Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Discussion of "The Best American Comics" selection process

A few weeks too late, I found this post by John Dermot Woods (editor of Action Yes!, which hosted a preview of the anthology early last summer--as you can see in the links to the right). John is responding to a remark by Charles Burns, editor of "The Best American Comics 2009," on discovering new artists and the selection process. In the long comment thread that follows, the subject of abstract comics and their place in the range of contemporary comic art comes up quite a bit. It's an interesting discussion.

1 comment:

  1. Wow. Thanks for that link, Andrei. That was a fascinating conversation.

    I admit (with a mixture of pride and paranoia after that discussion) that I buy Best American Comics every year. I don't really believe that it is actually the "best American comics" just because it says so in the title. It's just usually a pretty good anthology. I like it when I feel like I've found on my own things that were included there. And I also like it when it introduces me to work I was not aware of. I am not so deep into independent comics as to imagine I can't learn something new from the anthology. I think positing that BAC is only useless to true aficionados is on par with the exclusivity of Burns's radar.

    Anyway, here's hoping that the 2010 volume includes some abstract comics! Several of the contributors to this discussion certainly seem to think that it should.

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