in that game. I don't know that I was ever going to read The Umbrella Academy, but I don't know if I could ever bring myself to do so after hearing "Teenagers."

5. On a more positive note (sort of), I can't get over how much I like the music from Life on Mars. There's a little too much Simon and Garfunkel for my taste, but I can't deny the pleasure of hearing tracks from Muswell Hillbillies on a network show. I'm not convinced that Life on Mars isn't a waste of my time yet--it mostly still seems like a dumb cop show at heart. And the bit with Jim Croce last week was Quantum Leap-grade idiocy. So yeah, I guess the soundtrack has successfully pandered to me, cause I'm not so sure why else I'm watching. Here's hoping we hear some Pink Fairies before the show gets canceled or I lose interest.

6. The internet is right about the awesomeness of Takehiko Inoue. More on this later.

I promise

...to start posting again now that I'm not devoting every spare minute to following the election. Glad there was a payoff for all that obsessive checking of fivethirtyeight.com, pollster.com, etc.

Actually, I also have been devoting a lot of spare minutes, and will continue to devote a lot of spare minutes, to playing Fallout 3, which really kind of gets at a lot of the things I wrote about in the last post. More on that eventually, maybe, but I just wanted to note how much I'm loving it since Chris Mautner would probably ask in the comments. So I guess I'll turn the tables--how are you liking it, Chris? (Apologies if you've reviewed it on your blog already--haven't checked Google Reader in a looong time.)

Fun vs. art

So I've been playing a lot of Saints Row 2, which kind of feels the first new game I've played since the Carter administration. I usually spend my summer gaming time catching up with older titles, which I did again this year--God of War 2, Digital Devil Saga 2, and Morrowind being the main titles. But it's good to play a current-gen game again, and it's good to play something as much fun as Saints Row 2.

Of special note is how much more fun Saints Row 2 has been than Grand Theft Auto 4, at least for me. I realize this puts me in a small minority. GTA4 boasts a substantially bigger map, better graphics, better music, and a better sense of immersion--after multiple sequels, gamers feel that this is a real world they're operating in, with recurring characters, institutions, radio personalities, and whatnot. But nothing in GTA4 compare the fun of blasting over dirt hills in a police cruiser to chase down litterbugs and not having to worry about cousin Roman's gambling debts.

The gaming media's meta-narrative to the release of GTA4 was that video games were finally graduating from mere entertainment to actual art.* The main character, Niko Bellic, is haunted by his past in the war-torn Balkans; he struggles between his desire to avenge the wrongs he's suffered in the past and his desire to start over in the United States, a land of opportunity where immigrants can transform themselves and blah blah blah. I'll admit, this is somewhat sophisticated for a video game, but it's downright hackneyed by any other measure. America as a land of opportunity for immigrants? An old, old trope which GTA4 lets stand without significant revision, or even interrogation. Compare it to the Godfather movies, where the plight of the immigrant pushes Vito Corleone to the world of crime as a means of advancement. Revenge/past vs. forgiveness/future? A very poweful theme, and the one which resonates the best in GTA4. Unfortunately--

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The end of the game doesn't really give the player the opportunity to make their own decision. I was playing GTA4 in a future-looking way, letting Darko (the initial target of Niko's rage) live. The ending suggests another opportunity to choose revenge or forgiveness, but then pulls the rug out from under the player by forcing a final, revenge-oriented mission. It doesn't matter whether the player seeks revenge on Dmitri Rascalov (dig the absolutely appropos-of-nothing-other-than-Russianness literary allusion!) or not--someone close to you is going to die, and you're going to have to seek out revenge--or, as the case may be, even more revenge--anyway.

This is actually not a bad opportunity for GTA4 to reinforce a theme: no matter how forward-looking you might wish to be, the past will always return to haunt you. More specifically, an individual might choose to forget the past, but that's not good enough if others choose to remember the past and seek their own vengeance. Not a bad theme, especially when dealing with ethnic tensions and war. The problem is (a) this has nothing to do with war or ethnic tensions--the animosity between Dmitri and Niko is entirely grounded in the new world; and (b) it undermines the previous theme of personal choice that the game had gone so far to establish.

