A review by caedocyon
The Best American Comics 2010 by Jessica Abel, Neil Gaiman, Matt Madden

3.0

Obviously, some were better than others. There are a few excerpts I might seek out the full versions of, but it's probably more useful in that it got me to read comics I never would have picked up otherwise. Like the Chris Ware comic(s): I've seen his books at the library and flipped through them, but they're so dense and nothing about them managed to capture my attention. I read the entire Acme Novelty Library short story, and by the end I could see why Art Spiegelman likes his work so much (did I mention I saw Art Spiegelman talk recently? because I did; it was pretty awesome), and while I still have no desire to read the rest at least I have some idea what his work is now.

The most memorable one was Norman Eight's Left Arm. It's also the one that held together best as a single story, so much so that when I went back to find the name I was surprised to find that it's also an excerpt.

Some others that were successful as stand-alones which I also liked: Lobster Run, The Alcoholic. Ex Communication was self-contained but also hard to follow, somehow---I found myself having to concentrate and read panels multiple times to figure out what was going on.

The Flood gave me the strongest "wow, I really want to read the rest of this!" feeling.

Scott Pilgrim is obnoxious on many levels, and reading a disjointed scene from it did nothing to change my opinion, but it probably does count as influential. Or something.