Consider, again, the decision to kill or spare Darko. When presented to Niko, he's a wreck: racked with guilt, ravaged by drug addiction, in no way a functional human being. No matter how you play it, there's no material reward for killing or sparing his life--no new missions, no new weapons, etc. From an emotional/story standpoint, there are greater rewards for sparing his life. If the player chooses to kill Darko, Niko will admit that he feels no better for having done so. If they spare him, other characters and Niko himself will suggest this is an emotional breakthrough, a real turning point in Niko's life.

There's nothing wrong, per se, with having this forward-looking message undermined by having Dmitri or Jimmy Pegorino (depending on how one plays the game) kill either Roman or Kate (again, depending on how one plays the game). But at this point, the game moves from player-controlled to cut scene-controlled; Niko's reactions are predetermined. At this point the player feels less in control and more along for the ride. In other words, GTA4 goes back to being a typical video game.

I think this problem has less to do with the shortfalls in the story and more to do with a failure to recognize and capitalize upon the unique features of video games. Does the player identify with Niko, playing the game as he would? Or do they seek the greatest possible entertainment? If the producers of GTA4 wished the former, then there's a lot more they could have done. Take the Darko revenge delimma again. There's no reason for the player to kill Darko other than sadism (which, of course, is nothing to underestimate in this context). But what if the game had started in the former Yugoslavia, the player exposed to the treachery and atrocities that shape Niko? What if they were forced to play through that betrayal? That would make the decision to spare Darko much harder to reach.

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It's that tension between character and player which video games have not yet explored to the fullest. In its most simplistic (and most common) form, these usually amount to simple morality questions: do I kill an NPC to receive some kind of incentive (money, new missions), or do I spare them because that's what I think the character I'm playing would do? Do I help out these NPCs (thus opening a new mission), or do I ignore them? When confronted with these decisions, the player usually opts for whatever maximizes the entertainment quotient. Ironically, as more gaming genres incorporate elements of RPGs, they're failing to emphasize the "role playing" part of the equation.

Improving this role playing element is one path** toward making video games closer to genuine art, and it's certainly the more intriguing step from a formalist perspective. Video games are a unique medium in that they are played rather than read. There's a level of interaction just not possible in other media. Sure, in comics or novels, the reader is forced to use his or her imagination to fill in the blanks. But in video games, choices are left to the player. Or, rather, they can be left to the player, if the developer chooses to make the game that way.

As it stands, video game developers have relied on crude reward systems to provoke player reactions: more missions, better weapons, money, etc. A few games have aimed at a more sophisticated approach, like my favorite game of 2007, Bioshock. In Bioshock, the player chooses to either kill or spare Little Sisters. There's a material reward either way--can't forget the imperative to maximize entertainment!--but there's also an emotional reward. To harvest Little Sisters' energy (or ADAM, to be more precise), the player must observe their reaction--thrashing, the appearance of abject terror in their eyes. If one spares them, they become normal little girls again and thank you. Some reviews of the game were more impressed by the Little Sisters' reactions than others. I thought it was a good idea, but not perfectly executed; I chose to spare the Little Sisters, but I was unmoved by their protestations one way or another. There was also a not-especially-scintillating ending based on my decision to save the Little Sisters. But once again, it was the material reward (unlocking new attacks) which motivated me.

Bioshock gets a lot of credit for its BIG SHOCKING TWIST about 2/3 through, which calls into question the nature of free will in a video game. But, for my money, the most effective game I've encountered re: immersion into the character is Persona 3, a game developed very late in the life cycle of the PS2 (at which point, one presumes, development costs are no longer so monumental that ROI concerns overwhelm any hope of upsetting the entertainment:art ratio). I've never played a game that so successfully communicates its theme--in this case, the idea that life is precious, and should be savored no matter how ominous the future is. The player only has so much time to develop relationships with NPCs, level up the character (both in terms of the school simulation and the more traditional RPG quest), and complete the main quest. Spend too much time doing one thing and the others suffer. And the overwhelming sense of dread and defeat makes those moments of connection with other characters so much more meaningful; entertainment maximization starts to lose the battle with characterization.***

But I still think that entertainment trumps art in Persona 3, just as it does in Bioshock, Grand Theft Auto 4, Mass Effect, and countless other games which try to balance the two. To some extent this is understandable; given the outrageous costs of producing games for current gen systems, game developers must center their efforts on maximizing sales. There's not much room for narrowcasting, so it's no surprise that customer entertainment is the primary concern. I guess that's why so many people have pinned their hopes to smaller developers; perhaps, as is the case with film, certain types of innovation only occur in projects with a smaller budget, where ROI pressure is less daunting. And maybe the larger developers will pick up on these innovations and increase the sophistication of the medium across the board.

The biggest hurdle remains consumer expectations. Developers and publishers have conditioned players to view games as diversions rather than art, products rather than creative endeavors. It's going to take some reeducation to change these attitudes, assuming that the bigger publishers care to change them at all. And it's going to take something more than Grand Theft Auto 4's weak literary asperations and failure to capitalize on the inherent strengths of video games.

Maybe later in the week I'll try to write something about why comic books have been so much more successful in this regard than video games. Really, though, the biggest reasons are obvious: the price of producing a comic presents a much lower barrier to entry, the form has been around longer, there's less distance between creation and consumption. But there are certainly some parallels, so it might be worth thinking about in greater detail.

*Or, perhaps more accurately for GTA4, literature. But that sound weird, so I'll be sticking to "art" in this post.

**The other path is best embodied by games like Okami or Shadow of the Colossus: immerse the player in lush, beautiful environments. That's a valid approach, but one about which I don't have much to say yet.

***Though, to be fair, your character is a bit of a blank slate. These sorts of open ended games are a different beast entirely. It will be interesting to see if Fable 2 can live up to its promises; if so, that's another valid way to expand the horizons of video gaming. But Persona 3 doesn't really fall into this category, since the game's deep emotional atmosphere pushes the player into a specific direction. It's almost more impressive; you create the character's personality with your reactions to the game.

For the record...

Mark Waid needs to grow up. It's time for a lot of comic book professionals to grow up, actually.

Ranking Breakdowns

One thing I didn't mention in my review of Breakdowns was its positioning on my early best of 2008 handicapping. I had previously stated that I thought the strongest candidates to top this year's meta-list were (in no particular order) What It Is, All Star Superman, and Bottomless Bellybutton. It's pretty clear that Breakdowns will probably be in the running as well, partly because it's published by a traditional press, one which is (presumably) well-equipped to put review copies in the hands of mainstream critics. More importantly, Art Spiegelman is inarguably one of the most respected cartoonists in the world--I'd guess that he's actually the single most respected.* That reputation, along with the relative mainstream friendliness of "Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!," might propel Breakdowns to the top slot on many year-end lists; it almost guarantees that it will appear on many, many lists from mainstream outlets.

I would consider this a good thing, inasmuch as I would agree with these hypothetical list-makers that Breakdowns is worthy of great acclaim. If I were asked to choose the best comic of the year from the current frontrunners, I would certainly pick Breakdowns. In fact, I'm sort of inclined to pick it as the best comic of 2008, period. It's one of those rare, absolutely essential books, and I don't say that lightly.

So then, why am I only "sort of inclined" to make it my best of 2008? For one thing, the year isn't finished yet--there's another couple of months of releases yet to come, and at least a couple of unreleased books are very, very strong contenders--Nocturnal Conspiracies, a collection of David B's short material from NBM, and Kramers Ergot 7.** But the stronger consideration is this: should I rank a collection of previoiusly published material at #1 for the year?

I had a number of reprints on my best of 2007 list. Actually, half the list consisted of books which contained prevoiusly published material: Notes For a War Story, Phoenix: Sun, Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus, Town Boy, and Alias the Cat. Three of that group were the first available English translations of international work, so I don't feel too bad about including them. That leaves us with Alias the Cat and Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus.

The former was originally published in serialized form by Fantagraphics (I think), making it largely inaccessible to most readers in 2007. I had never read it before, so I was very happy to see it in one collected edition, in a very clever package, reminiscent (at least to me) of The Cat in the Hat or other Dr. Suess books. And it's not all that high on my list at #8. As for the Fourth World collection (#5): on the original list I wrote, "I'm a little loath to include this new series of reprints, since Kirby's Fourth World material has been reprinted several times in numerous formats." That still sounds right. If I were judging these books purely based on quality of content, well, Kirby at his best beats just about anything, short of maybe Kurtzman, Kelly, or Crumb at their peaks. Or maybe Tezuka.

But notice that I didn't put Tezuka's Phoenix: Sun at #1 either. Again, in terms of quality, it would have been justified; no one on my list, with the possible exception of Lat, beats Tezuka as a pure cartoonist. But I'm just not comfortable putting collections of fairly old material so high on a list of this type, even if some of it had not previously been available in English. I'd be sending a message that I don't really agree with, that the best days of the comics medium are behind it. Is that grading on a curve? Yes, kind of, but not exactly. I'm a hopeless antiquarian in many ways, but I'm very bullish on the future of comics. As much as I cherish older, classic work (I'm enjoying the hell out of the Popeye collections, now that I've found time to read them), I'm more excited about the present and future. I want my lists to reflect that kind of excitement.

So, then, what about Breakdowns? All of the material from the original edition comes from the 1970s. The only new addition, "Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!," is itself a couple of years old. I'm quite familiar with most of the older stories; "Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!" is new to me, but that's only because I was too lazy/cheap to track down the issues of the Virginia Quarterly in which it originally appeared. In short, nothing in this book should come as a revelation in and of itself to anyone sufficiently engaged with the comics medium.

And yet, as I write this, I'm sort of leaning towards putting this in my (provisional) top slot for a couple of reasons. First, as I noted in my review, the pairing of "Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!" and the original Breakdowns in a single volume greatly increases the impact of each. Actually, it goes a step further: it almost creates an entirely new work. But that's not so far off from what I had to say about Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus: "Better yet, the sequencing of the stories in published order has given them a new power. You can see Kirby's deft world building, always present yet always subservient to his desire to entertain his readers. And maybe I'm just in a different state of mind 10 years after I last read these stories, but the Fourth World seems so much more vibrant in this format. The Paranoid Pill, Happyland, the Glory Boat, the Hairies--these are some of the best ideas in the history of comics, each one better than the last. It's enough to make me reconsider whether or not this is actually Kirby's best work. I can't recommend these books highly enough."

There's something else, however, that Breakdowns has going for it: Spiegelman is a living, working creator. "Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!" isn't brand new, but it's not that old, either. It's more reflective of the present than the Fourth World omnibus. That's not to say that Kirby's comics are firmly relegated to the past: clearly he has an enormous impact on contemporary artists. Hell, the current Big Event at DC is based on his work. But that's the thing--none of this is an extension of his work; it's all reinterpretations or homages or pastiches. Jack Kirby's presence certainly looms large in 2008, but Art Spiegelman is alive and still producing great comics.*** That means a lot to me, and probably pushes Breakdowns to #1 on my best of 2008 list, barring any further revelations.

The next question: will I be able to resist putting Fantagraphics' new Pogo series at #1 for 2009? I'll probably avoid the temptation for the first volume or two. But what about the later ones, like once we get into Simple J. Malarkey and whatnot? Man, that's some awfully good stuff....

*Anyone want to try to list the other most respected living comics creators among the general English speaking population? After Spiegelman, I'd say (in no particular order) Joe Sacco, Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, Alan Moore, Marjane Satrapi, and Allison Bechdel are probably the top tier. Rutu Modan, Adrian Tomine, and Jaime Hernandez would round out the top 10, IMO. But am I underestimating the mainstream appeal of Gilbert Hernandez, Grant Morrison, Craig Thompson, or Posy Simmonds? What about Robert Crumb--does his history of misogynistic work cancel out his monumental accomplishments in the eyes of the general public (by which I mean the segment of the general public which is willing to think about comics, but not too hard and not for extended periods of time)? Is Stan Lee a part of this discussion? Do people still think about Matt Groening as a cartoonist, rather than a multimedia mogul? How about Gary Trudeau--would the public think to lump him in with the names above?

**Although...I didn't see it in Diamond's solicitations for November or December. I guess I might have missed it if it ended up in the merchandise section or something. Is it still supposed to debut at APE?

***This generally reflects my decision to put Notes For a War Story as high as I did. Coconino originally published it in 2004, only three years before its English translation. And Gipi is an active cartoonist, one of the best in the world. Hopefully one day these sorts of books will appear in an English the same year as their original release, but I'm not too worried about it in terms of list-making.